Varieties of Industry
Introduction
First… a word from wikipedia…
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or
feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can
refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it.
Grist is grain that has been separated from its chaff in preparation
for grinding.
We will use the terms gristmill, grist mill and flour mill
interchangeably because all three are used in the source material.
………
A Trip to Gregory’s Mill
Cartwright pioneer, A.E. Steel, writing in the Cartwright local
history, Memories Along the Badger Revisited, tells us this story of a
trip he took in the early 1880’s. The mill in question was some
distance away, outside of the Boundary Trail region, but we include as
an illustration of the forces that prompted the establishment of local
mills, and as a slice of life from the times.
Our first grist of wheat was taken to the flour mill at Glenora and a
farmer got his own wheat ground into flour and got all the flour, bran
and shorts that he owned. After that we went to Wakopa flour mill owned
by Harrision Bros., and again I have made a number of trips to the
Souris mill. The mill was equipped with the Hungarian Patent process
and made an excellent grade of flour. Each round trip took four long
days to go and return with oxen. The mill was kept running day and
night, and if we were fortunate our gristing was done right away and we
would be able to start for home without losing any time. The mill was
owned by a man by the name of Gregory, and anyone that had to stay
overnight was accommodated at his house. He had plenty of stable room
and feed for the teams and the charge for man and beast was very
reasonable.
I remember Bob Blackwell and myself going with our grists to the Souris
mill with the oxen and wagon after the freeze-up. The weather was
lovely so we travelled until quite late the first day and then camped
out for the night. We had plenty of
with which to keep us warm. The
next morning we hitched up early and got to Dunlop's for breakfast.
(The town, Dunrea, is situated on that place now, or at least part of
it). The townsite is on part of two farms that were owned by Dunlop and
Ray so the town was named after the two farmers.
Leaving Dunlop's, we entered Lang's Valley and travelled it for a few
miles, then crossed up the other side and the next valley we entered
was the Souris and then on across the river to the mill. This time
there were a lot of grists ahead of us and that meant staying at the
mill two nights instead of one. We could get our meals at the house but
there wasn't sleeping accommodation for all, so a number of us slept at
the mill above the engine room which was nice and warm. We got loaded
up and started for home before daylight on Saturday morning and
travelled a good distance be- fore we stopped to feed our teams. After
giving them a good feed we got going again. Bob said he intended to
stay that night at a friend's and he would not resume the journey until
Monday morning, but I decided to go on home after feeding and resting
the oxen. I passed through the north end of Killarney late at night,
and after a while began to feel sleepy so I wrapped a quilt about me
and lay between the bags. I knew the oxen would keep to the trail so I
dropped off to sleep. I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke,
I found the oxen both laying down. I got them going again and finally
reached home before daylight on Sunday morning.
*Cartwright & District History Committee, Memories Along the Badger
Revisited, 1985 p4
Mills Were a Priority
The European settlement of Southwestern Manitoba followed a process
that had already been established elsewhere, across North America.
People were here before services, before roads, before stores and towns
They really were starting from scratch. Slow transportation and long
distances made self-sufficiency a must. They came to farm, and they
already knew that wheat and other grains were to be the primary crops.
The prairies were opened to agricultural settlement for one main
economic purpose – to grow wheat. The problem with that was that it was
so far to market that there was little profit to be made.
That was okay, they all knew that. Eventually rail lines would cross
the land and everything would fall into place.
In the meantime, subsistence was a starting point.
Wheat and oats and barley were edible, even sought after, as a food
supply… with a little processing. Many of the settlers from Ontario and
Britain had no farming experience. Many were especially
unprepared for the difficulties prairie farming would present.
That wasn’t their fault – even for those with agricultural expertise,
prairie farming was a whole new game. But most of the newcomers
were pretty smart and self-sufficient. All of them kniew where flour
came from, and that it could be used to make bread. The same with oats
and oatmeal. They knew about flour or grist mills. Every
community back home had one. Quite a few of them even knew how they
worked.
Having a gristmill nearby, where one could at least exchange wheat for
flour was a crucial advantage in making a homestead sustainable until a
railway would arrive.
Turning wheat into flour represented Manitoba's first step in becoming
an industrialized society. Flour milling was practised by the
province's aboriginal peoples long before Lord Selkirk's settlers
engaged in the activity. When Manitoba gained provincial status
in 1870, most flour mills were concentrated in the vicinity of the
rapidly emerging city of Winnipeg. Flour mills supplied flour for the
practical consumer needs of the district residents.
The First Mills – Pre-Railroad Settlements
In a sense the early mills were services that hoped to become towns.
With the coming of the railway links we saw the creation of more
lasting towns. These towns wanted a gristmill and would often offer
what was called a Mill Bonus to attract such a business.
This
map shows postal routes and pre-railroad communities as of about 1884.
The period from 1881 and 1882, known as the “Manitoba Boom”, saw
intense speculation in land sale – especially in town lots. Everyone
knew that the population of rural western Manitoba was going to
explode. Towns would be built, businesses established, and money would
be made.
The problem was that nobody was sure where all these new towns would be
located. It all depended on where the railway lines would run, and
where the railway company would decide to put a station. Although some
railway surveys had been undertaken and some lines had been planned, no
one knew where the stations would be. So some enterprising landowners
decided that a piece of land they owned might just be a good spot for a
town
Speculating in town lots was a bit like participating in a gold rush.
You stake a claim and hope it pays. Exaggerations and outright lies
were the tools of that trade. To sell the lots the promoter had to
assure prospective buyers that the rail line was a sure thing. Another
selling point was having a mill.
Conclusions
The establishment of the rural milling industry was a direct result of
the confidence demonstrated by those entrepreneurs and farmers who
invested their fortunes, toil, and tears in the development of the
province’s agricultural resources. The conversion of wheat into
flour
for practical consumer purposes provided evidence to investors that the
region was worthy of future development. The agricultural sector
provided the engine for the growth of the entire province. Four milling
played an important role in this achievement.
Even though many settlers had milling experience, and there was a
definite need for the service, they weren’t prepared for the seasonal
nature of prairie rivers and soon learned that water power wasn’t
reliably available. Thus it was more costly here than in the east, and
making a profit was more difficult.
The decline and extinction of small independent flour mills across
Manitoba can be largely attributed to the uncompetitive position in
which these mills were placed by the large milling companies after the
first World War. Consumers of flour gravitated toward the more
inexpensive product produced by the large mills. Lack of business
suffocated the independent millers and most were driven out of the
business.
The large milling concerns could not only undercut the price of flour
that independent millers offered, but they operated at a distinct
advantage because of their large reserves of capital. The large mills
also had greater funds at their disposal for advertising.
Over the course of the twentieth century, Manitoba’s rural population
base began to decline; rural residents migrated to urban centres.
All these factors played a part.
Although the flour milling industry in rural Manitoba faced its perhaps
inevitable decline, the role it played in that short period of
transition to an agriculture based economy was both important and
interesting.
Sawmills
After treking half way across a continent in crowded lake boats, slow
river boats, poorly appointed trains; after finishing the journey in ox
carts, open wagons, or even on foot; the thought of building your first
home on the prairie must have been appealing, to say the least. If the
recent stretch of your long journey took you through the thriving town
of Emerson or the well-populated city of Winnipeg, both appearing to
have been visited by civilization, you might have some expectations
that your new home might be similar to the ones you stopped in along
the journey.
Welcome to the prairies.
Even if you could afford a nice frame home, perhaps forgoing the picket
fence, the building materials were hard to come by. This new country
didn’t seem to have lumberyards. Shipping lumber from the bigger
centres was expensive and time-consuming.
In much of southern Manitoba, timber was scarce.
The scarcity of trees meant that the open prairie was easy convert into
productive cropland. The downside was it was a long way even to get
firewood, let alone building materials. The Pembina - Manitou area was
a bit of an exception in that, the along the Pembina Escarpments and
along the Pembina River and Rock and Swan Lakes, there were well-wooded
spots. That allowed early settlers in that vicinity the option of using
locally sourced wood.
If there was timber nearby, one of the first businesses set up in those
pre-railroad settlements was a sawmill.
Some of those sawmills were small and temporary, not necessarily
designed for commercial use, but set up to get a few buildings up.
Pioneer J.E. Parr describes the first sawmill in the Rock Lake area…
“Two posts were out in the ground about twelve feet from the
precipitous bank, with timbers from the top of the bank to each post,
far enough apart to roll logs out on.
“ The saw mill machinery consisted of a long pit-saw and two men. When
a log was placed over the pit, the bark roughed off, and chalk-lined
from end to end, with lines one inch apart, one man would stand
up upon the log and the other in the pit , and operate the mill. Mr.
Thos. Sandow’s house, built on section 18-2-11, was the first raised in
the district, and the roof was sheeted with lumber from this
mill” (McKitrick)
![](IndustryImages/Sawmill.jpg)
An unidentified sawmill site
The era of locally milled lumber was short, but important. Most of
those first sawmills were in villages that would disappear when the
railway arrived and new towns were born. That rail service also allowed
for an easily accessible supply of milled lumber in most areas.
Brickyards
Manitoba is
geologically blessed with thousands of clay deposits, hundreds of which
have been exploited over the past 150 years for brick manufacture. The
“Golden Age” of this aspect of Manitoba’s building history was from
1880 to 1912. There were about 60 major clay sites and about 175 brick
manufacturing plants that provided the billions of bricks that were
required for Manitoba’s major building boom of the late 19th and early
20th centuries.
The details of industrial operations were not often covered in local
newspapers and so it is only possible to provide a sense of typical
operations. The work was hard and the days were long. The pay was
modest, about $2 a day, but it was steady, at least for the duration of
the season, usually from May (when the frost left) till August or
September.
Even small yards had up-to-date technologies such as
steam-power. A typical operation featured the large covered drying
sheds that new bricks were laid into.
It was the final stage of the
brick-making operation that usually distinguished a major from a minor
yard: whether the brick was fired in a scove or beehive kiln. The scove
kiln. Most likely used in most operations in the southwest corner, was
a less sophisticated technology, but one that was still effective
enough to produce good quality brick.
Burnings lasted about seven to
eight days, and when the outer shell of bricks on a scove kiln was
removed, workers discarded the disfigured and discoloured bricks nearer
the fire source.
The Brick House
The first settlers often built a sod hut for those first few years.
Logs were hard to find on the open prairie, but those living along near
the Pembina Escarpment or in the vicinity of Rock Lake might start with
a log house.
Settlers who arrived with a bit of cash in hand might opt to bring in
building supplies, but many had to wait for that first frame dwelling.
Brick was desirable as a building material, but was even more expensive
to ship than milled lumber, so it was some time before brick buildings
became popular.
What helped that process along was the fact that some of those new
settlers came with some experience making bricks, and they kept an eye
out for deposits of clay that would serve that purpose.
Food Processing
In the same way that grist mills or flour mills were an obvious way to
convert local product into food, butter and cheese factories were an
early attempt to process milk locally. Several of these were small
operations focusing on the local market.
In the same way that grist mills or flour mills were an obvious way to
convert local product into food, butter and cheese factories were an
early attempt to process milk locally. Several of these were small
operations focusing on the local market.
Other less common enterprises include S.S. Mayers Stock Medicine
Company started in Cartwright. It was so successful that he moved to
operation to Winnipeg in 1910. A rather unexpected initiative was the
establishement of soft drink manufacturing in Manitou, Mather, and West
Lynne.
Then, as now, there were obstacles to overcome in trying to operate a
manufacturing enterprise in small town. The bottom line was that many
of these enterprises were just getting underway when the explosion in
transportation technology, the extension of rail lines, and beginning
of the automobile age, changed everything.
Lime Kilns
Some years ago, while walking along the high riverbank, I found what
appeared to be an old well lined with fieldstones. I gave it little
thought until I learned about the small lime kilns that settlers often
constructed to make mortar for the many stone buildings that dot the
southwestern corner.
They are another example of small, local, do-it yourself, prairie
enterprises.
The remains of a small kiln.
Early settlers used it to purify and freshen damp basements, in the
henhouse, in cement and plaster and for whitewashing walls and
ceilings. Part of the spring housecleaning ritual was the whitewashing
of the interior of the little building with the half moon cut in the
door. The only "accessory" in that little building was a nail and
string to hold the previous year's Eaton's catalogue, which was used to
the very last page.
Angus McRuer describes one located near his Desford-area farm…
“This kiln was on a rise of land sloped to the north. A hole eight feet
deep by ten feet across was made at the top of the slope. A trench
three feet wide by thirty feet long was dug, starting at the bottom of
the hill, up into the bottom of the big hole. It was like a big clay
pipe. The trench acted as a damper.”
To prepare for a burn, stones were placed in the kiln leaving an arch
at the bottom to hold the fire. The process took three days to reduce
the limestone to powder. In addition to using it for making mortar,
people used it to purify and freshen damp basements, and in cement and
plaster and for whitewashing walls and ceilings.
There were several of these small local enterprises in our region. Many
are small and barely recognizable. They are usually on the side of a
creek bed or hill to allow access to one side of the kiln to feed the
fire and to provide the necessary draft to create a hot and steady burn.
“This kiln was on a rise of land sloped to the north. A hole
eight feet deep by ten feet across was made at the top of the slope. A
trench three feet wide by thirty feet long was dug, starting at the
bottom of the hill, up into the bottom of the big hole. It was like a
big clay pipe. The trench acted as a damper.”
To prepare for a burn, stones were placed in the kiln leaving an arch
at the bottom to hold the fire. The process took three days to reduce
the limestone to powder. In addition to using it for making mortar,
people used it to purify and freshen damp basements, and in cement and
plaster and for whitewashing walls and ceilings.
There were several of these small local enterprises in our region. Many
are small and barely recognizable. They are usually on the side of a
creek bed or hill to allow access to one side of the kiln to feed the
fire and to provide the necessary draft to create a hot and steady burn.
Once it was started, the fire in the kiln was kept going day and night.
Most of these operations ceased in the early 1900’s as commercial
building supplies became more readily available.
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