Page 5: The Gregory Mill

In 1883 John Gregory, from Wingham, Ontario, took title and settled on a farm that straddled the Souris river about 5 miles upstream from were it now passes under Highway #2 near Wawanesa. He had already built and begun operating a water powered grist mill that was to have steam power as an alternative during times of low water and in winter. He had carefully scouted his location, and it was, technically, an ideal site for a mill. The river in the Souris Bend area makes a rather sharp descent (as rivers go) onto the Assiniboine Plains. There was a moderately sharp bend across which he could construct a "mill race" or channel to direct the flow to the mill. He built a mud dam to back the water up to ensure a steady flow.



The mill race is still visible today, as are the foundations and a few feet of the walls. Time has erased almost all other traces, and a river traveler will pass the site by unless he knows what he is looking for. The mill race is about a kilometer long and one has to marvel at the engineering, and just sheer work, that must have been required to build it. No one recorded where they acquired the trenching equipment in a time before the municipalities had even begun to plan the grid of gravel roads that were to appear with the advent of the automobile? Some stretches are gouged out of the hillside, while in other places the sides are built up like dikes. The whole enterprise must have involved a substantial effort - in time and money.

The building itself was an impressive stone structure with the foundations cut into the incline of the valley wall, making it a full four stories at the front. The design and construction surely took a great deal of expertise, and it must easily have been the most impressive building in the Westman area at the time it opened.

The beautiful riverside setting was indeed aesthetically pleasing and convenient in and era when rivers provided transportation, water, wooded areas, and power for mills. But it simply was not destined to be a population centre. The rail lines passed to the north at Wawanesa and to the south at Boissevain. Transportation quickly shifted from river and cart trail, to rail and graded roads, and eventually to the automobile. Steam power was soon found to be more efficient than the variable and unpredictable flow of the local rivers.

The trail to the mill still exists today, etched in a zig-zag fashion up the hillside of a pasture, winding in gentle curves through the bush. A walk down it, or better still, up it, can only give one a hint of what the trip must have been like to force a team of sensibly reluctant animals to drag a tonne or so of cargo up that grade. After a few brief years of operation the site was abandoned and fell to ruin.


A corner of the remains of the Gregory Mill



The mill stands abandonned