It has long been my opinion that the pioneer period has received far too much emphasis in the way local history is presented in this county and elsewhere in southern Ontario.
In Wellington County the pioneer period was very brief, and indeed, almost non-existent in some locales. The typical experiences of the early generations revolved around small-town industry and commercial agriculture. Often, the two were closely linked.
I was delighted when I saw, a couple of months ago, the announcement for a display titled Minto Industrial History, in the upstairs Minto Heritage Gallery at the Harriston Public Library. Recently I made time to go and have a look. It is a most impressive exhibit, put together by a group of enthusiastic volunteers.
The exhibit looks at some of the industries in Harriston, Palmerston, and Clifford, with brief descriptions, photographs, correspondence, and in some cases, examples of the products.
When strolling through the exhibit it is quickly obvious that each town had a distinct industrial history, and that all strove, in the end unsuccessfully, to build solid bases of industry.
Clifford and Harriston, like virtually every settlement in southern Ontario, began their industrial activity with flour and saw mills, powered by water. It soon became apparent that water power in Minto was inadequate for running factories and mills. In some respects, that was an advantage: proprietors there switched to steam while factories and mills to the south, in Elora and Fergus, struggled with water power.
The pioneer phase in Minto was particularly brief. The provincial government opened the township for settlement in the mid-1850s. There was an immediate land rush, and townsites developed quickly, the major ones being Clifford and Harriston. The development of Harriston was particularly rapid and broad. Indeed, that town’s economy, by 1870, was as diversified and broadly-based as any in Wellington County.
A decade and a half after settlement began, a resident could ride to Toronto in a parlour car on either of the two railways pushed through the township. Those lines put the local industries directly into the provincial economy. That expanded the potential market, and permitted local shops to specialize. For example, a blacksmith could become a farm implement manufacturer, and a sawmill could expand into furniture making.
During the late 1870s and 1880s, railway promoters built additional branch lines through Minto. A major consequence of that activity was the establishment of Palmerston as a major junction point. Growth was so rapid there that the settlement moved to town status without ever being a village. Initially, Palmerston was purely a one-industry town, the home to dozens of operating employees, and the site of maintenance and repair shops.
Civic leaders in Palmerston soon decided that they did not like being virtual captives of the Grand Trunk Railway. There were intensive efforts to attract other industries. Civic leaders induced a few businesses to located there, but overall the story was one of disappointment, and a bitter tale at that, because the village spent a fortune giving the firms financial aid to locate there.
For a while, in the years after 1890, Palmerston boasted a major malt and brewing business (owned by Lionel Clarke, who became Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor), and a pork packing business, and a half dozen other firms. Those businesses did not survive long into the 20th century, and today are unknown to most of the town’s residents.
Harriston also had an important pork packing industry, and one with a turbulent history. For a time the plant was operated by Davies and Company of Toronto, one of the first integrated food operations in Canada, with a string of packing houses, refrigerated warehouses, and retail outlets. In 1928, Royal Sterling Products took over the building, and operated until 1937. The structure subsequently saw a variety of uses before it was demolished in 1968. The eventual legacy of the Davies operation was the big Canada Packers plant, which was the most important of Harriston’s industries in the 20th century.
When an industry failed or closed, it was the usual practice to attempt to use the facility for a new industry. The Taylor, Scott and Company building in Palmerston was another good example.
The original firm produced lines of wooden wares. Later businesses in the plant included a battery manufacturer, a crayon and chalk maker, the Brewers Retail outlet, and a restaurant.
Potential industrialists showed a great deal of ingenuity in recycling buildings to new uses. But in the long run, the new businesses rarely enjoyed long-term success. The depression years of the 1930s were especially hard on small-town industries.
Minto was at the north end of the southwestern Ontario dairy belt that covered portions of Perth, Waterloo, and Oxford Counties. In the late 19th century a series of small cheese factories expanded dairying greatly by providing local outlets for milk. Most of the cheese factories produced cheddar, largely for the export market. Altogether, there were once dozens of them, but today only a handful remain in the once significant dairy belt. Among the important ones serving Minto were the Cotswold Cheese Factory, active between about 1875 until 1911, and the Harriston Cheese and Butter Company, operating between about 1885 and 1935.
Each of the cheese factories employed only a couple of men, but their importance extended through the community, from the farmers who had an additional product to sell, to the transportation business, gathering milk and hauling cheese to the railway station, and to the cheese box business, which supplied wooden boxes for the secure transportation of the product. The making of cheese boxes was an important sideline for Taylor, Scott and Company in Palmerston, among others.
Like many small towns, both Harriston and Palmerston enjoyed a minor industrial revival in the years immediately after World War II. Some of those industries were firms leaving Toronto because of the cost of real estate there. Others were attracted by the availability of labour and the absence of unions in small towns. Among that group were the crayon factory in Palmerston and the spinning mill in the old Davies plant in Harriston. Initially those businesses promised a new boost to the local economies, but most were gone by the late 1950s.
There were also a few industries that were able to cope with changing markets and times. An outstanding example was the Harriston Stove Company, which build wood stoves for six decades until closing in 1963. Had the firm’s managers been able to hang on for another decade, they might have enjoyed renewed success when wood stoves again became fashionable. As it is, old Harriston stoves are now very desirable collectors items.
This brief outline does not do proper justice to the industrial history of Minto and the towns within it. Over the coming year I intend to look at some of those businesses in detail, once ever month or six weeks.
I noted that John Bowen, Roy Charters, Doug Davie, Rob Purcell, and Scott Vanner, were among those involved in putting the Minto exhibit together, and I assume that many of the items are from their personal collections. I do not know any of those gentlemen, but I feel a kinship with them in their enthusiasm for this subject.
The display runs at the Harriston Public Library until Aug. 29. Hours are: Tues. 7 to 9pm, Thursday and Friday, 2 to 4 and 7 to 9pm, and Sat. 11am to 1pm. It is certainly worth a visit.