While the water tower at AO Smith / GSW / Beatty Bros. Company Limited has been part of the Fergus skyline for roughly 86 years, it was essentially built to serve the needs of era in which it was constructed.
During those years, it served not only the factory, but the community as well.
Fire protection
Fire was a major hazard for industries in the 19th century.
The Hill Street plant, when built, was at the fringe of the town and there was no access to the river for a water supply.
The company drilled a well and constructed a reservoir should a large quantity of water be needed to fight a fire.
As the company grew, and especially after 1920, the fire fighting capacity of the factories remained a priority in the minds of W.G. and Milton Beatty and their senior managers.
In the 1930s they undertook a major upgrading of their facilities, and a formal integration of their own men and equipment with that of the municipality.
The upgrading of facilities at the Hill Street plant included some 7,000 sprinkler heads, each with a half-inch outlet. They were fed directly from the Beatty water tank on its tower.
It held 125,000 gallons of water. A pump fed the tower from a dedicated well 360 feet deep. The pump could replenish the tank at a rate of 200 gallons per minute. In addition to the sprinkler heads, there were several reels of 2-inch hose available to supply extra water where needed.
Alternative water supply
The well had another use. It had been inspected and approved by the department of health. Should the municipal well be out of service, the Beatty well could supply the town.
That was also useful should a fire elsewhere in Fergus strain the capacity of the municipal well and pump.
The tight integration of the Beatty fire fighting force and its equipment with that of the municipality was unusual for the time, but by no means unique.
Today, such a system would face all sorts of regulatory requirements concerning testing and water quality.
And that is assuming that a combined private and public system would be tolerated at all by provincial authorities.
In its day, though, it was an efficient and cost-effective way for the municipality of Fergus and the Beatty firm to operate a first-class fire fighting system.
Drought of 1929
Drought conditions in 1929 led to actions resulting in Shand Dam which opened in 1942.
Those same conditions were also a factor leading to to the construction of the water tower.
In 1929 all the rain clouds seemed to skirt around Fergus.
Other areas in Wellington County received a little rain, but none had a drought as bad as that in Fergus.
By late August many people with private wells had run out of water.
They had to make do as best they could, relying on the kindness of neighbours who still had water. Even the town of Fergus was under pressure.
The Fergus Public Utilities Commission instituted lawn watering restrictions, and by the first week of September the commission decided town water should be used only for cooking and drinking.
For washing and bathing it urged people to use the water in their cisterns.
Several contractors took advantage of the weather in late August to start new houses that they had not originally planned to build until the spring of 1930.
That was good News for Fergus, where the huge Beatty plant was in full-out production, and there was a housing shortage for those with families.
Unlike many industrialists, W.G. Beatty had a great fear of fire.
His firm, in the early 1920s, had installed a steam-powered pump at the Grand River plant, now the Fergus Market. It could pump 12,000 gallons per minute, about three times the capacity of the municipal system.
With the water shortage in 1929, they proceeded with additional fire protection at the main plant on Hill Street.
To supply the system, the company did not rely on municipal water.
They commissioned their own well, deeper than the one supplying the municipal system.
The company announced that in the spring of 1930 a crew of structural steel workers began assembling a water tower for the company with a capacity of 125,000 gallons, more than twice that of the Fergus municipal water tower, and it would be 12 feet higher.
Though an independent system for the factory only, the Beatty system, as the result of an agreement hammered out by W.G. Beatty and the village of Fergus could be connected to the municipal mains to assure an almost inexhaustible supply of water should a major fire break out in the town.
Wags around the town of Fergus thought the fire protection systems under construction by the town and the Beatty firm were overkill and an unnecessary expense.
That fall a major fire to the north, in Durham, devastated part of the downtown, silencing the critics.
Firefighters there had been hampered by an inadequate supply of water.
With files from Stephen Thorning.
