Fascinating display of industrial history at Harriston library

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.