HomeMy WebLinkAbout2000-01406Copy of a typewritten article, 3 pages, written by Dean Hughes, on the history of the mills
in Whitevale.
"The Sideroad By Dean Hughes
You can't keep an old mill down. The grist mill at Whitevale, about 25 miles northeast
of Toronto, has gone through fire and flood many times. But it is still operating- and by
water power just as it did when Truman P. White first built it. And unless Duffin's Creek
dries up the old mill wheel will still be turning in the 21st century.
It all started about the middle of the last century. That's when Truman White came to
the little village called Majorville- after a man called Major. White erected a grist mill that
cost $10,000 and was the best one for many miles. Later he built a planing mill and a
sawmill and in 1867 erected a woollon mill that cost $30,000.
What is now Whitevale was a busy place in those days. It had many mills and factories.
But tragedy struck. Before 1875 fire wiped out the planing mill, stave and heading mill
and the carriage factory. Later the woollen mill was burned but the walls were left standing.
Later when the flour mill burned the machinery was transferred to the woollen mill and
flour-making continued...
It was this old mill- now a grist mill- that I visited the other day.
It's operated now by the four sons of Thomas Wilson who died in 1961 and it was Gordon
Wilson who showed me around. We started in the cellar beside the cement enclosure
where the water"
"pours through the 36-inch flume and turns the waterwheel. The volume of water revolving
the wheel is tremendous. It comes form behind the big dam about a half mile
away which backs up the water to a depth of 28 feet. This water is detoured into a raceway
which loads finally into the flume. Thus is hits the wheel at a volume of 16,000 gallons a
minute and produces 100 horsepower.
The waterwheel was connected to the main driveshaft and it was this that transferred the
power to turn the countless shafts and pulleys to keep the belts running all over the mill.
Thus the power was produced to grind the grain into a finer form as meal or chop to be
fed to farm animals. In the old days the power was used to turn to millstones which ground
the wheat into flour.
As I left I stopped for a moment and listened to the full sound of the waterwheel turning
deep in the bowels of the old mill. It seemed impossible to realize that a wheel had been
turning in this same spot for well over a hundred years.
It had turned when the sounds of the countryside were such things as the ring of the
anvil in the nearby blacksmith shop, the creak of wagons loaded with grain for the mill,"
"the clink of the trace chains, the jingle of harness bells and the grating of sleigh runners on
bare ground in the spring when the snow wore off.
Most of all that is gone - never to come back. But the old mill wheel turns on - as if
determined to keep going regardless of change. It is like a tribute to Truman P. White
who built the mill - and so impressed the village that the residents changed its name from
Majorville to Whitevale."