Growing Galt makes a grand view
FLASH FROM THE PAST
Canada 150 is the catchphrase we will be hearing all year. That 150 — taking us back to 1867 — is also a good excuse to look at the significant growth of our communities here in Waterloo (County) Region. Sadly, not many local photographs from the actual year of Confederation seem to have been taken, even fewer surviving, so getting an absolute view of that era requires some elasticity, timewise.
This week’s pair of early images of Galt and the Grand River could be titled “Confederation plus 13” since each is dated c. 1880. They look downstream into Galt from the (then) brand new railway bridge over the river.
The Credit Valley Railway (CVR) reached Galt in the fall of 1879 on the way to connecting Toronto and St. Thomas. On Christmas Eve 1879, a CVR train crossed the new bridge for the first time and passengers looking left would have seen this view. The bridge also attracted intrepid photographers for whom the thought of a 75-foot tumble to the river caused no distress. The original bridge was replaced twice and the modern one is a c. 1930 structure with several upgrades. But our focus today is the view from, not of, the bridge.
The sketch appears in one of Waterloo County’s earliest histories, James Young’s 1880 “History of Galt.” Several anonymous drawings of early Galt were included in the book and this one provides an early downstream look. Because the caption mentions the 1879 bridge, the sketch can be confidently dated to that year. At right, we see the spire of Knox’s Presbyterian Church which had been built in 1869. The smaller church tower in the middle background is 1844’s Trinity Anglican. Galt’s other major Presbyterian church, Central, was still two years from opening. On the left bank of the river is Robert Dickson’s grist mill, erected in 1843. Nowadays that pre-Confederation stone building houses Cambridge Mill restaurant overlooking the Grand River.
The first bridge in the sketch is today called Park Hill but in 1880 it was Queen Street bridge. Its wooden trusses were replaced seven years later by an iron structure which lasted until 1934 when a Depression-era work force erected the current Park Hill bridge. The second visible bridge, carrying Main Street over the Grand, was a fourth or fifth descendant of the very first 1819 Galt bridge. The structure seen here looks quite new and in fact, was Galt’s first steel bridge, opening in 1878. The iconic Main Street bowstring bridge we know so well today went up in 1931.
In the photograph, the camera angle has shifted slightly and James Esson stands near the Credit Valley Railway overpass at Water Street which runs from bottom right. A trio of dressed-for-Sunday strollers sits in the sunshine takson’s ing in the view of prosperous late 19th-century Galt. Central Presbyterian’s spire has now sprouted and, combined with Knox’s tower, provides an easily recognizable representation of Galt’s west bank. Central’s spire helps us date this photo to 1882 when the church opened. Trinity’s more modest tower is barely visible here compared to the sketch. On the east bank, Dickson’s mill remains beside the river but now visible beside it is the two-storey, long white building that housed first, Wardlaw’s textile mill, and then the famous C. Turnbull Company which was a world leader in producing woollen “CEETEE” full fashioned body underwear. Es- lens also captured a portion of downtown Galt at the left with the Wesleyan Methodist (now Wesley United) and the town hall.
Next week, Flash from the Past will bring these views forward a few decades to show changes in “The Manchester of Canada.”