Historical bits and pieces along the Grand

Walter Bean Trail through Waterloo Region introduces more audacious explorers to reminders of the Grand River’s history. Downstream from Bridgeport — a short distance from the Economical Insurance trailhead — is one such site. Buried in the woods are foundation ruins of a once-substantial structure, part of a major industrial experiment. In 1901, promoters in Berlin and Waterloo County proposed combining a new crop ideally suited to the county’s soil — sugar beets — with a factory producing something Canada required: refined sugar. So, 115 years ago, atop the steep riverbank, the new Ontario Sugar Company refinery opened. Later this year, Flash from the Past delves into the establishment of that industry. For now, we scramble back to the river’s edge.

Necessary in sugar beet refining is water, plenty of water. Reports at the time said three million gallons a day! Thus, this smokebelching building. Inside, a coalpowered steam pump forced Grand River water uphill to the refinery during late summer and fall when sugar beets were arriving by the trainload. At the other end of the process, the messy effluent, now loaded with vegetable residue and lime, flowed back into the Grand.

The Ontario Sugar Company operated from 1902 until 1909. Bankruptcy led to the renamed Dominion Sugar Company owned by Ontario’s other major refinery located in Wallaceburg. In 1923, Dominion consolidated its operations, abandoning the Kitchener plant. The 1,500-foot-long factory stood empty until 1940 when Brown Steel moved in; demolished four-fifths of the structure and conducted business there for 60 years. What remains of the refinery is now home to the elegant Hacienda Sarria banquet facility.

Meanwhile, down by the river, nature is today busy absorbing industry. Time-plus-weather-plusspring-floods-plus-vandals has reduced the pump house to a few foundation walls and strewn-about rubble. The roof, machinery, piping and smokestack disappeared long ago.

Not far away are remnants of another idealistic business venture from early 20th-century Waterloo County. In the river and on the opposite shore are five concrete piers, some standing, some collapsed. One stands at the right edge of this c. 1912 postcard. They are almost the sole remaining evidence of an ambitious scheme to add a web of electric railways across Perth, Oxford, Waterloo and Wellington counties. With cheap hydro power flowing out of Niagara Falls, numerous electric railway plans were proposed throughout Ontario.

In Stratford, brothers N.R. and W.A. Bugg conceived “The People’s Railway” linking Woodstock, Stratford, Berlin and Guelph with stops in Tavistock, New Hamburg, Ayr, Bloomingdale, New Germany (Maryhill), Puslinch, Elora and Arthur. Huge bonuses were voted by communities along the route: Berlin, $60,000; New Hamburg, $20,000; Wellesley Township, $15,000; and Tavistock, $10,000, are just some of the local debentures issued in 1909 to support the company. Near Bridgeport, in July 1910, workers began building embankments across the Kraft farm toward Bloomingdale, and contractor Charles Robbins of Galt erected caissons in the Grand River. Within these he constructed concrete piers to support a 400foot-long bridge that would carry the railway from Berlin to Bloomingdale.

Surveying and embankment work paused for the winter. By spring 1911, disquieting signs indicated financial peril; workers went unpaid and suppliers demanded cash. Even a bond issue failed to pump life back into The People’s Railway. By fall 1911, the Bugg brothers were out. Several attempts to re-organize failed. For years, a large pile of steel rails sat rusting near Bridgeport.

The First World War halted all rail expansion plans and, when peace returned, changing transportation patterns doomed most of the might-have-been electric railway networks across southern Ontario.

A pilot friend says he can still trace the earthen embankments from Bridgeport to Bloomingdale to Maryhill, but that’s about all that remains of The People’s Railway a century later ... except for that quintet of concrete piers stepping across the Grand River.

RYCH MILLS COLLECTION In a circa 1912 postcard, smoke pours from the pump house along the Grand River while a new concrete bridge pier rises from the river at right.

ROBERT VOGEL COLLECTION Envelopes from The Peoples Railway, such as this one mailed to Goderich in May 1911, had a map of the proposed route on the reverse. Puslinch Lake and Hofstetter Lake would have become major resorts.