Local volunteer group refurbishes historic Morningstar Mill in St. Catharines

The City of St. Catharines is bringing an important piece of its past back to life, and residents are thrilled to get a new look into the history that helped shape the city and southern Ontario.

In the 1800s people in southern Ontario’s settler communities relied on their mills, which were powered by water — you couldn’t just go to the store to buy bread.

Their flour had to come from a mill, and now people can get a fresh look inside one of those historic mills.

On the banks of Beaverdams Creek in St Catharines, a complex of mills and other buildings are credited with helping to shape the city of St. Catharines today.

“This is the beginnings of the settlement area here in St. Catharines,” said St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe. “If you didn’t have a grist mill to make flour that people could use to bake, you had some issues. You probably wouldn’t have seen the population explosion this area saw. In reality, this site is foundational to St. Catharines becoming the city it is today.”

READ MORE: Ontario to spend nearly $10M on Niagara District Airport expansion

There’s been a mill on the site since just after the war of 1812. In the 1900s that grew to a grist mill, a sawmill and other businesses.

The city, along with the Friends of Morningstar Mill, have just completed a $2-million project to refurbish the mill, which was closed for years for repairs.

Now, people can see where the flour was made with an 1892 version of modern milling — when people wanted white bread for a change.

“This is the modern equipment that is here to grind grain — whatever it is, whichever kind of grain it is essentially,” said Kathleen Powell, the St. Catharines Historical Services Curator.

Along with the older technology for whole wheat flour, all of it was powered by water with a shaft going straight down to where the water picked up enough speed to drive a turbine at the bottom.

READ MORE: Niagara-bound Burlington Skyway faces partial weekend closures

“The mill is great,” said Powell. “Like coming in to see the mill itself and all of the equipment and how it works is pretty great, because there are not a lot of mills left in, especially in Niagara.”

They also show off the house where the Morningstar family lived and they may really have been the good old days.

“It was a lot of work — everything was a lot of work, but also the Moringstars’ letters and cards and diaries and things like that talk a lot about the fun things they did — so outings, making ice cream, and when you’re a kid enjoying tramping around the old mill for example,” said Powell. “So that’s a really interesting story about just enjoying life and enjoying where they lived.”

Well over a century later, people still enjoy tramping around the old mill.

Now that the Morningstar Mill has been refurbished, it’s now open to the public for four days a week: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m.

READ MORE: Niagara police charge Lincoln man in $17K building material thefts