Just milling about!15 Sep 2008
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Window of past opportunity.
Upstream at old Elora mill site.
Stone the crows!
One of the of the joys of travelling is getting to see new, and old places. Whilst Canada's history goes back thousands of years with their native tribes, European settlement is much more modern and follows similar traits to our own NZ history. Discovery then settlement by various European cultures with a few battles thrown in here and there over who gets what.
Also there comes a need whilst trying to see a foriegn country as large as this one, time to take it easy or just "mill about". So in between the bigger (read longer) trips we have been exploring some of the smaller local villages. Many of these villages had their beginnings when the explorers either used the rivers running through them for travel, or to power various forms of industry like sawmills or flour mills. Each of these mill sites has some history attached and were the focal point of the villages that grew into the towns that are still there.
Obviously to use water power for mills to operate. requires the fall of water, and one of the striking things about this part of Ontario is the apparent lack of any form of serious land undulations. Its basically fairly flat when compared with our own hilly country. To those that know Pukehou hill just north of Otaki, it would be classed as a serious hill here and turned in to a major ski resort! Get the drift. Yet despite this seemingly flatness the rivers obviously drop considerably in height on their journeys to the Great Lakes. Here in Guelph alone, the local river running through town drops over at least 8 weirs or low-head dams of varying heights within the city. Throughout Ontario a number of these types of drops are the old mill sites, or used now for mini hydropower stations.
So we've taken a number of the attached photos whilst just milling about in local villages.
