Meet Our Neighbours, Part II: Electricity and Regeneration at Power Glen
This is the second of a two-part series exploring the history of a community that has neighboured The Brown Homestead since the 1780s. Though the Power Glen community (as it’s known today) has cycled through different names over the centuries along with the industries that sustained it, there is continuity in the resourcefulness of people who lived there and how they harnessed the power of the hills and waterways in this particular corner of Niagara.
When we left off in telling the story of Power Glen, it was nearing the end of the nineteenth century and this hidden corner of Niagara was at the precipice of significant technological and industrial change. The mills that quite literally put Reynoldsville on the map had closed in 1893, and the entrepreneur and visionary who championed for the village’s success, Benjamin Franklin Reynolds, died in 1896. What was to happen to the small community of some 60 residents?
Located at the base of the Niagara Escarpment on Twelve Mile Creek, the existence of the community here was inextricably tied to its surrounding landscape. Harnessing the power of the water that fell from the ridge of the escarpment and weaved its way along the creek was inevitable. Yet, what came after the mills that initiated this tiny village was both revolutionary and unprecedented: hydroelectric power generation.
Canada’s Cradle of Hydro-Electric Power
The idea to build a hydroelectric power plant at Reynoldsville began in 1896 with five Hamilton men, all named John (1). After Nikola Tesla’s 1888 invention of the alternating electrical current system, the fervour to develop electricity power plants equipped for long-distance transmission emerged at lightning speed (pun intended). While talk of hydroelectricity in Niagara immediately brings Niagara Falls into the collective consciousness, the power station at Reynoldsville should not be overlooked. Rather, this was the site that first powered the “Birmingham of Canada”, or Hamilton, Ontario - a shocking 56 kilometres away (ok, I’ll stop with the puns now).
At this time, the idea to commercially transmit electricity over long distances was “in much of an experimental stage”(2). Only in November 1896, did Niagara Falls become the site of the first long distance transmission of electricity for commercial purposes, generating power for Buffalo, New York — 32 kilometres away. When the five Johns (Dickerson, Gibson, Moodie, Patterson and Sutherland) formed the Cataract Power Company of Hamilton earlier that year, they aimed to almost double that distance - and to maintain consistent power generation. To do so, finding the right location was critical.
While the historical records note the location of the power plant as “a point on the Niagara Escarpment near Decew Falls”(3), this point was in fact Reynoldsville. Originally, the Johns identified a site utilizing the water-ways of Beaver Dams Creek and Decew Falls for the plant. However, after further consideration, it was decided to change course ever so slightly, rather building the power plant “three quarters of a mile east” to gain more advantageous circumstances for power generation (4). These “very material advantages” included:
The ability to secure private land to ensure consistent and “unobstructed” water supply by digging a feeder canal “from the Lake Erie level of the Welland Canal at [Allanburg]” and creating storage reservoirs from the low-lying meadow surrounding Beaver Dams.
An additional drop of 70 feet at the base of the Escarpment compared to at Decew Falls, making for a fall of over 265 feet to maximize water pressure.
This particular portion of Twelve Mile Creek against the Escarpment served as a natural trail race, making an ideal location for the power house (5).
Despite the natural advantages of the area, it would still take technology about a year to catch up to the Johns’ vision. The longer the distance of electrical transmission, the more powerful the voltage was required - and the turbines able to generate the power needed (24,000 volts compared to the 11,000 volts at Niagara Falls) would not be available until 1897.
This map marks the location of the power house and associated feeder canal and transmission lines connecting the facility to Hamilton.
Source: "Electrical Power from the Welland Canal", Electrical World and Engineer, 1906.
After purchasing the needed land from the Reynolds and Hostetter families in 1896, the Cataract Power Company of Hamilton broke ground on October 5, 1897, and the first electricity was generated just 10 months later in August 1898 (6). The facilities encompassed areas both above and below the Escarpment, with a 4.5 mile private feeder canal connecting the third Welland Canal at Allanburg to three man-made water reservoirs spanning 33 acres - named Lakes Moodie, Gibson and Patterson - and containing 48 hours’ supply of water (7). From the reservoirs, sitting at the edge of the Escarpment brow, water flowed down the steep slope through a single steel penstock, or pipe, and discharged through two turbines, or water wheels, into Twelve Mile Creek. The power house at the Escarpment base was itself described in 1898 as “a substantial structure of iron and brock, 174 x 42 feet, with a galvanized iron roof over matched board sheathing” and noted to be “lighted by clusters of incandescent light and will be heated by electric heaters” (8).
The power house at Power Glen, dated 1906. Note the multiple penstocks carrying water down the cleared slope of the Niagara Escarpment. Additional generators and penstocks were added in 1900, 1905, 1908, and 1912 to meet demand.
Source: "Electrical Power from the Welland Canal", Electrical World and Engineer, 1906.
The electricity generated at the power plant then travelled through high voltage wires on a carefully laid out path of wooden poles spaced 90 feet apart, towards Hamilton. The first power line to cross Niagara began here at the Cataract Power Company. From the power house, the line made its way to the Grand Trunk Railway by way of “a concession road”, and followed the railway westward “on an almost perfectly straight line” to the company’s substation on Victoria Avenue in Hamilton, located on the Grand Trunk “about one mile within the city limits” (9). From Victoria Avenue, electricity was then distributed across the Ambitious City - enabling Hamilton to usher in an era of thriving industrial prosperity at the turn of the twentieth century.
It didn’t take long for the hydroelectric station to expand to accommodate the rapidly increasing demand for electricity in Hamilton, and across Niagara. At the time, the electricity generation and supply industry was a private enterprise, and as such, capitalists like those who owned the Cataract Power Company prioritized serving private businesses - that’s where the money was. So, by 1905, the power house was extended, new penstocks were built, and the reservoirs further flooded and made into two lakes: Moodie and Gibson (10). The Cradle of Canadian Hydroelectricity was very much entrenched into the fabric of Niagara.
Transforming the Landscape
The power house at Power Glen, circa 1912. Notice the stark contrast between the steel of the power generating facility and the surviving natural landscape. It’s worth noting here that the power plant, and the company that operated it, underwent several name changes in the first years of the 1900s. Though the plant’s parent company was headquartered in Hamilton, by 1911 it operated under the St. Catharines based subsidiary Lincoln Electric Light and Power.
Source: St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.
What attracted the Cataract Power Company of Hamilton to build their hydroelectric power generating station at Reynoldsville was the same as what enticed the United Empire Loyalists to settle in the area more than a century prior, and Indigenous peoples to hunt and travel even before that. The geographical features of the area. The steep slope of the Niagara Escarpment, rolling hills, and waters of Twelve Mile Creek in this hidden corner of Niagara fostered industry, innovation, and ingenuity. Ironically, the technology that arose here also greatly altered the landscape that enabled it.
While the success of the turn-of-the-nineteenth century mills that gave way to Reynoldsville relied on the flooding of Jackson Flats, the success of the Cataract Power Company of Hamilton required something even more dramatic. The treed slope of the Niagara Escarpment was cleared and steel penstocks erected, becoming the focal point (and symbol of progress) for those travelling along Pelham Road. Moreover, thick power lines draped from wooden poles soaring some 30 feet high now crossed Twelve Mile Creek, roads, and through farmers’ fields and other private property along the tracks of the railway (11).
This sight would have been entirely novel, and likely somewhat frightening, to locals. Electricity was so new, and its uses were expanding so rapidly, that some of the general public were wary of the technology. How did members of the Chellew family, who lived at The Brown Homestead from 1858-1902, react to seeing the penstock and power house for the first time while travelling on Pelham Road? Or, what about the Morningstar's who operated the mill at Decew Falls (12)?
In addition to new infrastructure at the station site itself, more and more power lines were soon erected, criss-crossing the countryside. In fact, in 1912, Lafontaine Powers, sold a small strip of land spanning 8th Avenue Louth to the Hamilton Cataract Power Light and Traction Company for the express purpose of raising more power lines.
An aerial view marking the thin tract of land sold to the Hamilton Cataract Power Light and Traction Company (the purple line at the top left corner). The Brown Homestead is marked with a yellow star, and 100 acres of the Powers’ land is outlined in black. The red lighting bolt at the top right corner marks the location of the hydroelectric generating station. Consider the work required for the Company to acquire the land to raise their hydrolines and connect their clients to electricity. This private enterprise would have had to purchase similar tracts at each farm and property they planned for their lines to cross.
Lafontaine Powers purchased The Brown Homestead and its 119 acres from Joseph Chellew Jr. in 1902. You can learn more about our site’s evolving cultural landscape and these early twentieth century developments by exploring our digital mapping exhibit below.
Regenerating Power Glen
It would be interesting to learn exactly what the Powers family, and the people of Reynoldsville more generally, felt about the rapid change that unfurled around them at the turn of the twentieth century. However, the coverage written at the time seemed more concerned with the impressiveness of such an enormous and novel project than the reaction of everyday people. In fact, if a reader were introduced to the community by an 1904 article written by Reverend J.R. Patterson in the The Canadian Epworth Era, they would be led to believe that its history really only began once the Cataract Power Company came to the area. The article, entitled “Power Glen: Where Hamilton Gets Her Electricity” relates the following,
Power Glen is one of the newest post-offices in Ontario. Less than a year old, it came into being last June, and is the direct result of a successful attempt to supply the Ambitious City with cheap power and light. In former days the neighbourhood was known as Reynoldville; but when a post-office was granted, Mrs. Sangster, the wife of the local superintendent, gave it its present pretty name. Situated about two miles south of the city of St. Catharines, and nestling close under the mountain… it derives its life and gets its name from the works of the Hamilton Cataract Power, Light and Traction Company (13).
While there is certainly more historical relevance to the area than Patterson cared to investigate, there is no denying that to many people, the evolution of the milling village of Reynoldville into the Cradle of Canadian Hydroelectricity at Power Glen was directly tied to the building of the power generating station.
The plant also welcomed a whole new generation and demographic of people to the community. Whereas the mills, and blacksmith, wagon, and barrel shops at Reynoldsville attracted labourers and skilled tradespeople, the power plant brought skilled machinists and highly trained electricians to the area. To accommodate their employees, the Company built six new “power homes”, and later, a community hall that would serve as a church, Sunday School, and community centre (14). The foundations of the new houses were built using red sandstone from the remains of the old mill that was destroyed by fire in 1893 (15). The surviving power homes today can still be identified by looking at their foundations.
The power homes at Power Glen, undated.
Source: City of St. Catharines, Power Glen Heritage Conservation District The Study, 39.
The full Power Glen Listing in the 1911 Province of Ontario Gazetteer and Directory.
The entry for Power Glen in the 1910-1911 Province of Ontario Gazetteer and Directory, which listed post offices and surrounding businesses in distinct communities across the province, included the following description: “a county post office in Grantham township, Lincoln county. 4 miles from St. Catharines, the county seat” (16). William G. Reynolds, son of the late Benjamin F. Reynolds, was listed as both the postmaster and grocer for the community. Notably, no other business was included in Power Glen’s listing - not even the power house for Dominion Power and Transmission (as the company became known in 1907). The area’s transition in industry, from milling and small-scale industries to strictly hydroelectricity, thus impacted not only the residents of the neighbourhood, but also the farming families in the surrounding vicinity. While the Brown and Chellew families living at The Brown Homestead through the 1800s could make the short trip to Reynoldsville for their milling and small repairs to their farming implements, the was no longer a place for such business in the new and improved Power Glen. The Powers family, who moved into the Homestead in 1902, likely had to travel elsewhere at a further distance for their needs.
This map shows proximity of Power Glen to St. Catharines, 1929. Source: Map, Data, and GIS Library, Brock University.
The opening of the power house not only meant change to the businesses and services of the area, but also to the very fabric of the community and the people who lived there. The engineers and contractors who built the generating facility came from large cities outside of Niagara - Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, and even Dayton, Ohio (17). And many of the machinists and electricians who operated the plant also relocated to Power Glen from out-of-town. Moving strictly for work, the employees lived in newly built homes and socialized in a community hall erected by the same company they worked for. All that tied the people of Power Glen together was the power plant.
It’s worth considering what kind of impact these changing demographics and community spaces had on the people formerly of Reynoldsville and the surrounding farms. It must be acknowledged that while the industrious St. Catharines was only a short distance away via Pelham Road, the energy of this urban centre would have differed widely from this little pocket of industry nestled against the Escarpment. And while the factories, businesses, and electric railways of the city at the turn of the twentieth century would have welcomed the electricity generated by the power plant with open arms, rural farming families like the Powers would not have benefited from electricity until much later. Power Glen was a tangible symbol of a society accelerating rapidly into the future, but what about those who couldn’t “keep up”?
Power Glen through the Twentieth Century
The ever-growing demand for electricity justified the focus on a singular industry in Power Glen. Within a 14 year period, the power plant’s capacity was expanded four different times - with additional generators and penstocks added in 1900, 1905, 1908, and 1912 (18). Demand only continued to increase. By 1930, the generating station came under the control of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (better known as Ontario Hydro), a publicly owned electricity utility. Now priority was expanded to supplying power to regular households as well.
Priorities, however, were once again redirected at the outbreak of the Second World War. As St. Catharines and other surrounding urban areas refocused and accelerated their industrial activity towards the war effort, the need for a second generating plant at Power Glen could not be ignored. The plan was approved in September 1941, and the new building opened in October 1943 in order to meet the demands of the war. Though Ontario Hydro anticipated a significant drop in demand following the war, the opposite occurred (19). The postwar period saw a rapid growth in Niagara’s economy as well as its population, meaning even more electricity was required to serve the homes, farms, and industries of the area. By 1947, a second turbine was installed at the new power plant. Eventually these two plants would become known as “Decew Falls Power Generating Station #1” and “Decew Falls Power Generating Station #2”, now operated by Ontario Power Generation.
Eventually a school would be built at Power Glen, and businesses would open. Yet, while postwar St. Catharines saw significant suburban expansion, the little community remained relatively isolated. Even a glance at the 1968 map of recently amalgamated City of St. Catharines clearly shows that Power Glen literally and figuratively straddled the border between rural and urban, sitting at the corner that divided Louth and St. Catharines.
Notice the location of Power Glen (towards the bottom left) in comparison to the rest of St. Catharines in 1968. The residential enclaves don’t yet make it that far south on Pelham Road, and the newly built Highway 406 diverts around the section of the valley of Twelve Mile Creek and the water reservoirs above the Escarpment.
However, what isolated Power Glen, also attributes to the community’s very existence. Power Glen, like Reynoldsville and the Loyalist settlement before that, could only flourish because of the pocket of geographical features upon which it sits. Nestled beneath the Niagara Escarpment, the industries that emerged here over the centuries relied on its steep slope of rock and the waters of Twelve Mile Creek. And the community, tucked away from the bustle of the urban centre, could build its own distinct identity. Each new generation would add its own layer to the character of the neighbourhood - layers, which, if you look hard enough, are still tangible today.
I invite you to seek out the many eras of Power Glen’s history on your own. See if you can find the 18th century Turney Family Cemetery now roped off within a residential neighbourhood. Hike the section of the Laura Secord Trail that takes you past what’s left of the old dam that once flooded Jackson’s Flats and provided water power to Crown Mills. Walk along Power Glen road and point out the power homes by their red sandstone foundation. Alone, these old remnants might not reveal much, but together - they reveal a richly layered story of a little pocket of community as it evolved over centuries.
Sara Nixon is a public historian and Community Engagement Coordinator at The Brown Homestead.
Footnotes
(1) This fact was pointed out astutely in the very informative article written by the late Brock University Professor of Geography, Alun Hughes whose passion for Niagara history led to numerous talks and publications. Alun Hughes, “Shades of Reynoldsville and Decew Town: A History of Power Glen and Vicinity”, Historical Society of St. Catharines (Dec 2008), 10.
(2) “The Cataract Power Company of Hamilton”, Canadian Electrical News and Steam Engineering Journal vol. 8, no 12. (December 1898): 228.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Rev. J.R. Patterson, “Power Glen: Where Hamilton Gets her Electricity”, The Canadian Epworth Era, no. 6 (June 1905): 166; “The Cataract Power Company of Hamilton,” 228.
(6) City of St. Catharines, Planning Services Department and the St. Catharines Heritage Committee, “Power Glen Heritage Conservation District The Study”, City of St. Catharines, (2010), 37.
(7) “The Cataract Power Company of Hamilton,” 229.
(8) “The Cataract Power Company of Hamilton,” 230.
(9) Ibid.
(10) This work was notably done with a team of “some eight hundred Italians, with picks and shovels, and a score of Canadians with teams, co-operated with steam shovels, donkey locomotive engines and dumping cars”, shedding light on the demographics of the working class local to the area and the technology available to them during the first years of the twentieth century. Patterson, “Power Glen”, 166.
(11) “The Cataract Power Company of Hamilton,” 232.
(12) There’s actually a great article about just this by our friends at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.
(13) Patterson, “Power Glen”, 166.
(14) City of St. Catharines, Power Glen Heritage Conservation District The Study, 38.
(15) Andrea Klose, A History of Short Hills Provincial Park, Friends of the Short Hills Park, St. Catharines, ON (2002): 12
(16) Province of Ontario gazetteer and directory... : containing an alphabetically arranged list of post offices with the business carried on in their vicinity, a classified list of patrons, also a list of the division court districts and clerks, (Toronto: Ingersoll : Ontario Publishing & Advertising, 1911): 869.
(17) George W. Bowie, “The Hamilton, Can., Cataract Power Co.’ Plant at De Cew Falls”, The Electrical Engineer vol. 26, no. 553 (December 8, 1898): 2.
(18) City of St. Catharines, “Power Glen Heritage Conservation District The Study”, 64.
(19) St. Catharines Standard News Index, “Decew Falls Generating Station (Hydro-Electric)”, Brock University Archives.