It was fascinating to read in The Citizen, our sister publication, that Howson and Howson Limited of Blyth celebrated its 150th anniversary in the milling business.
You’ve probably seen the Howson and Howson trucks on the road: the trucks drawing durum semolina wheat from ships in the port of Goderich that had been shipped from western Canada or the bulk trucks carrying milled flour to Lancia Bravo Foods that processes the flour into varieties of pasta.
The plant is one of the few left in Ontario processing flour, though once there were hundreds. Pioneer farmers needed flour and mills were set up a few miles apart to make it easier for them to carry wheat to the mill on foot and take flour or ground-up feed home again. Later, horses and buggies made the job easier.
Originally, most of the plants were powered by running water and dams created millponds. I remember Trealeven’s pond when I was a kid growing up near Lucknow.
Howson and Howson was originally located in Wingham and the huge pond there, nearly a lake, remained, even after the mill was struck by lightning in 1950. Recently there’s been a lot of controversy because the municipality didn’t want the multi-million-dollar cost of replacing the dam but nearby residents wanted the pond preserved.
When the Wingham mill burned, Howson and Howson already owned the mill in Blyth, having bought it and modernized it in 1947 (there was, at the time, one electric light in the building). After the fire Blyth became the company headquarters, though they had other feed mills, (it closed its Cargill location in 1996 and its Wingham store, all that was left of Howson and Howson’s Wingham operation, in 1997).
Meanwhile in Blyth, feed milling was moved to a new mill on the eastern edge of Blyth that also allowed the purchase, storage and marketing of local corn and other crops.
Freed up from producing feed, the downtown flour mill grew and grew and a new office was built. The Howson name still played a big part. Fred Howson ran the company when it moved to Blyth, He added sons Jim, Bill, Doug and Bruce as they became old enough in the 1960s. Their sons, in turn, Steve (Jim’s son) Jeff (Douglas’s son), Rick (Bill’s son), and Chris (Bruce’s son) joined the business in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the last few years, yet another generation of the family joined the company, Morgan Dianne Howson, (Jeff’s daughter), Colin Jeffrey (Jeff’s son) and Brendan Steven Walter, (Steve’s son) all worked in management.
This year, Colin Jeffrey Howson joined the flour mill and Joel Douglas Howson (Jeff’s son) joined the team at Millstone Crop Service, the amalgamation that took place in 2014 when Howson and Howson joined with Parrish & Heimbecker to merge the Blyth and Walton operations.
So flour milling has become a specialized business, as the great-great-grandsons and daughters can now buy flour, conveniently, in their grocery stores. Most of the water-powered flour mills have disappeared, with the exception of the 200-year-old Arva Flour Mill north of London. Even feed mills are rarer these days, as centralized plants and modern feed trucks let companies serve a far-flung customer base and fewer farms have livestock.
Flour and feed mills are symbolic of how things have changed in society, and on the farm, since pioneer days. Only the most entrepreneurial owners, like generations of the Howson family, have kept their companies viable as circumstances changed.
Howson and Howson’s 150 years in milling shows their willingness to adapt and change. With a new generation expanding, what will their future bring? ◊