Flax industry once boomed in Blyth
There was a time when many fields in the Blyth area turned a gentle blue in July as flax blossomed.
There was a time when exotic native Indians arrived in Blyth each year to help with the pulling of the mature flax plants in preparation of turning the fibre in the stems into a useful product.
There was a day when extracting the fibre from the flax plants was a major industry in Blyth with two processing plants going full blast.
The first flax mill seems to have been built by J. & J. Livingstone of Baden who entered into an agreement with the village council to construct a flax mill in time to receive the first crop in September, 1886. The following year The Huron Expositor’s correspondent reported that George McGowan of the McGowan settlement northeast of Blyth had delivered a load of flax weighing 2,240 pounds to the flax mill in Blyth.
A year later the Expositor reported that flax “has been an extra good crop this season and pays about as well as any crop on the farm.”
The silky fibres from the flax plant stems was called “tow” and was commonly used in those days as an upholstery stuffing.
William Drummond took over management of the plant in 1892 and ran it until 1897 when he left to manage a new mill in Wingham. The plant then remained idle for four years until he returned and leased the plant and began Drummond Bros. The company apparently only lasted a year and Blyth was without an outlet for flax for a decade.
Finally in 1912 it was reported that the Blyth Flax Mill Company had purchased eight acres of the old salt well property (where the G.L. Hubbard Ruttabaga plant is today) and planned to tear down the old salt block building and use the lumber to construct a new building. A mill and barns were to be built.
World War I brought a boom to flax production in Canada explained T. A. Gordon in an article in The Family Herald which was reprinted in The Blyth Standard in 1940. Gordon began the Blyth Flax Mills in World War II.
When World War I began there were 12 flax mills in Canada, he said but when it ended there were 54. Prior to 1914 processors were lucky to receive $345 a ton but with the great linen mills of Belfast, in Ireland cut off from their normal supply in Russia and the Baltic States, prices for Canadian fibre hit a high of $2,000 a ton.
As a result, he said, in those areas of western Ontario bordering Lake Huron, which was a prime flax-growing area because of its cloudy weather, everyone was talking flax with farmers ploughing up grassland for flax production and every town dreaming of a flax plant.
By 1919 Blyth had a second flax processing plant, the Canadian Flax Company.
To get the long fibres, the flax had to be pulled up by the roots, manually at that time. Large numbers of workers, making low wages, were needed. Whole classes of school children worked in the fields in September to make a little money.
Indians also arrived, camping in the flax fields where they worked and moving from farm to farm with the harvest. In 1920, flax pullers were offered $25 per acre by the two local flax companies.
Once pulled, the flax was left piled in the field where sun and rain would break down the outside sheath of the stem. The flax was then taken into the plant where the milling machines broke down the stems and separated the tow.
The tow was very flammable and was often piled outside the buildings to reduce danger to the building and equipment. Occasionally, however, the piles were too much temptation for vandals and several stacks of tow were burned at one time or another.
The war ended and so did the boom as the Irish turned to Europe again for their flax. Fibre in Canada fell from $1 a pound to 12 cents. Mills closed and processors went bankrupt.
World War II again breathed new life into the flax industry and Gordon had two plants in Blyth flourishing, the old Dinsley Street plant and one on Queen Street on the lot now occupied by the Queen’s Villa apartments.
There were local dreams of spin-off industries expressed in The Blyth Standard of March 13, 1940 including “a home spinning plant, a coarse knitting mill or, if possible, a large digester plant for the manufacturing of flax pulp for the linen paper plants and also for cigarette paper makers.” None of the dreams were realized and when the war ended, once again the market crashed.
The Queen Street plant was an empty relic until it was torn down in the early 1970s.