Foundations of Construction
Susanna McLeod
Special to Ontario Construction News
Replacing aging infrastructure for a community is a big task. Installing modern water, sewer and utility lines requires excavation with a trip into history. Some digs find small treasures, such as old coins or buttons, or perhaps jewellery. Other digs find significant surprises. At Paris, Ontario, remnants of a yellow brickwork archway were located by project workers of ‘The Downtown Dig’ in June 2025. The discovery of what was once an enormous millrace for generating waterpower highlighted the industrial heritage and innovation of the early 1800s.
Originally built in 1824 for the William Holme Plaster Mill, the raceway brought water in to power the mechanical mill. Reconstructed in the 1890s, the section uncovered was the tailrace that took water away from waterwheels and milling motors, with two dams on the Nith River. The raceway is a reminder that the rivers and waterpower were at the heart of early industry in Ontario.
Surveying roads in 1793, deputy-surveyor Augustus Jones observed a light-coloured rock along Grand River’s banks. The deposit was a grey-coloured gypsum. The soft sulfate mineral is associated with limestone, shale, and anhydrite, and is an effective farm fertilizer. (The white form of gypsum is used for agriculture, castings, cement, and Plaster of Paris.)
Emigrating from England to Brant County in 1814, William Holme (1783-1856) purchased a thousand acres near Paris to clear for farming. The family “had their servants digging up the gypsum which they called ‘land plaster’ out of the bank,” said Jean Farquharson at Canadian Industrial Heritage. In 1822, the entrepreneur established Ontario’s first gypsum milling business just over a kilometre from Paris.
Divided by shale, the gypsum beds had a thickness of 1.21m to 1.52m. Hauled to the mill, the rock was reduced to a powder by manual grinding. It was arduous and slow. A power source was needed soon as possible. In 1824, Holme dug the first channel, a shallow raceway “which cut across the Grand River [making] it possible to grind plaster mechanically,” stated “Development of the Water-Power Industry in Paris” (County of Brant Public Library Digital Collections–BPL).
In 1829, American immigrant Hiram Capron purchased Holme’s land, and a year later constructed a dam and enlarged the first raceway. “This allowed him to power a new grist mill in addition to the existing gypsum mill.” An enthusiastic and inventive businessman, Capron was just getting started. By 1838, he was hiring managers for mills and projects, and was constructing waterways and dams to provide energy for customers to operate their “grist mills, sawmills, textile mills, tanneries, iron foundries, and machine shops,” according to BPL. In just over a decade, Capron’s raceways on the nearby Nith River “supplied 87 horsepower to a number of local industries.”
Capron founded Paris on a portion of the land purchased from Holme, incorporating the town in 1849. The industrialist sold another parcel of land to provide for the Grand River raceway construction in 1854. The sturdy arched waterway was “capable of providing as much as 800 horsepower and supplying even more businesses,” said BPL. (Other sources claim the site produced 300 horsepower.)
The Grand River Navigation Company opened in 1832, shipping gypsum to Paris for milling. After processing, the milled mineral was loaded onto vessels bound for customers along Lake Ontario and into Lake Erie and New York State via the Welland Canal. Rail transport began in the mid-1800s, but “the river was still being used in the early 1870’s to transport gypsum from York to Caledonia, where it was hauled by team and wagon to the train station and shipped by rail to Paris for processing,” according to “Navigation on the Grand River” at Electric Scotland.
Researchers at Paris “already knew about the presence of the brickwork of the millrace, a channel that carries swift currents of water to power a mill wheel,” wrote Shelby Knox and Karis Mapp in “Pieces of the past unearthed at Paris, Ont.,” CTV news, June 5, 2025. The millrace under Grand River Street is regarded as the oldest historical section, built in the early 1820s to supply waterpower for operating the gypsum mill.
Discussions demonstrate the interest in the town’s industrial history. The raceway was “thought to have been lost to time during previous urban development projects,” wrote The Paris Independent editor Chris Whelan on June 10, 2025. (In a 1980s upgrade, the archway was filled in.) The rushing flow of water was employed “to turn mill wheel turbines and generate energy through pulleys and cables.”
The gypsum mines at Grand River closed in about 1905, with Caledonia taking the lead in mining the mineral, about 51 kms southeast of Paris. Uncovering the historical tailrace ignited the passion for history in the community, for the gypsum mills, and the energy industry that grew out of raceways from more than a century past.
© 2025 Living in Kingston, Susanna McLeod is a writer specializing in Canadian history.
Editor Sources:
“Caledonia—Along the Grand River by River and Rail: Navigation on the Grand River,” Canada, Electric Scotland. Retrieved from https://www.electricscotland.com/Canada/caledonia/caledonia_2.htm
“Development of the Water-Power Industry in Paris,” County of Brant Public Library Digital Collections, Our Ontario
Retrieved from https://images.ourontario.ca/brant/exhibit.asp?id=75&PID=3
Farquharson, Jean, “The First Gypsum Mine in Paris Ontario (1822),” Canadian Industrial Heritage. Retrieved from https://canadianindustrialheritage.com/resources/articles/gooderham-and-worts-distillery
Knox, Shelby; Mapp, Karis, “Pieces of the past unearthed in Paris, Ont.,” CTV News, June 5, 2025. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/pieces-of-the-past-unearthed-in-paris-ont/
Whelan, Chris, Editor, “Brick by Brick, Paris’ past reappears in Downtown Dig Project,” The Paris Independent, June 10, 2025. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/theparisindependent/docs/the_paris_independent_for_wednesday_june_11th_2025