Roblin's Mill

During the reign of King George III, the earliest European settlers to British North America were a group, loyal to the King, called the United Empire Loyalist.  They were given this honorific title in 1789 by Lord Dorchester, the Governor of Quebec and the General of British North America, when they settled in British North America after the American Revolution.  Settling in what became known as Prince Edward County, named in honour of King George III's son, they established a town later known as Ameliasburgh, named after King George III's fifteenth child, Amelia. 

The hamlet was established under a sheer limestone escarpment.  In 1829, Owen Roblin took land in what is now Ameliasburgh and, ten years later, he traded lots to build a mill.  Knowing that a good flow of water and an area for a dam was required to run a mill efficiently, Roblin blasted a 60ft-long channel from the river to the mill.  This provided the water needed to power the huge 30ft stone wheel used to grind grain into flour. 

Roblin's Mill was typical of the mills dotted along the waterways of South Central Ontario.  In the early nineteenth century, wheat was a staple crop of the farmers of upper Canada.  Farmers would bring their harvest to a mill and have it processed into flour and animal feed.  The process generally only took a few hours.  The whole wheat was used for baking and the bran was usually animal feed.  Wagons were used to transport the wheat and rye flour to docks in Rednersville, and the produce was shipped to the port in Montreal.  

Roblin's Mill was closed in the 1920s and eventually scheduled for demolition.  The building was subsequently purchased by the Metro Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.  The building was dismantled in 1965 and moved to Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto.  The village is a recreation of life in rural Ontario in the nineteenth century.  It consists of over forty historic buildings and is operated by historical interpreters and crafts people. 

All the original timber, flooring and machinery were used in the reconstructed mill.  The huge stone wheel was not used, but was replaced at the village with a red oak wheel measuring 18ft in diameter.  This wood wheel did not weather well, and was replaced in 1984 with a white oak wheel weighing 6000 pounds.  

Roblin's Mill is now the only operating mill in Toronto.  Interest in the mill was reignited when famed Canadian free verse poet, Al Purdy, built an A-frame home in Ameliasburgh and became interested in the town and the mill.  He wrote the famed poem "In Search of Owen Roblin".

Roblin's Mill has a few paranormal phenomena associated with it.  The huge wheel has been witnessed turning when it was not powered to do so.  It's believed that the mill is haunted by "the old ones".  Various superstitions are associated with the mill, including the roosting pigeons in the mill roof behaving in certain ways in certain conditions. 

Poet Al Purdy says this of the haunted mill:

Those old ones

You can hear them

Lost in the fourth dimension

What happened still happens

A lump rises in your throat 

I found the mill to be a beautiful building.  The windows in the huge structure do allow interesting shafts of light to dance around the building, giving the impression that, perhaps in the swirling, illuminated dust, just for a second, you may have seen something otherworldly.