Day 2 – Friday, July 2, 2004 –Morrisburg (Upper Canada Village), ON to Montreal QC.

        A “traditional” Canadian breakfast was included in our room price, which means the food was not too healthy – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.  Accordingly, the first thing we did after checking out was to drive to a local supermarket and buy yogurt, which we transported 3 blocks to a park along the St. Lawrence River, to eat while watching   the river. Here is a picture of us on the bench on which we finished breakfast (you can even see the yogurt container).

Barbara and Roger on the bank of the St. Lawrence River

        The weekend before leaving home, we had purchased a new bike carrier.  (We had also had both bikes checked, and the tires on Barbara’s changed, so that she has the same Kevlar tires that Roger has had for about a year.)  The carrier “locks” to the trailer hitch by a screw mechanism, which means that we do not need to have straps hooked onto the trunk lid to stabilize the carrier.  It also has built in places to attach straps to hold the bike tires, which means we no longer need to tie the tires with old inner tubes.  The new carrier makes loading and unloading the bikes and the stuff in the trunk a breeze!  A picture of the new carrier (with a beautiful young lady, and Barbara’s new car) is below.  You can see the blue straps holding the tires, and no straps across the trunk stabilizing the carrier, so the trunk can be opened at anytime.

        Next stop, Upper Canada Village (UCV), which is by far the best of the “historic village recreations,” at least in our opinion.  UCV was created using 40 historically important buildings fronting the St. Lawrence River that were moved when the St. Laurence Seaway was built.  Most of these buildings were on land that is now flooded, but all came from the area around Morrisburg, ON.  The Village now seeks to recreate life in Upper Canada (read Ontario) in about 1866.  Pictures are worth a thousand words, so the included photos show some of the many sites of UCV. 

        If you would like to read more about the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, go to the following location:  http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/cseh-twih/archives2_E.asp?id=381

        Upper Canada Village has a program that was new to us, namely “Time Travelers,” pursuant to which children aged from 9–13 get to dress up in period costumes, and then participate in “typical” 1860’s activities on site and work with artisans such as the blacksmith, tinsmith, printer, dressmaker and weaver for part of their day’s visit to UCV.  Unfortunately, Emily (our niece) could not accompany us – we had intended to offer her the opportunity to “time trip.” 

          First are several scenes from the only operational water powered woolen mill in North America (no time trippers here).  The first two pictures show raw wool and some of which has been died.

Next are the first machines in the process – the carding machines.  

 

These are spinning machines – that replaced the old spinning wheel.

Finally, the powered loom, on which the wool fabric (here a blanket) is made.  (And to fill the space, some of the sheep from which the wool comes.)

You can see that the sheep have been recently shorn; and you now know where the wool will be used.

        We next visited the water powered flour mill, which takes wheat kernels, and makes both whole wheat and white flower. The process starts with wheat kernels falling from the wood hopper into the center of the two grinding stones, where it is ground into course flower.  It is then moved by conveyer belts to a sifter.  Here, you will see 3 male time trippers helping to bag the white flower, from which the bran has been separated by sifting the flower through very fine cloth which surrounds the large rollers inside the wooden bins at the top of the machine.

The flour made at this mill is taken to the bakery (see later), where it is used to make bread – both white and whole wheat.  The baked bread is then taken to the Village store – where there is a mad rush for whole wheat loaves at about 2:00 every afternoon.

        The next stop was at the water powered saw mill, which makes planks from pine logs.  The whole process is automatic.  Once you get the log in place, the water powered apparatus moves the log forward and the saw blade cuts the wood.

Here is a picture of the sawing process:

        We then left the milling area, and visited the broom maker, who was a real character.  In response to thousands of questions from Harry Potter fans, he finally had to invent an all purpose broom, that is whatever the HP fans want it to be – Fireball 2000; Nimbus 3000, etc.  Here are pictures of the broom maker and the magic broom (which is hanging from the ceiling at the far left).

   
These broom corn brooms are very durable.  One in constant use in the village has worn down only 2-3 inches in 24 years!
 

        UCV really does look and feel like an 1866 village.  Here are the drivers of two horse drawn wagons taking a moment to talk about the weather.

        Next stop – the shoemaker’s, where we met two female time trippers, learning how to stitch 1866 style shoes.  No need to worry about right or left shoes back then – the two were identical, and could be worn on either foot!

        Next came the blacksmith, who was making an iron ring.

         The cabinet maker’s shop was next, where we saw the tools and materials that were being used to make furniture.  The owner was worried about all that “factory” furniture that was available in Montreal and Ottawa, but the cost of shipping the factory product made his local business still profitable.

        The dress and quilt maker’s shop showed us several more female time trippers, cutting quilt pieces and learning how to operate a foot powered spinning wheel.  Several of the colors of the died yarn were made using the same die – you made the brightest/darkest color with the first die lot, and lighter shades with each succeeding use of the die.

            Next was our first visit to the cheese making shop.  The workers had started heating 1000 pounds of milk at 6:00 a.m., then added rennin, which comes from the stomach of a cow and is used to make cheese, and let the mix simmer, until the cheese curds settled out.  During five hours the batch simmers, it needs to be stirred continuously, which is what we saw during our first visit. 

We decided that we would come back to the cheese maker’s when the workers planned to drain away over 800 pounds of whey (which was then fed to the pigs), leaving a little less than 200 pounds of curd, that would ultimately become cheese.  The batch we saw being made was going to be yellow cheese, which meant that a yellow die had been added with the rennin.  The cheese is also sold in the Village gift shop; we bought one piece of yellow cheese and one of white cheese to accompany the loaves of whole wheat bread we also purchased.

We next saw a couple of male time trippers helping cut the hay and load it onto a wagon.  We are not sure whether the hay field is owned by the church, but we are going to recommend that our church fire its grass cutters, and start using the front lawn to grow hay, which can then be sold!

The hay field was right across the street from the bakery, to which we were drawn by the divine aroma of freshly baking bread.  110 loaves of white bread were in the brick oven, while you can see what was to become 65 loaves of whole wheat being mixed.  The bricks were heated by building a fire inside the oven right on the bricks.  After the fire had burned for about an hour, it was cleaned out of the over, and the bread put right on the bricks, which provided all the heat used during the baking process.  Smelling the aroma of baking bread made us think about lunch.  Fortunately, Willard’s Hotel, which has the best lunch in the Village, is right next door to the bakery (which is the small red building to the left of the Hotel).  We made a reservation for noon, then headed off to the farm, which we decided to visit until it was time to revisit the cheese shop to see the whey being drained.

The Village farm is a “progressive” farm, which means that it has a variety of animals and crops.  Spring comes late to Upper Canada, so one foal had been born only the previous day, another a week before, and both the litter of piglets and a couple of calves were also brand new.  Oh, and there were chickens and geese everywhere.  Lots to see at the farm!  (There was also this really cute guy walking around.)

It was now time to head back to the cheese maker’s (we planned to come back to the farm after lunch).

Here you can see that the vat has been tipped, so that the whey will drain.

Playing with the curds has to be lots of fun, or really hard work, we could not decide which.

On the way to lunch, we made a quick stop at the dress maker’s.  Barbara got her ears talked off, but finally escaped!