Port McNicholl – Chicago North

Victoria Harbor or rather Port McNicholl (as it was renamed in 1912) was originally touted at the “Chicago of the North”. You might find this amusing if you had ever been to this small Hamlet of about 300 just outside of Midland Ontario. Not only is the town non-existent, there is only one small convenience store and nowhere to stop for a bite. We visited the silos twice, and both times we ran short on usable light as the first trip was a hasty weekday trip out before sunset and another was on a nice sunny day which went grey and bleak at our arrival.

Construction of silos, 1910

What the town certainly lacks is made up for in the silo tenfold. We have visited quite a number of silos of different configurations but I liked this one best simply because of its size. This silo was huge. It was about half a kilometer long and almost 100 feet high. It doesn’t look quite this large in pictures because there is no other landmark around to provide proper scale. It also doesn’t look as old as it was because of the more modern use of steel reinforced concrete. When the first silo was built in 1910 by the Canadian Pacific Railway to store grain it was a smaller building with 63 bins. As far back as the 1880’s CPR had been looking for a more prime location to store and move wheat from the west. In 1905 the site was surveyed, and between 1909 and 1910 this site was built and in operation, capable of storing 2.2 million bushels. In 1912 a second building was built right next to the first elevator which had a total of 126 bins (4 million bushel capacity) and the site was finally expanded to its final size in 1927 to its current mammoth size and has an estimated 210 individual silos and 6.5 Million bushel capacity, just half of what was originally supposed to be a 12 million bushel capacity silo. During peak times, 165 people worked around the clock to keep everything moving along. The silo really started slowing down in 1956 when St.Lawrence seway opened up, however it managed to operate on reduced capacity until 1990 when it closed down once a rail subsidy was cancelled in 1989.

Loading Grain onto ships

Workers skating on the frozen Ice channel next to silos, 1914.

Access to the silo was from a basement area where one had to climb in over huge concrete remains of what was another structure on site that was somewhat effectively dumped along the base of the whole silo. There was only one way in and all of the ladders outside had been welded off long ago. Once inside you were hit with a damp skanky mist and an enveloping darkness. In the basement remained the rails used with smaller carts used to haul grain and equipment around, but the actual carts, machinery and related materials have been looted long ago. A super torch comes in handy when surveying the size of the space as you can actually see from one of the silo to the other (all 500’) end. I found the vastness of the space to be the most interesting feature, apart from the rooftop view which we could not access because we spent a good two hours looking around for a stable enough ladder to climb up. No one was willing to go up the sketchy, 7 or so story rusty ladder that actually broke off at one point when a friend put his full weight on it.

The silo was demolished in 2009 to make way for a development that takes advantage of the deep water harbor.

Only time will tell if the development will be fully completed. Maybe Gil Blutrich’s $100 million bet will finally make Port McNicholl the Chicago of the North.

Photos by Kathy and Jan.

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