100 years of light
Posted Oct 11, 2010 03:47:04 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you used an electric coffee maker this morning or even turned on a light bulb, you should say thank-you for something that happened one hundred years ago today.
On October 11, 1910, Sir Adam Beck, from Baden, was in Niagara Falls and pressed the ceremonial button to mark the beginning of hydro electricity being sent up from the Falls to Kitchener.
Waterloo Region Museum Registrar, Stacy McLennan, tells 570 News, the Baden-born politician advocated for the system that brought perhaps ten times more electricity into Kitchener — still called Berlin at the time — than was already in the small city.
She says before that, what electricity there was came from water mills, or steam- or coal-powered generators.
McLennan adds the Niagara Falls electricity was a more consistent form of power, and cheaper.
But there was quite a bit of initial public resistance to the idea of abundant electricity, she says: people didn’t understand how it worked, and didn’t want all the wiring.
McLennan says one of Beck’s partners, D.B. Detweiler, from Berlin, changed that perception, even bicycling around to all the local farmers to convince them of the benefits of electricity for living and for farm machinery.
McLennan says both the ceremonial button and Detweiler’s bike are in the Museum collection.
Ontario Power Generation calls Adam Beck “the father of public power in Ontario.”
