Arva Flour Mills Limited - "Best flour by a dam site"

New Grist for an Old Mill

"Best flour by a dam site"

Excerpts from Article -- Summer 98 issue of LONDON'S CITY LIFE Story by Holly McWilliams Photography by Rachel Lincoln

The blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Arva, just a little north of the urban brawl we know as Masonville, is the backroads equivalent of a whistlestop on the railway, remarkable for its lone stoplight, and its small dam with the Medway Creek spilling over it. It's also home to this large, silverclad mill that has loomed large and unswerving over the Medway's banks since 1819.

Yessirree-bob, when you come to Arva, you definitely feel you have left the city. But have you? As London's development sprawls northward, the mill may soon be wearing suburbia like a long, clackety coat. Already, an exclusive enclave of fancy, three-garage homes is tucked away at the mill property's shoulder, clinging tenuously to the pastoral vistas of Arva. "In the next 10 years," says the mill's jocular owner Bill Matthews, "they estimate 10,000 more people living between Hyde Park Sideroad and Adelaide, and Fanshawe Park Road and Sunningdale." In spite of this, it's hard to imagine the Arva mill going anywhere, or ever losing its charm. Bill Matthews has a plan to keep it so.

A first visit to Arva Flour Mill's tiny retail outlet catapults the visitor back in time; it's like a jumbly general store with buggies pulled up in the dusty yard in front of its barn-red, clapboard exterior. Inside, two-inch thick plank floors creak underfoot and there's an unpretentious backdrop of white-washed wood. A small fortress of flour takes centre stage. Hard, soft, unbleached white, and whole wheat, in thick, ungimmicky paper bags. Specialty flours, such as spelt (a trendy ancient grain, and "the mother grain of today's wheat," says Matthews), amaranth, quinoa, and semolina can be found here and there. Great sacks of feed for horses, and dog and cat food line the perimeter. Jams, jellies, honey, dried beans, rice and all manner of baking ingredients--tinned yeast, dried fruit, spices and herbs, all packaged bulk-style--are stacked on wooden shelves. An office to one side houses a cluttered desk, and a filing cabinet with a coffee maker on top. In the corner sits an old-fashioned clawfoot safe; the combination is scrawled on its door that gapes permanently open. As if on cue, an amiable, barrel-chested millhand in a plaid flannel shirt ambles in from the noisy millroom for coffee, grumbling about no doughnuts, and what in hell is he going to eat for breakfast anyway. (It's 10 a.m.) Wilfred has been working at the mill since before Matthews took over--"26 years, come October...I come with the place," he grins. A solidly male environment, this--full of guffaws and good-natured ribbing.

The old-fashioned schtick aside, evidence that the mill is courting the urban retail market is scattered throughout the store. Piled haphazardly on the floor and on another high shelf, for instance, are boxes of the latest Black & Decker bread machine--a perfect fit for the mill, and very nineties. A collection of dried pasta line the shelves, some made with spelt; then, there's birdseed and birdfeeders. At the front of the store, a small display features the current groove in sleep accessories--the buckwheat-hull pillow. The hulls themselves are sold in bulk for the do-it-yourselfer. But the final tip-off that you're in the here-and-now are the better-quality, souvenir T-shirts and sweats emblazoned with the mill's clever logo: "Best flour by a dam site." Heh-heh. City folks eat this stuff up. In the background, the constant whirr of the turbines reminds you this is not just another pretty--and obsolescent--old mill. For the most part, it operates pretty much the way it did when Clarence Scott bought if from Jacob Hawkins back in 1917. "We still run half the mill on water power--the rollers, the choppers, the mixers, the elevators," says Bill Matthews. "And a 50-horsepower electric motor mills the flour, because it makes a more consistent product."

This site is owned by Arva Flour Mills Limited, Arva, Ontario, Canada.