More confessions from a Pillsbury doughboy

This flourmill started out as Alberta Flour Mills in 1915, George Lane owner of the Calgary Breweries serving as a stockholder and member of the board of directors. Despite a vigorous financial and public campaign and the injection of large loans from the stockholders Lane and William Pierce, the company sold its assets to Spillers Ltd. of England in 1925. During the 1930s, Spillers mothballed the mill, and during World War II it was used by the military as a storage warehouse. In 1947, the mill was bought and reopened as Renown Mills, they installed "B" Mill for domestic flour that had an output of 3000 hundredweight's per 24 hours. This along with the original "A" Mill that was used for export flour with its 7000 hundredweights output, gave a total of 10,000 hundredweight a day when both mills were running. In 1952 Pillsbury Mills of Minneapolis, Minnesota purchased the mill, and it became Pillsbury Canada Ltd.

There were about 15 warehousemen working day shift when I started, there was also 4 packers they ran the machines that packed flour into jute bags for export, and paper bags for domestic orders. The warehouse to me looked like it hadn't changed much since 1930, the first two floors of the brick part of the mill was warehouse space, and flour was stacked on the rough concrete floor, it originally had hardwood floors, but they were torn up due to flour beetle infestation. The bags were stacked 10 layers high everywhere you looked, the domestic flour was packed in 100-pound paper bags, and the Packer ran his machine from the third floor. It would come down a chute and go through a bag flattener to a table elbows height, where we would load up on our two wheel cart with seven bags of flour, and wheel it over to where the flour was being stacked. There would be a warehousemen there whose job was to help you unload your wheeler. The bags were stacked in threes starting on the floor we would place to bags, side-by-side, and one bag at the end of the other two on the next level we would do the opposite so the bags would be interlocked. Depending on the distance from the table to where we were stacking bags in the warehouse there would be three or four of us in constant motion to keep up with the Packer. We would do this, from 8 o'clock till 10 o'clock in the morning and have a 15 minute coffee break then worked till 12 noon and take a half an hour lunch break worked till 2 p.m. then a 15 minute break, and worked till 4 p.m. when the next shift started.

If we were finished on the second floor the table would be folded down and a chute put in connecting to the first floor to a conveyor belt that would send the bags down to a shoulder height table where we would load up our wheelers, or if close enough 2 of us would carry the bags on our shoulder and pile up the flour. The advantage of the shoulder height table was that you learned how to carry 100-pound bag upright and using the muscles in your shoulder you could propel the bag 2 feet over your head, which was the height of 10 layers of bags. The flour could also be routed out to the front-loading dock, where you see the boxcars in my picture. They would come off on other conveyor belt into the box car were two men would load it 6 rows in each end and 3 rows across the doorway, at 60 bags to a row 900 hundredweights would be loaded in each car. You have to understand that, while some crews would be stacking the new flour on the warehouse floor, other crews would be loading and unloading trucks and box cars at the back loading dock of the mill. Every bag in the warehouse was handled at least two times before it reached its destination. The work was very physical, and I understood what Pete said about me not being able to handle the work, this made me all the more determined to carry on. The first month was the worst, but after that I started getting into good shape. More to come later.