Keewatin Mill Background for Novel

Keewatin Mill serves as background for groundbreaking Canadian novel

The significance of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company in the economic development of Keewatin is well-known. What may be less well-known is the role the industry played in Canadian literature.

In 1944, author Frederick Philip Grove published a novel called The Master of the Mill. The story follows four generations of the Clark family who own and operate a flour mill in a fictional northwestern Ontario community called Langholm.

The novel’s backdrop, including the development of the flour mill as well as the surrounding community, is based on research Grove conducted in Keewatin in 1928 at the Lake of the Woods Milling Company.

Of course, Grove’s sweeping saga goes far beyond the local experience, but it is interesting to note the similarities which exist between his imagined world and the Keewatin of the time.

A Ernest Epp has made an exhaustive study of this connection and his paper is available at the Kenora Public Library. According to Epp, Grove referenced the importance of railway access and water power in the development of the flour mill in Langholm. He noted a provincial boundary dispute that affected the community and even described Langholm’s main street as steeply sloped from east to west.

The Master of the Mill was the first Canadian novel to explore the social impact of industrial automation and monopoly. In literary terms, the work continues to be evaluated by scholars, as indeed does the author himself.

Groves, who won a Governor General’s award in 1946 for his fictionalized autobiography, was said to have been largely undervalued during his lifetime, but today is generally acknowledged as a prolific and significant writer of the early 20^th century.