{"id":93,"date":"2012-08-04T00:44:11","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T00:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.wordpress.com\/?page_id=93"},"modified":"2012-08-04T00:44:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T00:44:11","slug":"electricity-for-sherbrooke","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/electricity-for-sherbrooke\/","title":{"rendered":"Electricity for Sherbrooke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electricity for Sherbrooke<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Bill Davidson<\/em><\/p>\n

My mother’s brother, Leonard Rodenhiser, lived near Sherbrooke and kept himself active with a saw-mill and other projects. I was fortunate to\u00a0work on some of these and feel my Uncle Len was a great inventor who\u00a0helped many.<\/p>\n

In 1929, Sherbrooke was without electricity so Uncle Len conceived\u00a0the idea of supplying light and power for the place. He knew this would\u00a0also benefit himself, as well. He tried to form a company, but many were\u00a0 skeptical –so he decided to operate it himself.<\/p>\n

Uncle Len, like many others, did not have too much wealth — $4,000\u00a0of his personal money and $2,000 worth of timber lands was the total of\u00a0his wealth. He constructed the dams, drew all the plans for turbines and\u00a0had them cast in New Glasgow. We worked at cutting light poles from the\u00a0native wood to supply electricity to many.<\/p>\n

I remember the power plant was situated on North West Arm Brook. The\u00a0 first plant generated 2200 hp and had a 40-foot head, with a 75-foot horse-power turbine and more than 1200 feet of pipe line.<\/p>\n

The lights were turned on in Sherbrooke May 24, 1931 (Archives).<\/p>\n

Being practical, Uncle Len never wanted to waste anything, and felt the water could be used twice. A second plant was built 200 yards below\u00a0the first plant for this purpose, and there were seven storage dams.\u00a0There has been a great deal of interest in this big project. He did most\u00a0 of the work personally and magazine articles and moving pictures of the\u00a0project\u00a0give him the credit he was due.<\/p>\n

Uncle Len sold out to the Nova Scotia Light and Power Commission in\u00a0 1944. He still had his mill and with Aunt Grace, operated a tourist home,\u00a0 which they called Winkle-Rod Inn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Electricity for Sherbrooke By Bill Davidson My mother’s brother, Leonard Rodenhiser, lived near Sherbrooke and kept himself active with a saw-mill and other projects. I was fortunate to\u00a0work on some of these and feel my Uncle Len was a great inventor who\u00a0helped many. In 1929, Sherbrooke was without electricity so \u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-93","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nsgenealogy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}