Beck-Mellow Gold

0N THE NIGHT of October 11, 1910, more than 8,000 people crowded into Berlin's (now Kitchener) largest ice rink to see their city, through the publicly owned Ontario Hydro Commission, become the first in Ontario to get electricity. When the moment come in the darkened arena for Premier Sir James Whitney to push the button, he grasped the hand of the man beside him and said, "With this hand which has made this project complete, I now turn on the power." It was a gracious tribute to Adam Beck.

Interest in publicly owned power took root in Berlin, Ontario; meetings about it were held in both 1902 and 1903. Beck, the new mayor of London, attended the second one along with 66 other representatives of municipalities, boards of trade, and manufacturing associations. Later Beck was one of seven officials named to determine which municipalities were interested in a revolutionary concept for hydro-electric power. In December 1903, as London's MLA as well as mayor, Beck was appointed to the newly created Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission.

When the Conservatives, led by Whitney, won the 1905 election, Beck became minister without portfolio and was appointed to chair a new commission of inquiry into public power. The original municipal group was still active, but Beck now considered it a "dead duck" and soon released, in his name, many of that group's findings and recommended that seven municipalities proceed "with a 60,000 horsepower development unless the other municipalities mentioned, joined them, in which case a 100,000 horsepower development was favoured."

This was the first of many aggressive acts Beck perpetrated over the next two decades in his zeal for public power. At the same time, he was vilified by private power interests of both Canada and the United States who relentlessly tried to discredit him. They failed. The Hydro movement had caught the imagination of the public, and Beck cleverly manipulated a largely supportive press to play the role of an unsullied knight championing the cause of cheap power for the people.

As the system expanded (London and Hamilton followed Berlin in 19 10, Toronto in 1911) Beck made enemies within his own party by disregarding government red tape and rules of procedure. He could not tolerate anyone around him who questioned his vision for a new Ontario. To be against him was to be against "Hydro," an attitude that backfired in 1912 when he rudely refused to see an investigating New York Senate Commission. Consequently, the Commission's report condemned the Hydro project as a failure.

The 1913 annual report, however, stressed otherwise. Hydro was now operating in 56 communities, had bought out all the private power companies except those in Toronto, Hamilton, London and Ottawa, and showed revenues of $2.6 million which yielded a surplus of $620,000. In 1914 Beck received a knighthood. An expert horseman (he had a stable in London), during World War I he served as an honourary colonel in charge of procuring horses for the army in Eastern Canada. He also made available to soldiers with TB, a sanatorium he had built in Byron. His dictatorial methods in continuing to run the facility, however, caused complaints from both the troops and staff.

Chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission (now Ontario Hydro) from 1909-1925, Adam Beck built and expanded this public utility into the largest publicly owned power authority in the world [Ontario Archives].

Petulant even with his own party whenever he didn't get his own way, he deliberated, in 1919, about replacing Sir William Hearst as its leader or about becoming leader of a Hydro non-partisan government. Instead, he ran as an independent, claiming this was the best way for him to "look after the interests of Hydro." He lost, partly because of his arrogance and defection from the Conservative Party which also lost that election to the United Farmers of Ontario. The UFO then approached Sir Adam to become its leader, but his insistence that he must have an absolutely free hand with regard to Hydro made them choose another. The municipalities, on the other hand, quickly passed a resolution demanding he continue as chairman.

In 1920, Sir William MacKenzie, his archenemy in Ontario, agreed to sell out to Hydro, making it, in Sir Adam's words, "the largest organized power system in the world." His sparring with government, however, continued. He promoted electric railways (radials) between communities despite evidence that they wouldn't pay and insisted on the completion of the Queenston/Chippawa canal power project in 1921, where costs ballooned in two years from an estimated $14.5 million to $50 million. This caused the UFO government to launch the Gregory Inquiry and stimulated new attacks by American private power interests.

When Premier Whitney and Ontario Hydro Chairman Adam Beck pushed "the button" in Berlin, Ontario, in 1910, to unleash the hydroelectric power generated by Niagara Falls, it made available cheap electricity across southern Ontario and stimulated industrial growth throughout Ontario's business community [Ontario Archives].

On January 1, 1923, Sir Adam lost a bitter campaign to have Hydro radials on the Toronto waterfront. In June, however, he handily won the provincial election in London - his "home" city since the 1880s when he moved his successful cigar box company there from Galt and, following his marriage, built a mansion. In 1924 he attended the World Power Conference in London, England, and met British government officials. The result was an announcement in the House of Commons that "one of the greatest authorities is available to manage the project."

Back home, Sir Adam denied press speculation about his leaving Hydro, and in October faced new problems when his long-time private secretary was arrested and charged with stealing $29,990 from the Commission. The secretary then registered 39 charges against Beck and other senior officers. These included excessive expense accounts, personal use of company cars, conflict of interest charges, "fixing" the books to make the radial systems look viable, and, in 1912, of sending lamps costing $22.48, and paid for by Hydro, to Sir Adam's home in London.

Within months, a commission dismissed all charges and the press applauded. One paper wrote, "Another attempt 'to get' Sir Adam Beck has failed miserably," and a Buffalo journal, describing him as "perhaps the most successful exponent of public ownership on this continent," suggested the uproar was partly due to his battle with private power interests.

The press support, however, didn't end the attacks. When the Gregory Inquiry was released in 1924, private power interests in the United States sponsored new attacks by known Hydro critics on both sides of the border, despite the report's finding that the engineering department was "made up of men of high professional qualifications ... serving the Commission zealously and efficiently," and that Hydro was "fundamentally sound and should be maintained ... in its full integrity."

Sir Adam was pleased. Now a widower and in poor health, he returned from a Baltimore hospital early in 1925, aware that time was running out. True to the Gregory Inquiry's description of Hydro engineers, however, he remained the ever-zealous chairman until his death, at 68, in mid-August. As a tribute to him on the day of his funeral, every factory wheel in Ontario was stopped at a given moment as the power of the Hydro over a range of 400 miles was suspended.