This will be an in-person event that is free to view. The lecture will be broadcast live via ZOOM for those who cannot attend in person and recorded and then to the Museum's YouTube at a later date.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE WEBINAR
Description:
The presentation will describe the first grain handling terminals in Thunder Bay, all built by the Canadian Pacific Railway after the tracks were completed between Manitoba and Lake Superior. The manpower and timber resources required to meet the grain storage
and handling volumes were immense. No traces of these elevators remain today except some foundations.
SPEAKER BIO:
Bill Reist is a retired Civil Engineer. He graduated from McMaster University in 1963 and came to Port Arthur to work for C D Howe Engineering in the fall of 1964. His experience with C D Howe included a great deal of design and construction work with grain elevators which were the core expertise of the company.
He was directly responsible for concept development, detailed engineering design and construction of an inland terminal grain elevator in Indiana, a waterfront terminal elevator in Windsor and many maintenance and remedial projects in Lakehead elevators.
The collateral expertise related to elevators includes marine structures to address shipping, foundations of heavy industrial structures, slipforming procedures unique to silo-shaped structures. He supervised the construction of a dock and breakwater in El Salvador which consisted of a series of slipformed concrete caissons and included ship handling features for berthing and mooring as well as providing protection for the port from strong ocean swells.
The C D Howe Company was sold on the 1990’s and Bill took his experience in construction to the mining field during the expansion of Lac des Iles mine in 2000.
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When the C D Howe Company was closed in Thunder Bay, Bill collected from the company archives numerous photographs of elevator construction projects and design drawings. Some of this material was donated to the Thunder Bay Historical Museum at the time, but the photographs have been collected and assembled into video presentations illustrating the early construction processes for local elevators, and historical records of the development of elevators across the Port Arthur and Fort William waterfronts.
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- Free Museum Admission during the event
- Refreshments will be available
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Parking
The Thunder Bay Museum has a free parking lot on the East side of the building, but there are only 16 spaces. On-street parking and other lots nearby are available.
This lecture session is part of the Society's long tradition of holding free public lectures. From September to March, talks on a wide range of topics are held on the fourth Tuesday of each month at the Thunder Bay Museum.
The 2025-2026 Thunder Bay Museum lecture series is sponsored by the Lakehead University Department of History.
ZOOM INFORMATION
You are invited to a Zoom webinar!
When: Nov 25, 2025 07:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Free Public Lecture - Bill Reist - Early CPR Elevators
Join from PC, Mac, iPad, or Android:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89468299182
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Webinar ID: 894 6829 9182
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdCVGQmc0s