 
With a rousing round of applause, the entertainers felt confident enough that the audience might stick around for a bit longer and it was at that point in the program that the push for Tilton Tonic began. I took that as my cue to sneak away.
My next stop was Beach’s Sawmill. My grandfather, John Hay Sr., operated the sawmill on the Spur line near Minitonas south of Swan River, Manitoba. Any time that I am near an old-style saw mill, it brings back memories of the piles of sawdust and the piles of slabs that are a part of any sawmill.
 
The sawmill at Upper Canada Village is actually a combination of two saw mills. The external structure is Beach’s Sawmill built in 1846 by Alvin and William Beach outside of Heckston, Ontario. and was moved to its current site in Upper Canada Village in 1956. The machinery used in the mill came from a separate mill and features a vertical saw on the second floor and a shingle saw on the main floor. The mill is totally water driven with the cutting speed controlled by the volume of water released through the sluice gate.
 For any of these mills (flour, woolen, or saw) that were designed to rely on water power, the capacity of the mill was very dependent on the size and elevation of the mill pond and the mills were often only able to operate for a limited number of months at a time if water conditions were not favourable or the weather was too cold and thick ice formed on the mill pond.
