The smell of freshly baked pie, tea and refreshing drinks is sure to draw visitors to Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum’s 40th annual Arabella’s Pie Social and History Fair on Sunday. Assistant museum curator Tami Nail said the free event runs noon to 4 p.m.
and will feature music, spinning, blacksmithing and printing, with demonstrations by the Niagara Antique Power Association. Tea room volunteers made the pies. People can buy tea cups, try on fashions of the past and shop at the perennial plant sale.
While on the museum grounds at 280 King St. , visitors can check out two exhibits — “Made in PoCo” and “Step in Time: The History of the Humberstone Shoe Factory.” “‘Made in PoCo’ showcases what Port Colborne has made, and how it’s been significant not just locally but to Canada, to show we are not just a sleepy little tourism town.
We have a lot to be proud of,” Nail said. An innovation from the lakeside city still in use is a fairlead. Invented by Henry Edric Heighton of Port Colborne Iron Works, who filed for a U.
S. patent in 1932, a fairlead is a revolving pulley in a ship’s side-through on which a line is put out to shore. When natural gas was discovered in Ontario sometime in the mid-1800s, making it usable for lamps and lights was a made-in-Port Colborne innovation.
“Step in Time: The History of the Humberstone Shoe Factory” looks at the history of the factory, now an apartment building at the corner of Main and Elm streets. For it.
