PEORIA MAGAZINE May 2022

And the Steam Whistle Still Sounds If you live in Canton, you respond to a whistle, the steam whistle that’s been heard throughout the community for over a century. The wh i st le was sounded seven times each weekday while International Harvester’s plant was operating in town. “It was blown eight minutes before a shift change,” said Jack Pollitt, who served as plant manager at the Canton plant that closed in 1983. But it wasn’t just IH workers who paid attention to the whistle. “People woke up to it or started dinner by it. Kids knew that they had to be home before that whistle blew,” recalled Pollitt. The steamwhistle is part of Canton history. It was heard atop the factory of Parlin &Orendorff Co., the Canton firm that first forged all-steel plows and was purchased by IH in 1919. The whistle was silenced in 1974 for a short time over concern of possible noise pollution but, following a massive outpouring of support fromCanton residents -- Pollitt said 10,000 signed petitions -- the whistle soon returned. Saved in the 1997 fire that engulfed the IH facility, the steam whistle came back to life in 2015. Now atop the Cook Polymer Technology facility on the old Harvester site, it’s blown at 8 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. every weekday. The Stromberg Time Corporation clock, installed in 1948 as the official timepiece for Canton’s IH plant that was used by employees to sound the whistle, has also been restored and now keeps perfect time at the Canton Area Heritage Center.

Cook Medical building on a portion of the old IH site

year, Smith said that reinvigorating Canton’s downtown “has been a challenge.” Nonetheless, the group was making progress until 2016, when a gas explosion in the downtown destroyed a building, killed an Ameren worker and injured 12 others, said Smith. “Canton hadmade inroads at that point. We didn’t have a lot of vacancies in the downtown but once the explosion hap pened, it hurt somany businesses. Then we had COVID for two years,” she said. Despite the setbacks, Smith remains optimistic about the town’s prospects. “We have an awful lot that small communities don’t,” she said, ticking off Graham Hospital, now the biggest employer in Fulton County, the town’s top-rated park district and its school system as some of the assets. Back at the Heritage Center, Ste phenson pointed out other aspects of Canton’s colorful history. Along with the sizable collection of International Harvester memorabilia, most of it from Pollitt’s own collection, there are dis

IH plant from the local Historical and Genealogy Collection, Peoria Library

plays on cigar factories, coal mining and Canton’s radio stationWBYS (complete with teletype machine). Photographs of hometown heroes in the worlds of sports and music are on display along with information about the late billion aire and Canton High School graduate Bill Cook, whose Indiana-based com pany – which he built into the largest family-owned medical device manu facturer in the world — has invested heavily in the downtown. Many of the displays include QR codes that allow the visitor to check out videos on their smart camera at the various displays. There’s plenty to choose from. Along with a photograph of the estimated 25,000 people that gathered in down town Canton in 1899 to see President William McKinley and his Democrat ic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, there’s a display on the rock acts that performed in Canton the same night in 1967 at two different venues in town. “Youhad todecidewhether youwanted to see Gary Lewis & the Playboys or the Doors that evening,” said Stephenson.

Steve Tarter is a Peoria Magazine contributor who was born in England, raised in Boston, moved to Peoria to attend Bradley University and decided to stay. He has spent a career in journalism and public relations.

Jack Pollitt (the last plant manager), Dana Smith, (Canton Main Street President) and in back, former Canton mayor Jerry Bohler

MAY 2022 P EORIA MAGAZINE 47