Elias Weber Bingeman Snider

Who was Elias Weber Bingeman Snider?

Elias Weber Bingeman Snider was an Ontario businessman and political figure. He represented Waterloo North in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Liberal member from 1881 to 1894.

He was born in Waterloo, Canada West in 1842, the son of a farmer, and, after leaving school at 12, worked on the family farm and then at the family's gristmills in German Mills, becoming mill manager in 1862. In 1864, Snider married Nancy Weber. In 1871, he purchased a mill at St. Jacobs, replacing the millstones with rollers, which produced a better quality of flour. In 1884, he purchased a foundry at Waterloo, which produced agricultural implements and machinery. He also owned a lumber company. Snider lobbied for the establishment of forest reserves while in office, seeing the disappearing forests in Waterloo County.

A generator at his mill in St. Jacobs supplied electricity to the town. In 1900, with others, he formed the Michipicoten Falls Power Company Limited to provide hydroelectric power to mines north of Lake Superior. Snider lobbied the provincial government to build power transmission lines to make power generated at Niagara Falls available to the rest of the province. In 1903, he became the chair of the Ontario Power Commission, which laid the groundwork for the establishpment of a provincial electric power utility. He married Helen Shoemaker in 1915 after the death of his first wife.