Student Essay

Maya Soren, M.A. Art History, Concordia University
This essay was written by an M.A. student in a Museum Practice seminar in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. The seminar was taught by Dr. Loren Lerner with the assistance of Dina Vescio, a M.A. graduate of the program.

Wellington Boulter and the Origins of Canada’s Canning Industry

Prince Edward County, Ontario was once the centre of the canning industry in Canada. For decades, this regional industry provided jobs in factories, sustained the livelihood of family-owned farms, and put locally grown, nutritious food on the table year-round for many thousands of Canadians (fig. 1).¹ Surviving the Great Depression and two world wars, the canning industry was a beacon of hope and prosperity for generations in this rural community. So how you may ask, did the Canadian canning industry’s success come to fruition (no pun intended)?

It all began in the 1880s after George Dunning, a nursery salesman from Prince Edward County, visited the Philadelphia Food Exposition where he learned about canning and the new industry that was becoming popular in the eastern United States. In 1882, with his business partner Wellington Boulter, the pair opened the first successful fruit and vegetable cannery in Canada in the old Vincent Foundry on Mary Street in Picton, Ontario.² Following a fire that destroyed their factory in 1885, they were quick to rebuild on the corner of Mary and Spring Streets. However, George Dunning had some financial problems and on March 1, 1885, Sherriff James Gillespie obtained a writ that allowed him to seize several properties owned by George Dunning.³ On April 3, 1886 eight of the properties, including the cannery, were sold to Wellington Boulter for $30.⁴ Shortly afterwards, the cannery’s name was changed to Bay of Quinte Canning Factory and again in the mid-1890s to W. Boulter & Sons (fig. 2).⁵ Under the Lion Brand the factory canned:

a large variety of goods including peas, tomatoes, corn, green and yellow beans, pumpkin, damson plums, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, pears, peaches, Niagara grapes, red currents, white and red cherries, pineapple, apples and pork and beans (fig. 3).⁶

It is important to realize that Boulter did not grow all of these crops himself. Instead, he purchased products from local farmers in the County like Nelson Cahoon of Waring’s Corners, the first farmer to plant a tomato crop for canning in the County, which Boulter bought for ten dollars an acre.⁷ While the goods were produced, canned, and sold locally, they were also often shipped across Canada and even abroad. For example, in 1895 an entire trainload of Boulter’s products was sent to Vancouver, making it the first shipment of an all-Canadian product of one firm to be delivered there by the Canadian Pacific Railway.⁸ Wellington Boulter’s business was so successful that it became internationally known when he introduced canned goods to Europe and eventually shipped them to Australia, South Africa and China.⁹

Wellington Boulter became a key player in the canning industry and is recognized as its pioneer.¹⁰ With Boulter’s success, the canning craze in Prince Edward County caught on and local competition was fierce. By 1900, the County had eight canning plants in production: this was half of the total in Canada at the time.¹¹ In 1903, the W. Boulter & Sons factory was sold for shares in the Canadian Canners Consolidated Companies Limited, but the Picton factory continued to be managed by Boulter and his two sons, Edward and Frank, for many years.¹² By 1906 Canadian Canners had thirty factories in operation and from 1920 until the late 1950s about thirty-five factories operated continuously in the area.¹³

The Art of Canning and the Duncan Lithographing Company

The canning industry in Prince Edward County involved many different types of businesses before the canned product made it to the dinner table; from the farmer, to the can manufacturer, to the cannery itself (which eventually, was often a job done by the farmer). Since illiteracy was common among Canadians during the 1880s until the early 1900s, a company’s label had to visually entice consumers using very few words.¹⁴ Even if the consumer was literate, canners quickly caught on that for a can to stand out on the shelf it was of upmost importance for it to be visually attractive in order to promote their product amongst the competition. But above all, since hazards such as exploding cans, botulism, and lead poisoning from the reaction of the food packed in tin cans were common, it was crucial for the canning company to convey that their product was not only wholesome and nutritious, but also safe to eat.¹⁵

In order to create colourful and eye-catching labels like the apple labels for the Niagara Falls Canning Co. (which operated southwest of Prince Edward County in the Niagara Falls area), professional artists working in the commercial field designed an original artwork for the initial product label, which advertised tomatoes (figs. 4 & 5). This proves that the Niagara Falls Canning Co. used this label interchangeably with at least one other product, and probably also for its canned pears, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, beans, plums etc. This is mentioned on the original docket that is preserved with the artifact, documenting the canning company’s order placed with the lithography company on February 13th, 1908 (fig. 6).¹⁶A blank space was left where one could insert a different image on the label depending on the product (fig. 7). The final product label was engraved and mass-produced with a lithographic printing press at the Duncan Lithographing Company in Hamilton, Ontario, incorporated as Reid Press in 1909, and bought out by Reid Dominion Packaging Limited in 1978.¹⁷ In order to create the final image, each colour had to be printed separately and superimposed. This was a delicate and tedious process (fig. 8).

In 1856, Hardy Gregory opened a lithography studio in Hamilton, which went through many owners until it was acquired by Robert Duncan in 1881 and became known as the Duncan Lithography Company.¹⁸ Printing labels for everything from cigars, whiskey, soap, and food products, to advertisements for farm machinery, carriages and suspenders,¹⁹ the Company employed George Burton from 1898 until 1910, the first and only man ever to engrave copper plates in Hamilton.²⁰ “It is said that his Spenserian Script was the most perfect ever produced in Canada.”²¹ Since the apple labels were printed in 1908, and Burton worked for the Company until 1910, it is possible that he engraved the Niagara Falls Apple Labels.²² But who was the artist responsible for creating the original artwork? In a finding-aid for the Reid Dominion Packaging Limited collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, Richard Spence Allan is listed as the company artist in 1909, the year after the label was printed. ²³ It is quite likely that Allan designed the Niagara Falls Canning Co.’s label, although it is possible that another artist could have been contracted. In any case, this artist and engraver were highly skilled professional craftsmen who acted as a valuable communicative link from the farmer’s field to the consumer’s dinner table.

The Canning Industry’s Demise; Life through the Wellington Heritage Museum

While the canning industry in Prince Edward County had nearly seventy years of business, it would eventually all come to an end. Over a period of about fifteen years from the end of World War II until 1956, about sixty canneries that were not owned by Canadian Canners Limited were closed because they were no longer cost effective.²⁴ In an industrialized Canadian nation, it was no longer necessary to have canneries next door to the farm due to improved motor and rail transportation, and by the 1950s frozen food was beginning to take away market share from the canners.²⁵ Competition from agricultural produce corporations south of the border was also quickly encroaching upon Prince Edward County, and the local factories simply could not compete. In 1955, sales for Canadian Canners Limited were $42,000,000 compared to $250,000,000 for the California Packing Corporation.²⁶ “In 1956, the California Packing Company, the makers of Del Monte brand produce, purchased Canadian Canners, the largest company of its kind in Canada with several factories in Prince Edward County and surrounding areas.”²⁷ This marked the end of an era. The remaining local factories were not able to compete with the corporate American giant and were forced to close their doors soon thereafter. Many people lost their jobs and were financially devastated. Today however, the County is flourishing again with many agricultural farms and is also the home to Ontario’s newest wine industry with over a dozen wineries since 2000.²⁸

The Wellington Heritage Museum, located in Wellington, Ontario, is a repository of information for the history of the canning industry in Prince Edward County (fig. 9). Built in 1885 as a Quaker Meeting House, the museum features local exhibits and is open to the public from May through October. The museum houses not only the Douglas A. Crawford Canning Industry Collection of labels, but also barrels, packing crates, furniture, antique household objects and assorted ephemera (fig. 10). These items are the material traces of a collective memory of a community and its past as a prosperous, innovative, and important Canadian economic centre.

LIST OF FIGURES

fig. 1 Map of Prince Edward County, 2009. (Photo: Prince Edward County Chamber of Tourism & Commerce {www.pec.on.ca/other/maps.php})

fig. 2 Wellington Boulter & Sons factory boiler room (seated man with hat is Wellington Boulter), 1901. (Photo: S.M. Brown, West Lake. Published in Douglas A. Crawford, County Canners: A History of the Canning Industry in Prince Edward County (Bloomfield, Ontario: County Magazine Printshop Inc., 2000)

fig. 3 Lion Brand Label, 1936, 100 X 275 mm, Douglas Crawford Canning Industry Collection, Museums of Prince Edward County. (Photo: Sandy Foreman)

fig. 4 Niagara Falls Apple Labels, Canada Agriculture Museum. (Photo: the author)

fig. 5 Niagara Falls Canning Co. Label (artist’s original artwork advertising tomatoes), Canada Agriculture Museum. (Photo: Jess Aylsworth)

fig. 6 Original docket preserved with artifact, Canada Agriculture Museum. (Photo: Jess Aylsworth)

fig. 7 Niagara Falls Canning Co. Labels (detail showing blank spaces for possibility of use for different products), Canada Agriculture Museum. (Photo: Jess Aylsworth)

fig. 8 Niagara Falls Apple Label Montage, Canada Agriculture Museum. (Photo: Jess Aylsworth)

fig. 9 Wellington Heritage Museum, 2008 Canada Day Celebration, Museums of Prince Edward County. (Photo: Peggy DeWitt)

fig. 10 Wellington Heritage Museum interior, Museums of Prince Edward County. (Photo: Peggy DeWitt)

NOTES

1. Special thanks to Derek Cooke, Acting Head Curator of the Wellington Heritage Museum.
2. Peter Lockyer, “An Uncertain Harvest: Hard Work, Big Business and Changing Times in Prince Edward County, Ontario,” Material History Review 33 (Spring 1991): 12.
3. Douglas A. Crawford, County Canners: A History of the Canning Industry in Prince Edward County (Bloomfield, Ontario: County Magazine Printshop Inc., 2000) 179-180.
4. Crawford, 180.
5. Crawford, 180.
6. Alan R. Capon, Wellington Boulter – Eastern Ontario’s canning pioneer, The County Weekly News, 5 Nov. 2009 {www.countyweeklynews.ca/ArticleDisplayGenContent.aspx?e=3225}.
7. Capon.
8. Crawford,180.
9. Crawford, 180.
10. Robert F. Barratt, Fruit and Vegetable Industry, Canadian Encyclopedia Online, 2 Nov. 2009 {www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA000308}.
11. Crawford, 182.
12. Lockyer, “An Uncertain Harvest,” 16-19.
13. Peter Lockyer, “The ‘Art’ in Selling the First Canned Goods,” County and Quinte
    Living, (Autumn 2009): 58.
14. Lockyer, “The ‘Art’ in Selling the First Canned Goods,” 58.
15. Lockyer, “The ‘Art’ in Selling the First Canned Goods,” 58.
16. The lithographic process, traditionally done on limestone blocks, depends on the repulsion of oil and water in order to separate the image to be printed from the surrounding negative space. After the image is drawn on the stone block or metal plate, water and ink are applied to the surface; the oil absorbs the ink while the wet area does not.
17. M. Juanita Rossiter, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, “Finding Aid: Reid Dominion Packaging Limited collection,” 20 Oct. 2006, page 2.
18. Anonymous, “Archival Sources: Treasures from Ontario’s Archives,” Ontario History 2 (1996): 245.
19. Hamilton Public Library, “Finding Aid: Duncan Lithographing Company Limited, Hamilton, Samples of Work 1898-1910,” Jan. 1952.
20. Anonymous, 245.
21. Anonymous, 245.
22. The Niagara Falls Apple labels were almost certainly printed on limestone blocks, though in the twentieth century metal plates largely superceded them. The craftsmen who prepared lithographic stones were sometimes called engravers and often worked in both fields. The Duncan Lithographing Co. may have employed Burton for both copper plate work and stone lithography.
23. Rossiter, 2.
24. Crawford, vii, 190.
25. Crawford, vii.
26. Crawford, 190.
27. Crawford, 190.
28. Wineries, Cidery, Brewery, Prince Edward County Ontario, 30 Nov. 2009 {www.pec.on.ca/pec_yellowpages/yellowpages.php3?category=44}.