By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
Canadians either adore Red River hot breakfast cereal or have never heard of it: The crunchy saga of a quintessentially Canadian food item
Feb 18, 2024
Media
An advertisement of Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for Red River Cereal. Anon., “Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited.” Nor’-West Farmer, 20 February 1929, 35.
Do you often prepare yourself a bowl of hot cereal for breakfast, my eating, err, my reading friend? Yours truly must admit I never developed a taste for that food item. Even so, I shall entertain you today, I hope, with the tale of an iconic, or so I am told, Canadian hot breakfast cereal.
The saga of Red River Cereal began in April 1887, in the village of Teeswater, Ontario, with the birth of Gertrude Edna “Gert / Gertie” Skilling.
The early years of that bright child were quite typical.
After completing her secondary school education, however, Skilling decided to attend a normal school and become a teacher. She graduated around 1906. Skilling taught for 5 or so years, in an elementary school and a secondary school located around Teeswater. She then moved to Calgary, Alberta, a somewhat unusual move for a young woman of her time, and taught for a few more years.
In June 1915, Skilling married Harvey Kavaner, a grain merchant / businessman with a promising future who happened to be the Calgary manager of a grain elevator firm, Imperial Elevator and Lumber Company of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The family moved to that city in March 1918, when Kavaner was offered a new position, that of manager of another grain elevator firm, Dominion Elevator Company of Winnipeg.
In 1924, Mrs. Kavaner came up with a recipe of hot cereal for breakfast after much experimenting. She did so to provide her children with a suitable breakfast cereal. Her spouse was impressed with the mixture of hand ground wheat (85%), rye (10%) and flax (5%), and he was not the only one.
Red River Cereal, as the new hot cereal for breakfast became known, was on sale no later than October 1926 in the grocery section of the Winnipeg store of a firm mentioned in a December 2023 issue of our astonishing blog / bulletin / thingee, The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay.
Before I forget, Red River Cereal was of course named after the American and Canadian river which flowed / flows through Winnipeg, the Red River.
The first advertisement issued by Red River Grain Company Limited of Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, was published in a Winnipeg daily, The Manitoba Free Press, in November 1926, I think. And here is a copy of said advertisement that yours truly found in another newspaper…
The first newspaper advertisement for Red River Cereal put out by Red River Grain Company Limited of Saint-Boniface, Manitoba. Anon., “Red River Grain Company Limited.” The Winnipeg Evening Tribune, 8 December 1926, 7.
Interestingly, at least for yours truly, Red River Grain was not created to produce Red River Cereal. Nay. You see, that firm had come into existence in February 1923. It owned a single grain elevator in Saint-Boniface. Kavaner, yes, the male spouse, was the firm’s founding president and / or manager.
The equipment which produced Red River Cereal, on the other hand, was put in place no later than early 1927 – and possibly several months earlier. Originally, a grand total of 4 people were involved in the production of that hot breakfast cereal.
Red River Cereal was one of the new products demonstrated at the 1926 edition of the Canadian National Exhibition, held in Toronto, Ontario, in August and September. One or two siblings of the creator of said product distributed free samples in small paper cups to individuals and families who visited the food building.
The popularity of the Manitoban breakfast cereal grew and grew as the weeks turned into months. It could be found in Saskatchewan no later than February 1927. Red River Cereal arrived in Alberta and Ontario no later than April. It could be found in Québec no later than July. British Columbian, New Brunswickan and Yukonian families could enjoy it no later than February 1928, May 1928 and April 1929. Those on Prince Edward Island might, I repeat might, have had to wait until May 1933.
Yours truly must admit that I did not find a date for Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories.
This being said (typed?), would you believe that Red River Cereal could be found on the shelves of English stores no later than January 1930?
Given that success, you will not be surprised to hear (read?), my reading friend, that Kavaner, yes, the male spouse, applied for a Canadian patent in March 1927. Said patent was issued, to him and not his spouse, in August 1929. In that patent, Kavaner was described as designer to Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg.
What was Maple Leaf Milling, you ask, my perplexed reading friend, and what is it doing in our story? Two good questions.
The story of Maple Leaf Milling began in November 1904 with the founding of Maple Leaf Flour Mills Company Limited of Ottawa, Ontario, by a small group of businessmen from Manitoba, Ontario and Québec.
Those individuals concluded pretty soon, however, that moving the firm’s headquarters to Winnipeg, a thriving city much closer to Canada’s wheatfields than Ottawa, made a great deal of sense. Indeed, the switch took place in December 1906.
And yes, Maple Leaf Flour Mills underwent a reorganisation in April 1910 and became Maple Leaf Milling
For some reason or other, Maple Leaf Milling thought best to merge with a grain elevator firm, Toronto Elevators Limited of… Toronto, in February 1961, to form Maple Leaf Mills Limited of Montréal, Québec, a Canadian multinational packaged meats and food production firm known in 2024 as Maple Leaf Foods Incorporated of Mississauga, Ontario, but back to Red River Cereal before smoke starts to pour out of your exasperated ears.
Maple Leaf Milling took over the production and distribution of Red River Cereal in the fall of 1928. The actual production of that breakfast cereal moved from Saint-Boniface to Medicine Hat, Alberta, around November. The production of Maple Leaf Milling’s new facility would be sold from British Columbia all the way to Fort William, in the western part of Ontario.
Yours truly presumes that Red River Grain simply did not have the resources required to produce Red River Cereal in the quantities required by the increasing demand.
How about sales in the rest of Ontario and in Québec, you ask, my concerned reading friend? Well, from the looks of it, those sales continued more or less unabated, which meant that the mandate of Maple Leaf Milling’s facility was soon modified, or that another facility came online.
Speaking (typing?) of sales, in November 1928, Maple Leaf Milling joined forces with the Edmonton, Alberta, radio station CKLC to launch an hour-long music program called Red River Cereal Hour. Sadly, yours truly does not know how long that program remained on the air, only a few weeks perhaps.
An advertisement for Red River Cereal put out by Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, which featured Donald James Baldock, the grand champion of the baby competition held during the 1929 edition of the Canadian National Exhibition. Anon., “Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited.” The Winnipeg Evening Tribune, 12 October 1929, 11.
Maple Leaf Milling sought to promote sales of its new product even more by inserting in one of its 1929 advertisements a photograph of Donald James Baldock, the Torontonian grand champion of the baby competition held during the 1929 edition of the Canadian National Exhibition.
Sadly, the Kavaner family was one of the countless Canadian families who lost a great deal as a result of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, an unprecedented event which gave rise to the Great Depression.
The couple might, I repeat might, have split around 1936-37. She moved back to Teeswater (with her children?) while he remained in Winnipeg.
As millions of Canadians struggled as a result of the economic chaos engendered by the Great Depression, Maple Leaf Milling struggled as well. This being said (typed?), it sought to maintain, if not improve sales by joining forces with 3 radio stations in Eastern Canada, CFRB of Toronto, CKAC of Montréal and CKPC of Brantford, Ontario, to create a new program, The Half-Hour of Happiness, launched in October 1934 but seemingly terminated in January 1935.
And yes, Maple Leaf Milling representatives could be found in the food building of the Canadian National Exhibition in 1934, 1936, 1938 and 1939 – and perhaps in other years as well. It went without saying that they offered special offers.
In 1936 for example, consumers could obtain a large shopping bag, a cake tester and a toy parachute with a package of Red River Cereal, and all of this a reduced price. Paying a few more cents allowed said consumers to leave the Maple Leaf Milling booth with an aluminium saucepan. In 1939, on the other hand, a slightly larger sum of money allowed those customers to go home with a table tennis set.
Ten of the 48 poster stamps of the Know Canada series produced for Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, by the National Poster Stamp Society of Chicago, Illinois, and distributed in packages of Red River Cereal. Anon., “‘Know Canada’ Poster Stamp Series.” Poster Stamp Bulletin, December 1938, 6.
Yours truly would be remiss if I did not point out that, in late 1938, Maple Leaf Milling launched a series of 48 poster stamps. Issued in sets of 4 in 12 different colours, Know Canada featured interesting views and famous scenes to be found in Canada’s 9 provinces, views and scenes like the city hall of Toronto, the grain elevators at Fort William and the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.
The poster stamps were presumably produced by the National Poster Stamp Society of Chicago, Illinois.
One of the advertisements put out by Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for the Know Canada series of poster stamps offered in packages of Red River Cereal. Anon., “Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited.” The Ottawa Evening Citizen, 26 October 1939, 15.
Given that the first of a small series of advertisements (4 in all?) for those poster stamps seemingly came out in November 1939, yours truly does not know when said poster stamps began to appear in packages of Red River Cereal.
And yes, as was to be expected, the children and tweenagers who collected those poster stamps could put them in a handsome album with a leather-like binding and lettering in red and gold which could be obtained by mailing to Maple Leaf Milling a 2-cent stamp and two labels cut out from packages of Red River Cereal.
Underneath the space where each poster stamps could be glued in, the young collectors could read a 50 or so word text on each view or scene.
And yes, again, collectors, possibly adult ones, could acquire the entire series in one fell swoop by sending 15 cents to the National Poster Stamp Society, or its recently founded associate, the International Poster Stamp Society of Toronto. An album, on the other hand, could be bought for 25 cents.
Those sums correspond respectively to slightly more than $ 3 and $ 5 in 2024 currency.
And yes, you calculated well, my reading friend. The value of the aforementioned 2-cent stamp corresponds to 40 or so cents in 2024 currency, which is well below the $ 1.07 (!) you and I have to pay to mail a letter.
As far as yours truly can tell, the poster stamps replaced one or more type of (American-made?) trinkets previously found in packages of Red River Cereal.
And yes, those poster stamps and their album might have been available in French. Scènes canadiennes seemingly reached grocery stores in October or November 1939. And here is proof. Whether or not the texts on the poster stamps and the ones in the album were translated was another matter.
The French language version of an advertisement put out by Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for the Scènes canadiennes series of poster stamps offered in packages of Red River Cereal. Anon., “Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited.” La Presse, 2 November 1939, 9.
Mind you, Maple Leaf Milling put other types of gifts in packages of Red River Cereal, a magic paint folder or… a pencil with a rubber eraser on the end.
Yep, a f*ck*n’ pencil, to quote, out of context and very, very politely / respectfully the Russian American mob boss Viggo Tarasov, yes, the one who met a sticky end in a very successful and popular 2014 American action thriller film, John Wick.
As the days, weeks, months and years turned into weeks, months, years and decades, Red River Cereal went on its own merry way. To paraphrase a well known saying, well known in French that is, happy breakfast cereals have no history.
Canadians, it seems, either adored Red River Cereal or had never heard of it. Individuals who fell within that second group tended to be somewhat younger than those in the first group.
A brief digression if I may.
A most intriguing Red River Cereal advertisement made its appearance in newspapers of Buffalo, New York, and seemingly nowhere else, in March and April 1948. And here it is…
The advertisement put out by Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for a Jet Pilot’s Cap offered, it seemed, only to American friends of Red River Cereal living in Buffalo, New York. Anon., “Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited.” Buffalo Evening News, 11 March 1948, 14.
Interesting, is it not? Any tweenager or teenager interested in obtaining a jet pilot cap only had to send 10 cents in coin and the top of a box of Red River Cereal to Maple Leaf Milling. Easy peasy. Incidentally those 10 cents correspond to approximately $ 1.75 in 2024 Canadian currency.
Now, I ask you, my reading friend, why would Maple Leaf Milling go through the trouble of ordering batches of jet pilot caps and make no effort to distribute them beyond Buffalo? And why limit the effort to a period of about 3 weeks? I am utterly baffled. The management of Maple Leaf Milling, it seemed, moved in mysterious ways.
In reality, those ways might not have been that mysterious. You see, back in November 1947, Maple Leaf Milling had begun to offer jet pilot caps to tweenagers and teenagers who sent 10 cents and the top of a box of, wait for it, Brex, “the quick-to-cook wheat germ cereal with the flavour you’ll say is grand.”
The cap was apparently advertised in at least 4 provinces (Alberta, Ontario, Québec and Saskatchewan) between November 1947 and November 1948.
And yes, in Québec, the jet pilot cap was advertised in French, as the “Bonnet BREX de pilote d’avion à réaction.”
End of digression.
Would you believe that an eatery which served Red River Cereal, orange juice and black coffee opened in doors in Vancouver, British Columbia, in February 1990? Sadly, the Double R closed its doors in April. You see, the windows of that eatery were so fogged out that people inside or outside could not see outside or inside. I kid you not. I think.
Those who adored Red River Cereal swore by its high fibre content and how it helped to keep things, err, going down below. Some of them did, however, acknowledge that Red River Cereal did not have much of a taste.
Would it be deemed heretical to state that, in its pre-cooked form, Red River Cereal looked a lot like… birdseed? Or that, in its unadorned cooked form, that hot breakfast cereal smelled a wee bit like a barn, tasted a wee bit like wet cardboard and felt a wee bit like wet sand in the mouth? Sorry, sorry.
Mind you, some people pointed out that Red River Cereal tasted a wee bit like birdseed, a comment which brought to mind an intriguing question : why did those people feel the need to learn how birdseed tasted like? Just askin’.
Which reminds me of a story about the English geologist / paleontologist / Anglican theologian William Buckland. In 1826, I think, during a year-long honeymoon trip to continental Europe, Buckland and his spouse visited a church or cathedral where, the local roman catholic clergy claimed, the fresh blood of a martyred saint could regularly be found on the floor. He instantly dropped to his knees and carefully tasted that holy relic. Buckland’s conclusion was that it was bat urine. Bon appétit tout le monde.
During that same trip, before or after his encounter with the bodily fluid of a flying mammal, Buckland and his spouse visited the Santuario di Santa Rosalia, in Palermo, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, now in Italy. They were shown the holy bones of Santa Rosalia / La Santuzza, a devout 12th century Norman noble lady who had become a hermit. Bones which had saved the inhabitants of Palermo from an epidemic when paraded through the streets of said city in 1624.
Buckland took one look at the bones proudly displayed in the sanctuary and stated that they had belonged to a goat. As embarrassing as the misidentification was for the church, the frequent association between goats, witchcraft and Satan / Lucifer was perhaps far worse. The bones were stored soon after.
And yes, my reading friend who desperately wants to change topic, it looked as if one if not two flavoured versions (brown sugar and maple?) of Red River Cereal appeared on shelves at some point in the (recent?) past.
Indeed, the recipe might have been tweaked at some other point in the recent past to take into consideration the fact that many consumers were now heating that product in a microwave oven.
At this point, yours truly would be remiss if I did not debunk several microwave oven myths.
- They do not release dangerous radiation.
- They do not have to be used only with junk food.
- They do not affect the nutritional value or taste of food items.
- They do not damage food containers, as long as the right ones are used.
- They do not dry up food items or leave parts of them uncooked if used properly.
But I digress.
Sadly, Gertrude Edna Kavaner did not get a chance to see how beloved Red River Cereal had become. She left this world in Toronto in March 1946, at the age of 58.
In June 1990, Maple Leaf Milling, at the time a subsidiary of the English food giant Hillsdown Holdings Public Limited Company, merged with a Canadian meat packing giant, Canada Packers Incorporated of Toronto. Eager to shed its meat packing past, the latter officially changed its name to Maple Leaf Foods in May 1991.
As far as yours truly can figure out, Robin Hood Multifoods Corporation of Toronto, a subsidiary of a big American food manufacturer, International Multifoods Corporation, began to produce Red River Cereal in 1995, in some location or other, presumably in Ontario.
In March 2004, The J.M. Smucker Company, a very big American beverage and food manufacturer, acquired International Multifoods. As a result, the former’s Canadian subsidiary, J.M. Smucker (Canada) Incorporated of Halifax, Nova Scotia, I think, became responsible for the latter’s Canadian subsidiary, Robin Hood Multifoods of Markham, Ontario.
A potentially serious problem shot across Red River Cereal’s bow in September 2011 when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning to the general public to the effect that certain packages contained some soy, a legume which happens to be one of the most common allergens affecting infants and children. Oddly enough, the presence of that soy was not mentioned on the label.
And no, there had been no case of allergic reaction at the time the warning came out.
In any event, Smucker Foods of Canada Corporation of Markham voluntarily agreed to recall the packages in question. For some reason or other, the recall did not affect packages of Red River Cereal distributed in the United States.
A representative of Smucker Foods of Canada’s American parent company indicated in December 2011 that packages of Red River Cereal should reappear in Canadian stores that very month. Said packages would eventually mention the potential presence in the product of soy as well as, perhaps, barley, mustard, oat, sesame and triticale. Incidentally, the wheat and rye contained therein would now be steel cut rather than cracked.
As is sometimes, if not often, the case, the misfortune of a product made the happiness of another product. The breakfast cereal which (briefly?) benefitted from the woes faced by Red River Cereal was Sunny Boy Cereal, produced in Camrose, Alberta, by Sunny Boy Foods Limited.
Would you believe that this product, developed in 1928, I think, by what was then Byers Flour Mills Limited, a firm founded in 1926, was a mixture of wheat, rye and flax?
You will of course remember that Red River Cereal, another mixture of wheat, rye and flax, had hit the shelves in 1926.
Although containing the same basic ingredients, both of those hot breakfast cereals had slightly different recipes. Sunny Boy Cereal might have contained a tad more rye for example. It might also have been slightly creamier in its cooked form.
Although produced in Alberta until today, Sunny Boy Cereal has failed to acquire the same aura as its rival. It did and does have great fans, however, but back to our story.
In 2020-21, Smucker Foods of Canada or its American parent firm put a stop to the production and distribution of Red River Cereal. Understandably enough, longtime fans of that product were deeply disappointed, if not shocked. They had lost an old friend.
The 90+ year long saga of Red River Cereal seemed to be over and it was indeed sad to see such an icon disappear, through no fault of its own.
That, however, was not the end of our saga. Nay. It was not.
You see, in June 2022, Arva Flour Mills Limited of Arva, Ontario, near London, acquired the Red River Cereal brand from Smucker Foods of Canada. Better yet, that small firm planned to sell that product in its Arva retail store and on its website by the end of that month.
Whether or not it succeeded in doing so is unclear but one could argue that this did not really matter. The main fact, the only fact in fact, was that production of Red River Cereal restarted, something that its fans, both in Canada and the United States, cheered to high heaven.
Incidentally, the wheat and rye contained in the newly sold packages would be cracked rather than steel cut. That of course meant that Arva Flour Mills had to buy a hammer mill.
Aware as they were of the need to keep in mind consumer demand, the two co-owners also bought the tooling required to produce gluten-free flour, something that the original tooling of the mill was quite incapable of doing.
Incidentally, Arva Flour Mills was not exactly a newcomer in the flour mill business. You see, the mill it operated was, and still is, the oldest continuously operating water-powered flour mill in Canada, as well as one of the oldest surviving businesses in Canada.
Would you believe that this historic mill has been milling flour since 1819? To quote the title of a 1985 (!) hit song of the British pop rock band Eurythmics, would I lie to you?
The current co-owners had bought the mill in the summer of 2021, much to the relief of many Arva residents who had feared that developers from Toronto, Vancouver or China would buy it and do something horrible to that historic site, something that several / many developers in Canada and elsewhere have been known to do to historic places over the years, with or without a permit.
Thankfully, the owner of the mill at the time of its sale was as keen to see it remain in operation as the individuals who wanted to acquire it.
So, to quote, out of context, the English poet / playwright / actor William Shakespeare, all’s well that ends well. Now I must be going, so, ta-ta.
This writer wishes to thank the people who provided information. Any mistake contained in this article is my fault, not theirs.
Rénald Fortier
More Stories by
![A block of photographs showing some of the people involved in the bombing of beluga whales in the estuary and gulf of the St. Lawrence River. Anon., “La chasse aux marsouins [sic]. » Le Devoir, 15 August 1929, 6.](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_7/public/2024-09/Le%20Devoir%2015%20aout%201929%20page%206.jpg?h=584f1d27&itok=TppdLItg)
![Peter Müller at the controls [sic] of the Pedroplan, Berlin, Germany, March 1931. Anon., “Cologne contre Marseille – Le mystère du ‘Pédroplan.’ [sic]” Les Ailes, 2 April 1931, 14.](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_7/public/2021-04/Les%20Ailes%202%20avril%201931%20version%20big.jpg?h=eafd0ed4&itok=WnBZ5gMf)
![One of the first de Havilland Canada Chipmunk imported to the United Kingdom. Anon., “De Havilland [Canada] DHC-1 ‘Chipmunk.’” Aviation Magazine, 1 January 1951, cover.](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_7/public/2021-01/Aviation%20magazine%201er%20janvier%201951%20version%202.jpg?h=2f876e0f&itok=DM4JHe5C)
