By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
“You know how to dry cabbage the way you do it at home?” La Société Ferdon Enregistrée / Ferdon Limitée of Laprairie / La Prairie, Québec, the first vegetable dehydration plant of the Belle Province, part 1
Back view of the first vegetable dehydration plant in Québec, La Société Ferdon Enregistré of Laprairie / La Prairie, Québec. Pellerin Lagloire, “Déshydratation.” Le Bulletin des Agriculteurs, January 1944, 15.
Are you feeling a bit peckish at the moment, my reading friend? That happened to me very often a little before the mid-1980s, after a day spent in the library of an institution of high learning mentioned many times in our blog / bulletin / thingee since December 2018, McGill University, in Montréal, Québec, if I remember correctly.
Human memory is indeed a faculty that forgets, or even a faculty which can sometimes remember events that never took place, but back to my peckishness of the 1980s.
Yours truly fought said peckishness by snacking on the contents of small bags of dried or dehydrated fruits or vegetables. Come to think of it, the fruits or vegetables in question were probably dried. There is indeed a difference between a dried fruit or vegetable and a dehydrated fruit or vegetable. As far as the United States Department of Agriculture is concerned, for example, a dehydrated product contains no more than 2.5% water, while a dried product contains more than 2.5% water.
Even though I had never asked myself the question, I suspected at that time that dried or dehydrated fruits or vegetables had existed well before the 1980s. Indeed, populations in Asia and the Middle East were drying food in the sun at least 14 000 years ago.
It goes without saying that the present peroration will not go that far back in time. In fact, it will simply go back to the beginning of the 1940s, when the Second World War raged, and…
Alright, alright, my reading friend with an explosive temper. Here is a bit of Canadian historical context.
Did you know that Graham Company Limited of Belleville, Ontario, allegedly supplied dehydrated vegetables to the United States Army when the latter waged war against Spain during the Spanish American War of 1898? Or that it allegedly supplied such products to some of the people who took part in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-99, as did Findley & Company of Vancouver, British Columbia, I think?
Incidentally, if you ever decide to research the early history of industrialised vegetable dehydration, please consider the possibility of using as keywords expressions like dehydrated vegetables, desiccated vegetables, dried vegetables, evaporated vegetables, etc. The French language counterparts of those expressions would be légumes déshydratés, légumes desséchés, légumes évaporés, légumes séchés, etc.
You are most welcome. To paraphrase Other Government Agency agent Harvey Russell, one of the major protagonists of Rampage, a 2018 American science fiction / adventure / action monster film loosely based on an eponymous series of video games, like my grandpappy always said, us eggheads gotta stick together, but back to this week’s topic.
During the Anglo–Boer War / Boer War / Second Boer War of 1899-1902, an unjust war fought by an imperialistic great power, no, not Russia, the United Kingdom, in order to grab the diamonds, gold and land of the Boers, several Canadian firms shipped ginormous quantities of dehydrated vegetables, well over a thousand metric (Imperial / American) tonnes perhaps, to the troops of the British Army and, in all likelihood, the Canadian Militia who consumed them in the form of soup.
And yes, 7 000 or so Canadian volunteers fought in the Second Boer War, on the British side of course. Mind you, more than 2 800 volunteers from 15 or so European countries, including the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom, fought on the Boer side. Dare one ask if some of the Americans (300 or so?) who did the same were Canadians who could not stomach the way the United Kingdom fought the Second Boer War?
In any event, when that dreadful conflict ended, a Canadian firm still had many metric (imperial / American) tonnes of dehydrated vegetables on its hands. And no, said vegetables found no taker over the following months and years.
Would you believe that no less than 13 600 or so kilogrammes (30 000 or so pounds) of that carefully stored food were allegedly shipped to Europe in 1914, shortly after the start of the First World War, and apparently eaten by British Army soldiers, again in the form of soup? Bon appétit tout le monde!
Female employees of Dominion Products Company Limited of New Westminster, British Columbia, at work, removing spots and fragments of peel left on potatoes by the peeling machines. Anon., “Vegetable Drying Becoming Important Industry.” The Vancouver Daily Province, 26 March 1918, 34.
The First World War obviously sparked a spectacular growth in the production of dehydrated vegetables in Canada. Firms like the aforementioned Graham, as well as Dominion Products Company Limited of Vancouver and New Westminster, British Columbia, not to mention British Columbia Hop Company Limited of Agassiz, British Columbia, and others produced between 18 150 and 22 700 metric tonnes (between 18 000 and 22 300 imperial tons / between 20 000 and 25 000 American tons) of dehydrated food during the conflict.
A substantial quantity of dehydrated vegetables went to the French Armée de Terre, for example. And yes, it was a safe bet that members of the Canadian Army stuffed themselves with Canadian dehydrated vegetables between 1914 and 1918.
According to words, translated here, by Pellerin Lagloire, an agronomist working in the Service de l’information et des recherches of the Ministère de l’Agriculture du Québec, words published in November 1943, however, the dehydrated foods available in Canada in 1917-18 were hardly appetizing: “There comes to our mouth, despite ourselves, a taste of wilted hay and the imagination brings to our memory slices of potatoes blackened like the soles of boots.” Ow…
The end of the First World War and the cancellation of large American orders obviously led to significant layoffs in Canada. Graham fired more than 500 people in February 1919, for example. That firm might even have shut down its facility for a while in early 1919, as Dominion Products did, possibly to install new production tooling.
In May 1923, concerned as it was by large imports of dehydrated foods, prunes, peaches and apricots for example, the House of Commons of Canada created a committee on dehydration to study Canadian commercial processes. Would you believe that, in March and April 1924, Canada imported 1 815 or so metric tonnes (1 785 or so imperial tons / 2 000 or so American tons) of dehydrated American prunes (7/8 of the total!), peaches and apricots?
I know, I know. That was a lot of prunes. A person with a negative turn of mind, not yours truly of course, might, err, let us not go there actually.
In 1924, dehydration facilities were installed at a commercial plant in Grimsby, Ontario, and at a semi-commercial plant in Penticton, British Columbia, thanks to the efforts of Charles S. McGillivray, Chief Canning Inspector at the fruit directorate of the federal Department of Agriculture, and Edgar Spinney Archibald, director of the Experimental Farms Service of that department. There was also a laboratory at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, a sister / brother museal institution of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum of Ottawa, is located on the site of the Central Experimental Farm. (Hello, WK!)
In 1929, a processing laboratory was added to the horticultural building at the Summerland Experimental Station, near Summerland, British Columbia.
Around the same time, the geneticist Cecil Conrad Eidt set out to improve the dehydration process. In fact, he supervised the construction of a high-performance forced air dehydrating tunnel at the Kentville Experimental Station, near Kentville, Nova Scotia. Completed in 1929, that quasi revolutionary tunnel might have remained a cutting edge technology until the 1950s, if not the 1960s.
Incidentally, yours truly could not find much of anything on dehydrated vegetable research or production in Québec before the Second World War. This being said (typed?), unidentified commercial interests based in Montréal, Québec, supplied some sort of production tooling to the Université de Montréal, in you know where, in 1935. Equally unidentified people from that university used that equipment over a period of several months and successfully dehydrated a great many types of vegetables and several types of fruits. Even so, no industrial facility dedicated to the dehydration of vegetables came into existence in Québec in the following months.
Around 1938-39, the federal Department of Agriculture might, I repeat might, have organised an experimental round-trip transport to the Colony of Singapore of dehydrated cabbage preserved under vacuum in metal cans. The unrefrigerated cargo ship used for that experiment remained at sea for 6 months. On its return, the cabbage it was transporting was compared with dehydrated cabbage kept at a temperature of 0° Celsius (32° Fahrenheit) in a department building in Ottawa.
The report by Mary MacArthur, a Scottish-Canadian agricultural researcher in the horticulture division of the federal Department of Agriculture who, I think, worked at the Central Experimental Farm, and F.B. Johnston, a researcher in the chemistry division of the same department, concluded that high temperatures were detrimental to the preservation of a dehydrated vegetable like cabbage. End of the historical digression that you, yes, yes, you, imposed on me.
As dehydrated fruits and vegetables were much less heavy and bulky than fresh fruits and vegetables, they were appreciated by the British government during the Second World War. Why was this the case, you ask, my reading friend? A good question. You see, almost 70% of the food consumed by the population of the United Kingdom in September 1939, when the Second World War broke out, came from outside the country.
The British government therefore feared that attacks by German submarines on merchant ships supplying the United Kingdom could lead to more or less serious food shortages, shortages which could provoke a growing desire of the civilian population to put an end to its misfortunes by forcing said government to sue for peace. To mitigate that risk, the British government declared in March 1939 its intention to impose rationing in an emergency.
Ration booklets were distributed to the entire British population in January 1940. Initially, the list of rationed products was relatively short: sugar, ham, butter and bacon. By the end of 1942, however, it included many other items, such as tea, rice, milk, meat, margarine, eggs, cheese, breakfast cereals, biscuits, etc.
As you might imagine, the collapse of France in June 1940 and the start of the Battle of Britain in July greatly complicated things for the British government. Worse still, German submarines sank more and more merchant ships: 225 or so in 1940, 290 or so in 1941 and 450 or so in 1942.
All in all, more than 40 000 merchant sailors from Allied countries died during the Second World War, including 1 600 or so Canadian sailors.
The depredations of the German submarines resulted in a serious shortage of maritime transport which in turn led to the need to minimise the weight and volume of food transported as much as possible.
Since dehydrated fruits and vegetables were much less heavy and bulky than fresh fruits and vegetables, a fact greatly appreciated by the British government you will remember, you will not be surprised to learn that the Government of Canada began to be interested in the production of those foodstuffs.
A brief digression if I may. In 1943, one needed
- 13 to 14 kilogrammes (pounds) of fresh turnips to produce 1 kilogramme (pound) of dehydrated turnips,
- 6 to 8 kilogrammes (pounds) of fresh potatoes to produce 1 kilogramme (pound) of dehydrated potatoes,
- 14 to 16 kilogrammes (pounds) of fresh onions to produce 1 kilogramme (pound) of dehydrated onions,
- 10 to 12 kilogrammes (pounds) of fresh carrots to produce 1 kilogramme (pound) of dehydrated carrots, and
- 18 to 19 kilogrammes (pounds) of fresh cabbage to produce 1 kilogramme (pound) of dehydrated cabbage.
End of digression and return to the interest shown by certain elements of the federal government, since 1940 it seemed, in the production of dehydrated vegetables.
Around July 1940, for example, the Commercial Intelligence Journal of the Department of Trade and Commerce stated that “The possibilities of developing an export market in the United Kingdom for Canadian dehydrated vegetables were good for any packer willing and able to offer competitive prices.”
A young male employee at the vegetable dehydration plant of Gordon Beardmore & Company Limited in Oakville, Ontario, surrounded by bags of Allium cepa, in other words onions, weighing 23 or so kilogrammes (50 or so pounds) each. Anon., “Un nouveau procédé.” La Patrie, 4 August 1941, 6.
Everything suggested that the production of such products was carried out in relatively large quantities as early as 1941. The vegetables thus dehydrated included turnips, spinach, potatoes, onions, carrots and beets.
By the way, rehydrated potatoes and onions were apparently pleasant in taste and texture. Rehydrated carrots, on the other hand, were a tad spineless. The content of vitamins and other nutrients in those products might, I repeat might, have left something to be desired. That vitamin deficiency could explain the quite limited quantities of North American dehydrated vegetables and fruits imported by the United Kingdom between 1939 and 1941.
By the way, Canadian production of dehydrated vegetables increased from 32 or so metric tonnes (31.5 or so imperial tons / 35.5 or so American tons) in 1939 to 280 or so metric tonnes (275 or so imperial tons / 310 or so American tons) in 1941.
Aware of the difficulties facing the Canadian dehydration industry, experts from the federal Department of Agriculture met in 1941 at the aforementioned Kentville Experimental Station. They then pooled the available information and launched a fairly elaborate experimental program.
Aware of the need to increase Canadian production of dehydrated vegetables (and fruits?), the federal government tabled an order in council in the House of Commons of Canada in January 1942.
The purpose of said order in council was to provide a sum of money to the Department of Agriculture to provide production tooling to 5 existing firms located in British Columbia (Bulman’s Limited of Vernon), Ontario (Gordon Beardmore & Company Limited of Oakville (and Weston?) and Graham Dried Foods Limited of Belleville ), Nova Scotia (Berwick Food Products Limited of Berwick) and New Brunswick (New Brunswick Potato Products Limited of Hartland), I think, as well as purchasing the production of said factories.
According to the federal Minister of Agriculture, James Garfield Gardiner, both the Department of National Defence of Canada and the War Office of the United Kingdom were increasingly interested in Canadian dehydrated vegetables (and fruits?).
Indeed, the British government or, more precisely, I think, the Ministry of Food, seemed ready to order 1 015 or so metric tonnes (1 000 or so imperial tons / 1 120 or so American tons) of dehydrated vegetables (and fruits?), which posed a problem. You see, the existing equipment on Canadian soil only allowed the overseas delivery of 140 or so metric tonnes (137 or so imperial tons / 155 or so American tons) of food of that type in 1941.
As you might imagine, the British authorities would place such an order only after receiving confirmation that sufficient amounts of vitamins and other nutrients were present in those foods.
From January 1942 onward, Canada’s Agricultural Supplies Board therefore organised an experimental production cycle in the 5 companies mentioned above.
Before I forget, the lack of investment in Québec irritated a Québec backbencher from the ruling party in Ottawa. In March 1942, in the House of Commons of Canada, Jean-François Pouliot asked why a dehydration plant would not be erected in Montréal. The latter also deemed the planned costs of producing dehydrated vegetables to be too high. Pouliot’s petulance hardly bothered Gardiner.
Speaking (typing?) of Pouliot, would you believe that this gentleman and my paternal grandmother had the same great great great great great grandfather, Charles Pouliot, a French master carpenter who arrived in Québec, New France, in 1653, at age 25? Ours is a small world, is it not, especially where most francophone Quebecers are concerned? But I digress.
The experimental production cycle gave good results. The 5 Canadian dehydration plants apparently processed 2 330 or so metric tonnes (2 295 or so imperial tons / 2 570 or so American tons) of vegetables (cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and turnips) between January and May 1942.
The price of the vegetables, once placed in the holds of hypothetical merchant ships, obviously varied depending on the product. It actually varied between 68 cents per kilogramme (31 cents per pound) for potatoes and $1.61 per kilogramme (73 cents per pound) for cabbage. Those amounts correspond to between $12.15 or so per kilogramme ($5.50 or so per pound) and $28.70 or so per kilogramme ($13.00 or so per pound) in 2024 currency.
If yours truly understands the information on which I laid a very virtual hand, that production seemingly did not leave Canada. It actually seemed to end up in warehouses no later than in July 1942, and this so that it could be used by the Canadian Army.
Are those figures reliable, you ask, my reading friend who is well aware of the existence of government claptrap? A good question. If only I knew.
Indeed, according to another source, also journalistic, Canadian production of dehydrated vegetables reached 1 730 or so metric tonnes (1 700 or so imperial tons / 1 900 or so American tons) in 1942, which was not too bad. Well, that production would not have been too bad had the published information been true. You see, the true figure was apparently 730 or so metric tonnes (715 or so imperial tons / 805 or so American tons). Might the federal Department of Agriculture have deliberately fed false information to the media? Be still my heart.
And no, the Canadian food industry did not appear to have shipped large quantities of dehydrated vegetables overseas during the first half of 1942, a situation which annoyed some / many Canadians who would have liked to see Canada do more for the United Kingdom.
The federal government’s interest in dehydrated foods was so significant that two other factories received production tooling, albeit with a certain delay. Indeed, an eighth factory received production tooling no later than 1943. The three additional dehydration plants might, I repeat might, have been those of Island Foods Incorporated of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Kildonan Canning Company Limited of East Kildonan, Manitoba, and Pirie Potato Products Limited of Grand Falls, New Brunswick.
Mind you, other factories came into operation in Canada in 1943. One only needed to think about the one that Canadian Canners Limited of Hamilton, Ontario, completed in Forest, Ontario, no later than 1943. Or the one operated by Canada Foods Limited of Kentville, Nova Scotia, which had gone into production in September.
Would you believe that, towards the end of 1942, researchers from the Department of Agriculture had developed a dehydration process which preserved the taste, texture and nutritional value of foods better than those in use until then?
That process appeared to take advantage of research seemingly completed no later than January 1942 by researchers at the Low Temperature Research Station at the University of Cambridge, in… Cambridge, England. That British process was said to be far superior to those used in North America. It apparently better preserved the vitamins present in foods. Curiously, given the circumstances, the process developed by the Low Temperature Research Station seemingly did not go beyond the testing stage.
In any event, C.S. Harris, a British researcher traveling to the United States on mission, gave a complete file on the British process to researchers at the Canadian Department of Agriculture in 1942.
Work then began in Canada, under the direction of the Dominion horticulturist, Malcolm Bancroft Davis. While some work was carried out at the Dominion Experimental Farm at Summerland and the Central Experimental Farm, the bulk of the work was carried out at the Dominion Experimental Station at Kentville, under the direction of the Assistant Superintendent of fruit dehydration from the Department of Agriculture, the aforementioned Eidt.
The equipment thus developed was installed in 7 of the 8 Canadian dehydration plants, by the end of the winter of 1942-43 at the latest. It was also found in many American dehydration plants.
Yours truly would be remiss if I did not mention here the great contribution of a Scottish Canadian agricultural researcher from the horticulture division of the federal Department of Agriculture who worked at the Central Experimental Farm. The aforementioned MacArthur supervised, for example, the construction of an imposing dehydration tunnel there in 1943. She supervised more than 2 000 tests and experiments there between 1943 and 1945.
A leader in dehydration on Canadian soil, MacArthur might, I repeat might, have discovered the need to blanch vegetables before dehydrating them, to deactivate the enzymes which harmed the process.
In June 1943, while testifying before the Standing Committee on Agriculture of the House of Commons of Canada, the Chairman of the Agricultural Supplies Board, the Canadian agricultural scientist John Alexander Malcolm Shaw, revealed that the aforementioned Ministry of Food wanted obtain 5 080 or so metric tonnes (5 000 or so imperial tons / 5 600 or so American tons) of dehydrated vegetables, that is carrots, cabbage, potatoes and turnips.
Shaw also mentioned that there were dehydration plants in 8 of the 9 provinces of Canada. Such a factory was to see the light of day in Saskatchewan shortly, which would complete the set. What was / is curious in that statement was that there was no dehydration plant in Québec or Alberta in June 1943. Yours truly cannot say if Shaw had been misinformed or was deliberately misinforming the press, and…
I recognise a hand poking through the aether. You have a question, my well informed reading friend? How about Sunshine Products Company of Edmonton, Alberta, you ask? A good and intriguing question.
That story had begun in November 1940 when 2 individuals, I think, leased an Edmonton factory building formerly owned by Cushing Brothers Company Limited of Calgary, Alberta, a firm which specialised in the production of windows, sashes and doors for houses. Once repaired, that building was to be fitted with a dehydration tunnel which was to be used to dehydrate vegetables and, perhaps, fruits.
In May 1941, however, John A. Clarke and Robert S. McGuire were in court, facing several charges of false pretence and / or theft. Those nogoodniks received sentences of one year imprisonment in November. Incidentally, McGuire’s sentence also included punishment for the theft of a motorcycle.
Would you believe that Sunshine Products might, I repeat might, have produced some dehydrated potatoes, and that it sold those dehydrated spuds to the federal government? In his statement, Clarke actually went further. If the investors, which happened to be mainly the firm’s employees, had not lost their nerve, Sunshine Products would be a going concern returning handsome profits. Yours truly cannot say if the investors ever saw their money again, but back to our story.
The federal government ordered an additional 2 030 or so metric tons (2 000 or so imperial tons / 2 240 American tons) of dehydrated food by July 1943 at the latest. Unless I am mistaken, all orders were shared so as not to create shortages in any region of Canada.
Before I forget, Canadian dehydration plants produced 5 800 or so metric tons (5 700 or so imperial tons / 6 400 or so American tons) of dehydrated vegetables in 1943, which was almost 8 times what they had produced the previous year. Wah!
Yours truly’s work on the Canadian aircraft industry leads me to wonder if Canada’s various industries struggled to deliver the goods between 1939 and 1942, only hitting their stride in 1943. Just sayin’
As you might imagine, the Canadian dehydration plants were working at full capacity in 1943. Here is proof…
Three scenes of daily life at the dehydration plant of Bulman’s Limited in Vernon, British Columbia: a female young student named Gwenyth Davies in the middle of a mountain of cabbage, female and male employees busy around a cabbage chopper and two female employees welding the lids of metal boxes destined for the United Kingdom. Anon., “Des étudiants travaillent dur dans les usines de déshydratation du pays.” Le Droit, 2 October 1943, 11.
Indeed, the 12 to 15 Canadian dehydration plants in operation towards the end of the summer of 1944 worked at such a pace that the federal government authorised them to place a small percentage of their production on the shelves of Canadian food stores.
And yes, there were now factories in 8 of the 9 Canadian provinces. Even though the plan to build one in Saskatchewan had been abandoned for some reason or other, if there was actually one that is, a shiny new plant operated by Broder Canning Company of Lethbridge, Alberta, opened its doors in March 1944. Potatoes were on its menu. Spuds were also seemingly on the menu of the plant operated by Gilland Dehydrated Foods Limited which went into operation in Haney, British Columbia, in March 1944.
And it is now time to turn to something else, my reading friend, because it will be next week that the second part of our fascinating article on La Société Ferdon Enregistrée de Laprairie / La Prairie, Québec, the first vegetable dehydration plant in La Belle province, will reach you.
And you have a question, do you not, my reading friend? Was the title of this article inspired by a French nursery rhyme, Savez-vous planter les choux? Yes, of course.
Did you know that said nursery rhyme might have emerged during the Middle Ages, when cabbage gradually became one of the pillars of the peasant diet of what would later become France?
Would you also believe that, given the legend according to which children were / are born in cabbage, some see in Savez-vous planter les choux a slightly bawdy nursery rhyme whose subtext completely escapes the young children who sing it with such great enthusiasm? (Hello, EP!)
Ahh, culture is such a nice thing!
See ya later, comrade.
Rénald Fortier
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