Commercial Fruit Growing in Canada, from European Contact to 1930: An Outline

Commercial Fruit Growing in Canada, from Contact to 1930: An Outline

Edwinna von Baeyer

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COPYRIGHT

Published by EvB Communications at Smashwords

©Edwinna von Baeyer, Commercial Fruit Growing in Canada, from European Contact to 1930: An Outline, 2018

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this publication’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edwinna von Baeyer, Commercial Fruit Growing in Canada, from European Contact to 1930: An Outline, and with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

eBook ISBN 978-0-9692100-3-0

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DEDICATION

This book took years to research, as life and work intervened to stop progress. However, two people enthusiastically supported the project throughout: my dear, late friend Susan Buggey who always posed the right questions, and my husband, Cornelius, who, always supportive, never asked when I would finish

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO CANADA'S HORTICULTURAL HISTORY

Canada’s horticultural history: Background

CHAPTER 2. PREPARING THE GROUND -- UP TO 1850

The French

1700s: Against the backdrop of war

Early 1800s: Taming the wilderness, making the wild places smooth

Transportation

Background: European models of commercial seed and plant supply

Rise of early 19th century Canadian seed and nursery suppliers

Fruit growing in early 19th-century Canada

Background: Storage

Background: Canning

Background: Refrigeration

CHAPTER 3. NUTURING AND CULTIVATING, 1850-1899

Setting the Stage, 1840s-1860s

Railways: Engines of development

Markets expanding

Growers’ associations

Commercial fruit growing in the 19th century

Working together to find solutions to problems, 1870-1899

Operations: Producing fruit

Operations: From tree to market

CHAPTER 4. HORTICULTURAL INDUSTRY SUPPORTS, 1850-1899

Outreach was the key

Hardy plant material crucial

Systematized plant breeding slowly increasing

More testing called for

Markets beginning to influence varieties grown

Supply: Seedhouses and nurseries

Advertising

Nursery stock tariff

Selected list of seedhouses and nurseries, by province, 1867-1900

Outreach: Exhibitions and fairs

Marketing: Learning the ropes

Canned produce

Evaporated and dried fruit

Cider

Wine making

Transportation and its challenges

Refrigeration: Beginnings

Transition into the 20th century

CHAPTER 5. COMMERCIAL HORTICULTURE FLOURISHING, 1900-1918

Operations: Producing the crop

Plant breeding

Supply: Nurseries

Operations: From tree to market

Legislation: Regulation of grades, promotion of inspection

Storage

Canning and jam-making industry

Markets and marketing

First World War and the labour problem

Transportation

Outreach

Into the 1920s

CHAPTER 6. CONSOLIDATION OF THE COMMERCIAL HORTICULTURAL INDUSTRY, 1918-1930

Operations: Producing the crop

Plant breeding

Nursery overview

Operations: From tree to market

Packaging, packages and standardization

Markets and marketing

Middlemen still criticized

Tariff

Collecting statistics

Advertising

Cooperation

Canning

Storage

Transportation

Outreach

Plant registration

Onward into the future

CHAPTER 7. THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT CANADA'S HORTICULTURAL INDUSTRY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

About the author

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PREFACE

This book broadly outlines the history of Canada’s commercial fruit growing, touching on various themes such as the continuing refinement of horticultural practices, the process from cultivation to storage and to transportation; the rise of standardization; and the influence of science and technology on horticulture. It is not a detailed history of horticultural techniques, such as orchard, market garden or greenhouse cultivation, nor an economic history of the Canadian fruit industry. I leave such histories to future horticultural historians. The story stops at 1930. Why? By 1930, most of the supports, tools, markets and science were in place that would carry the Canadian fruit industry into modern times.

A few definitions

BCE and CE: Before the Common Era and Common Era. A year numbering system based on the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. CE begins at the year corresponding to AD 1.

Graft: the physical joining of two cultivars of the same species, such as apples. One cultivar is used as the rootstock (governing a plant’s hardiness and growth activity) and the other is used as scion or budstock (where fruit forms).

Hybrid: the result of a cross between two distinctly genetically different plants.

Open pollination: fertilizing a plant by natural means – such as by pollen that is carried by wind or insect to the female reproductive organs of a plant.

Selection: choosing a plant that seems to be superior from a group of similar plants, and growing and propagating it either by vegetative propagation or seed.

Variety: a named selection or hybrid, the name enclosed in single quotation marks.

Vegetative propagation: growing new plants from cuttings, from a division of a plant, or from grafting. This type of propagation does not mix genes, so the plants are genetically identical. Plants produced in this manner are often called clones or cultivars.

Explanation of plant nomenclature

When using the botanical name of a plant, I follow the convention of capitalizing the genus, but not the species, but italicizing both: Rosa acicularis. Common names of plants and fruits are not capitalized or italicized: apple, strawberry. However, if a hybrid is noted, the name is enclosed in single quotes; for example, ‘Lobo’ apple.

Sources

There are few first-person sources on Canadian fruit growing. Horticultural historians rely on the articles found in Canada’s major horticultural journals for their primary source materials as well as government and association reports. This outline is no exception and heavily depends on the information found in the Canadian Horticulturist and in the publications and annual reports of provincial fruit growers’ associations, especially the influential Fruit Growers’ Association of Ontario annual reports.

Unfortunately, I found very few women’s voices, beyond the wonderful Annie Jack, in Canada’s early years of commercial horticulture. As in so many other commercial areas, women may have been silent actors and active partners with their male counterparts, but they were mostly invisible in the sources mentioned above.

Edwinna von Baeyer

Ottawa, Canada March 2018

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Jardin du séminaire des Sulpiciens dans le Vieux-Montréal. Photo credit: Jean Gagnon, Wikimedia Commons

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO CANADA'S HORTICULTURAL HISTORY

When looking back over Canada’s history, do you normally think of apples and strawberries, celery and onions? Not usually. However, horticulture, as in most other societies, played a major role in Canada’s development. The men and women who established and worked in our horticultural industry certainly saw themselves as helping shape our national destiny.

What is horticulture?

Horticulture [Latin: hortus (garden) and colere (to cultivate)] is defined as the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts and ornamental plants (trees, shrubs, flowering plants and turf). The separation of horticulture from agriculture as a distinct activity is usually dated from the Middle Ages in Europe. Although horticulture and agriculture have many practices in common (weeding, fertilizing, watering, etc.), horticulture is distinguished from agriculture by its specialized practices, for example, grafting, and by the smaller scale of its operations.

Horticulture can be divided into three main sectors: fruit growing (pomology); market gardening (vegetables and herbs) and ornamentals cultivation (flowers, shrubs, trees). The cultivation of ornamental plants, which some call floriculture and landscape horticulture, can be further divided, for example, into arboriculture (woody plants) and floristry. Nut cultivation (used to produce oils, fats and ornaments) and grape growing (viticulture) are smaller horticultural divisions.1

Canada’s horticulture progressed from a focus on trial-and-error subsistence to a focus on either horticulture as a business or on horticulture as a domestic activity. The development was uneven, always tempered by climate and geography, yet supported by the early belief that North America was an endless natural garden to be cultivated and exploited.2 Canadian commercial growers, by the 1930s, were well able to stand on their own horticultural feet.

Knowledge transfer, a modern buzzword, underlay the progress of the industry. Most early settlers, first from France, then Great Britain, and later from the United States and other countries, came with baggage filled with seeds from home and their minds filled with horticultural methods learned at home. At first, horticultural knowledge was passed by word-of-mouth – sharing what varieties grew well, and what methods worked in Canadian conditions. The early settlers also received horticultural help from Aboriginal peoples.3

No one horticulturist – from the home cultivator to the commercial fruit grower – worked in a vacuum. As settlement increased, knowledge was transferred through articles, books, exhibitions, scientific papers, meetings, etc. Successful cultivation depended on growers learning how to adapt their practices as they attempted to meet the challenges along the way.

Canadian horticulture, and around the world, still faces a number of challenges. Shopping in a neighbourhood grocery store, it is obvious that globalization – love it or loathe it – is here to stay. Strolling down one aisle after another, you see during the off-season in Canada an amazing array of fruits and vegetables on sale: grapes from Chile; mangoes and avocados from Mexico; apples from New Zealand; strawberries and lettuce and many, many other vegetables from California; and citrus fruits from Florida … with the odd greenhouse-grown tomato or cucumber from Canada.

We may marvel at this abundance of choice, and how far we have come in gaining some control over nature to produce food. However, these advancements have come at a price: chemical fertilizers and other horticultural chemicals are threatening our land, water and air. Will our soils become irretrievably depleted? There is the added worry of how climate change will affect traditional food growing areas. Will our freshwater supplies run dry?

Horticulturists are also challenged by other questions, especially the pros and cons of producing foods from genetically modified seeds and plants. What are the affects over the long term of eating these foods? Horticultural progress has often been double edged: as technology advanced, it narrowed the varieties sold, many believe, at the expense of taste, but it also helped horticulture flourish and provided more food for the world’s peoples.

Canada’s horticultural history: Background

Canadian horticulture did not arise out of thin air. How did we get to where we are today? To place our horticultural history into context, we need to take a brief look at the beginnings and advancement of the world’s horticulture up into the 1600s.

The history and evolution of fruit and vegetable production is intimately connected to the history and development of agriculture. As such, horticulture is part of the story of humanity’s desire to gain control over nature. Canada’s narrative is part of horticulture’s greater story that includes experimentation, exploration, conquest, innovation and globalization as the world’s food production moved out of the realm of myth and superstition and into a

science-based discipline.

Agriculture’s origins are shrouded in mystery

Prehistoric humans were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers who followed the migration of animals and the ripening of foods, such as berries, to feed themselves. From the end of the Pleistocene onwards, over thousands of years, our ancestors changed their life style from nomadic food collection to settled food production.4 Agriculture, and certainly fruit growing, obviously require staying in one place to oversee cultivation.

Early agricultural centres. Photo credit: Davius, Wikimedia Commons

The origin of agriculture is surrounded by many questions. Why did humans become farmers? Was it a coincidence that people in different parts of the world began a settled, agricultural life somewhat in the same time span? The answers to these questions are contentious. In 2016, there was some agreement that agriculture itself, strongly allied to the concept of domestication of plants and animals, can be dated as beginning about 11,500 years ago5, more or less independently, in 10 major centres around the world, with Southwest Asia the oldest centre.6 Early agricultural/horticultural tools date from the Neolithic Age such as bone digging-sticks, and the pick-like mattock, used to break up hard soil.7 More than half of the world’s food crops, including turnips, onions, carrots, lettuce, apples, pears, quince, bananas, peach, citrus fruits and almonds, originated in Asian centres of development. From the Mediterranean centres came cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. From came corn, beans, tomato, cacao, squash, sweet potato, avocado and potatoes.8

Agriculture and horticulture continued to evolve together in a trial-and-error manner up into the Middle Ages. Plants and crops were observed to see which would survive and under what conditions. Weeds were identified, as were the pests and diseases that preyed on plants. Treatments ranged from sacrificing animals to ward off disease and pestilence to handpicking noxious insects off plants. All labour was done by hand or with the help of animal power. In many cultures, women were (and often still are today) the main garden cultivators, while men usually worked in the fields.

European antecedents

The rise of Greek civilization by 1600 BCE, and its flourishing during the Hellenic Period (750-450 BCE), saw Greek writings on agriculture and horticulture spread, especially in the Mediterranean region. The Greeks also passed along earlier horticultural innovations and concepts, such as the Persian garden model (which may date back to 4000 BCE) that introduced designing for enclosure and protection.9

Roman practices were also influenced by Greek writings on agriculture and horticulture during the years of its own empire (7th century BCE up into the 5th century CE).10 the Romans also inherited the knowledge of grafting, budding, legume rotation, and sheltered, enclosed growing. The Romans were practical horticulturists who expanded and tended their country estates, where they planted fruit orchards and flower gardens and designed landscaped gardens ornamented with statuary, fountains, terracing, etc. By the 2nd century BCE, the Romans had refined and improved their horticultural practices and techniques, such as grafting roses.11 As well, they began developing specialized tools, such as pruning knives and fruit-picking ladders. The Greeks and Romans also recorded how they tried to prevent pest and disease damage to their crops by performing sacrifices and applying, for example, mixtures of various plant extracts on fruit trees.12 Roman horticultural practices were to influence the development of European horticulture for centuries.

After the destruction of the Roman Empire by the end of the 5th century, Europe entered the Dark Ages (5th to 8th centuries), which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages. The great Roman cities were diminished, civil authority had broken down and the focus of power had shifted to the protected rural estates of notables, where traditional agricultural and horticultural methods continued to be practiced. New foods and crops were introduced to the Iberian Peninsula (beginning in the early 700s) as Muslim forces invaded and settled there.13

As well, these turbulent times witnessed the rise of Christian monasteries, which became plant repositories and places where Greek and Roman horticultural practices were perpetuated. Ancient herbal lore thrived in these protected environments,14 as herbals of the ancient Greeks and Romans were re-discovered and translated.15 Some monks, who cultivated physic gardens of herbs and spices, became proficient in applying this knowledge to treat disease and physical ailments.16 This lore was passed down from generation to generation in religious institutions as well as through individuals (often women), and became the foundation of modern medicine.

Another major development in the Middle Ages was the formal recognition that horticulture was distinct from agriculture. This recognition evolved from the increasing importance of the kitchen garden (supplying vegetables, herbs and fruit), which, based on earlier Roman estate organization, was located next to the manor house with agricultural fields further away. Agriculture was divided into agronomy, horticulture and forestry, although those words were not in use until much later.17

Bone, wood and stone tools probably continued to be used in many parts of the world. However, once iron was discovered in Europe, the strength and design of tools improved. With the inventing of the blast furnace during the Middle Ages, iron could be melted and cast into tools. Before this, all iron was wrought.18

Increasing cross-fertilization between world regions

The far-flung conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) helped spread Greek culture and knowledge and extended Europe’s trade into Asia along the Silk Road (a caravan route from China and India via the Persian Gulf and eventually overland to Egypt and then to Europe).19 However, until the 11th century, trade was limited between Europe and Asia. For example, Arab traders continued to control access to the spices of Asia. These spices were desired already in ancient times for their medicinal, food preservative and culinary values, and were a source of great wealth from the time of the Roman Empire up into the Middle Ages. The Crusades (beginning in the 1100s) and Marco Polo’s journeys to China (in the 1200s) would stimulate more trade with the East and intensify the desire for spices in the Western world. As well, the Crusades also stimulated food trade with the Holy Land, bringing dates, figs, raisins, almonds, lemons, oranges, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom to Europe.20

Between the 11th century and the end of the 13th century, agriculture and horticulture expanded. As economic activity increased, the beginnings of capitalism based on a money economy began. Horticultural crops began to be sold as goods, rather than bartered.21 Market gardens increased and became more important sources of food for landless city dwellers. Gardening as a profession was also emerging: an early sign was the establishment of a guild of gardeners in 1030 in Italy.22

European transportation routes, which were mainly along rivers, were augmented as road systems expanded, which facilitated supplying food to cities and towns. However, there were setbacks to this steady advancement of horticulture: The growth and development of European states from 1300 up into the 1400s were tempered by climate change (the Little Ice Age), which severely curtailed agricultural and horticultural production, as did the epidemic of the Black Death and wars between fledgling nation states.23 By the 1400s, Europe was also looking westwards and sending out voyages of exploration. By the 1500s, the French had a foothold in North America – it is here that Canada’s horticultural story begins.

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"A Pioneer Homestead'', Cornelius Krieghoff, 1854. Photo credit: National Gallery of Canada, Wikimedia Commons

CHAPTER 2. PREPARING THE GROUND -- UP TO 1850

Although this outline focuses on the history of commercial fruit growing, Canada’s early horticultural history was dominated by letters and reports on vegetable growing. This is quite understandable given the need for early explorers to feed themselves and their crews.

Fruit was mainly gathered in the wild. Planting fruit trees, bushes or plants would come later when exploration gave way to settlement.

Take the example of the Vikings, Canada’s first immigrant gardeners. Leif Erikson was lured to Newfoundland’s picturesque coast around 1000 CE by reports from earlier Viking explorers. They wrote admiringly of lush meadows, dense forests, salmon-filled streams, even wild grapes in abundance. This last discovery was said to prompt Erikson to name the land Vineland, land of wine. When he returned to Greenland with lumber (especially prized in nearly treeless Greenland) and grapes (perhaps in the form of wine or raisins), other brave Viking sailors made plans to visit the island. One later Viking expedition settled in what today is L’Ance aux Meadows.1 Here, archaeological investigation found evidence that for six or seven years, the Vikings cultivated gardens using the vegetable and herb seeds they brought with them (turnips, carrots, cabbage, beans, peas, onions, and garlic).2

There was a hiatus of a few centuries before Europeans once again broke ground in the New World. European explorers began sailing the world in the late 1400s, attempting to find another route to East Asia to evade Arab traders, who still had a stranglehold on the supply of spices. Later voyages of exploration to find gold and other riches saw explorers claiming territory for king and country that in time would be colonized. This obviously had a tremendous impact on horticulture.

Colonization of many areas of North and South America, Africa and Asia by European states began in the 1600s. Colonization facilitated a huge transfer of economic plants between different colonies. The trade between Europe and the Americas (called the Columbian Exchange, from the 1400s to the 1600s), saw potatoes, for example, taken from South America and introduced into cultivation in Europe. Plant exchanges also happened between Asia and new lands; for example, sugar cane and bananas were brought to Latin and South America from Asia. The effects of these transfers are still seen today: Florida is a major producer of oranges (originating in Asia); Italy is known for its tomatoes (originating in Mesoamerica); and Ecuador is a major producer of bananas (originating in Asia).3

Horticulture was further broadened by the invention of the printing press around 1440 in Europe and the translation of ancient texts into vernacular languages. This led to a wider distribution of texts written originally in Greek, Latin and Arabic on garden design, horticulture and herbs.4

By the late 1600s, the word horticulture was used for the first time in the English language.5 Certainly by the 1600s, there was a clear separation between horticultural and agricultural tools. As well, horticultural science, first broadly studied under the new science of botany, was on the rise, advanced by the invention of the microscope by Van Leeuwenhoek; the discovery of plant cells by Robert Hooke; more accurate studies of plant anatomy and circulation; the classification of plants by Linnaeus; and the beginnings of

science-based plant breeding.

The French

Canada’s fruit-growing history runs parallel to Canadian settlement history. Certainly, we know that fishing fleets from Portugal, France and Spain were regularly, by the late 1500s, landing on the North American east coast, such as Ferryland on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.6 Sailors might plant a garden during the fishing season, but most of these efforts were ephemeral, seasonal. The first non-Native horticulturists were the French. For example, John Cabot in 1497 and 1498 landed at Cape Breton and Newfoundland looking for the East. Not finding the riches he sought, he did return with news of other wealth to be had: cod. Fish for Catholic Europe was especially important because holy days, when meat-eating was prohibited, numbered nearly one half of the year. Cabot, however, did not venture far enough inland to record any Native horticultural activity nor edible wild plants. That would not happen until Jacques Cartier visited Newfoundland in 1534, 1535 and 1541. Until that time, Europeans were not aware of the sophistication of Native people’s plant knowledge and agriculture. Native peoples’ close, symbiotic relationship with the land, over millennia, led to learning what plants were good for medicines, eating and other purposes. Most Native peoples at the time of contact were hunter-gatherers, seeking fish, game and wild fruits wherever they could find them. For example, over 180 plants have been identified that Native groups on the Saskatchewan plains alone used for foods, medicines, ceremonies and construction materials.7 There were also sedentary agricultural communities, such as the Huron-Wendat, living in the Great Lakes region who grew corn and cultivated other crops,8 or the Ojibway near Lake Superior who cultivated wild rice9 as part of the cycle of hunting, fishing, foraging and cultivating.10

Samuel de Champlain. Photo credit: British Library HMNTS 9555.ee.16, Wikimedia Commons

European ignorance of Native agricultural knowledge began to be dispelled when Cartier reported that he saw Native communities cultivating corn, peas, beans, cucumber and tobacco.11 He also wrote about the wild grapes growing in abundance on an island in the St. Lawrence, which he named the Isle de Bacchus.12 Cartier also named another nearby island the Isle aux Coudres, amazed to see so many hazelnut trees. As well, he wrote in 1534 of seeing dried plums (a staple in Native peoples’ winter diets) carried in canoes, and plums growing wild on the Isle de Bacchus.13

Cartier, who continued to look for precious metals in the area, was actually rescued by Native horticultural knowledge. During the miserable winter of 1535-1536, he and his crew lived with the Stadacona people (part of the Iroquois Nation) in the St. Lawrence Valley. In an often-repeated story that every Canadian schoolchild learns, many of Cartier’s men suffered and died from scurvy that winter. The rest were saved when a Stadacona explained how to make an infusion from the flat, scale-like leaves of the white cedar (high in Vitamin C) for the crew to drink to ward off the disease.14

For years, France did not support permanent settlements, but sustained its small footholds by more or less regular delivery of supplies from France. The settlers supplemented their supplies by hunting and fishing. The French king and his advisors were more interested in the wealth that would come from the fur trade and commercial fishing, not in establishing outposts of commerce or agriculture. Samuel de Champlain’s persistence would change this attitude.

Between 1603 and 1635, he made 11 voyages to Canada, exploring, taking copious notes on Native agriculture, wild fruits and edible plants and growing conditions, while continually petitioning Louis XIII to establish a permanent settlement in what would become New France. During his early explorations of coastal Quebec and the St. Lawrence Valley and inland to where Windsor, Ontario, is today, he was surprised not only to see abundant grapes and other wild fruits growing, but also to see Native peoples cultivating corn and squash. Champlain, who once wrote that he took a particular pleasure in gardening,15 began experimenting. In 1608, he tried out the soil by planting wheat, rye, grape vines and vegetables. It was said that he also planted apple tree seedlings he brought from Normandy, which by the 1620s were still recorded as growing and yielding apples.16 As well, Champlain took detailed notes on the Algonquin and Huron peoples’ cultivation techniques and crops. In 1611, Champlain planted two gardens at Montreal – one in meadowland and the other in the woods – which might be called the first demonstration plots in Canada.17

After nearly 30 years of experience in North America and carefully tending the developing French settlements, Champlain, as part of his petition to continue the King’s support of New France, strongly suggested that the settlers must cultivate the land, before all things, in order to have the basic foodstuffs on the spot, without being obliged to bring them from France.18 He could show, due to his diligent recordkeeping, that it could be done.

Champlain was not the only 17th century French colonizer who began gardening in the new world. The Sieur Jean de Poutrincourt, who was granted land in the new settlement of Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), planted a garden in 1606 and in 1618 with seeds he had brought from France. In 1618, he proudly noted that he had successfully cultivated cabbages, radishes, lettuce, purslane, sorrel, parsley, squash, cucumbers, melons, peas, and beans.19

In 1617, Louis Hébert and his family sailed with Champlain to Quebec. Hébert was an apothecary, regarded in those times as a doctor. Although cultivating the land was not initially supported by the French government, Hébert did anyway, earning him the honour of being named the first farmer of Quebec, and the first of a long line of habitants.20 In 1623, he was granted title to his land (known later as the fief Sault-au-Matelot). By 1626 (the year before he died), his farming had become so successful, he was growing enough to support his family.21

Champlain also brought a few priests from the Récollet order to the young settlement to service the settlers’ religious lives. The priests established a mission in Cape Sable (on the southern tip of Nova Scotia where there was already a French settlement) and began gardening, not surprising given that many European monasteries were known from the Middle Ages on for their gardens.

Fruit cultivation began seriously in Cape Sable in 1632. Father Le Jeune wrote that he had planted …two double rows of fruit trees, one of a hundred feet or more, the other larger, planted on either side with wild trees which are well rooted. We have 8 or 10 rows of apple and pear trees, which are also well rooted, we shall see how they will succeed. I have an idea that the cold is very injurious to the fruit, but in a few years we shall know from experience. Formerly, some fine apples were seen here.22 Three years later, a traveller visiting Cape Sable wrote about Father Le Jeune’s apple and pear trees which were well started and very fine, but not yet in condition to bear ...23

Other religious orders also began accompanying French colonizers, hoping to convert Native peoples to Christianity, as well as serve the growing settlements. Some, such as the Jesuit priest Brébeuf, learned Algonquin and learned how to grow melons from the Native peoples he lived among. Brébeuf planted vegetable gardens on the banks of the St. Charles River (near Quebec City) and fruit trees from seedlings he brought from France. He also transplanted grape vines from the Isle de Bacchus.24 The Jesuits, in fact, were credited with planting a particular variety of pear tree from seed wherever they roamed in eastern Canada.25 Today, some survivors of the trees grown from seed collected from the original trees, are all now a great height, and still growing in the Windsor and Chatham, Ontario, area. One particular 12-meter-tall tree, near Harrow, was estimated in 2001 to be over 200 years old. Obviously, these Jesuit pear trees were either extremely hardy or adapted well to the new climatic conditions, especially due to their resistant to blight (a destructive fungal disease).26

Why were these early horticulturists so intent on cultivating apple trees and grape vines? Most of Europe, given the dirty, disease-ridden water supplies found in many cities and towns, only drank wine and cider made from grapes and apples – a practice transferred to the New World. Sulpician missionaries, for example, made wine from local fruit growing on the north shore of Lake Erie (perhaps in the 1700s). One missionary observed that: …the vine grows here [near Port Dover, Patterson’s Creek] only in sand, on the banks of lakes and rivers, but although it has no cultivation it does not fail to produce grapes in great quantities as large and as sweet as the finest of France. We even made wine of them…It is a heavy dark wine ….27

Meanwhile, the French settlements began expanding after Louis XIV decreed in 1663 that the territory was a royal colony called New France. In that year, the population of New France was around 3,000. In comparison, the population of British settlements, mostly on the American east coast, was 100,000 – New Holland (New York City today) alone numbered 10,000. By 1683, New France had expanded to 10,000 settlers.28

Recreated garden at Fort Louisbourg in present-day Cape Breton. Photo credit: D.W. Burke, Wikimedia Commons

Many of the seeds and plants brought by the French, and cultivated in the lower St. Lawrence Valley settlements, were brought from northwest France and later from New England (throughout the 18th century).29 Established farms were producing grains and root crops, and cultivating small kitchen gardens and small orchards. The habitants no longer had to totally depend on supply ships to bring in staples, as the settlements slowly became self-sufficient.30 However, commercial horticulture was not yet established – the habitants grew only what was needed. There was little real marketing of surplus crops. If there was a surplus, it would often be given to the seigneureur (landowner) or to the clergy. Any profit from selling it would usually find its way back to France to absentee landowners.31 Nor was lumbering lucrative until the end of the 17th century when war made it profitable to ship lumber abroad. A major wood export was barrel staves that were shipped to Europe to feed the insatiable international market for barrels, the major containers for shipped goods.32 Barrels would also play a major role in the development of Canada’s fruit industry.

Subsistence cultivation was becoming more successful, even though in the late 1600s, Governor Villebon of Port Royal observed that the settlement: …is a little Normandy for apples. They might have a great many more, and could easily make cider; but apart from the fact that they are not very industrious and most of them only work for a bare living, they neglect the propagation of fruit trees for use as the country opens up. Calvilles, Rambours, Reinettes, and three or four more varieties of apples are found at Port Royal, and russet pears. There were other varieties of pears, and cherries, including the Bigarotiers, which they have allowed to go to ruin. There is an abundance of vegetables for food, cabbage, beets, onions, carrots, chives, shallots, turnips, parsnips, and all sorts of salads; they grow perfectly and are not expensive.33

Not everyone in New France practiced the same type of cultivation. A number of French settlers, later called Acadians, established permanent settlements along the Bay of Fundy. They brought with them, and refined, the techniques of farming on tidal salt marshes learned while living on coastal France. Their system of dykes, ditches and water gates drained the marshes, creating fertile, salt-less soils that they then farmed and gardened. Not for the Acadians the backbreaking labour of clearing the forests. Many began cultivating apple trees from seed by 1610 on these reclaimed lands. By 1700, many were living self-sufficiently on their salt marsh farms, not only raising a variety of grain crops, but also cultivating vegetable gardens and pears, cherries, plums, peaches, quince, grapes and currants.34 As a sign of Acadian industry and horticultural adeptness, a French census in 1698 reported that 1,584 apple trees were growing on the properties of 54 Acadian families in Port Royal.35 Most of the apples were turned into cider.

The British North American presence was also growing by the early 1600s, especially along the Atlantic seaboard. These colonies eventually became richer and more populous than New France. Although the British Hudson’s Bay Company had built forts and trading posts in the Rupert’s Land territory (which covered nearly one-third of present day central-west Canada) in the late 1600s, they had not established permanent settlements. Short-lived settlements existed in today what is Nova Scotia in the 1620s (charters were granted by King James VI of Scotland) and in today’s Saint John’s, Newfoundland, in the 1540s, but were not really settled until the 1620s. All this would change in the 1700s, after various battles were won and lost as European nations (mainly the French and English) also fought their wars on North American soil.

1700s: Against the backdrop of war

If the 1600s were marked by the French and English establishing settlements in the New World, the 1700s were noteworthy for the wars between the two nations for dominance in North America. Against this backdrop of political and military upheaval, French settlements continued to expand, led by Montreal and Quebec City. Montreal, well on its way to becoming a commercial centre, focused its economic activity on the fur trade and the cod fishery. At the same time, New France had become a distinct feudal agrarian society with small agricultural markets.36 Goods were traded between New England, the Caribbean, the Maritimes and various European cities (such as Liverpool, Glasgow and London) – connections that later would be used by fruit growers.

Plan of the Seigneurie de Chateaugay, Quebec. Photo credit: Fonds Ministère des Terres et Forêt – BAnQ Québec, Wikimedia Commons

Because the 1720s and 1730s were relatively peaceful, the number of farms in New France increased and slowly surplus crops were produced that could be sold in nearby towns. However, storage and transport (two great challenges in our horticultural history) were constant problems, especially for the new farms that were opening further inland from the St. Lawrence River.37 The population of New France, around 15,000, was spread between Quebec City, Montreal and Trois-Rivères.38 Fruit growing was also on the rise. Swedish botanist and explorer Peter Kalm in 1771 noted plums growing as far north as Quebec City: Plum trees of different sorts brought over from France succeed very well here. He added further, The winters do not hurt them.39 But in the Maritimes, fruit growing had another narrative. The Acadians’ orchards (mostly apples) in Port Royal continued to thrive. By the mid-1700s, fruit culture in Nova Scotia was widespread. By 1755, when the Acadians were expelled, it is recorded that the cultivation of apples, pears, and other fruits had become quite general throughout Annapolis Valley settlements.40

Despite the development of small markets, horticulture in New France continued to be practiced at a subsistence level. Farm gardens were extensive and were often complemented by an orchard (mainly apple trees). Most town dwellers had their own gardens. For example, Louisbourg (on modern-day Cape Breton) from 1713 to 1758, supported over 100 gardens. The garden plots were divided into rectangles or squares and surrounded by a picket fence. The average size was 61 ft. x 45 ft. Seeds and cuttings for these gardens came from France or from New England. The most commonly grown vegetables were: cabbage, turnip, beans, peas, pumpkins and all sorts of roots. Herbs (such as chives, caraway, chicory, wild parsnips, soapwort, hops, rhubarb) and medicinal plants were also grown.41

However, as Britain and France moved closer to war again, especially in the late 1750s to the early 1760s, the progress of New France’s horticulture and agriculture was curtailed as able-bodied men were forced to join the militias. At one point, it was estimated that a quarter of the men in New France were enrolled in the army.42

The aftermath of the ensuing war would change the Canadian political and social landscape forever. Various settlements changed national allegiance – such as St. John’s, Louisbourg, Port-Royal, Quebec City – until they all were firmly in British hands after they won the last battle in the Seven Years’ War (called the French and Indian War in North America).

When Quebec City fell to the British in 1759 and Montreal in 1760, it was the beginning of the end of French sovereignty in Canada, and the beginning of change in our horticultural progress. Historians have noted that in the former New France (now designated as Lower Canada), agricultural and horticultural development sped up as the people of New France were forced to confront changing circumstances.43

British subjects from the American colonies began migrating north, many finding land in Nova Scotia and British-controlled, Lower Canada. After the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783, this emigration greatly increased.44 These emigrants, called United Empire Loyalists (UEL) due to their loyalty to the British crown, were given rights to the farms and orchards, some tended for over a century, left behind by the exiled Acadians (deported by the British beginning in 1755 to other North American French territories, such as Louisiana). These UEL settlers enlarged the original Acadians’ orchards and introduced new varieties of fruit.

This first generation of UEL settlers were challenged to find the hardiest varieties of fruits, ornamentals and vegetables among the seeds and seedlings they carried from their well-established New England orchards that would thrive in their new homes. Many brought along new agricultural techniques influenced by the discipline of scientific agriculture. Productivity began to soar in English settlements due to these innovations.45 Their efforts laid the groundwork for the future fruit industry, especially in the Annapolis Valley, and to trade with Great Britain. One early apple success was a tree that grew from a seed planted by Lieutenant James Eccles, named the ‘Eccles’ apple, which was described as large, green and excellent for cooking and storing.46

As well, the huge influx of UEL emigrants (30,000 by the early 1780s) created vibrant markets in Halifax and St. John, which benefitted the emerging fruit growers.47 They brought with them their horticultural experience from New England as well as the British ideals of landscape design, and the belief that having flower and vegetable gardens and orchards, were the proper components of a British gentleman’s estate. For example, Joseph Frederic Wallet DesBarres, a French Huguenot who came to Canada with the Royal American Regiment, was rewarded for his military service with a land grant at Falmouth, Nova Scotia. At the head of the Avon River, he built an estate called Castle Frederick, which at its height supported 93 people living and working there. DesBarres established orchards, some say based on the 30,000 young trees he bought from a Windsor, Nova Scotia, nurseryman, Joseph Gray. It was estimated that over 1,600 kegs of cider were exported from his estate every year.48

Meanwhile, gardens and orchards were established in other British settlements. There is some evidence that since the early 1790s, cherries and peaches were grown at the mouth of the Niagara River.49 Meanwhile, at the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC50) forts and trading posts in the western Rupert’s Land territory, food was a major problem followed closely by scurvy – the scourge of all long-distance travelers of the time. The HBC would send out supply ships, as had the French, but often its employees had to rely on remaining provisions and any fruit they gathered or traded as well any fish or game they caught or traded with nearby Native peoples. When the men could vary their diets with fresh produce, scurvy decreased. Some gardens survived; however, many did not.

Poised on the cusp of a new century, what was the state of commercial horticulture in British North America? In a word – limited. However, the seedlings of a vibrant industry were beginning to appear above ground. British North America in the 1790s was in transition, divided by language, religion, extent of urbanization, climate and geography. It was a predominately agrarian society, reliant on subsistence farming. Communication between settlements, towns and cities was difficult. Transportation was mainly water-based, roads were few and rough. Horticultural markets had not appeared in any great number, although Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City were evolving into commercial centres supported by their location on major water routes. These large centres serviced the rural areas and connected them to Britain and Europe for goods and trade.51

Before 1800, few books on gardening were written in English. Most horticultural writing focused on herbs, which is understandable because most medicines were plant based.52 In 1629, John Parkinson published Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris [A Garden of Pleasant Flowers]. Philip Miller published The Gardener’s and Florist’s Dictionary in 1724. These two books were England’s main horticultural reference books up into the early 1800s where plant descriptions, cultivation and propagation information would be found. As well, a few garden calendars, detailing month-by-month instructions for the plant nursery, flower garden, hothouse, etc., were published in the later 1700s. But for the majority of pre-1800s gardeners, gardening information was passed on in families and by word of mouth.

Early 1800s: Taming the wilderness, making the wild places smooth

As the 19th century progressed, the disparate parts of British North America would be pulled together into a country, which obviously would have a direct impact on the rise and development of our horticultural industries. British North America in 1800 consisted of seven entities: Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Newfoundland. In 1841, Upper and Lower Canada were united, and in 1848, the United Province of Canada was established and granted responsible government. Britain had big plans for its Canadian colonies – mostly to supply the raw materials that would create wealth for the mother country: fish, furs, whale oil (used for lighting, and other uses), iron, hemp and flax, and timber from the country’s seemingly inexhaustible forests.53 Cultivating, marketing and exporting horticultural products at that time were not high on this list. However, in some areas, horticulture was becoming more important and seen as needing protection by law. For example, in 1796, Prince Edward Island passed an act against robbing gardens and orchards, potatoes, and turnip fields, and destroying fences.54 Montreal in 1807 passed an act to help preserve apple trees. The act instructed growers on how to prevent damage caused by the caterpillar Arpenteuse.55

But a lot of development and sheer backbreaking labour had to be done before the practice of horticulture evolved into a commercial effort. The wave of immigration in the 1820s increased British North America’s population, which grew to about 2.5 million between 1791 and 1851.56 Many of these immigrants faced great hardships when establishing their new lives here, sometimes due to false information about the conditions they would encounter. There were no photographs or accurate drawings depicting the (usually forested) land they had bought or had been granted. As did the habitants before them, new settlers first had to clear forest in order to plant crops while also trying to support themselves and their families. It has been estimated that settlers could only clear about four acres a year.57 Thus, it could take years to clear enough land to be able to grow a surplus that could be sold in local markets. Most first crops were Indian corn that could be sown between the tree stumps on mostly cleared land. Corn was usually followed by wheat, but wheat cultivation required a team of oxen and a harrow – which many new settlers could not afford.58

"The settlement of Coldwater." Photo credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. 1981-42-9R Source: Dr. Nigel Davies, Gelati, Mexico. MIKAN no. 2833432

Self-sufficiency was key to survival. Many farmers and their wives were their own weavers, dyers, tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters59 – not to mention planters, cultivators, harvesters and canners. However, survival could be precarious – a backwoods farm could be wiped out by forest fire, crop failure, death of a working family member – or even by inattention. Isaac Watt’s poem, The Sluggard was often quoted as a warning to lazy cultivators:

"…I passed by his garden, and saw the wild brier,

The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher;

The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags,

And his money still wastes, till he starves or he begs.."60

European visitors were often appalled by their first sight of bush farms and their rough dwellings and outbuildings in the midst of ugly stumps dotting the semi-cleared land. The idealized picture of what a farm should look like was soon replaced in settlers’ minds by the reality of Canadian conditions, but not from visitors’ minds.61 John Howison, who travelled in the Canadas between 1818 and 1820, was not impressed: … the peasantry evince the upmost indifference about every thing that is not absolutely necessary to support existence. They raise wheat, Indian corn, and potatoes enough, to place themselves beyond the reach of want, but rarely endeavour to increase their comforts, by making gardens or adorning the sites of their rude abodes with those rural improvements that so often grace the cottages of the British peasantry…62

In Lower Canada, where the habitant-cultivated farms were far past the bush-farming stage, progress was sluggish. Farming was still conducted according to old practices.63 Up into the 1850s, many Lower Canada farmers had crop failures, as the land wore out and wheat crops failed. At that point, many habitants often switched to vegetable and root crops to support their families.64

Some Upper and Lower Canada farmers learned to be flexible and adopt new techniques for their new environments. However, many settlers still resisted changing their old methods and practices to more lucrative ones based on scientific agriculture.

Transportation

Transportation would be a key factor in nation building, settling the interior and supporting the growth of trade and services. The expansion of transportation routes and introduction of new or refined modes of transportation would be heavily influenced by population increases and technological advances. As routes and modes of transport expanded, communication between isolated settlements, between the interior and the growing cities with their beckoning markets, and between North America, Great Britain and Europe, would all be enhanced.

Certainly, urbanization in British North American was rapidly increasing between 1800 and 1840. Some examples:

- Quebec City: population in 1821 was 15,000

- York [Toronto]: population in 1832 was 13,000

- Montreal: population in 1840 was 40,00065

- By the 1840s, 10 cities and towns had populations of 3,000 or more

Water

Up into the 1800s, moving goods and people into the interior was slow and labourious. Until the advent of the railroad in the 1850s, travel and shipping were governed by winter freeze up, which stopped most traffic, until spring break up, which freed the movement of goods and people once again. At first, goods were carried along waterways on canoes, later on flat-bottomed boats and rafts. Rapids, waterfalls and shallows all necessitated unloading and carrying all goods by hand (or if you were lucky, by oxen team) around the obstacle to open water, and then reloading. One of the most lucrative early water-dependent businesses was the fur trade, which involved intricate routes along rivers, across lakes and over portages, bringing beaver and other furs out of the interior eventually to Montreal and then to Europe.

Waterways were also the major mover of people to and from settlements up into the early 1800s. However, they were not always the most efficient. The War of 1812 demonstrated to the British the difficulties of transporting and supplying, mainly by water, their army and navy from Montreal and other eastern supply ports to lakes Erie and Ontario where battles were fought.

After the war was won, the British began building a system of canals in Upper and Lower Canada, mainly for military reasons, and also for commerce and settlement. The major canal building occurred between 1815 and 1853,66 And included the Rideau Canal (from Kingston to Ottawa), the Lachine Canal (bypassing the Lachine Rapids near Montreal), and the Welland Canal (bypassing Niagara Falls and the Niagara River rapids). These waterways facilitated shipping from the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River.67 By the late 1830s, the Lachine, Rideau and Welland canals provided the first unbroken water route from Quebec and Montreal to Lake Huron.68 However, these canals had a popular competitor – the American Erie Canal, built in 1815 and in full operation by 1825. It often attracted lucrative shipping from the Canadian interior to eastern ports because it was cheaper. 69 As well, stage and steamboat routes along the Hudson River and the Erie Canal connected New York City to central British North America.70 New York, as a shipping point, was very popular because the port operated year round – no winter freeze up as at Montreal. As well, it was cheaper to ship to Liverpool from New York.

At the same time, a technological innovation was enhancing water travel and commerce: the steamship. Steam power further helped river and lake ports maintain their importance as centres of trade and travel. Towns and cities receiving government moneys to upgrade, dredge their ports and build warehouses often prospered.71

The Industrial Revolution

The 1700s would usher in even greater changes through the Industrial Revolution. It began in England in the 1700s and spread to other parts of the world by 1850. One of the major repercussions was the change from a reliance on manual labour, wind, sail and animal power to a reliance on machine power. Machine power, introduced with the invention of the steam engine, would eventually change the scale of operations in many horticultural businesses.72

In 1809, the first steamboat in British North America – the Accommodation – was built in Montreal for John Molson’s new steamboat company.73 Within 10 years, steam-powered navigation on the St. Lawrence River was firmly established. The Rideau Canal had