Crawford Bay Canning and Preserving

In 2009, I came across this intriguing ad that appeared a century earlier in the Nelson Daily News.

I’d never heard of the Crawford Bay Canning and Preserving Co. and could find nothing else about it, suggesting it was short-lived. It’s not mentioned in Terry Turner and Susan Hulland’s book Remember When: Celebrating 100 Years of Crawford Bay, which includes a chapter on local fruit growing.

Interesting that the company used Crawford Bay in its name but indicated Gray Creek as its headquarters. While they were separate places, this may simply reflect that Gray Creek, the community, is on Crawford Bay, the body of water.

East Shore sage Tom Lymbery told me he thought his father mentioned the company, but he got to Gray Creek in 1911, by which time the cannery was presumably already long gone. It wasn’t listed in the 1910 civic directory, there was no sign of the company’s incorporation, and no other newspaper references existed outside of a week’s worth of ads in December 1909. This was puzzling, insofar as a cannery would have been a major boost for East Shore fruit growers. How did it leave almost no trace?

So imagine my surprise when this item appeared on eBay from a seller in Vernon. I bought it today for $52 US.

The label is very beautiful and in remarkably good shape. But curiously, it didn’t indicate what sort of fruit was once in the tin. Did a second label on the back fall off? Or was this label actually placed on an old but unrelated tin for display purposes? The seller told me he remembered his mother buying the tin in Glade, as they had relatives who lived there, and it thereafter sat on her kitchen cupboard. But he had no knowledge of its history before that.

One other thought: in June 1909, the Kootenay Jam Co. opened a factory in Nelson, having previously operated one at Harrop. Community Doukhobors purchased the business in 1911 and renamed it the Kootenay Columbia Preserving Works, operating it for a few years before building a new factory at Brilliant. The building still stands as the Front Street Emporium. 

Might the Crawford Bay Canning and Preserving Co. have taken advantage of either the Harrop or Nelson facilities to manufacture its product? It might explain why there is no record of a cannery at Crawford Bay or Gray Creek.  

UPDATE: While exploring Kaslo’s weekly newspaper on an unrelated search for references to the Gerrard football team, I discovered who was responsible for the company! From The Kootenaian, July 1, 1909:

Messrs. Berbeck [sic] and Oliver have returned from Galena Bay, where they had a contract for the Hon. F.E. Grosvenor. The above parties are undertaking a venture in the shape of establishing a jam factory. Their prices and conditions are governed by local competition. We should patronize them all we can.

Sam Birkbeck and Thomas Oliver were fruit growers, both prominent in Gray Creek’s early settler history. Birkbeck hewed the logs used to build the still-standing Gray Creek Hall. Oliver was the patriarch of a family that still lives on the East Shore.

English aristocrat Francis Egerton Grosvenor was once chief chemist for the Hall Mines smelter in Nelson and also a fruit rancher at Riondel, where he started the Atalanta ranch. During World War I he was a major with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. It would make sense if he bankrolled the jam plan.

However, while The Kootenaian had a Crawford Bay correspondent who frequently filed dispatches to the paper, this is the lone mention I can find of the operation. So it’s still unclear whether a factory was actually built and if so, why it was so short-lived. 

The Atalanta ranch, which later became the Riondel golf course.

Updated on May 30, 2024 to reveal the parties behind the company and on June 7, 2024 to add the Atalanta ranch postcard.