I was riding in a Mercier carriage on a warm, windy spring day down the dirt road (Main Street) of Vankleek Hill (VKH) with my father and uncle. The sky was clear, blue and cloudless but my mind was on the many tasks to attend to, given my grandfather had just passed and we needed to make funeral arrangements, purchase supplies and arrange accommodations for our large family coming into town in four days.
My uncle had moved to England as a young adult, and my father was recapitulating the scores of changes that had happened since my uncle left. Our first stop was for cheese and dry goods at the McCuaig Cheney general store and as usual there was the town porch-sitters catching up on all the news. Yet another cheese factory had opened in Ontario bringing the total to over 1,000! By 1911, Prescott County would have 71 factories, Glengarry 75 and Russell 64. Cheddar cheese was the most important agricultural export (largely to Britian) worth $20M and shipped wonderfully encased in wax. The popularity of these factories was largely due to farmers making a profit of $50/month with only 10 cows (Ayrshires or Durhams) to pay the mortgage on the farm. The first cheese factory in VKH was located on Agricultural Street and the Cheese Marketing Board in VKH was the largest in the dominion of Canada. By 1919 the government was grading cheese, and the ‘big cheese’ exhibits were popping up at the Vankleek Hill Fair! Thank goodness for William E N Byers who constructed a cooperative cheese factory at Brown’s Corners (now Greenlane) after sailing to England to establish the British market for Canadian cheese!
How the porch sitters talked about the fuss between the men and women as men started taking over the dairy industry and how the women/wives weren’t happy given they had birthed the profitable enterprises. An exodus was even happening as men who didn’t want to milk cows were leaving to go west! Eventually herds of cows got larger and milked year-round rather than seasonally, barns were constructed with 2 stories for animal food storage and farmers moved to other breeds (Holsteins, Jersey, Guernsey) and favored purebreds. Growing cities wanted fluid milk to drink and the British market for cheese was drying up due to the WWII War Recovery Act and the move by the middle working class from cheese to meat as their main protein source.
We all laughed when one ole timer rationalized buying more cheese than he needed “Cheese may be binding but rhubarb is in season!”.
After purchasing our flour, sugar and rice we stepped outside the McCuaig Cheney store only to get a faint whiff of a peppery odor. A man came running up with a scarf on his face exclaiming the kids were coughing, wheezing and sniffling at the St. Gregoire’s school yard. The teachers thought they were coming down with a serious disease until he told them the cause. The indoor grinder at ‘The Norda’ at Main and Farmers Avenue was down and Art Massia was using a temporary outdoor unit to grind the capsicum (hot red pepper). Dang that wind! We discovered later that week that Art was grinding turmeric outdoors and Mrs. Lacroix’s freshly laundered white bed sheets drying on the line had turned the most beautiful shades of bright yellow. What’s even more is that the outdoor grinder had been used to grind cattle feed without a proper washing after grinding the capsicum. The cows were literally jumping all over the field!
My father explained to my uncle that the Norda Company came to Vankleek Hill in 1942 and bought the cedar leaf oil operation at Main Street and Hibbard, but a boiler blew up a year later and burned the whole place down, so operations moved across the street into the vacant ‘Sylvester’s (flour) Mill’ at Main and Farmers Avenue. Cedar leaf oil was in demand as an industrial lubricant during WWII and VKH had many natural cedar groves in the area. The cedar leaf oil was used for pharmaceuticals (including Vick’s Vaporub), floor waxes, insecticides and furniture finishing compounds. The Norda expanded into food flavors particularly supporting luxury goods post WWII. Ice cream and soda foundation shops were springing up at every corner shop in North America and Norda was supplying hot chocolate powder, chocolate syrup, and caramel toppings, and soda fountain fruit syrups. They diversified further in the 1950s to oleoresins (concentrated natural extracts from spices used for flavor, aroma, and colour in food and beverages, cosmetics etc.). The majority of production was oleoresin of black pepper used in meat processing which became a huge industry in Canada and the USA after the war. Vanilla was hugely popular leading to 2 additional buildings for overall production and exports to Australia, South Africa and Iran among other countries.
To quote “If you eat biscuits from Voortman’s or cookies from Westons, Mannings or Christies, you are tasting Norda flavours. Norda’s vanilla flavours Sara Lee Vanilla cake, Diary Queen soft vanilla ice cream, Dad’s Cookies, Ogilivy, Pillsbury and General Mills cake mixes”
My father remarked “that Phil Kronberg has run a good ship all these years and I hear the deputy manager and flavour chemist Bodo Schmidt is some wizard with those oleoresins”.
Our next stop was to see Napolëon Martel at 144-146 Main to pick out a headstone for dear grandfather. I hear marble is popular, but we could look at granite Father said. I’ve written out what I’d like on the headstone, but we can have them chisel it right at the cemetery if you want changes. Hard dirty work…all that sandblasting by hand after they cut the slabs with a wire saw and water. Martel monuments would go on to celebrate four generations of a most successful family-owned business winning numerous awards including a Life-time Achievement Award from the Monument Builders of North America. Third generation Jean-Real Martel built the initial customer base driving 100,000 MILES a year and worked 6 days/week selling products to caretakers across Ontario. He would change his car every 9 months, always opting for a Chrysler. Monument work at Ontario cemeteries could be done from 6am to 9pm back in the day so services were provided for farther locations for day trips. Today Ontario hours are 9am-4pm.
After selecting the headstone, we headed over to the Windsor Tavern for a much-needed draft. Father was saying that Joe St. Denis bought the tavern in 1908 and later changed the name to Windsor to honour the House of Windsor, the British Royal family. Joe said it was fine to reserve 4 rooms at $1.50 apiece complete with a meal for our family coming in. Business was thriving with travellers and horses stopping to lodge overnight between Montreal and Ottawa. The Windsor Tavern saw many changes through four generations and is today the longest family-run tavern in Canada. Horse sheds at the back of the tavern, spittoons, smoking, cursing, Friday and Saturday night fights and the ‘BLACK List’ barring poorly behaved patrons were built-in features. A separate ladies room allowed men only if they were escorted, Rooms #1 and #2 had writing rooms to conduct business and the closed verandah was a fine bedroom for the St. Denis’. Long term clients like Peter Granville who worked at The Norda were like family watching the Saturday night hockey match in the living room with all. And the night of the 1951 fire at Sinclair Supply- many took up pails of water to douse the roof from wafting embers that appeared. Thankfully, no damage. The Tavern stopped renting rooms in 1981-2 and today the bar and fridge doors are original inside this cherished watering hole.
As we boarded our carriage, my uncle noticed the fine craftmanship on the Mercier 173 A. Father explained the Mercier family imported oversized plywood that was steamed and molded using clamps to form the shell of the carriage so there were no joints front to back. They run the only family business model of integrated carriage making and blacksmithing, producing carriages in the winter and cutters/sleighs in the summer, all by hand. They make the steel wheels using a stone round form that’s sunk in the ground in the backyard. I’ll tell you…that wood is burnt hot enough to melt steel and mold those wheels. The grandfather doesn’t wear gloves and can grab a piece of steel from the fire with his bare (calloused) hands when the steel is yellow and throw it in the water. You know, when that’s steel runs white, it melts, game over. The Mercier family would be the longest running carriage business from 1876 to 1965 in Vankleek Hill. The Mercier family owned the Dominion Inn (current Creating Centre), ran the Stagecoach, and had the mail carrier route from Lancaster to Vankleek Hill. Family stories included selling caskets that came in wood crates and using the crates as rafts to float on the pond near the current day VKH arena.
Father, it’s best we get head’in home as it’s dusk. Yes, son.
This tale is told from stories shared by the speakers at the 2025 Summer Speaker Series hosted by the Vankleek Hill and District Historical Society at the Vankleek Hill Museum, 95 Main Street VKH. The Society would like to thank Jean Kronberg and Bodo Schmidt (Norda – The History of the Spice Industry); Gilles Mercier (Mercier Carriages); Bill Byers (How Cheese Changed Everything); St. Denis (Patsy, Joe, Rob, Mike) family (Generations of Windsor Tavern) and André Martel (History of Martel Monuments). We are grateful for your generosity to share your life experiences, knowledge and humour with our community.
A full transcript of each talk is recorded on the Vankleek Hill Museum Facebook page.
