Canada’s Fruit Basket: orcharding as an industry

The first commercial orchard in Summerland was run by the Gartrell family who kept the boys in fruit at the mining towns of Fairview and Camp McKinney. The picking bag was used in all operations to gather the fruit from the orchard. An apple-packing school opened in town and instructor, Jack Lawler taught apple-grading (There wasn't a machine for that in 1910!), and also trained women to work in the packing houses. They were major local employers; the Summerland Fruit Union starting up in 1908 and operating from a plant at the lakeside with access to the CPR slip. There were also many independent packing houses. An important local business related to the fruit industry was created in order to ship fruit out to market; the Summerland Box Company, which manufactured box shook (name given to the pine pieces used to build a box) as well as lumber. The business did well until the early 1960’s, when cardboard boxes became popular.

Many fruit related industries prospered for a time in the Valley; pitting and evaporating plants, industries such as the production of apple juice that utilized the culls (fruit not suitable for the fresh market). A related flash-in-the-pan enterprise was an experiment with zucca melons. These were huge, oblong fruits which could grow up to a hundred and twenty centimetres (four feet) long. Their colourless and tasteless rind was processed as a substitute for citron or candied fruit, one of the main ingredients used in Christmas cakes.

There were many canneries in Summerland, starting with the Balcomo and the Prairie Valley Canneries. Mrs. D.L. Milne arrived in town in the mid-1920’s and packed and shipped canned fruits and vegetables to four provinces and to England. The Garnett Valley Cannery tried their hand at making potato chips, then switched to tomatoes and then to fruit. The Summerland Co-operative Growers started the Cornwall Cannery, Tom Young established the Summerland Evaporating Company and the Sunoka Fruit Products made glazed and maraschino cherries. The Barkwills, the Fudges and Beavens ran canneries, the latter being the last to close their doors in the 1990’s.

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