Can-It-Yourself in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve

This post is a special contribution by Bethany Or.

I have a little dream of someday owning a plot of land and growing at least part of my own food. And who doesn’t dream of someday hightailing it out of the city? Country life just seems better sometimes. So when I passed by Home Canning Enr. the other day, it’s imposing green doors, out of place on a typical Hochelaga-Maisonneuve street, drew my curiosity. Not to mention an English company name in a decidedly francophone neighbourhood.

Peeking in, I was delighted to find hundreds upon hundreds of containers, all shapes and sizes, in glass, plastic and metal. There was even a tin you could buy to preserve your own maple syrup, similar to what you’d find in the grocery store. While I snapped pictures everywhere, the very friendly Yves Lessard helped fill in the historical blanks.

The company started back in the early 1900s, in a location near the Bonsecours Market in Old Montreal. Laurette Buisson – a woman described by Yves as “unmarriageable” because of her “bad character” – bought the business in 1920. As a francophone woman owning a business in anglophone-dominated Montreal, she made the bold decision of adding a French name to the company: Les Conserves du Fermier Enrg. After changing owners and locations several times, the company finally settled on a storefront on Davidson Street in 1972, and hasn’t budged since. Maurice Legros manages the store now, and was sitting behind a computerless desk when I arrived, just as he has since 1960.

After marvelling at the tiny containers lining Home Canning Enr.’s every surface, Yves told me about what an important role home canning played in Montreal’s history. Up until maybe fifty years ago, it was very common for Quebec families to put food away for winter. They might buy fruits and vegetables wholesale at the market, or they might grow it themselves.There was even a system of bartering whereby one neighbour could trade a can of this for a can of that, to increase pantry variety. Farmers would also can their produce themselves, using metal machines that sealed the metal together. Yves showed me the Home Canning Enr. collection, which he’s set up on bookshelves on the second floor of the store. There’s even a soda pop bottle sealer, for the enterprising mid-twentieth century Quebec family who wanted drinks to go along with their preserves.

I couldn’t help thinking that this store preserves a little piece of Quebec history, not so long forgotten, when people lived more simply and outside the formal economy. When I joked that Yves and Maurice could open a museum, he pulled a stack of 1940s labels off a shelf and laid them out for me on the counter. Each one depicting a different vegetable, their detailed line drawings came from a time when illustrators trumped photographers. Yves explained that farmers would wrap their cans with labels bought at Home Canning Enr., so that each farmer’s produce was affixed with the same image. To my surprise, Yves gave me a handful to take home. I cherish these old wrappers, and plan to frame them, as a reminder of how things used to be, and how I hope they’ll turn in the future.