One of my earliest associations with the Glengarry Pioneer Museum was in the early 1980s when the late Velma Franklin was curator. Somehow, she had discovered that Terry and I had a whole bunch of old sawhorses and she was determined to commandeer them for a new fundraiser: an annual book sale. From those early days of a few scattered trestle tables on sawhorse underpinnings, this outdoor event grew to become the museum’s biggest fundraiser. It also was one of its biggest drains on volunteer labour and, by 2009, the whole thing ran out of steam. In its heyday, though, ‘The Sale’ raised well over $5,000 a year… and brought avid readers to Dunvegan from as far away as Montreal and Ottawa.
It’s hard to keep a good idea down, and I was delighted to see that the Centre Lochiel Centre in the former St. Alexander’s Catholic Church on County Road 21 had taken up the bibliophilic torch. When I spoke to Henriette Keusch, the group’s president, shortly before the start of their three-weekend book-a-thon, she was bound and determined to beat the Pioneer Museum’s record. And break it they did, chalking up a grand total of $6,420 in sales. Pretty impressive when you consider that paperbacks were going for a loonie and hard covers, a toonie. Now, one or two readers out there might point out that the museum total was reached in two days versus six. But that would be nitpicking. Henriette and her Centre Lochiel Centre committee are on fire and deserve to be congratulated.
Valley Towns: part 3
These days, it’s hard to envision a cheese factory half-hidden behind the cemetery as one drives north from the crossroads. But when Ottawa’s Evening Citizen reporter Fred Inglis wrote on Dunvegan in July 1953, cheese was a relatively big business in our little hamlet. It’s easy to miss, but there’s still a narrow laneway just past the church hall on the south side of the manse’s fence. Today, it leads to the DRA’s soccer pitch. From 1879 to 1957 though, it was the entrance to the Dunvegan Cheddar cheese factory. Every morning from April to September, the lane would be chock-a-block with horse-drawn wagons (and in later years, pick-up trucks) as local farmers chatted with friends and neighbours while waiting to offload their cans of milk.
Cheesemaking An Intricate Process was the third of Fred’s four-part feature on Dunvegan. At the time Fred visited the small factory, it was called the Dunvegan Dairy Products Cooperative. It had been reorganized as a farmers’ collective in 1950 when Dan Ross, the previous owner, died in 1949. Once again, as you read Fred’s words, try to view the hamlet through his eyes and see Dunvegan as it once was.
“The farmers bring in their cans of milk by truck or horse and rig, an average of 300 pounds per farmer. They come every day, seven days a week and all are usually in by 7.30 a.m… Each farmer’s milk is weighed and the weight marked in his own record book which he carries.
When all the milk — about 8,000 pounds of it — is in the long shallow vat, a ‘starter’ (milk with acid) is thrown into the vat and the milk is heated to 86 degrees. The milk is constantly stirred by agitators and when it reaches 21 points of acid, rennet is added to coagulate the milk. It is further agitated for about 20 minutes until it thickens… the thickened milk is sliced into fragments. This is done by running wire cutters, shaped something like a harp down, across and the length of the vat, three ways, to expel the moisture and develop the acid.
This thickening mixture is stirred for five or 10 minutes, heat is applied and the milk cooks for 30 or 40 minutes at a temperature of 103 or 104, the agitators turning all the time to keep the curd from matting.
When the acidity reaches 25 or 26 points, the whey is drained off and pumped to an outside tank where it is known as ‘sweet -whey.’ This is run through a cream separator and the resultant whey cream is shipped to the Casselman Creamery where it is made into whey butter. The final whey is pumped into another outside tank from which the farmers who own pigs, can fill their cans with whey and take it home as pig feed.
By now the milk has turned to a rubbery, yellowish curd, about eight inches thick on the floor of the metal vat. A canvas cover is drawn over the vat for 20 minutes… With a large knife, the cheesemaker swiftly cuts the curd into chunks, piles it up in slabs and covers it was canvas again… Next an electrically powered curd cutting machine is placed across the vat. The slabs of curd are put through the machine which cuts them into half-inch squares… This ‘milling’ allows further moisture to evaporate from the curd. When it reaches the right texture, then comes the salting.
The curd is then placed in cloth-lined metal hoops which are placed on their side, one behind the other and compressed together in a long vice-like gimmick… where they are left overnight. The hoops are emptied out every morning and the cheese rounds, weighing 90 pounds or more, are put in the cooler room, weighed, labelled and placed on shelves. Each cheese is turned daily from end to end, for nine days, so that the moisture will break down evenly in the cheese. Otherwise it would all be at one end.
The cheeses are boxed and picked up every two weeks, for shipment to Vankleek Hill cold storage where they are ‘boarded’ by a representative of the Ontario Cheese Producers Marketing Board and sold, mostly to Montreal.”
When Fred Inglis documented the Dunvegan cheese factory in the early 50s, Peter Cousineau and his wife from Curry Hill were in charge of the production process. And they were very good cheesemakers. In fact, Cheddar from the Dunvegan Dairy Products Cooperative was awarded a score of 94 by the Ontario Cheese Producers Marketing Board. 92 was first grade; 93 received a one-cent a pound bonus; and 94 got a two-cent bonus. A two-cent bonus may not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that, based on Fred’s figures, Team Cousineau would have produced nearly 800 pounds of cheese per day… or 124,000 pounds of Cheddar per season. A 2¢ per pound bonus would translate to around $2,480 in extra revenue for the Cooperative back in 1953. Or about $25,000 in today’s dollars.
Hoarder wanted
Believe it or not, in the four years immediately following amalgamation — from 1999 to 2002 — North Glengarry published an actual newsletter and distributed it to all residents. You have to remember that these were the days before the Internet had really caught on… and smartphones and Apple watches were the stuff of Dick Tracey comic strips. The publication was called the North Glengarry Bulletin and it contained regular features like a message from the mayor; notices of upcoming events across the municipality; and informative articles by local organizations and citizens. The job of cajoling contributors to cough up articles and event notices and then organize the resultant information and ready it for publication fell to Ruth Stanton from the 1st of Kenyon. And she did an excellent job. I know because my firm’s role was to layout the electronic art for the newsletters and have them printed.
I hate to admit it, but I had forgotten about the Bulletin until a recent call from Ruth brought it back to top of mind. Allan J. MacDonald from the Glengarry County Archive had approached her looking for a complete set of the newsletters to add to the collection. Unfortunately, her set was incomplete. So she called me to see if I had a set or could pull the e-files from my archives. To be honest a lot of pixels have passed under the bridge in the past twenty years. And finding and de-archiving the original art is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
In hindsight, yes, we should have kept a complete set locked away in a safe deposit box. But we’re not soothsayers. Who even thought we’d have a county archives, let alone one with the professional caliber of ours? The bottom line is that I’m looking for your help. If you had the foresight to squirrel away a complete set of the North Glengarry Bulletin out of the reach of mice, I’d love to hear from you and borrow them to scan for posterity.
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