Have you ever heard of a "ploughman's lunch"?
During the Industrial Revolution in Britain, before the sandwich was invented, every working stiff ate a ploughman's lunch - a hunk of bread (not the white sliced kind), and a chunk of cheese. Specifically cheddar cheese. More specifically cheddar cheese made in Canada. And even more specifically cheddar cheese made in Eastern Ontario. At its height, Canada supplied over 80% of the cheese eaten in Britain. And most of that came from Ontario.
It started as a cottage industry in the 1860s with the discovery of the yeast for making cheddar cheese. At first, it was the farmer's wife who made the cheese. The industry then graduated to "cheese factories". No, these weren't the kind that Mr Kraft has. These were small wooden structures where local farmers would cart their milk to have it made into cheddar cheese.
No farmer could be more than 3 (later expanded to 5) miles away from the cheese factory. Otherwise, the milk would slosh about and become sour on the trip to the cheese factory. Now, with the proliferation of farms in Eastern and Southern Ontario, this meant that there were an awful lot of these cheese factories around the province. At its height, over 2,500 cheese factories.
Cheddar cheese does not require refrigeration - not even pasteurization. So, the cheese factories took the milk and made it into cheddar cheese. The cheese was then stuffed into round wooden boxes of cheese about 24" in diameter and 16" deep.
Now, how does cheese relate to railway, you ask? For a moment, forget about the big cheese in Perth. Relative to the total cheese being produced at the time, that was small potatoes. And besides, it was a publicity stunt to increase cheese sales (as a marketing gimic, it didn't work).
Instead, think of all the cheese being consumed in Britain and recall I said that over 80% of that cheese came from Canada - specifically Ontario. How are you going to get it from the backwoods of Eastern Ontario to Britain? Obviously we're going to send it over in ships. But how are we going to get the cheese from the factory to the ports?
Three guesses and the first two don't count.
Yes, you are correct! The railways of Eastern Ontario are going to ship the cheese from the local cheese factory to the ports!!!
On the Brockville, Westport & Sault Ste Marie Railway (it never got to Sault Ste Marie), Friday was the day that cheese was shipped along this short 45 mile line between Westport and Brockville. Over 1,500 boxes of cheese were shipped weekly, even as late as 1905 - 1910. It doesn't sound like much until you do some calculations. A box of cheese weighs 90 lbs. 1,500 boxes x 90 lbs = 13,500 lbs or 6.75 tons of cheese - each week!
However, with the onset of WW1, the appearance of the refrigerator, more food choices, the sandwich, J.R. Kraft and processed cheese, and other things, the cheddar cheese industry started to go into decline. The cheese factories started to decline.
In its later days in the 1940s, over 20 cheese factories were shipping their cheese to Westport for loading onto boxcars. By the early 1950s, most of the cheese factories had disappeared. Only the Forfar cheese factory is left in the area. Another one is Balderson Cheese in Lanark.
There were a number of large cheeses that were produced, the Perth cheese being one of the better publicized ones - at least in more recent times. The monument was moved to the north end of town along Hwy 7. I think it's still there.
Bob M.
We didn't leave until closing time - man our feet were tired by then!!!