Local Lore

As spring of 1902 turned to summer, more information about the Frontenac Cereal Company's plans began to be revealed. They had the ambition to enter the prepared food manufacturing business, but this was no simple task. As we discussed in the last post, this was a very new product, the whole industry was only a few years old. This was cutting-edge technology, requiring specialized equipment and machinery. In 1902, the number of people with the expertise to design, build and operate a functioning cereal factory was a short list indeed. It was inevitable that help would be recruited from outside...

In the spring of 1902, the Frontenac Cereal Co. Ltd was formed, with the stated intention of expanding the capacity of the milling operation to include manufactured food-stuffs, in addition to the traditional milling of flour. (Click here to begin at the beginning!) While this sounds like a simple enough proposition, it was quite a novel and audacious plan in 1902. The best way to understand that is to explore the state of breakfast cereal at the turn of the century. At the outset, I'd like to note that this story has been extensively researched and told elsewhere. In particular,...

This is the second in a series of blog posts exploring the fascinating history of Kingston's own Orange Meat breakfast cereal. Click here to start at the beginning! Our earliest signs in the public record connected to Orange Meat and the Frontenac Cereal Company start to appear in the spring of 1902. Reporting from the Daily British Whig allows us to identify a very specific date for the establishment of the Frontenac Cereal Company: Monday, May 19, 1902. On that date, noting that "notice of incorporation was received only this morning", the Whig reported the news with the headline: "Big New Company Formed:...

The giants of soda - Coca Cola, Pepsi, and the like, have become so ubiquitous and universally recognizable it is easy to forget that soda used to be a very local thing.  Artificially carbonated water began to become available in North America around the beginning of the19th Century.  Starting around 1820, small carbonated bottling operations began to be established across Canada. Local bottlers in every city and town in Canada developed their own recipe books, names, logos and advertising slogans. They were a familiar part of the communities, often multigenerational family operations. Around that same time, carbonated soda began to...

The Frontenac Cereal Co., Limited was formed in the spring of 1902, initially comprised of a committee of prominent turn-of-the-century Kingston residents. Right from the outset, the ambitious plan seemed to be to move beyond traditional milling to take advantage of the craze for manufactured "pure" food that was sweeping the slowly industrializing new world. The new company was capitalized at $600,000 - an outrageous sum of money in Canada in 1902 (something in the neighborhood of 15 million dollars). Finally brought to market in October 1903, for a brief time Orange Meat was a brand of national - even international profile. It...