When George Christie attended high school in Collingwood, his lessons did include target practice with rifles, but he also built an elaborate bird house for his grandfather W.G. Smart, one of the brothers who helped build a fruit and vegetable farm, flower, and canning enterprise that operated from 1890 to 1970.
The birdhouses were for purple martins, favourites of Christie's grandfather and namesake William George. The birds also served as free and organic insect control when they arrived in April to devour the bugs that would feed on the Smart Brothers' produce and flowers.
The Smart Brothers' legacy was the topic du jour at the Collingwood Probus Club last week (July 6) with special guest Melissa Shaw, Collingwood Museum supervisor, presenting a history of the family's businesses.
It began, said Shaw, with Smart Cottage — a yellow, wooden building at 310 Pine Street — the home of John and Isabella Smart while John worked as a railway conductor. When John retired, he bought seven acres of land with the intention of starting a market garden. John's eldest son Norman bought another five acres and the family continued purchasing land as it became available, eventually owning 500 acres of Collingwood land.
In 1892, Norman's brother William George Smart (he went by W.G.) joined the business, their father retired, and it became a Smart Brothers' operation.
"Their first employee's name was Bill Griffin, who was just a boy at the time of his employment," said Shaw, who compiled the presentation using information from newspaper articles and other items in the museum archives. "It's quite common to run into people living in Collingwood who worked for Smart Brothers as school children."
Picking asparagus was a common task for the young, seasonal workers.
A photo Shaw brought from the museum collection shows crates of cabbage stacked on a wagon. Each crate contained about 150 pounds of cabbage and garnered about $2.25 per crate. The cabbage was sent out from Collingwood to Smart's customers by ship.
Speaking of cabbage, sauerkraut was also a common export for the local family business — one of the old "kraut houses" still stands on the corner of Campbell and High Streets. Though it likely smells a little fresher today than it did while cabbage was fermenting for the sauerkraut.
While there was once a Collingwood Canning Factory, it was the Smart Brothers who made a large and long-lasting cannery in Collingwood, opening the first iteration in 1911 on Campbell Street.
Shaw noted a worker strike in 1935 because the cherry pickers wanted a three-cent raise. Their demands were unsuccessful and the workers went back to the fields quickly. A vote to unionize in 1950 failed and that's the last record of worker unrest.
Eventually, the Smart Brothers built greenhouses and expanded their offerings to include flowers, which were displayed in the front window of Henry Smart's tailor shop.
The greenhouses needed round-the-clock staffing to keep the boilers burning, so Collingwood firefighters picked up overnight shifts keeping the plants warm until the heating source became more efficient.
"By 1926, Smart's had six greenhouses covering 25,600 square feet and another 12,000 square feet were covered by heated frames for spring work," said Shaw.
In March, 1925, Smart's started building a new canning factory on North First Street, one that had a link to the railway. Today, the LCBO building stands in the place where the cannery once operated and processed 20,000 cans of sauerkraut, among other products, each year.
The next generation of Smart Brothers, Herbert and Edward Smart, brought Canada's first calorie-reduced line of canned products. Smart's dietetic line was made with Edward's diabetic wife in mind.
"Eventually, Smart Brothers' supplied 90 per cent of Ontario's hospitals with their (canned food) products," said Shaw.
Any Smart Brothers' employees who served overseas in the Second World War also received canned food from home in the form of care packages from the cannery.
"During the depression and the Second World War, employment could always be found at smarts," said Shaw. "While the shipyard lay dormant, Smart Brothers' hired hundreds and hundreds of employees of all ages. Women made up the bulk of the workforce."
The museum has one of the blue and white smocks worn by the women on the processing floor in the archive collection.
By 1950, the Smart Brothers had created a high-tech irrigation system for their crops, using a dam in Underwood Creek and a commercial pump capable of pumping 250 gallons of water every minute over the nearby crops. There were about 2,000 feet of pipe to carry the water to the fields, putting about one inch of water onto the fields in three hours. The system could be operated by one employee and could treat all the Smart fields in eight hours.
The largest payroll recorded at the Smart Brothers' factory was 331 employees with an additional 150 at the farm, a dozen more at the garage (for deliveries) and more with the floral division, with a total of about 500 employees at one time.
Much more information is available about the Smart Brothers' enterprise, the family legacy, and the contribution to Collingwood's economy, history, and growth is available at the Collingwood Museum. There are also some interpretive plaques around town with tidbits from the Smart Brothers' history, including a plaque and boiler at the Collingwood Labyrinth and a plaque near the roundabout at High Street and Poplar Sideroad.
Visit the Collingwood Museum website for information on visiting hours here.
