History of Peach Production in Ontario

"In 1748, a traveler named Kahn, reported the occurrence of peach trees in "southern Canada" presumably referring to the Niagara area. While the report is sketchy, it was the first identifying the birth of the peach industry in this country"¹.

"In Upper Canada, cherries and peaches were being harvested at the mouth of the Niagara River in the early 1790's and peaches at Grimsby 30 miles to the west. In 1815, Charles Woolverton of Grimsby Township operated a fruit tree nursery"².

"In 1856 Mr. C. E. Woolverton, of Grimsby planted the first large commercial orchard that we have any record of, five acres of such varieties as Barnard, Crawford, Oldmixon and Mountain Rose. Mr. Woolverton was the first also to ship by express to different Ontario markets"³.

"From 1860 to 1890, Peach Yellows and Little Peach viruses took their toll in the North-East United States and Canada. At that time, by various reports, Ontario had some 6 million trees and was reduced to somewhere between 2-3 million"⁴.

"But peach growing in Canada is by no means the important industry that it was 5-6 years ago. Then, every choice piece of garden soil was devoted to peach culture, and every orchardist, along the southern shore of Ontario and the eastern shore of Lake Huron, had golden dreams of the profits to be derived from this delicate fruit. But alas, the mysterious "Yellows" awakened us all to the unpleasant reality of great disappointment, and our beautiful peach trees had to be cut off and drawn out of the ground by hundreds. Our growers are now turning their attention to the vineyard in place of peach orchard; and very few are giving the latter even reasonable cultivation, so wholly disgusted are they with the unsightly remains of what was once the pride of their grounds"⁶.

"In 1872, the editor of the Canadian Fruit, Flower and Kitchen Gardener wrote, "Yet it must not be expected that the geographical distribution of the peach tree can be greatly enlarged within the Dominion; the warm soils near the great lakes, lying between Lake Erie and Ontario, along the north shore of Lake Ontario and the south shore of Lake Huron, where the air is tempered by those large bodies of water, will ever remain the most favourable to the production of Apricot, Nectarine and Peach. The main cultivars were Downton, Early Newington, Elruge, Stanwick, Violet Hative" (Editors note: 3 white and 2 yellow flesh peaches)"⁵.

"Peach Growing was called an enormous industry in the Niagara Peninsula in 1880. From the Grimsby railway station alone, in a radius of two miles, 70,000 baskets of peaches were shipped. A Mr. Allen reported peach growing success for 40 years at Goderich on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. The Commision Report of 1881 indicates a thriving plum industry in the Georgian Bay area with 14,000 to 16,000 bushels being shipped annually by boat from Owen Sound mainly to Chicago. Cherries were largely unimportant until 1880 largely due to brown rot and bird hazards"².

In 1887, The Canadian Horticulturalist Magazine wrote, "For the first time in three or four years peach growers of Ontario are the happy possessors of a fair crop of peaches. The early varieties such as Alexanders, Hale's Early, Louise and Rivers are overloaded, while the finer varieties such as Early Crawford and Old Mixen are about half-crop"⁶.

"From 1890 to 1898 the industry boomed and fell. Then came the winter in 1897-98, and many trees were killed. This forced many out of business and discouraged others who then refused to replant. But the best men stuck to it and others came back slowly. In 1904, the first shipment was made, by freight, to Winnipeg, and since that time, though plantings have increased largely, at no time has the market been over supplied. Several Hundred cars were forwarded west that year. The first shipments were made to Europe in 1909 and were entirely successful. The table below is from the 1910 Tree Census"³.

Total trees 595,703
Acres 4,495

This year, 1910, several thousand cases were forwarded, and though the work is still in the experimental stage, it is expected that it is possible to develop there a large and profitable market³.

Number of Trees 1956 to 1999⁷

References

¹Peach Growing, Gould H. P. 1918, pp 426
²History of Fruit Growing and Handling in United States of America and Canada 1860-1972, Dr. W. H. Upshall,
³Report of Fruit Branch - Department of Agriculture, Ontario, 1910
⁴Unknown
⁵Canadian Fruit, Flower and Kitchen Gardener - 1872
⁶The Canadian Horticulturalist, Grimsby, September 1887, Vol. X, No.9
⁷ OMAF tree census 1956-1999