Snacks by Janis Thiessen

Author:Janis Thiessen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 2017-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Cavalier Candies

George Bond and Ronald Samuel founded Cavalier Candies as Bond and Ronald in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1922. Bond was the owner and manager; Samuel was the candy maker.48 One of their most popular products was (and continues to be) agar jelly fruit slices, made by soaking strips of agar seaweed overnight, then cooking them into flavoured jelly, thirty-six kilograms at a time. Charles Spencer Fletcher, owner of Edmonton’s Pavey Candy, purchased the company in 1957;49 he expanded their market from the province to the nation.50 Fletcher divided the business into two: Cavalier Candies (which manufactures confectionery) and Cavalier Foods (which imports confectionery). Individually wrapped jelly fruit slices (marketed as the “Pizazz” brand) were launched in the 1970s. Fletcher’s son, Walter, joined the business in 1986, and Cavalier Candies is now the largest confectioner in western Canada, and the largest agar fruit slice manufacturer in North America.51

While best known for their fruit slices, Cavalier manufactures a variety of candies. The company brochure indicates that these include candy canes; “satin baby pillows: a popular mixture of tiny hard candy pillows in a ‘cocktail’ of traditional flavours”; “assorted cut rock: traditional ‘design in the centre’ hard candies”; Christmas ribbon candy; chocolate- or mint-filled straws; mint humbugs; red- or green-striped mint pillows; raspberry, lemon, and fruit drops; toasted marshmallows; “toasted peanut butter logs: golden coconut toasted hard candy with a smooth and creamy peanut butter filling”; and Turkish delight.52 In the 1930s, the business also produced chocolate and fudge, but they now solely produce hard candies and fruit slices.53

The original factory, a two-storey brick plant with 100 employees, was located at 690 McGee Street in Winnipeg’s West End. A fire seriously damaged the business in 1947.54 In addition to the fire (whose traces lingered into the 1950s), the Second World War provided challenges for the company in the 1940s. Sugar rationing limited the company’s daily production; once the day’s quota was used up, workers were sent home for the rest of the day.55 In 1961 or 1962, the company moved from McGee Street to King Edward Street. In 1971, Cavalier Candies moved again, this time into the McClary Building at 185 Bannatyne Avenue in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. The plant now employs fifty or sixty people. Initially, they used only three floors in the McClary Building; by 2015, they occupied all six floors. The fifth floor warehouses Christmas candy, stored in airtight eighteen-litre pails. The fourth floor is where jelly fruit slices and toasted marshmallows are made. Most of the hard candy production occurs on the third floor. The second floor is where the jellies are placed in trays.56

One of the longest-serving employees at Cavalier was Clarence Gould, who worked there from age nineteen to seventy-nine. He was hired in 1954 as “a gopher” at Bond and Ronald on McGee Street, and retired as general manager of Cavalier in 2014.57 Gould was educated in a rural one-room school until eighth grade. He completed his high school equivalency at Red River College. Later, he obtained a food-handling certificate, and trained in power engineering to operate the factory’s steam unit.

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