Newfoundland Margarine Co., created in political controversy in 1925 and included in the terms of union under which the province entered Confederation, is quietly closing its doors.
Unilever Canada Ltd. has begun the process of shutting down the historic St. John's plant, which now employs only 17 people, and centralizing production at its plant in the Toronto area of Rexdale.
The 78-year-old St. John's plant was one of the few remaining enterprises from an era when factories in the then-isolated colony produced a wide range of goods for local consumption. "There were clothing and shoe factories here going back to the 1930s," Roger Crosbie, who was an executive at the margarine plant until 2000, said in an interview. "But most of those were lost in the 1930s and after Confederation. As transportation was developed, this was a small market and goods were imported here, and eventually what was made here was out-priced."
In the 1920s and 1930s, the margarine plant, founded by Sir John Crosbie to utilize whale, seal and fish oil from his fleet, produced hard bricks of margarine that became a mainstay in rural communities that had no electricity or means of refrigeration.
Sir John, grandfather of the former federal cabinet minister, decided to set up the factory in 1925 after he visited Denmark and saw the butter substitute business was booming, John Perlin, great grandson of Sir John, said in a recent interview.
"He was prosecuting both the whale and seal fishery and producing and selling the oil. Then he went to Denmark where he discovered they were using those oils to produce oleomargarine and he thought: 'If they can do it in Denmark, in an agrarian economy and a large dairy industry, why not here?' " Mr. Perlin said.
Newfoundland and Labrador did not have significant dairy farms in the 1920s and two margarine plants were operating when the Crosbie enterprise began production.
But Sir John, then minister of finance in the Newfoundland government, made a sensational entrance into the industry. The construction of the plant, then known as Newfoundland Butter Co., came the same year that the province introduced a tariff of 6 cents a pound on imported margarine.
His political opponents claimed Sir John profited from that and had exclusive arrangements to supply the spread to public institutions.
The first margarine tubs became instantly popular because a few of them contained gold and silver coins. As well, Sir John made the plant and its grounds a floral showpiece and lit up the St. John's skyline with the province's first neon sign -- a cow swishing its tail.
The sign was shut off during the Second World War lest it become a target for the enemy.
While the strong dairy lobby across Canada prevented the sale of margarine, the hard spread, which contained some dairy products as a small Newfoundland herd was developed, was popular on the Rock where it was known as butter. In many homes in the province today, margarine is called butter and the dairy spread is called table butter.
"Poor people in St. John's and most of the people in rural Newfoundland didn't have access to refrigeration and the margarine didn't require refrigeration." Mr. Perlin said. "It looked like butter and to many people it tasted like butter."
The St. John's plant was so successful that Sir John built another margarine factory in Brazil, but that operation was nationalized shortly after it was created.
Sir John died in 1932, and in 1937, the family sold the plant to Unilever, which had already purchased the Newfoundland plant's main competitor. Unilever continued to employ members of the family until Roger Crosbie retired in 2000.
The spread came back into the public eye in 1949 when it was included in the terms of union between Newfoundland and Labrador and the Dominion of Canada. While the sale of margarine was banned in Canada, Newfoundland Butter Co. was allowed to produce and sell margarine within the province.
That prompted a strong lobby by companies in the rest of Canada who eventually convinced the federal government to allow production of the spread.
But the legacy of the company, renamed the Newfoundland Margarine Co. in 1950, lives on in a province where customers still seek the Oversweet and Mom's brands that the plant produced.
While Unilever has promised to make severance payments and help the employees seek other jobs, Mr. Perlin said he's saddened by the demise of the plant.
"I'm sad in the sense that this is another industry that is gone from Newfoundland and Labrador. It was started back in 1925 and outlasted the competition and even in the depths of the Depression managed to make a profit. It's part of our history and it's gone down the tubes."
Unilever says the St. John's plant is one of about 100 operations it is shutting down to focus production on 150 major factories.