Roast beef and gravy

On each side of the highway, parked cars and trucks are huddled around the intersection at Station Road. It’s late afternoon, Sunday, the sky bright and gulls are drifting inland. There’s something going on at Hillier Hall.

Days like this are when you want to call the hamlet of Hillier by its former name, that of Pleasant Valley. You see, that name travelled. It was printed on labels stuck to cans of tomatoes, or peas or carrots or corn and just like every name of each of the forty-odd number of canning outfits in the County back in the 1950’s , the cans found their way onto grocery store shelves in every small corner of Saskatchewan and Alberta and certainly Sault St Marie. Tons of goods in wooden crates where loaded at every stop along the former Prince Edward County Railway including Niles Corners and Gardenville. The freight cars were taken to the Trenton rail yards, shunted and then hooked onto engines headed east and west along the CNR mainline.

The travelling labels and Pleasant Valley Canners came into being as an upshot early one Saturday morning back in the day when Jack Taylor drove his tractor hauling his wagon load of tomatoes onto the scales of a cannery in Wellington. Jack was proud of his farm crops and when the weigh master proffered a ‘B’ grade onto his crop, apparently there was a discussion not fit to print in the local newspaper. The encounter turned out to be the last straw for Taylor who was also a stubborn sort of being. Jack got back on his tractor, fired it up, and headed back home, his wagon load of tomatoes behind him. The story goes that as he drove along the Old Danforth Road he hatched a plan. Jack Taylor would build his own cannery and to hell with the rest.

Mary and Jack owned what is referred to today as the old Taylor place whose acreage occupied the corner of Highway 33 and Station Road. The property also straddled Slab Creek upstream for pretty near a mile it seemed like. Having acreage, water, gumption and with Mary working as Station Agent down at the Hillier rail depot, the couple had the makings of what soon became Pleasant Valley Canners. And much like today it required seasonal workers from places like Jamaica and Mexico along with a local workforce to see the outfit develop.

So on Sunday I went over to Hillier Hall when I heard about a dinner in honour of Father’s Day was being prepared and served by the local volunteer committee. I paid my 15 bucks at the door and got a ticket which also entitled me to tea, coffee and dessert. I can best describe the room ringing with conversation and laughter as sounds familiar to the timbers in the limestone building that have lasted 150 years. This kind of tradition, of a gathering around food stems to ancient times. It’s only the voices and the venues that change, this kind of thing is like a glue that holds communities together around the planet.

There are recent born babies being passed over the heads of people for close-up inspection and pandering; ones a few years older crawl under the tables while those as young adults are busy helping grey haired folk clean tables and hauling dirty dishes and knives and forks into the kitchen. Here a small army animates the room; some with arms stuck into sinks full of hot dishwater; others with a drying towel in hand; still others lift pots from one counter to the next and some like Councilor Ernie who points to cup where my ticket needs to go and offers to serve. I take a plate from a stack of the rose coloured porcelain ones belonging to the Women’s Institute and then saunter back to the tables where shiny warming pans are lined up waiting to soothe the appetites of a lineup of on-comers.

First the roast beef is laid on my plate as seemingly a base layer; next server down offers potatoes and then carrots and peas. My plate is looking pretty tasty and handsome at this point as I move toward the utensils that sit at the end of a rectangular arrangement of fresh baked buns matching the width of the table itself. Last minute and I realize gravy was being served. Where do I want it? On just about everything, thank you.

Back in the main room I find a spot amidst long rows of tables and chairs. A margarine tub and a spreading knife await next to a set of green and red salt and pepper shakers. All around, tables with unrolled sections of blue flowered table cloths are accented here and there with small arrangements of burlap enclosed clusters of flowers in yellow and red and blue and violet that along with the table covers offers sheen from the plastic that illuminates the room.

As I finish my meal, over there on the table at the far end of the room that holds the water jugs and coffee urns, sits an awfully good looking setup of dessert. Turns out that cheesecake with strawberry filling happens to be a favorite and therefore most appropriate for a day like today. Also turns out that Joe over at the Wellington Bakery gifted the folks here with buns and dessert and good karma as my thoughts take me to the Jack Taylor riff at the Wellington scales back when. I think desserts are always the best way to resolve varying opinions even if decades have lapsed.

I also think how the region, once known as the Garden Capital of Canada, made its way onto many a kitchen table across the land via canned peas and carrots and beans, a trend that continues today under more recent labels. As for that morning that caused a stir over a wagon of tomatoes, well Jack and Mary had a sweet response when their most favorite of labels went onto cans that loudly heralded ‘Taylor Made Tomatoes’, Pleasant Valley Canners, Pleasant Valley, Ontario.

www.walkingwiththunder.com