There are at least 15 different Alberta and Saskatchewan “Purity” milk bottle tops that I have seen over the last couple of years. Quite a few of them do not have location information on them, so it is not immediately obvious which dairy used them. Never one to duck a challenging research topic, I have […]
In 1910 Peter Pallesen was employed as Manager of the Provincial Government Cold Storage and Creamery. His residence and the government plant were both located at Brewery Flats (East Calgary). The Carlyle Dairy was in operation at this time. The 1911 Calgary Henderson’s Directory lists the Cold Storage & Creamery plant but shows no manager […]
There is another group of milk bottles that, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “don’t get much respect.” These are the milk bottles, with no dairy name on them, but with generic slogans like “LOANED – RETURN WHEN EMPTY.” Such bottles would have been cheaper for dairies to buy than the named bottles mostly desired by […]
There is a wide array of items that a collector (serious or otherwise) may acquire as a novelty to have on display, as an attractive “piece of art” or as a source of reference for dairy collectables or for dairy history research. This article is intended to cover these sectors and to bring the reader […]
People collect many things because they are attracted to them for a variety of reasons: colour, shape and size or elements of the design on them. Milk bottles fall in to several categories in these areas. Clear glass milk bottles were made with many colours of labels. A half dozen or more Alberta dairies used […]
Collectors have a variety of criteria they use to build their milk bottle collections. Perhaps they choose to build a “complete” collection, seeking all of the bottles that had dairy names on them. Or perhaps they prefer only coloured label bottles, or only quart size bottles or only one-half pint bottles to save space. I […]
The gestation period for my latest literary effort was rather long. Some serious research was started in 2002, but other Alberta-related projects kept elbowing their way to the forefront. As those other books came to fruition, a major commitment to complete the Saskatchewan book was made in mid 2007. It has been a challenge to assemble […]
Many older Edmontonians remember the delicious Mello-Moor ice cream that was sold at the Whyte Avenue dairy bar of South Edmonton Creamery. On a hot summer’s day, there were long lines to obtain the confection at the creamery at 10105-82 avenue. The creamery was founded in 1933 by Richard Barendregt, who managed it until 1938. […]
Milk delivery in bottles probably began in Alberta about 1906. Prior to that, dairies delivered milk in bulk and then ladled out the requested quantity into the customer’s containers. With the advent of milk bottles, came the creation of a very interesting group of collectibles: glass milk bottles with the dairy names on them. The […]
Milk bottles, the first obvious dairy collectible, first appeared in Western Canada about 1905 or so. Prior to that milk was dispensed by dipper into the customer’s container. The development of the automatic bottle manufacturing machine made good bottles of consistent quality available at reasonable cost. These bottles were designed to be sealed with paper […]
