Caledon Living, Spring 2011 ed.
“Down from Canada came tales of a wonderful beverage”- early Canada Dry, Inc. slogan
Exactly seventy years before Caledon would come to dot a map, the invention of ginger ale in a tiny hamlet near the Forks of the Credit would cause a revolution in the beverage industry and make a resounding splash on the North American scene. Before 1904, carbonated soda water was primarily sold in corner drug stores as a mixer for fruit juices or whisky. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, John J. McLaughlin, not yet a challenger of the carbonated status quo, opened a small plant in Cataract, located a mile from the town near the yard limit sign. Originally, McLaughlin had bottled soft drinks in Toronto, but the city’s water was ill-suited to his industrial needs, unlike the many springs in the Credit valley, created from layers of clay and lime sediment. He sought to manufacture soda water, for which he built a small building to wash, fill, and house the five and ten gallon jugs of sparkling Caledon spring water before shipping them by rail to Toronto for manufacture and distribution. He called his operation “White Mountain Spring Water”, although many of the surviving bottle caps bear the logo “J.J. McLaughlin-Hygeia Waters” (Hygeia being the Greek goddess of health, from which is derived the word “hygene”, an indirect comment on the quality of water being used).
Like his brother, Col. Sam McLaughlin, the founder of what would one day become General Motors, John had a head for business and innovation. He conducted hundreds of experiments before producing a formula for a new carbonated beverage, which he named Canada Dry Ginger Ale, in 1904. McLaughlin named it “dry” to describe the taste of the new beverage, which was less sweet than the other ginger ales then available. Three years after its inception, the drink was appropriated by the Royal Household of the Governor General, with the label originally featuring a beaver above a map of Canada replaced with the insignia of the Crown and Shield, which it bears to this day. Aside from the drink’s recipe, McLaughlin invented a mass bottling technique, and then marketed his product at groups in high-density public areas, like beaches and ballparks. This was the pioneer effort that would become standard practice in the beverage industry throughout the twentieth century. Companies like Coca-Cola quickly followed suit, especially after McLaughlin began shipping his product to New York in 1919, and opened an American plant in Manhattan. Four years later, Canada Dry became an American company when it was purchased by P.D. Saylor and Associates from the McLaughlin family, just in time for Prohibition.
Ginger ale became the perfect companion to moonshine throughout the Prohibition era, its flavour masking the unpleasant qualities of homebrew. Even at 35 cents a bottle, a steep price in those days, sales roared along with the 1920s. It became so popular that Canada Dry, Inc. began to expand nationally, and came out with its Club Soda, Tonic Water, and Collins Mix, among other fruit flavours now out of distribution, such as orange, grape, Jamaica Cola, and Cactus Cooler. In the post-war era, Canada Dry further pioneered the industry, introducing sugar-free drinks (named “Sports Cola”), and most importantly, the concept of the canned soft-drink. Today, the Canada Dry brand is owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc, based in Texas, the largest soft-drink company apart from Coca-Cola. In the United States, Canada Dry is available in pineapple, peach, black cherry, and island lime flavours, but the brand has world-wide distribution, reaching as far as Japan, Peru, Syria, and Iran, quite a distance away from its humble beginnings in Cataract, Ontario.
The Cataract bottling works factory closed during the 1920s, when trucks replaced the railway as the primary shipping method for the spring water, and the structure was destroyed. This would have put many locals out of work, including Billy Scott, the plant foreman, village fighter, and (somewhat ironically) Sunday school teacher. One of his employees, Charles Forbes, remembered him as a hot-tempered man but a fair boss, and recalls an incident during his employ when Forbes and a co-worker smashed a trolley full of water jugs while loading it into a box car, under the watchful eyes of both Scott and McLaughlin, who was making an inspection trip from headquarters.
However, Canada Dry’s Caledon connections were not severed upon the 1923 sale of the brand across the border. Until very recently, the company continued to have their trucks make irregular trips up North to take emergency water from a well in Caledon East, until silt polluted the source. While it appears now the well may have run Canada dry, the Caledon origins of the beverage run deep, much like the clay sediment that created the pure spring water in the beginning.