Salt Spring Island Archives

Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!

Audio

James Canadian Seed Company

Dorothy James

This recording is part of the Salt Spring Island Historical Society Collection
Mrs. James gives a description of the James Seed Company, from its origins in 1915 on James Island to Salt Spring Island in 1922, to Cowichan District in 1930, dissolved in the early 1940s.

See also:
Dorothy James - James Seed Co.
James Seed Company
James Seed Company (photos)

Accession Number 989.031.050 Interviewer Salt Spring Island Historical Society
Date 1986 Location
Media Audio CD
ID 45 Topic

45_D_James-Seeds.mp3

otter.ai

18.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
I am the Dorothy James

Unknown Speaker 0:07
wife of

Unknown Speaker 0:09
Jack James, of the James Canadian Seed Company. This was started

Unknown Speaker 0:22
in 1915

Unknown Speaker 0:25
on Parker island by Mr. And Mrs. PT James, who had come out from England, therefore sums Fred,

Unknown Speaker 0:45
who was the

Unknown Speaker 0:51
there were four sons,

Unknown Speaker 0:53
a friend Jay,

Unknown Speaker 0:57
who is a graduate of the Arnold Arboretum and Harvard Jack James

Unknown Speaker 1:07
in the Navy in

Unknown Speaker 1:08
the first war, from 1916 to 19. Is brother Harry, and the youngest brother, Charles were the young sons who helped run the farm

Unknown Speaker 1:37
also their daughter Phyllis, later married Chad Lee of Saltspring. Mr. James had an as it was a trained horticulturist in England and

Unknown Speaker 1:58
came to the to Victoria to run the

Unknown Speaker 2:10
Sir James Douglas, a state in Victoria, where their first three children were born

Unknown Speaker 2:25
Mr. James later joined the Department of Agriculture in Victoria

Unknown Speaker 2:38
where he met my father

Unknown Speaker 2:44
who align

Unknown Speaker 2:44
with the first department of agriculture in BC

Unknown Speaker 2:57
Parker Island was the starting point for the seed business where

Unknown Speaker 3:10
they had moved to Parker Island or from a James Island after he had left the Department of Agriculture

Unknown Speaker 3:29
Why did they go to

Unknown Speaker 3:33
because they he, Mr. James

Unknown Speaker 3:35
walked so a Parker island for their home now this was during the war. The first night was just before the war. And they they the Jack was in the Navy and Fred was the plant hybridizer and geneticists.

Unknown Speaker 4:14
Parker Island at that time, was a virgin forest, and they cleared the land into plots large enough to grow their first seed plots. They started on a full line of flower seeds and vegetable seeds and brought out some of their own special varieties.

Unknown Speaker 4:56
James family raised all of the seeds they So the the first catalog they put out was handwritten with just a few special varieties they had they were insistent that it must be of the highest quality because they

Unknown Speaker 5:30
ended up as the only seed firm in Canada who grew and guaranteed there, the quality and trueness of seed

Unknown Speaker 5:54
they

Unknown Speaker 5:55
they put out this catalog and they it was chiefly a mail order business and it ended up in sending seeds to all over the world. It was the largest seed growing company in Canada, we're guaranteed their rule and guaranteed their seeds

Unknown Speaker 6:30
in 1917, they outgrew the

Unknown Speaker 6:36
room on Parker Island and moved to Ganges to Barnsbury which is now the golf course at that time owned by Norman Wilson's son of the Reverend Wilson

Unknown Speaker 7:00
they were they were there for four years. And then in

Unknown Speaker 7:06
1922, moved to the JC Lange farm, which is suffering wood farm at the north end

Unknown Speaker 7:24
and carried on growing product to augment the sale of seeds they grew and shipped to Vancouver and m&d anemones, in which they specialized and fresh vegetables, corn, broccoli, potatoes

Unknown Speaker 8:00
they

Unknown Speaker 8:01
imported the first tractor on Saltspring, which scared the horses and animals that were on the road

Unknown Speaker 8:27
there was

Unknown Speaker 8:27
a marsh in connection with the Fernwood farm, which they imported special key tractor to cultivate is a marsh which had large cracks in the wheels where they're sunk down. It was on this march that they grew beautiful potatoes and it was excellent for certain crops of seed particularly root crops.

Unknown Speaker 9:10
They also

Unknown Speaker 9:14
when they needed

Unknown Speaker 9:16
machinery for cleaning their seeds and anything else that was necessary to carry on

Unknown Speaker 9:24
they would the ingenuity of the

Unknown Speaker 9:30
four boys have produced

Unknown Speaker 9:40
the necessary equipment to carry Yes, never was anything else. They also built a A mill to

Unknown Speaker 10:06
make their own lumber

Unknown Speaker 10:08
and cut ties for the singer Lumber Company which had numerous time Mills on the island. At that time

Unknown Speaker 10:31
the mail order

Unknown Speaker 10:31
business was carried on by the

Unknown Speaker 10:38
by the family MD.

Unknown Speaker 10:42
I myself was married in 1922 and those became one of the helpers on the on the staff

Unknown Speaker 11:01
we

Unknown Speaker 11:03
also had our two daughters while we

Unknown Speaker 11:07
were living here

Unknown Speaker 11:10
Mary and Valerie

Unknown Speaker 11:19
at that time the surface to Salt Spring was in during the winter when we were at the peak of the mail order season there were sometimes only three boats a week.

Unknown Speaker 11:37
So with the growth of the business we moved

Unknown Speaker 11:45
over to

Unknown Speaker 11:47
couch and Bay to the cornfield farm in 1930. And then it was officially called the James Canadian seeds limited

Unknown Speaker 12:13
yes

Unknown Speaker 12:19
at this time, there were over 100 agents for retailing the seeds Jack was the sales manager and traveled all over

Unknown Speaker 12:37
BC

Unknown Speaker 12:43
visiting

Unknown Speaker 12:44
the various agents there were as many as 50 employed in the

Unknown Speaker 12:56
in the fields and in the

Unknown Speaker 13:00
office. receipts were put up

Unknown Speaker 13:13
the first seed catalog in 1998 listed 77 varieties in 1936 166 varieties on 150 acres and more. And we were known nationally and internationally. The family business was similar to the way burpees started and a Barger of the badru Seed Company was a frequent visitor to couch and

Unknown Speaker 13:53
bar this was also during the Depression when people were making the most of what they had. And but our family who said that they were the happiest some of the happiest years

Unknown Speaker 14:22
of their childhood. We got they didn't or they weren't aware of

Unknown Speaker 14:30
what we were going through

Unknown Speaker 14:35
the made their own fun

Unknown Speaker 14:37
when we moved over to the city later they just couldn't understand why children were dissatisfied in the city because they didn't know how to make well you

Unknown Speaker 14:57
know you don't get you don't become are very well off on

Unknown Speaker 15:02
agriculture pursuits, because they expenses are heavy as I say it was hard time and

Unknown Speaker 15:16
our youngest daughter Audrey was born

Unknown Speaker 15:26
during the

Unknown Speaker 15:27
last war they

Unknown Speaker 15:31
were there were large contracts of seed the sample overseas and a Jack was

Unknown Speaker 15:51
was asked to Superintendent the growing of seeds for the British Ministry of Food in the whole of BC, which meant traveling from one end to the other with the word contracting the different varieties of seeds wanted and one of the interesting things was that they used portulaca seed flour before camouflaging

Unknown Speaker 16:31
the tops of buildings over in the around the

Unknown Speaker 16:40
Mediterranean and Africa during the war, because of where the air and air bases were large shipments of radish seed went to Russia and that

Unknown Speaker 16:59
they with all the

Unknown Speaker 17:01
war time loss shipping none of the seats were ever lost

Unknown Speaker 17:20
after

Unknown Speaker 17:21
after the war they the market were were flooded by cheaper seed from other countries and labor prices had gone so high that it was impossible to carry on the seed business and the dissolved in the end of the second

Unknown Speaker 18:14
growing your seeds meant our large acreage so that each variety could be well separated to prevent crossing a varieties

Unknown Speaker 18:30
the

Unknown Speaker 18:32
farm at Fernwood.

Unknown Speaker 18:42
Think about 50 acres there that were used as the farm spray they had about that was about

Unknown Speaker 19:02
they used about

Unknown Speaker 19:05
50 acres there

Unknown Speaker 19:21
during a war with the the acreage increased it had collagen to accommodate these tremendous orders we have for overseas.

Unknown Speaker 19:49
Work was very exacting because great care had to be taken not to mix seeds And

Unknown Speaker 20:00
we were in

Unknown Speaker 20:04
at Fernwood, we just use the primitive buildings that were there to start with the scene.

Unknown Speaker 20:12
Although they they had frames

Unknown Speaker 20:17
and a small greenhouse were starting the clouds and all those all the plants for the seeds were transplant started in the greenhouse and transplanted they had special transplant transplanting Pam machines which were a big help then all that had to be cultivated because we had no water and it was all dry cultivation

Unknown Speaker 20:58
and the

Unknown Speaker 21:01
with the used horses with the with the cultivators to keep a dust mulch on all the fields also kept down the wheat dust mulch the and this was one thing that we had very dry years in the 20s which made it you had to have a lot of acreage you

Unknown Speaker 21:53
for the crops No

Unknown Speaker 22:01
it didn't. Except that every it was hard work. And the dirt in the sun the summary for very often fact I remember one summer where it was in the 90s for over three weeks. And people ran over water in their wells they used to all the water from the lake or the various lakes on there. In those days they didn't have a deep wells. They're not drilled wells. They were all hand dug at Fernwood farm there yeah where the soft springs are you had to be very careful where you dug wells because they would be contaminated by the salt there were also in the early 20s, my husband was in touch with people who were interested in developing the Saltspring for a spa but apparently they their financial backing they didn't materialize but the the analysis out the salt spray is the same as the as the Harrogate springs in England famous

Unknown Speaker 24:04
about the

Unknown Speaker 24:07
so this also affected the crops

Unknown Speaker 24:15
that were near the

Unknown Speaker 24:17
salt spring.

Unknown Speaker 24:19
The one crop that

Unknown Speaker 24:20
flourished was then was the mango crop

Unknown Speaker 24:27
which they used a great deal for feeding cattle.

Unknown Speaker 24:32
Mango, ma and g and

Unknown Speaker 24:49
the there was only one doctor on the island and it was Dr. Sutherland A lady doctor who had been a specialist in Harley Street in London. And she was she and her husband

Unknown Speaker 25:12
came out here.

Unknown Speaker 25:13
And he drove her around. But she was a wonderful doctor, but she was deaf. And this this, I think, was why she left her practice. But she was marvelous, marvelous doctor. My two job my eldest daughter, Mary had whooping cough and it developed into pneumonia and we nearly lost her. At that time, they everyone, the neighbors were so good. And the telephone director the telephone office closed at night. So they connected our line with the doctor's line so that we could get her nice we needed her the one thing I think that they helped to save her life was the Reverend Clinton, who was the minister at that time, had goats and he used the goat milk every day, because of the small Kurds she could keep that down. It was after we started that.

Unknown Speaker 27:00
Well, the war the war

Unknown Speaker 27:09
gave us these big contracts. And as I said before,

Unknown Speaker 27:17
the interest the after the war, there was a flood of the cheap seeds coming in from

Unknown Speaker 27:28
these other countries who had been closed down during the war, particularly in Europe.

Unknown Speaker 27:35
And then the labor

Unknown Speaker 27:40
the wages went so high that we just couldn't do YouTubers need economic impossibility to carry on. So they, they close down, my husband was

Unknown Speaker 27:57
asked to join the

Unknown Speaker 28:01
country interior vegetable marketing agency in Kelowna as the agriculturist and that is where we stayed until he retired in 1960. And then we then we came back here and we knew this place because this had been this place in the series here had been one of the where we had several seed contracts where we had to separate the crops. So we knew that this place had particularly good soil. So when he came he wanted to grow a special tomato that would be suitable for the coast climate.

Unknown Speaker 28:56
Free from the verticillium

Unknown Speaker 28:58
wilt, which was one of the worst diseases we had in the Okanagan and he found a plant there. That was a mute. See, the only plant in this huge field have gone down with this. He started that as our cluster stock or the Saltspring some vice tomato

Unknown Speaker 29:40
that we're carrying, I'm still growing the foundation seed other people carry

Unknown Speaker 29:59
on shot shot

Unknown Speaker 30:15
I did a great deal of the

Unknown Speaker 30:23
stamp most of the packets and deal with those that we didn't have printed. were stamped