Let’s take a step back in time to visit the Duchesney Packing Company.
Between 1914 and 1918 the company occupied the site and buildings of the former Wadham’s Cannery in Ladner.
The company specialized in evaporated vegetables, especially potatoes.
It canned soup bricks as well using beef extract with finely ground turnips, carrots, and celery seeds.
The products were made for the Alaskan and Yukon trade.
An article in the April 2, 1914 edition of the Delta Times noted how the products from the Duchesney plant in Delta, including its evaporated vegetables and soup in bricks, travelled a long way by steamer to Dawson City and by Yukon Railway to Whitehorse, as well as by dog teams to the gold fields of the north.
The article noted the vegetables readily absorbed water during preparation and “are said to be not different from the fresh vegetable.”
The buildings burned somewhere between 1959 and 1964 by the volunteer fire brigade as a practice exercise.
