When tobacco was king: the once mighty reign of London, Ont., as Ontario’s stogie capital | CBC News

Canada was once home to a booming cigar industry – and southwestern Ontario was known as this country’s ‘tobacco belt.’

In the late 19th century, London had dozens of cigar factories whose buildings still stand in the city’s downtown and whose owners’ names still adorn public places. 

London was second only to Montreal when it came to the production of cigars in Victorian Canada. From the late 1870s to the early 1920s, cigars were locally grown, manufactured and distributed. 

There were over 40 Canadian cigar manufacturers at the time, and many were located in London. 

Tom Peace is a professor of history at Huron University College at Western University. He is also the curator of the Hidden Histories of southwestern Ontario website. 

Peace spoke with Colin Butler on CBC Radio One’s Afternoon Drive.

LISTEN: Southwestern Ontario’s booming cigar business in the 19th century

Colin Butler: Why was cigar making such big business in southwestern Ontario?

Tom Peace: For you and I, this might seem a little bit strange, but for a lot of your younger listeners, it’s important to remember that smoking was a really big industry in the 20th century, and it seemed at times that everybody smoked. 

This was a very important industry in our region, known as the Tobacco Belt, basically the North Shore of Lake Erie. And here in London, there were dozens of cigar manufacturers, mostly located downtown along Horton, Clarence and Dundas Streets.

That’s factories, not shops. When we think about downtown London today, we think about shopping and we think about retail. We don’t tend to think about heavy industry, but there was heavy industry in downtown London. 

CB: What made southwestern Ontario in particular so important for the tobacco business in this country?

TP: Well, there’s two pieces. One is the climate. The sandy soils on the north shore of Lake Erie make it ideal.

But during the period where the cigar making was at its peak in London, it was actually Quebec that produced more tobacco than Ontario. 

It’s also important to to note that London was second in Canada for cigar manufacturing. And according to the Museum of History, most of that tobacco came from the Caribbean. But it’s hard not to believe that there is a bit of alignment between the growing of tobacco, which is an important part of the history of this part of southwestern Ontario, and the development of the cigar industry.

CB: Can you tell us a little bit about some of these tobacco companies?

TP: The first company that we know to have made cigars was William Kelly & Sons which began in 1870. They were located more or less at the forks of the Thames at 64 Dundas St. That’s where the first cigar factory was built.

There was also the Brenner Brothers. These were two Jewish brothers in the 1880s who played an important role actually hiring Jewish immigrants to work in their factory. That factory was located where the Boys and Girls Club is today on Horton Street.

That’s important because that was just down the road from the synagogue that opened in 1924, which still stands today and is now the N’Amerind Friendship Centre.

In 1912, the Brenner brothers were producing about 10 million cigars a year. So this is they were the biggest cigar manufacturer in the city. The last of these companies was William Ward which was located at 19 King St. and closed in 1952.

We’re really talking about an industry that peaked at the beginning of the 20th century.

CB: Smoking is most associated with ill health. It was part of a campaign by the federal government to crusade against it. As a result, smoking has plummeted. How did that affect the cigar industry with smoking on the decline?

TP: The temptation is to think that decline was caused by the anti-smoking campaigns — but it was actually the cigarette that eclipsed the cigar. So as the 1920s rolled along, the development of the cigarette became a more popular form of smoking and cigar smoking began to decline.

But the anti-smoking campaigns really of the 1990s and early 2000s also had a significant impact impact on those people who farm tobacco. And in fact, in the mid-2000s there was a federal buyout plan for people who farmer farmed tobacco and an encouragement to replace their crops with various types of nuts, watermelons, sweet potatoes and even lavender.

So the history of smoking and not smoking actually has a significant, has had a significant impact on our region.

To learn more about historic cigar manufacturing in Canada, you can visit the Canadian Museum of History’s online exhibition here.