Canada goes better with Coke
Soft drink’s relationship with our nation dates back to 1892
One of the best stories heard about Coca-Cola’s relationship to Canada is when then company president Robert Woodruff visited the country in the middle of a bitter 1930s winter — in Moose Jaw, Sask. And what did he see? A group of hearty Canucks chugging back bottles of ice-cold Coke.
“Robert Woodruff stopped in Moose Jaw and saw people were drinking Coke in winter time,” company archivist Justine Fletcher says. “He came back to Atlanta, assembled his staff and said ‘no reason you can’t sell Coke year-round because the Canadians are doing it!’ ”
As we celebrate the country’s 150th, Canada certainly has quite the history with the legendary drink — Shannon notes that “Canada, at one time, bottled more Coke than anywhere else in the world. In 1935, the Montreal plant became the world’s largest producer.”
Research shows that officially The Coca-Cola Company and Canada have shared a special relationship since 1906, in truth the connection between the two has thrived for much longer.
According to the company’s official website, the first record of Coca-Cola being available in Canada dates back to 1892 — six years after the beverage was first served at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, when a Boston family acquired the sales rights for Coca-Cola syrup to soda fountains in New England as well as the Atlantic provinces.
While we don’t know for sure if any sales were made at this time, by 1897 a company report from thenpresident Asa G. Candler remarks, “Coca-Cola is now sold to some extent in every state and in almost all the cities of the U.S., and in some of the cities in Canada.”
In January 1906, the first bottling facility of Coca-Cola outside the U.S., opened in Toronto, in what is now the city’s Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood.
“The success enjoyed by the small factory was immediate as it struggled to keep up with the orders that flooded in from all around the city as well as neighbouring communities. Toronto-bottled Coca-Cola was so popular in 1908 that it was being sold as far away as Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City,” noted the website.
Company officials added that, as the popularity of Coca-Cola grew and consolidated in Central and Eastern Canada, the company’s attention began to turn towards Manitoba.
“Construction on a Winnipeg bottling facility began in 1914. Due to difficulties with construction during the First World War the plant required much of the company’s attention, so much so that CocaCola’s headquarters in Canada actually moved to Winnipeg at the time (where they would remain until 1923).”
By April 1915, however, the plant was ready to open and yet again overwhelming sales forced the plant to be expanded twice in its first four years. By 1921, the company’s Winnipeg facility was so busy that it outproduced both Coca-Cola’s Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala., bottling plants combined.
Today, we’ve been told, Coca-Cola employs more than 6,200 Canadians and operates over 50 facilities across Canada as well as six manufacturing plants.