Jan. 15, 1907: Sub-zero temperatures make ice block harvest difficult task
What was expected to be a record ice crop in December was suffering by this date in January because of continuing severe cold weather and new technology.
There was no refrigeration in 1907, so businesses provided Edmontonians with large blocks of ice, delivered to their homes by horsedrawn ice wagons.
Ice men employed by the Edmonton Ice Company, established in 1899, and the Alberta Ice Company, started 1900, would use saws to harvest or cut big chunks of ice out of the frozen North Saskatchewan River. Delivery teams would take the blocks to ice plants, where they were stored, then shipped to customers.
The Edmonton Ice Company had enough room in its ice house on the river flats to store 7,300 tonnes of ice.
Homes had an icebox, a non-mechanical refrigerator made of wood, which was a common kitchen appliance. Iceboxes had hollow walls lined with tin or zinc and packed with insulating materials such as cork, sawdust, straw or seaweed. A large block of ice was held in a tray or compartment near the top of the box and cold air would circulate down and around food storage compartments below.
Ice companies were having problems filling orders, however, because severe cold temperatures of -32 C to -45 C prevented their employees from working outdoors.
The previous year, a record 10,800 to 13,600 tonnes of ice were harvested by the Edmonton Ice Company alone. Most of it supplied local demand, but some was shipped by CNR and CPR to smaller towns along the rail line.
The difficulty in getting the ice, however, made it tough for the ice company to get rail cars to ship what it could harvest, a problem shared by the coal and grain industries.
The market was also changing. Some of the city’s largest consumers of ice were meat merchants, hotels, restaurants and railway companies, which stored their own supplies. But other large consumers such as the brewery and cold storage plants were installing a freezing plant chilled with ammonia gas instead of ice.
As cities like Edmonton grew, many sources of natural ice became contaminated from industrial pollution or sewer run-off.
Mechanical refrigerators that could produce clean, sanitary ice year-round became available in the 1930s, gradually replacing the need for harvested ice.