No milk today!
1950s. Residential customers set out empty glass bottles with a token. The “milkman” would remove the empty bottle and token, replacing with a full bottle. When delivery was not required, customers placed a “No Milk Today” sign in the window.
The Carlyle dairy empire ended in 1966 when the company, then known as the Union Milk Co. Ltd., was sold to Silverwood Dairies from Ontario.
In the late 1970s, the local Silverwood Dairy became the Alpha Milk Company. In 1983, the Alpha plant moved to Industrial Ave. The Fifth Street operation ceased production and the building was sold. It remained vacant for years and became a centre of controversy as a boarded up and derelict building that was attracting transients, drug users and a devil worshipping cult. In December 1988, 150 names from the neighbourhood were placed on a petition to have the city remove the building.
A decade later, in January 1999, the building was purchased by Cambridge Investments Ltd. whose vision to repurpose the building for multiple family residential use ultimately saved the building. The rear portion of the second floor, the elevator shaft and the third floor were added in the first phase, with the first tenant moving in April 2000. The fourth floor and final phase of construction was completed in December 2010.
James Devine, a local mason who specializes in historical masonry reconstruction, was the brick contractor on the project. Much of the original brick work on the building was saved. New bricks were “rumbled” to make them resemble the original historic brick. Devine even replicatedthe historical