High quality water once flowed from this spot near Montcalm and Notre Dame, home of the Laurentian Water well from about 1900.
Here's the story behind it. Prior to being a bottle water company, a now-demolished warehouse housed a tannery that whipped up shoe leather. The effort required a lot of hawthorn tree bark dye. Entire forests of hawthorn in Quebec were denuded for dyeing leather until a chemical workaround was created.
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The tannery required a water supply and a well was built beneath. The water proved useful and a beautifully-tiled public bath - aka a swimming pool - was installed in the building.
The White family seized upon public mistrust of the water supply and started selling the water instead allowing people to bathe in it. They marketed it as a healthy way to avoid disease such as typhoid.
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The White and Wells families started marketing their Laurentian spring water aggressively and their ads were a family sight in newspapers from about 1900 on.
The family eventually started pumping out soft drinks, which proved popular in bottles and in local bars which were paid a little bribe to serve 'em.
For a while a pair of brothers at the plant also had a short-lived side business that proved incredibly lucrative, supplying alcohol by mail to other dry provinces. According to family legend they had 100 women in a room whose sole task was to open letters full of cash. After about a year or so they were set for life.
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So by the 1950s the family still had the plant and up until around 1980 they had about four trucks that would haul 500 65 lb glass bottles to fill local water coolers.
Muscly delivery guys were often able to carry two of these glassy beasts at once but if one would break it would cause a huge mess of water and glass on the ground.
The company had a high-temperature sterilization machine to clean the glass bottles and they would frequently break in the high heat, leaving a dangerous mess to clean up.
Profits remained stable at the company for decades but other competitors were on the rise. They regretfully turned down an offer from Schweppes and eventually sold out to Labrador, which then considered themselves the inheritors of "over 100 years in business" title.
Blair Wells remembers working at the family firm in the late 1970s and has some vivid descriptions of the experience. Wells married Dorothy Nixon who is a prolific writer, blogger and local historian. She believes it likely that her great grandfather, a high-ranking Montreal official knew her husband's great grandfather.
Here's the story behind it. Prior to being a bottle water company, a now-demolished warehouse housed a tannery that whipped up shoe leather. The effort required a lot of hawthorn tree bark dye. Entire forests of hawthorn in Quebec were denuded for dyeing leather until a chemical workaround was created.
The tannery required a water supply and a well was built beneath. The water proved useful and a beautifully-tiled public bath - aka a swimming pool - was installed in the building.The White family seized upon public mistrust of the water supply and started selling the water instead allowing people to bathe in it. They marketed it as a healthy way to avoid disease such as typhoid.
The White and Wells families started marketing their Laurentian spring water aggressively and their ads were a family sight in newspapers from about 1900 on.The family eventually started pumping out soft drinks, which proved popular in bottles and in local bars which were paid a little bribe to serve 'em.
For a while a pair of brothers at the plant also had a short-lived side business that proved incredibly lucrative, supplying alcohol by mail to other dry provinces. According to family legend they had 100 women in a room whose sole task was to open letters full of cash. After about a year or so they were set for life.
So by the 1950s the family still had the plant and up until around 1980 they had about four trucks that would haul 500 65 lb glass bottles to fill local water coolers.Muscly delivery guys were often able to carry two of these glassy beasts at once but if one would break it would cause a huge mess of water and glass on the ground.
The company had a high-temperature sterilization machine to clean the glass bottles and they would frequently break in the high heat, leaving a dangerous mess to clean up.
Profits remained stable at the company for decades but other competitors were on the rise. They regretfully turned down an offer from Schweppes and eventually sold out to Labrador, which then considered themselves the inheritors of "over 100 years in business" title.
Blair Wells remembers working at the family firm in the late 1970s and has some vivid descriptions of the experience. Wells married Dorothy Nixon who is a prolific writer, blogger and local historian. She believes it likely that her great grandfather, a high-ranking Montreal official knew her husband's great grandfather.