The Story of a Candy Box
In a current decluttering effort, I pulled a scruffy box of old letters from my closet. The letters were great, like old friends, but the box itself caught my attention. It says in prominent blue printing: “MR. DEALER, This display container has been designed to help you to capitalize on the high percentage of IMPULSE SALES enjoyed by candies. Prominently displayed it will assist you in increasing your sales and profits.” Okay – so a candy box. And sure enough, on the side in handsome navy blue art-deco lettering, it says,
McCormick’s Candies.
There is a big loopy signature on top: L.E. Feltmate. That was my Uncle Lindsay. In 1925 he had emigrated from the fishing village of Whitehead, Nova Scotia to Boston where he studied and worked as a machinist for many years. In World War II he joined the US Navy and served on the USS Pasadena in the Pacific arena. In the late 1950s after the War and the passing of his wife, Lindsay came home to Whitehead to take over his father’s general store. Below centre is his father Bill on the stoop of the shop. This old box was in that store.
I was 4 years old. The old store stood close beside my grandparents’ home. I can just remember the jars of penny candies, the glass fronted ice cream case and the shelves of canned goods. There were glass and wood display cases on top of the counters and the counters themselves had tiny bannisters along their edges. The counters had been salvaged from a shipwreck off Whitehead, and in the ship’s galley the tiny bannisters had kept dishes and pots from sliding off in a big sea. There was a little pot-bellied stove that the fishermen sat around, smoking. There was a tiny back office that had a window facing the house, and a Victrola. Uncle Lindsay would go in there, open the window, wind up the Victrola and put on the 78rpm recording of “Maple Sugar”, the famous Ward Allen fiddle tune.
This was my signal: If I came over, there would be some candy for me!
Which brings us back to the McCormick’s Candy box. Despite the scruffy exterior cardboard, the inside is all white, and the flaps are designed to fold back to make a handsome display of the favorite McCormicks of the day.
Turning the box over, I found the box manufacturer’s imprint: “Hinde and Dauch Paper Company of Canada Limited, Chatham, Canada.” McCormick’s was based in London, Ontario, and Chatham, too, is in southern Ontario. But what really caught my eye about the imprint was the little woman wearing a box dress – and her name is there! Cora Gated, as in corrugated cardboard. Click to get a closer look. This demanded Googling!
Cora was born the same year as me. She was conceived in 1953 and trademarked in 1954 as a mascot of the Hinde and Dauch Paper Company, a maker of “corrugated boxes and corrugated specialties”. This fancy McCormick’s display box appears to be one of those “specialties”. H&D had been founded in 1880 in Sandusky, Ohio. The two owners had developed a hay-baling process before getting into paper making. The company opened a Canadian arm as early as 1910. You can read more of their history, HERE.
In her little box hat and dress, Cora Gated appeared not only on boxes but on lighters, playing cards, and even neckties. In the 1950s/60s, Cora appeared in ad campaigns that will plunge you right back into the advertising world of TV’s “Mad Men”. The Box Vox blog shares this one which perhaps inspired a 1970s burlesque dancer to pick up the name for her stage persona: “The laminated delight. CORA GATED. She’ll wrap you around her finger!” You can read more about Cora the H&D mascot on the Weird Universe blog and on the Box Vox blog.
McCormick’s was a highly successful Canadian company. Thomas McCormick, an Irish immigrant who arrived in London, Ontario in 1849 started a small confectionery business in 1858. The company eventually became one of the largest in Canada, and Thomas was called “The King of Candy”. When Thomas died in 1906 his 3 sons took over the business and continued making candy, chocolate and biscuits. Coincidentally, two of MCCormick’s “retro” candies that you might remember, marshmallow bananas and marshmallow strawberries, were first produced in 1906. A gigantic new state-of-the-art building was opened in London ON in 1914, based on designs created by Thomas McCormick. It was gleaming white and graced with large windows that made up 68 percent of its façade. The locals dubbed it the “Palace of Sweets” and the “Sunshine Palace”. In 1914, McCormick’s had 420 employees and produced 61,000 kg of Candy per day! Between 1922 and 1958, several wings were added to the Palace with more production facilities and a warehouse. By 1952, there were 1,194 employees – so Uncle Lindsay’s McCormick’s box dates from the company’s heyday.
In more recent years, the company has changed hands several times, having gone from the McCormick sons to Westons and then beyond, and sadly, in 2007, went into receivership and the plant was shut down. The Palace of Sweets has been sitting empty since then, attracting opportunistic scrappers, municipal concerns and citizens’ complaints.
You can take a “photo tour” of the abandoned Palace at the blog Jermalism, where I found these two photos; and you also can find more photos and history HERE. As Forrest Gump famously said, “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what your going to get.”
very entertaining…..great history…amusing….another job well done , Peggy
Aw, thanks Cynthia! I knew you would be one to appreciate the little lady in her box dress.
Funny how the box of candy takes you back in time! My mom had box of chocolates that that was empty. (I tired to find it but couldn’t). I didn’t know who gave it to her – my dad, someone at the store where she worked, or she bought it herself. She was a young woman, new wife and just came to the United States. She was working at a Department store. This box, that once held chocolates, was precious to her. I can imagine her reading the letters and putting them carefully in the empty box, sad, thinking of her home so many miles away.
Yes, these things take on special meaning, don’t they!