Canada: ONTARIO: Market Day

Stocky Eugene Gauthier, 45, and his wife Winnifred worked late Friday evening loading their new Mercury one-ton truck. At 5:30 next morning, they were off to Ottawa’s By Ward Market. In a jiffy the Gauthiers were setting up shop (they pay $35 a year for a stall, plus 10¢ for each day they actually use it). Gene backed up to the curb and began to arrange the vegetables and fruit on packing boxes, along the running board, and on the tailboard. When all was in order, he left Winnifred in charge and went to a nearby lunchroom for a belated breakfast (pork chop, pineapple pie, coffee with plenty of sugar). His wife went to eat later.

Peaches & Plums. This year’s vegetable crop is a record-breaker and By Ward Market showed it. Ripe tomatoes as big as softballs glowed in almost every stall. Heaps of corn, cucumbers, rutabagas and broccoli were piled around them. On the fruit stands were new Duchess and Melba apples, peaches, plums and melons. For added color and fragrance there were asters, snapdragons, baby’s breath, zinnias.

The scene was older than Ottawa itself. By Ward Market had been a going concern since the 1840s, when the capital-to-be was known as Bytown,* a lusty lumbermen’s town. Here in nine acres of open stalls, some 500 farmers sell their vegetables, chickens, suckling pigs, sides of mutton, raw wool, herbs, honey, eggs, cheese, flowers.

For many a farmer, market days begin at 4 in the morning when the wholesalers show up to buy for other markets. Retailers like the Gauthiers arrive later, and for them business does not get brisk until about 8 o’clock. Thereafter they are seldom without customers, who pinch and punch their fruit and vegetables and ask them to pull open the husks of sweet corn to make sure the kernels are full and firm.

Carrots & Corn. Market prices are about the same as in Ottawa’s retail stores, but sometimes there are bargains, and for most buyers there is fascination in the sprawling confusion of the stalls. Gene Gauthier knew what he wanted for his vegetables before he got to market last week: 35¢ for a dozen ears of corn, a cent apiece for cucumbers, 25¢ for an 11-quart basket of tomatoes, 10¢ for a 5-lb. bag of carrots. Some farmers sprinkle their vegetables with water to make them look fresher, but Gene feels that makes them soggy and pulpy.

By 4 p.m., with sales dropping, Gene began to shave prices. Corn dropped a nickel. Finally, at 8 p.m., his truck was empty. Dead tired, he and Winnifred set out for home. It had been a good day and there was more than $100 in the pocket of Gene’s heavy black pants.

* Originally named after Lieut. Colonel John By, its founder, who also gave his name to the market because it is in the city’s By ward.