That’s what the town’s sign said in Canada’s centennial year. For most of the twentieth century, flue-cured tobacco shaped Delhi: its farms and kilns, its halls and newcomers, its research station and its auction floor. This is that history, from the record and the people who lived it.
The town sign, 1867–1967Wikipedia uploader (PD-self) · Public domain
Contemporary illustration
Lot1856The name Delhi is adoptedLot1874Quance mills open on Big CreekLot1893Delhi incorporated as a townLot192330-acre crop at nearby LynedochLot1930sQuance mills cut lumber for kilnsLot1933Research substation opens west of townLot1949The Hungarian House opensLot1950The German Home opensLot1957Growers’ marketing board formedLot1959NFB films the harvest in DelhiLot1961Canada’s first bulk kiln tested at DelhiLot1979Delhi Tobacco Museum builtLot2009The Delhi exchange closes
Lot1856The name Delhi is adoptedLot1874Quance mills open on Big CreekLot1893Delhi incorporated as a townLot192330-acre crop at nearby LynedochLot1930sQuance mills cut lumber for kilnsLot1933Research substation opens west of townLot1949The Hungarian House opensLot1950The German Home opensLot1957Growers’ marketing board formedLot1959NFB films the harvest in DelhiLot1961Canada’s first bulk kiln tested at DelhiLot1979Delhi Tobacco Museum builtLot2009The Delhi exchange closes
01
The towna mill town on Big Creek
Before the leaf, there was the creek
Delhi grew up on Big Creek. Local histories say Frederick Sovereen settled there around 1812, kept a tavern and made plug tobacco, a century before the flue-cured boom. The crossroads went by Sovereen’s Corners, then Fredericksburg, before taking the name Delhi in 1856.S36
The Quance family ran the mills on the creek from 1874 until 1970. In the 1930s those mills cut the lumber for the new crop’s kilns, laths and barns.S33 In 1933 the federal government opened a tobacco research substation just 4 km west of town.S1
Tobacco drew newcomers to Delhi from across Europe. Many started as labourers, became sharecroppers and saved for farms of their own. Then they built clubs, churches and halls, and some still stand. The Delhi Tobacco Project recorded their stories in English, Flemish, French, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Polish.S5
1949
Hungarian
The Tobacco District Hungarian House opened on 15 May 1949. Its history records that about 1,000 Hungarians answered a 1933 newspaper call for tobacco workers.S8
A drama club formed in 1943 became the Belgian Club, whose hall opened in 1948. For nearly seventy years it hosted archery, feather bowling, pigeon racing and dances.S9
German-speaking settlers founded the German Association Club of Delhi on 20 April 1936. Their German Home was built in 1949 and held its first dance in November 1950.S24
Lithuanians were working Delhi-area tobacco farms by 1930–31, and some grew their own crop from 1932. By the Second World War, about a hundred Lithuanian families and individuals lived around Delhi.S29
Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch and other families, and seasonal workers from Quebec, the Maritimes, the Caribbean and Mexico. Their chapters are still being researched.S5S18
Directed by Terence Macartney-Filgate for the NFB’s Candid Eye series. The film plays from nfb.ca.S30S31 Still: a woman in a tobacco field, ca. 1945, Archives of Ontario, public domain.
The gang, from field to kiln
PrimerWorked down the rows by hand, snapping off the ripe bottom leaves two or three at a time.S35S37
Boat driverDrove the horse-drawn “tobacco boat” that carried the leaf out of the field.S37
TierAt the tying table, bound the bunches of leaf onto four-foot sticks with cord.S35
KilnThe filled sticks were hung in the kiln and cured for about a week, the heat raised slowly from about 90°F to 170°F.S35
The first flue-cured tobacco is grown in extreme southwestern Ontario.S1
1923
The new belt begins
They buy the old Chrysler farm at Lynedoch and harvest a 30-acre commercial crop, which the federal history calls the first of the new belt.S2
Tobacco and curing barns, Ca. 1920 · Archives of Ontario, I0004344
1931
Norfolk takes the lead
Norfolk’s flue-cured production overtakes the total tobacco production of Essex and Kent.S3
1933
Science comes to Delhi
A federal tobacco research substation opens on 20 hectares about 4 km west of Delhi.S1
1943–45
The wartime harvest
Permits are needed to work on a tobacco farm, and army units help bring in the crop.S1
1949
The Hungarian House opens
Delhi’s Hungarian community opens its hall on 15 May 1949.S8
1957
The marketing board
Growers form a marketing board, with quota and auction exchanges at Delhi, Tillsonburg and Aylmer.S10
1961
Canada’s first bulk kiln
The Delhi station buys a bulk-curing kiln from the United States to test, the first in Canada.S1
1966
Seasonal workers
Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program begins, with Jamaica.S18
1967
Peak acreage
Ontario plants 128,000 acres of flue-cured tobacco, up from 30,000 in 1933.S4
Tobacco field in Long Point, 1952 · Archives of Ontario, I0015246
1977–88
The voices recorded
The Delhi Tobacco Project records 308 cassettes of oral history, about 267 hours, in six languages.S5
1979
A museum in a pack barn
A museum built in the form of a typical tobacco pack barn goes up above Quance Park in Delhi.S6
Delhi Tobacco Museum & Heritage Centre, 2017 · Jfvoll
1988
The long decline
Production has fallen nearly 50% since 1982, and growers from 2,500 to 1,500, Norfolk’s MPP tells the Legislature.S12
2008
The buyout
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announces the federal Tobacco Transition Program at the Delhi exchange on 1 August. The Auditor General later puts it at about $284 million.S38S14
2009
The last auction
The Delhi exchange closes as the quota system ends.S11
06
The scale of itstraight from the federal record
By 1973, most of Ontario’s crop grew within 20 miles of Delhi
of oral history, about 267 hours in six languages, recorded from 1977 to 1988 by the Multicultural History Society of Ontario and the Delhi Tobacco Museum. The voices of the people who grew it.
07
From the archiveopen-licence photographs, credited
The faces of tobacco country
Essex County · the old beltWorkers in an Essex County tobacco field, in the province’s first tobacco belt.Ca. 1909–1930 · Archives of Ontario, I0032837 · OGL-ONDelhiThe former Calvin Presbyterian Church, Delhi.2017 · JFVoll · CC BY-SA 4.0Ca. 1945A young woman and a horse in a tobacco field.Ca. 1945 · Gordon W. Powley, Archives of Ontario, I0002759 · Public domainSecond lifeA tobacco kiln reused as the Delhi District Chamber of Commerce information centre.2000 · RTBoughner · Public domain1955“$80,000,000 Industry”: the National Film Board’s photo story on the Canadian tobacco harvest.13 September 1955 · National Film Board of Canada, photos by Chris Lund · Public domain1900–1910Tobacco harvesters show off their crop.1900–1910 · Library and Archives Canada · CC BY 2.0Vittoria, NorfolkÉdouard Jacobs on his tractor with the tobacco harvest from his farm in Vittoria, Ontario.Library and Archives Canada · CC BY 2.0Belgian familiesTobacco farming, from a Belgian Canadian family album, with Mrs. Van Compern.1928–1929 · MHSO fonds, Archives of Ontario, I0057364 · Public domainCa. 1945A man and a woman among the tobacco plants.Ca. 1945 · Gordon W. Powley, Archives of Ontario, I0002761 · Public domainDelhiThe Delhi Tobacco Museum & Heritage Centre, built in 1979 in the form of a pack barn.2017 · Jfvoll · CC BY-SA 4.0
ICa. 1920 · AO
IICa. July 1969 · AO
IIICa. 1945 · AO
IV1952 · AO
V2011 · Sean Hurley
