Ottawa’s Golden Age of baking – the lost bakeries of Old Ottawa East
How Old Ottawa East’s three bakeries – Morrison Lamothe, Walker’s, and Ideal Cake – turned our community into Ottawa’s breadbasket for much of the 20th century.
LEFT: This 1943 newspaper ad from the Ottawa Journal promotes Walker’s Bread as deliciously fresh and deliciously good, and a fundamental way to stay healthy during wartime rationing; RIGHT: This popular Wonder Bread billboard from the 1920s touts the bread as a healthy dietary boost that “dextrinates” starches.
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JILL WHERRETT
Imagine strolling down a quiet neighbourhood street on a cool August morning. The aroma of freshly baked bread or sweet cake wafts through the air, and behind you comes the rhythmic clip-clop of a horse towing a delivery wagon.
Such was the scene for a large part of the last century, when Old Ottawa East was a hub of baked goods. Three well-loved business called it home: Walker’s Breads, Morrison Lamothe Baker and the Ideal Cake Company.
Walker’s Bread stood at the corner of Evelyn Avenue and Simcoe Street. Brothers James and John Walker opened shop in 1914 as a cake business, expanding into bread production in 1921. By the early 1950s, Walker’s employed 130 people and had 60 routes across the city covered by their salesmen, trucks and wagons. A December 1952 advertising supplement in the Evening Citizen plugged Walker’s recent modernization program, including installation of “the newest and most automatic oven known to the baking industry,” capable of producing 3,500 loaves of bread an hour.
In the 1920s, Walker’s advertised its “Butter-Maid Cakes”, while a 1938 ad promoted Walker’s “Kitchen-Proved” cakes produced “under the watchful eye of Miss Jean Campbell, Walker’s Graduate Dietician”. A mouth-watering range of sweet tea breads were popular in the 1940s.
LEFT: The Morrison Lamothe commercial bakery was located along the Rideau Canal at 95 Echo Drive. This photo, taken in the mid-1970s, reflects the commercial and industrial past of our community, which has now transitioned to largely residential property uses; CENTRE: Walker’s Bread Company baked the popular Wonder Bread product for Ottawa consumers from this commercial bakery in Old Ottawa East until the property was demolished in the 1970s; RIGHT: In this 1956 photo, an apparent mix-up occurred between a Walker’s Bread delivery truck and the company’s horse-drawn wagons which were undergoing a phase-out at the time.
Sharing a slice of our bread and cake baking legacy
Later, Walker’s held the sole Ottawa franchise for “Hollywood Bread”, a brand marketed in the mid-20th century as a diet product, with ads featuring popular actresses. In 1953, two Walker’s salesmen placed first and second among 10,000 Hollywood Bread salesmen in North America.
Cartoon characters Wendy Walker, “the Walker girl”, outfitted in a bonnet and apron with a large bow, and Freshie, a boy clad in shorts and a striped shirt with a single curl protruding from the top of his head, appeared in Walker’s advertising and on its signature blue gingham wrappers.
In 1959 Walker’s was bought by General Bakeries, and renamed Walker Bakeries Limited, still managed by Bruce Walker, the son of co-founder John. The well-known “Wonder Bread” product was produced from the company’s bakery premises in Old Ottawa East. In 1975, General Bakeries shut down the Ottawa operation, citing the inefficiency of the small plant with aging equipment, and laid off its remaining 60 employees.
Pan Dandy Cake and Donald Duck Bread
Morrison Lamothe Bakery, an Ottawa institution founded by brothers-in-law Cecil Morrison and Richard Lamothe, opened for business at 95 Echo Drive in 1933. Operations were modest at first – they started with eleven delivery routes, run by “discouraged salesmen,” with “poor horses and unpainted wagons” according to an early ad. But success came quickly: within a year they’d expanded to 26 delivery routes.
The bakery’s early offerings included Pan Dandy bread, at just 10¢ a loaf in 1933, as well as Pan Dandy Cake. Later came Donald Duck Bread, wrapped in packing with the famous cartoon duck displayed front and centre. Also popular were the company’s doughnuts, cookies, cakes, pies and wedding cakes.
Morrison Lamothe continued to grow, becoming the largest bakery in the region by the 1960s, and diversifying into the restaurant and catering business, and later, frozen foods. In 1967, the bakery had a proud role in Canada’s 100th birthday celebrations, constructing the massive twenty foot high four-tiered cake (much of it plywood decorated with icing, with cake in the base layer) cut by Queen Elizabeth on Parliament Hill.
Cecil Morrison’s daughters, Jean Pigott and Grete Hale – well-known figures in Ottawa – led the company though the late 1960s and 70s. But as demand for traditional baked goods declined, the bakery side of the business was sold in 1979 and the Echo Drive plant closed, marking the end of large-scale commercial baking in Old Ottawa East.
A two-pound pudding for 65 cents!
A little less known was the Ideal Cake Company of Ottawa, located at 52 Concord Street. It was founded by army pals Harold G. Fisher and Emile Soublière, at least one of whom had worked as a baker at Walker’s. After a start in Sandy Hill, they moved to Concord St in the early 1930s, churning out cakes, cookies, macaroons, and other products, including “Cremo doughnuts”, and supplied grocery stores in and around Ottawa.
Ideal’s slogan was “Better Made Cakes”, and their 1930 Christmas ad offered holiday cakes and puddings “as good or better than you can make yourself”. A two-pound “very choice” pudding could be had for 65¢. By 1944, the company had 31 employees. The founders retired in 1954 and the business appears to have then changed ownership or closed soon after.
A scroll through local Facebook groups like “Lost Ottawa” and “Old Ottawa and Bytown” turns up dozens of nostalgic posts. Many – whether they lived near the bakeries, passed by on the bus, or took Sunday drives along the canal – can’t forget the tantalizing aromas. There are also stories of kids catching warm balls of dough thrown by bakery workers, buying half-price bread off the back of delivery trucks and year-end school trips to Morrison Lamothe.
And then there were the horses. Until the 1950s, home delivery often meant horse-drawn wagons. Morrison Lamothe’s jade-green trucks, decorated with Donald Duck, were a local fixture, as were Walker’s wagons. Residents remember horses stopping at the right homes without being told, and kids rushing out to pet them.
Today, these businesses are just memories, with condos and homes occupying their former sites. But as you pull a loaf of sourdough out of the oven or serve a slice of cake, you might just catch the scent of a long neighbourhood tradition.
We know that there are lots of readers of The Mainstreeter who remember the local OOE bakeries and their popular products. If you have some fond childhood memories of the famed Old Ottawa East bakeries, you can email them to us at editor@mainstreeter. ca – we’d love to publish them in our next issue!