13th Annual Cherry Fair, July 2008
"The Laurel Packinghouse in downtown Kelowna is one of our favourite venues for events; the building has a story to tell and our clients love that!"
Gayle Voyer, Total Events
"The historic Laurel Packinghouse offers a glimpse into the past of Kelowna's vital orchard industry. It envelops visitors with the aromas, textures, and materials of a bustling packinghouse built in 1918. Today, our tourism industry benefits from this unique and intensely local experience that delights visitors and leaves them with the feeling that they've reached out and touched this city's past."
Nancy Cameron, CEO Tourism Kelowna
We invite you to share your personal stories of the Laurel Packinghouse. Did you or someone you know once work at the Laurel Packinghouse? Perhaps you attended a community event there, or had a memorable visit to the BC Orchard Industry Museum, or took in one of our wine events at the VQA Wine Shop. Please leave your story in the comments section below. Thank you.
We really enjoyed the Cherry Fair at the Laurel. It's such a beautiful building and the perfect venue for family events.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Second World War,from 1939 to 1945 Most of the able bodied men were in the armed forces and oveseas,fighting the Enemy or somewhere at a Station in Canada learning how to fight that Enemy, and During that period,we "schoolkids" were asked to help out by replacing those fighting men by working in the orchards and the packing houses,with the bringing in of the harvests and getting the harvested fruit ready for shipment. In doing so, we were allowed to be off school, particularly in the Fall, to get employment in the packing houses, hence, we were off school for September and October. I was fortunate to get work at the Laurel Packinghouse. As I recall, we made 50 cents an hour ( a good wage in those days). My job was to "hand truck" freshly made apple boxes being made by an expert box maker who,at first, made the boxes by hand. Simpson's Sawmill provided the "shook"(all the pieces of wood to make a box )which the "box maker" would assemble with hammer & nails . As things progressed a box making machine was produced which simply necessitated the man to put the wood pieces into slots in the machine which then nailed the box together in the correct manner. That machine did all the hammering & nailing that the man used to do. He simply put the wood pieces in the right places (slots), stepped on a foot pedal and the machine did the rest. I simly "trucked" the boxes, which were stacked about 6 feet high, into a holding room--- a HUGE room where all the boxes were kept until required for packing. We made pretty good money doing this work.
ReplyDeleteI love going to your cherry fest.
ReplyDeleteIt was the thing my dad loves to do on his birthday.
Its always a great family event with lots of people. How you keep the tradition going! (:
-Amy Gullickson
Thank you everyone for your stories. We enjoy reading what the Laurel Packinghouse means to you. Keep them coming!
ReplyDeleteMy earliest memory of The Laurel involves auditioning for some kind of low budget (who knows if it even happened?) movie back in 1986. My mom let me skip school for the day and me and two friends headed down for what we thought would be our big break. The “casting agents” were cloistered in a room that is now the Orchard Industry Museum, and we sat in the lobby (I guess it was) for at least three hours waiting to get in. The parts we were trying for were advertised for women over the age of 18. Despite falling a few years below the mark we were sure we would be convincing enough to inspire them to pick us anyway. Looking back at pictures of myself now at that age, I see that quite the contrary was true and I actually looked about three years younger. We were the only ones who turned out for the audition, along with two completely strung out girls who had us in stitches the whole time, regaling us with their tales of hitch hiking adventures and other vignettes from their wild and wacky lives. When the guys in the room finally humoured us by letting us in, I was asked, for my audition part, to pretend to convince a police officer not to give me a speeding ticket. Not yet of driving age, I faltered and, yes, failed. Obviously, I never did become a movie star. But a piece of me – a yellowed memory – still lives in the old building, alongside the throngs of other people and their stories.
ReplyDelete