EDITORIAL:
The chicken or the egg
by Brandon Mayer
Winchester is home to the largest cheese plant in Canada. Not in the region or the province... but the largest cheese plant in the country. It is of course no small task to provide the infrastructure needed for such a large operation, but most North Dundas residents would agree that the benefits outweigh the challenges.
According to census data, the median household income across all of Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry is $73,500. In North Dundas, that figure is significantly higher, at $90,000. Yes, being in close proximity to Ottawa-based employment opportunities helps that figure, but so does the Township’s largest employer. The Lactalis factory offers relatively generous wages and full time work hours for countless people – it is not a minimum wage employer, and the size and beauty of the homes in Winchester is a reflection of this.
The current council seems keenly aware of the positive impact that Lactalis has on the local community. The fact that Lactalis is the Mayor’s employer likely helps with this awareness. Within the last few years, huge steps have been taken to honour the Ault family legacy in Winchester, which is where the Lactalis factory’s roots began. We now have “Ault Way” as a ceremonial alternative name for Winchester’s Main Street, and a grand mural on the side of the Winchester Arena explains the reason for the Arena’s name – the “Sam Ault Arena”.
North Dundas’ honouring of the Ault family and the local cheese plant is certainly reciprocated in the respect that the company gives the Township and its residents. A decade ago, Winchester almost always smelled like cheese, but not fresh, delicious cheese – more like “sewage au gratin”. As is common in a working class mentality, people grew used to the smell and learned to live with it. The factory – Parmalat at the time – was a major employer, so as much as the smell was unpleasant, most people were content to conclude that it “smelled like a paycheque”.
Parmalat could have easily played the “major employer” card when locals started becoming less tolerant of the smell. Such a major employer has the kind of resources that small town folks simply don’t. A corporate decision to set up a factory somewhere else could have left many Winchester residents in poverty. And yet, as complaints about the stench kept rolling in, along with fines for environmental violations, Parmalat invested huge sums of money into making its operations odour neutral. When Lactalis took over the operations, it stayed true to this course – a good relationship with the people of Winchester was and is paramount. Sure, an occasional odour will still waft over the town, but for the most part, residents in Winchester are now able to enjoy a breath of fresh air when they open their windows. Even when some people in Winchester were choosing to bite the hand that was feeding them, Winchester’s iconic cheese plant remained civil and dedicated to finding solutions. That is not something that should go unnoticed.
More recently, North Dundas is facing a water crisis. Groundwater is not a sustainable source of water in drought conditions in a tile drained farming community. This is hardly shocking information. It’s true that the Lactalis factory uses more water than all the Township’s houses combined – such is the nature of cheesemaking. If the Lactalis factory suddenly ceased operations, it would probably add many decades to the life of the current water source infrastructure in both Winchester and Chesterville – the systems in the two villages are connected, so what benefits one will also benefit the other. However, the losses would be far greater than the gains. No one wants the cheese factory to shut down.
Despite the immense benefits of hosting the largest cheese plant in Canada, there are still naturally many eyes in the community that are looking toward the factory during this water shortage. When a Township official recently suggested that I ask Lactalis if they will also be reducing their water use during the outdoor use ban, deep down I knew that company officials would confirm the factory is thinking outside the box and doing all it can. I was right. The company confirmed that it has been condensing steam as an alternative water source, and also trucking in water to reduce the load on the municipal system. The company also confirmed that it will work with the community on a long term solution – in other words, use its resources to help North Dundas gain access to a surface water source.
To be clear: no, Lactalis did not pay me to write this article. I simply believe in giving credit where credit is due. The last piece of the puzzle – “cheese for thought”, so to speak – is the fact that the Ault family legacy in what is now North Dundas dates back to 1891. That is when the family built its first cheese making facility outside of Winchester. We often philosophically ask whether the chicken or the egg came first; well the puzzle is less complicated when it comes to the cheese vs the water in North Dundas. Winchester was a dairy hub long before the municipal water system was installed in 1960. In fact, in the 1960s, the current cheese factory almost ended up in Brockville due to a more abundant access of water there. But Winchester was chosen, and it’s no coincidence that the construction of the current factory happened in the same decade that municipal water was installed – Ault Foods needed water for its operations, and for years, the people of Winchester got it for free, thanks to the company.
There is a reason that the North Dundas community honours the Ault family legacy, and when it comes to this new water crisis, we should be careful not to take the easy route of blaming the factory. Lactalis – formerly Parmalat, and Ault Foods before that – is not a freeloader stealing our water resources. The company’s roots predate water infrastructure here, and indeed, the company’s history is intertwined with the history of municipal water in North Dundas. Decades of dragging our feet on finding a more sustainable water source is anything but the company’s fault. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, because this community needs a solution, not a scapegoat.