Reclaim the Bread

I’m at my local Loblaws grocery store in Ottawa, Ontario on a mission to replenish our pantry with flour and other baking essentials. Thoughts of baking evoke the warmest of memories from home. 

In maman’s kitchen, tearing a morsel of fresh Barbari bread delivered from the oven just seconds ago. The pads of my fingertips are scorched, but I endure the pain like a flagellant as I transcend my corporeal self and draw closer to the Holy Grain. With a smile in her eyes, mom chastises me for my impatience and for a moment we regress to an earlier chapter in our lives. It’s wonderful.

I’m awash in nostalgia. Everything from the flatbread’s crisp outer shell and chewy interior to the shimmering egg-yolk glaze with saffron, nigella seeds, and fried onion (piaz dagh). The long sheets of bread were never meant for me alone, but I can’t resist the urge. I claw away portion-after-portion, adding slices of creamy, salty feta, sometimes a drizzle of honey, soft butter, black-cherry jam. Oh. My. God.

The fiend in my mouth was too busy hot-boxing yeast and dosing carbs to notice the sirens of distention screaming from my gut. The “goodness” of freshly baked bread is negatively correlated with time – every minute that passes contributes to its further degradation. The shorter the period between oven delivery and mastication, the greater the experience of joy. 

The practice of making and consuming bread predates the birth of civilization. Somewhere near Jawa, Jordan in the Black Desert, some 14,000 years ago, a group of Natufian hunter-gatherers ground wild wheat and barley into a flour and then mixed this with a dry pulp made from club-rush tubers. The resulting dough was then baked on hot stones around a fire. No doubt, the taste, texture, and experience of eating this ancient Natufian bread was quite apart from my 21st century Barbari. Still, we share much in common: wet and dry ingredients mixed and kneaded to create a dough, baked until much of the moisture has evaporated, and then consumed. Has there ever been a recipe in cookery more axiomatic than bread?

There’s something innocent, wholesome, almost meek about bread-making, don’t you think? It combines so many aspects of what it means to be human and the leavening agents that give rise to culture, community, and civilization. Examples from both ancient and modern practices demonstrate the diversity of ingredients with which (and conditions wherein) bread-making has flourished. Its simplicity makes it accessible to all and infinitely versatile.

Really, besides water, is there any food or drink more democratic, more radical, more anti-establishment, more punk, more proletariat, more anarchist, more labour, more working-class, more serf, more common than bread? At the same time, does it not also grace the tables of our most royal, posh, bourgeois, and opulent members? 

O the Great Leavener cum the Great Equalizer.

Since antiquity, humanity has made every effort to bring this nutritious, filling, and humble feed to the masses. Farms grew in size and capacity. Grains were bred and developed to produce higher and more resilient yields. Innovations in storage and transportation allowed us to access fresh warm loaves at any time of the day or year. Labour was specialized, divided, and streamlined to relieve us from the taxing means of production, allowing us more time to break bread with our loved ones.

Which brings me back to my current predicament. I’m still in the aisle at Loblaws, debating between three brands of flour: Robin Hood, Five Roses, and No Name. The prices and ingredients are virtually the same. Five Roses has the most attractive packaging. The maple leaf along with an assurance, “Made with 100% Canadian Wheat”, is branded on both the Robin Hood and Five Roses products. The No Name option is a dollar cheaper and apparently the most popular, but I wonder what I might be compromising. Will I get what I pay for?

In addition to making bread more available, industry and competition scaled up production, drove down costs, and homogenized flavour. To further improve shelf life, millers had learned to discard bran and wheatgerm, giving rise to “refined” white breads. For some time, these refined breads were reserved for refined Lords and Ladies. Afterall, it is only appropriate that pure white breads be enjoyed by pure White Christians – let the serfs, prisoners, whores, and slaves quarrel like dogs over dark and stale crusts. It is only appropriate for their station. 

In the late 20th century (and many of us can attest to this), white breads’ dearth of nutrition and taste became common knowledge. Suddenly, the trend had reversed: cheap fortified Wonderbread for the poor and 100% Ancient Whole Grains for the rich. (Honestly, humans are such assholes). 

Like everything else, the bread industry experienced a robust oven-spring in profits (all puns in this article are absolutely intended) and, as capitalisms’ predictable trajectory often proceeds, the mercantile elite and robber barons secured their investments by buying up or driving out competition, integrating their ventures vertically to assume complete control over extraction, manufacturing, supply, transport, marketing, and retail.

Case in point, the story of George Weston and the epic tale of Canadian Bread.

As this post is already quite long, I’m going to try my best to keep this history lesson succinct. Indeed the tale of Canadian bread and milling is a winding and infinitely branching rabbit hole that could easily occupy a keen sleuth with years of tumbling. As such, I’ll keep to the main plot as much as possible, offering hyperlinks along the way for those interested in pursuing tangents.

Sarcastic Warning: No women will appear in any of the text below as they have been relegated to the bread boxes of colonial history and, frankly, shouldn’t be bothered with such matters of business, enterprise, and conquest. Trust that the women did indeed exist, carrying out their prescribed domestic duties under the protection of their capable husbands. 

Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi

George Weston was born on March 23, 1864. The son of British working-class immigrants, George Weston started as a bread maker’s apprentice in Toronto at the age of 12 – coincidentally, the same year the Indian Act was introduced. Uninhibited by the social and economic constraints faced by First Nations peoples, George Weston seized his dumb luck (i.e., being born a White Christian man to a settler colonial family in late 1800s Canada) and became a bread salesman. In 1882, he started his own business, George Weston Limited, adopting the latest technological bread-making innovations. He then established G. Weston’s Bread Factory in the 1890s, supplying more than one hundred towns across Ontario. In 1901, the Bread Factory became the Model Bakery Company Limited, renowned as Canada’s largest and most modern bread factory.

Weston’s “Model Bakery” at the corner of Soho and Phoebe in Toronto. (Source)

Following the merger of five of Canada’s leading bread companies (including Weston’s Model Bakery) between 1901 and 1911, the Canada Bread Company was formed with 47-year-old George Weston as a director. The five companies agreed not to compete with Canada Bread for a period of ten years.

As a brief aside, the Canada Bread Company owned brands such as Ben’s, Stonemill, and Dempsters, and would eventually be acquired by Maple Leaf Foods (owned by Michael McCain of the New Brunswick McCain Foods dynasty). In 2014, Canada Bread was purchased by Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican multinational company whose brands include SaraLee and Barcel (the makers of Takis). 

Returning to our original plotline, in 1921, after the ten-year non-competition period had expired, George Weston re-entered the bread business. In 1922, he partnered with his son, Garfield Weston (who had served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during WWI), to create Weston’s English Quality Biscuits. George Weston died in 1924, leaving his 26-year-old son, Garfield, as president of George Weston Ltd. Garfield Weston then began his voracious campaign of expansion and acquisition.

In 1935, Garfield founded the British-based Allied Bakeries Limited, which is now known as Associated British Foods (ABF) – one of the world’s largest food processing and retailing companies. Today, majority shares of ABF belong to Wittington Investments Limited, a British holding company owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Weston family. ABF owns a number of well known brands, such as Twinings, Patak’s, Ovaltine, Mazola corn oil, and Fleischmann’s Yeast, and is also parent company to a number of large subsidiaries, including Primark, British Sugar, Zambia Sugar, Frontier Agriculture Ltd., and George Weston Foods.

While he was securing his British foothold, Garfield was also entrenching his monopoly of Canada’s retail grocery market. By the mid 1950s, George Weston Limited had acquired Loblaw Groceterias Co. Limited, and secured control over Loblaw Companies in both Canada and the United States. In 1972, Garfield’s youngest son, Galen Weston, was appointed CEO of Loblaw Companies. In 2006, Galen’s son, Willard Galen Garfield Weston (a.k.a. Galen Weston Jr. – I’m totally rolling my eyes at how these dudes masterbated to their patriarchal lineage) became the executive chairman of Loblaw Companies Limited. Ten years later, Galen Jr. took over from his father as CEO of George Weston Limited.

Today, George Weston Limited owns 52.5% of stock in Loblaw Companies Limited, and the Canadian retailer is parent to many well known brands and franchises, including (but not limited to):

• Atlantic Superstore
• Dominion Stores
• Real Canadian Superstore
• Loblaws / Loblaw Great Food / Loblaws CityMarket
• Provigo / Provigo Le Marché
• T & T Supermarket
• Zehrs / Zehrs Great Food
• SaveEasy
• SuperValu
• Valu-mart
• Freshmart
• Your Independent Grocer
• No Frills
• President’s Choice, no name and T&T private label products
• Joe Fresh,
• President’s Choice Financial
• PC Optimum
• Life (over-the-counter pharmacy and medicinal items)
• Shoppers Drug Mart

Today, besides its grocery retail business, George Weston Limited is heavily invested in real estate through its Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust – Canada’s largest real estate investment trust. With its bakery business, Weston Foods, only bringing in under 10% of the company’s net asset value, it was time to divest. In 2021, George Weston Limited announced the sale of its Weston Foods fresh and frozen bakery businesses to FGF Brands Inc. The brands acquired by FGF as part of this $1.2 Billion sale include Wonder, ACE Bakery, Country Harvest, D’Italiano, Casa Mendosa, Dave’s Killer Bread, and Gadoua.

As you can see, the Weston Family dynasty has controlled and certainly continues to control a significant share of the retail market in Canada and the United Kingdom. If you have purchased virtually anything at a Canadian grocery store or pharmacy, chances are that your hard-earned dollars have helped to pad the deep Weston pockets. 

After about thirty minutes of staring at my options and skimming through company profiles on Wikipedia, I’ve come to learn that I’ve been bamboozled. The choices presented to me are illusory. Robin Hood, Five Roses, and No Name are not competing brands, but consumer levers in some elaborate Skinner Box designed to distract us rodents, pawing at the crumbs of sustenance, scurrying about from aisle-to-aisle, store-to-store, in a never-ending maze with no exit while the reigning oligarchs dance about with statesmen, cracking open inherited bottles from family vineyards and condemning to the incinerator any mouse bold enough to climb the walls. 

But the Westons are not the only oligarchs on the block. Though all three flour options before me are being sold at a Weston retailer, only one is owned by the Weston Family, i.e., the no name brand. What about Robin Hood and Five Roses? Let’s begin with the infamous Robin Hood.

Robin Hood flour is made by the Horizon Milling division of Cargill, which is a privately held global food corporation based in Minnesota. Cargill has long been America’s largest private company with revenues in 2021 of $165 Billion. Roughly 90% of Cargill is owned by the Cargill Family. 

This might get a bit confusing, but although Robin Hood flour is marketed to the food service and industrial sector by Horizon Milling, it is marketed to the consumer retail sector by the J.M. Smucker Company (yes, the brand that makes jam). This business agreement is the result of a deal reached between the two companies in 2006 when Smuckers announced the sale of three milling facilities in Canada (including Robin Hood flour) to Horizon Milling for $78 million (USD). As part of the deal, Horizon Milling would own and operate the Canadian mills in Saskatoon, Montreal, and Burlington, and Smuckers would continue to market Robin Hood products to retail.

As an aside, Mark Timothy Smucker (president and CEO of the Smucker Company), also sits on the board of directors for the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, an American multinational personal care corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products, including: Kleenex facial tissue, Kotex feminine hygiene products, Cottonelle, Scott and Andrex toilet paper, Wypall utility wipes, KimWipes scientific cleaning wipes and Huggies disposable diapers and baby wipes. Yes, that’s correct, these are all one company.

In addition to Robin Hood flour, Smucker’s food brands include: 9Lives, Kibbles ‘n Bits, Meow Mix, Milk-Bone, and Nature’s Recipe, Bick’s (pickles and condiments), Adams (peanut butter), Carnation (milk – in Canada), Dickinson’s (preserves), Double Fruit (preserves), Golden Temple (Indian foods), Jif (peanut butter), and Smucker’s (preserves, peanut butter), Folgers, and – drum roll, please – Five Roses flour.

There it is. We have come full circle. The three products that first sent me down this dizzying maze linked together in a grotesque incestual web of monopoly, oligarchy, and the centralization of corporate power. Am I claiming that there’s some secret cabal controlling consumer demand and manipulating our purchasing behaviours? Yes, I think I might be. Don’t believe me? Watch this:

Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a cabal. Perhaps this is just capitalism doing what it was designed to do, i.e., to increase profits by expanding market control and minimizing competition. Maybe we’re all being naïve expecting anything different, or something better. Still, I can’t help but make connections between the unbridled growth of transnational corporations and wildfires. I can’t help but to blame greedy oligarchs for encouraging hyperconsumption in the West by exploiting cheap labour overseas to maintain the steady flow of readily available and inexpensive consumer goods. It’s the wet markets in China and COVID-19. It’s climate change, rising sea levels, and climate refugees. It’s deforestation, reduced biodiversity, habitat loss, and the death knell for many species.

A few days ago when the Washington Post reported on a study published in PLOS Climate, which found, “the richest 10 percent of U.S. households are responsible for 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions,” well, let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly shocked. We all too often blame consumers for demanding unethical and unsustainable commodities, while treating these mega-corporations as amoral entities – just doing their best to keep up with our insatiable appetites for stuff. What’s interesting about this study is that it didn’t look at the link between consumer choices and greenhouse gas emissions; rather, it looked at income sources and found that as you move up the income ladder, “an increasing share of emissions is associated with investments.” 

Left with few immediate alternatives, I settled on the No Name brand for no good reason. What reason is there? Afterall, choice is an illusion at a place like Loblaws. At the same time, I realized that just as the Weston’s and Cargill’s acquire and divest of assets to safeguard their capital interests, I can do the same by investing in Greater equities like people, animals, and the environment. I can do this by supporting locally owned and operated mills like Arva Flour Mills, Almanac, Watson’s Mill, Ottawa Valley Grain Products, and the many artisanal bakeries supplying high quality, affordable loaves to Ottawa residents (e.g., Art-Is-In Bakery, Bread and Sons, Wild Oat Bakery, Bread By Us, Black Walnut Bakery, and the Britannia Bakeshop). 

I’m finished with being gaslit by large retail chains into thinking that the trusted source is the familiar one. They’re just taking advantage of a cognitive bias known as the availability heuristic, or the tendency to use readily recalled information when making decisions. My brain prefers brands, labels, and taglines that are familiar and come to mind easily. Both politicians and businesses take advantage of this fact when developing their marketing campaigns. It’s up to me to counter this by intentionally seeking out businesses that are less concerned with volume and profit; businesses run by people who are excited about their craft and committed to offering quality products to their communities, and not in creating global empires or strengthening family dynasties. 

It’s time for me to fight against the grain, to make some dough, and to reclaim the bread.

For more on Canada’s grocery retail market and the monopolies driving out competition in this country, I highly recommend the CANADALAND Commons podcast series titled, “Monopoly.” You can find it and other high quality investigations, by clicking on this link: https://www.canadaland.com/shows/commons-monopoly/