Many of the French-speaking settlers who came to Manitoba from Quebec, the United States, or Europe opened creameries or cheese factories in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Among them was the Count P.G. de la Borderie of Saint-Malo, who first came to Manitoba in 1887 and who subsequently became the first in Canada to introduce a practical method of packing butter in hermetically closed boxes for exportation to Japan and the tropical islands. One of the machines which greatly advanced the production of butter at low cost was the Alexandra cream separator which was marketed in Manitoba by Professor S.M. BarrÄ, another Frenchman who operated creameries in St. Pierre Jolys and elsewhere. The Melotte separator was widely sold in the West for use on individual farms. The one pictured here is from the collection of the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa. Today many Franco-Manitobans continue to engage in dairy farming in the South-eastern rural area of Manitoba.
Courtesy: Farmer's Advocate 5 May 1894, p. 190 National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa
