BRANDON, Man. – He was known as both a miser and a philanthropist, his building defined Brandon’s skyline, and he reported for work at 8 a.m. sharp each day until he was 94 years old.
Nancy McLennan says there is a lot of mystery surrounding Albert Edward McKenzie, who ran the seed company bearing his name.
“This man did amazing things basically on pioneer prairie,” said the market analyst.
“He wrote six-figure cheques in the twenties. He went to Chicago every Christmas. He didn’t look like a real handsome guy, but as I started finding out these things about him, I realized that he had a persona that was really something.”
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McLennan never met McKenzie, but she feels she got to know him a little bit as she pored through boxes of archival material this year.
With other company and community volunteers, she created a visual display of catalogues, photos, price lists, ledgers, time sheets, furniture and seed packs in the company’s downtown building for its 100th anniversary.
“We did it to sort of give credibility to our heritage. You say you’re 100 years old, but it’s a myth until you see it,” she explained.
City and company founded
Brandon was founded in 1881, and around the same time, McKenzie’s father started a feed, flour and grain company. McKenzie inherited it in 1896 and ran it for 68 years.
His earliest price lists were on small pieces of pink paper. In 1898, Red Fife wheat seed, “specially cleaned,” was selling for 90 cents per bushel, while barley was half the price.
By 1900, McKenzie had a 28-page illustrated catalogue. And in 1905, his seed started appearing in retail stores across the country.
In the 1928 catalogue, McKenzie reflected on the company’s progress.
“It was a humble beginning,” he wrote. “The country was new. There was very little upon which to found a seed business except abiding faith in the future of Western Canada and faith in men and women destined to turn its rolling prairie to become the granary of the Empire.”
Turning pages of the early catalogues is like turning the pages of time.
A 1912 ad for Marquis wheat boasts, “No eloquence is necessary to create or establish its reputation.”
And in 1931, McKenzie advised his readers, “You can easily grow enough in your garden to keep your family.”
Mixed into the pages is some technical information about how to grow crops, grasses, vegetables and flowers.
“If our current employees read the 1916 catalogue from cover to cover upon starting work here, we would have the most informed staff you could imagine,” said McLennan.
She said the archives are also a study of corporate takeovers. McKenzie bought regional competitors like McFayden, McConnell, Pike and Steele-Briggs. He was a founding member of the Canadian Seed Trade Association.
In the 1950s, McKenzie started to specialize solely in garden supplies.
After his death, the company became a crown corporation.
Goes east
In 1994, a Toronto-based company that also owns Regal Greetings and Gifts bought McKenzie from the Manitoba government.
Today, Cathy Kolosky, business development manager, said several new marketing and distribution deals are keeping the company busy.
It has an exclusive deal with Disney to sell Mickey Mouse garden kits for kids. It’s also selling “convenience” gardens: Thin, green wood-fibre mats containing seeds.
“Some people just don’t want to be bothered digging in the dirt,” Kolosky explained. “They just lay (the mat) down right on top of the soil and keep it wet.”
McLennan is glad the company’s archives will be turned over to the province at the end of the year, so researchers can pore over them at will.
“There’s a book here. There’s a movie about this guy. I can see it in my mind’s eye.”
