Gem jar lids should soon be appearing in prairie grocery stores, says a representative of Canadian Home Canning Inc.
The Toronto-based company shipped 169 cases of the lids in the last week of April, said Shirley Tirebuck, wife of the company president.
The Tirebucks started their company this year to manufacture the gem home canning line after Ber-nardin discontinued it. Bernardin, now controlled by an American firm, decided late last winter to do a one-time run of the lids and bands after a consumer protest organized by two Saskatchewan women.
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A Manitoba woman collected more than 4,000 signatures on an on-line petition. The people who signed her petition and the one organized by Marla Rauser of Lloydminster and Paulette Lysychyn of Unity said they needed a million gem lids for their annual canning needs.
The gem line is an older one that is common on the Prairies where mothers and grandmothers have passed along their family canning equipment. The new lines of glass jars are either too small or have too wide a mouth for safety, said Lysychyn, who prefers her 5,000 older jars. Rauser said she began the protest because she couldn’t afford to buy new jars to replace her 2,000 gem jars.
Both women hoped the price of the new lids will be similar to the old one. Rauser said if the Canadian lids are side by side with Bernardin, she will buy Canadian even if they are a bit more expensive.
“But if I need lids and Bernardin is the only one on the shelf, I’m definitely not going to be a martyr.”
Rauser said she would shop based on principle, not malice. But she wasn’t sure whether the average shopper cares about which company made the lids, just as long as they now had a source of lids again.
Tirebuck said prices will be a bit higher than the discontinued stock, but said the actual price would be up to the store. She said prairie stores that will carry the Canadian line include Federated Co-op, Superstore, Pratt’s Wholesale and some Wal-Mart and Home Hardware stores.
