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Canned
Doukhobor Borsch?
by
Greg Nesteroff
Canned soup? Sure. But canned borsch? "Why not!" thought two young Doukhobor
entrepreneurs in 1955. Using an age-old family recipe, they marketed their
ready-to-eat Doukhobor vegetable soup under the Kootenay Valley "Genuine
Borsch" brand. The world, however, was not ready for canned borsch and
the enterprise failed before it began. However, it left behind some
colourful labels, now prized collectibles. Reproduced by permission
from the Castlegar Current (October 25, 2007).
Canned borsch?
Hey, why not, thought Peter Makonin and Fred Makaroff in the spring of 1955. The
two Glade men formed a company, Kootenay Valley Food Products Ltd., and went to
a cannery in Kelowna to whip up some test batches. Jars were, for whatever
reason, deemed unviable.
The Makonins ran a store near the ferry landing and were natural entrepreneurs.
But the enterprise failed before it began: health regulators said the cabbage
had to be boiled for 90 minutes, by which time it turned to mush. So the duo
gave up, although not before they printed thousands of labels.
“There were cases of them,” recalls Makonin’s son, Peter Jr. “I forget exactly
how many.”
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Kootenay Valley Brand "Genuine Borsch" label (obverse), 1955. |
The labels periodically pop up on eBay, selling for $1 to $10 each. In 2006, a
woman in Ontario bought an old house and discovered 4,000 in her basement. She’s
since been selling batches of 100. Nick Denisoff, also of Glade, has about 90
which he sells in handcrafted frames: “I got ahold of them and ended up making
kitchen plaques, just for fun,” he says. “I do the matting and framing.”
The label has also appeared on at least one t-shirt.
As for the borsch itself, “the recipe was my mom’s,” says Makonin’s daughter,
Elaine Strelive. “Just a regular Doukhobor borsch recipe.” She recalls her
mother and aunt going to Kelowna to supervise the test run.
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Kootenay Valley Brand "Genuine Borsch" label (reverse), 1955. |
Today Strelive does some catering, and says the secret to making good borsch is
“all the fresh ingredients you can get. The vegetables are most important. Then
you need cream. It’s very time consuming. If I start making borsch I have to set
aside at least two or three hours.”
The world may not have been ready for canned borsch, but at least it left behind
some colourful souvenirs.
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