Kensington Dairy Association | P.E.I. Grain Elevator | Canada Packers
The Kensington Dairy
Association was formed in 1893, when farmers decided that
they needed a place to market their increasing milk
supply. The founding members pooled their resources and,
with the funds, started up a butter factory. The factory
was made into a cooperative in 1945, and bought the other
dairy establishment in town-- the Champion
Butter Factory-- later that year. It continued in
operation until 1953, when it joined with Amalgamated
Dairies Limited in Summerside, P. E. I. The old building
was moved 
and
converted into a feed mill, and the Margate school was
purchased to place an extension on it. The Co-op opened a
hardware store in 1960 and a grocery store in 1965.
Although the grocery store has since closed, the feed
mill is still in operation and sells commercial feeds as
well as hardware items to its many customers.
In the late 1960s, the
Department of Public Works called for the construction of
a grain elevator one and a half miles outside of
Kensington. As no grain elevator has ever been
constructed on the Island, much less in Kensington, three
Winnipeg men had to be brought in to oversee the building
of the elevator. It took over 700,000 feet of lumber to
construct, and these boards were fixed in place with one
and a half carloads of nails. At its highest point, the
building reaches 103 feet and can hold up to 235,000
bushels of grain.
The elevator opened on December 6, 1971, and at that time
could boast that it was the only country grain elevator
east of Manitoba. The new building had the most modern
grading equipment in the grain industry. With its
continuous blow dryer, it could dry up to 2500 bushels of
hay or 500 bushels of barley per hour. It could unload
box cars off the rails at a rate of one every three
hours, and load one up every thirty minutes. It was soon
full to capacity, and bustling with shipping activity.
Canada
Packers opened a branch in Kensington primarily to
provide a Shur-Gain feed service. Their business was
located in a small section of the Kensington Cold Storage
building, owned by Russell Champion
and Sons. In 1940, Canada Packers
added a poultry processing plant and egg-grading section,
as well as an electrically- powered feed mixer. A year
later, they expanded into a bigger section of the
Champion building-- which had been vacated by the MacKenzie and
Company store-- and began a
full-scale poultry production. In 1946, the Maritime head
office decided that the branch would be best converted
into a strictly feed-mixing operation. The feed service
business operated until 1958, when Shur-Gain was moved to
Kinkora.
