If you were ever walking along Ossington early in the morning between Roylat and Foxley you may have smelled the scent of fresh bread baking. It wasn’t coming from Venezia, Nova Era or Caldense. Many people never realized that in the alleyway behind the hardware store there was a bakery churning out fresh bread every morning for 80 years – delivering their products across southern Ontario – mostly to Polish stores. On Jun 21st this year the factory stopped producing, putting an end to the production of bread from this inner city bakery. A couple locals put together this video as a tribute to the people who ran this factory for many years.
In 2011 we attended a party for RAW design, a company behind many of the innovative designs in the neighbourhood. at the bakery and got a tour and met some of the fine people running the bakery. Also in the history of the bread factory, earlier in 2011 a group of 3 of the bakers won $50m in the Ontario lottery.
It’s sad to see this historic part of Toronto history move on, but we’ll see what can be done with the space. We haven’t heard yet what is going in there, but we’ll let you know when we hear.
Ontario Bread – a tribute from jim bachalo on Vimeo.