Description of Historic Place

The historic place is the three-storey brick Old Cannery building, built in 1912 in Edwardian Commercial style at 1280-1298 Ellis Street in Kelowna's downtown area. The central three-storey brick portion was later extended with a one-storey wood-frame wing to the south and a two-storey brick wing to the north.

Heritage Value

The Old Cannery has heritage value for its close association with a number of Kelowna's agricultural industries, including cigar-making, fruit-packing, and canning, and for later non-agricultural industry uses. It also has value as an unusually well-designed industrial building, and for demonstrating (through its additions) the growth of one industry over time. Representative of the area, the building now includes an entertainment use, reflecting Kelowna's shift from an industrial to a service economy.

The three-storey central brick portion was built in 1912 as the handsome premises of the ambitious British North American Tobacco Company (BNATCO). This company had been started in 1910, with a capitalization of $500,000, mostly British investment, with the intention of making cigars from Kelowna-grown tobacco in a large way. The building was close to the Candian Pacific Railway yards. It was constructed for heavy use, with the floors made of 2-by-6 planks laid on edge and spiked together (called 'millwork' construction). The cigar factory was located on the second floor, while the first and third floors were used for storage. The factory had the capacity to turn out 25 million cigars a year. However, it never achieved more than 800,000 at peak production, and by the end of 1913 unwise land contracts, coupled with embezzlement by an officer of the company, combined to bring BNATCO (and the local farmers who had planted five hundred acres to tobacco for the company) crashing down. By May 1914 the company was in liquidation.

The building was then purchased by the newly-established Occidental Fruit Company (the name catering to the anti-Asian prejudices of the time), a fruit shipper that prospered during World War I. In 1918, the Occidental Fruit Company transferred its fruit packing facility to another building, further north on Ellis Street, and began to operate a fruit and vegetable cannery here. The long, single-storey frame building to the south was constructed in 1918, and the two-storey brick building at the north end in 1919, with rear storage warehouses added in 1920. The actual canning was carried on in the southern building, while the other portions were used for storage. Occidental operated the cannery until 1929, when it packed almost 200,000 cases of canned goods, mostly tomatoes and catsup.

In 1929 the cannery was purchased by Canadian Canners Ltd., of Hamilton, Ontario, which continued to operate it until 1960. In 1965, the brick building was bought by Harold Armeneau to expand the Kelowna Machine Shop, located across the street at 1247 Ellis Street. The machine works occupied the second floor, while the lower floor served as office space.

The buildings were sold to the Cannery Group in 1971, which remodeled the old cigar factory and north extension as a night club. The northern extension has gone through numerous name changes: Bernie's Supper Club, the North Forty, Changes, the Casbah, and most recently Flashbacks. The south building was refurbished as a row of small shops, though its original function is still easily seen in the raised front loading level of the old cannery. An antique shop currently occupies the three-storey portion.

Source: City of Kelowna Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Old Cannery include its:
- prominent location, the largest brick building on west side of Ellis Street, three storeys high
- attractively composed and ornamented facade, four bays wide, with the end bays projecting forward slightly, framed by pilasters, and with the brick on the two upper floors arranged to resemble rustication, all somewhat in the manner of the Neoclassical Revival Style
- outer bays with segmental-arched window heads with large keystones on the ground floor, round-arched window heads on the second floor, and flat window heads on the third floor
- two, broader central bays with segmental window heads on the second floor, and flat heads elsewhere
- wood-sash windows with small panes (except on the ground floor) and transoms
- stone sills and pilaster bases and capitals
- brick facade wraps around the two corners
- set-back north wing with two storeys, with prominent repetitive second-floor windows
- south wing with repetitive windows on the two floors