How the century-old history of the Okanagan's bold fruit labels is being kept fresh

Larry Kotz has never been a farmer, but for decades he has been maintaining an antique collection that makes his den at home in Vernon, B.C., look like a lush orchard during harvest season.

The 72-year-old retired mail carrier says he has 240 vintage fruit crate labels displayed on his walls — with several thousand more stored in the basement — after buying them from various packing houses in the Okanagan and his home province of Manitoba since 1988.

The avid collector says he's particularly interested in the paper labels — which feature mostly apples but also pears, cherries and other tree fruits — because of their colourful drawings of produce, plants, animals and human characters. 

"I was attracted to the great graphics and the great colours that really stood out," he said. "I like the history that goes with the labels."

WATCH | How Larry Kotz collected his fruit crate labels over the years:

The labels offer insight into B.C.'s agriculture industry in the first half of the 20th century, when fruit from the Okanagan — which remains the major producer of Canada's cherries and apples — were exported as far away as the United Kingdom. 

According to the Lake Country Museum and Archives in Central Okanagan, there were as many as 88 packing houses and 13 canneries across the region during that period, where workers wrapped apples individually in thin paper, placed them in wooden crates, and shipped them to grocery stores in the Prairies, eastern Canada and the U.K.

Wayne Wilson, former executive director of the Kelowna Museums Society, says fruit growers began sticking beautifully designed labels on crates around 1913, after the B.C. government had encouraged them to follow the successful example of Washington state farmers to boost consumer appeal in Canada.

Wilson says because most of their fruit was exported to the U.K., Okanagan growers often used labels that reflected how Britons imagined Western Canada, such as ones featuring Indigenous people wearing feathered headdresses, and also British symbols like John Bull and the Scottish thistle. 

He added that Americans inspired B.C. fruit labels a lot, and there wasn't much concern over copying designs — one notable example being the similarity of Vernon's Terrier brand label to that of a Los Angeles lemon grower.

"The border in terms of graphic design was a pretty porous border, so these designs went back and forth all the time," Wilson said.

Wilson estimates Vancouver lithographic printing houses churned out millions of crate labels for Okanagan farmers until the late 1950s, when the industry replaced wooden crates with cardboard boxes.

But the labels' legacy lives on, in the hands of private collectors across North America and also in exhibits like the ones at the Okanagan Wine and Orchard Museum housed in the Laurel Packinghouse, which is located in downtown Kelowna along with other historic buildings once occupied by the fruit industry.

WATCH | Wayne Wilson explains the shape and location of Laurel Packinghouse: