Montreal melon, once thought to be all but gone, makes long-awaited comeback

A locally-grown fruit that was once a delicacy in high demand among society's elites is being brought back to the city. The Montreal melon is making waves, again.

A Montreal-grown fruit that was once a delicacy in high demand among society’s elites is making a long-awaited comeback.

The Montreal melon used to be the talk of the town over a century ago, with a high price tag for those lucky enough to afford one — or even a slice. Now, a local community group is hoping to bring back a little sliver of history and tastiness to the city.

“It was sold for one or two dollars a slice,” Justine Senechal, the project lead at the Blue Bonnets Gardens, said in a recent interview.

“Which to today’s equivalent is something like 35 bucks a slice, which is insane when we think about it, so it was very much a luxury food.”

The Montreal melon was grown along the St. Lawrence River in the 1800s, including in the fertile farmlands of the city. The harvest wasn’t just loved by locals: aristocrats in New York, Boston and Philadelphia also couldn’t get enough.

Why was the melon so popular at the time? There isn’t a clear-cut answer, but Senechal said “a lot of people made a very good living of growing it over here.”

But as farmlands gave way for industrial development, buildings and roads, non-profit organization Community Cafeteria MultiCaf says the once-coveted fruit all but disappeared by the 1920s.

“Essentially it stopped being produced and the seeds were then lost because there was no more production of it,” Senechal said.