Soaps of the ‘ Home Cleaning Institute’ — Today it is Surprise Soap!

1923 Almonte Gazette

I think I have been fascinated by soap since my younger years. I watched my late grandmother try every single new soap made to mindkind through the years. Mary Louise Deller Knight was not a fastidious cleaner, much like her granddaughter, but she loved new things and soap was one of them. For years I watched the old MIR soap stand by the kitchen sink gathering gobs of hard residue knowing that frolicing bacteria was gathering on that yellow plastic bottle. She always went back to MIR or her Sunlight Soap after she tired of a new soap and I often wondered why she bothered. But seeing that her grandaughter bowled over with a great smile when the Mr. Clean Freak showed up at the door yesterday, I guess the apple does not fall far from the tree.

CLIPPED FROM
The Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada26 Jul 1979, Thu  •  Page 33

The Factory who was owned by the Ganong Brothers ( yes the chocolatey ones) closed in 1946 and the real surprise is the factory disappeared into the earth and was not found until a collection of milling stones was unearthed this month at the construction site of St. Stephen’s new civic centre. See video below.

As they say SURPRISE!!!

CLIPPED FROM
The Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada06 Apr 1922, Thu  •  Page 13

So what was Surprise Soap?

I thought that it had some sort of surprise inside, but there was none. Instead the surprise was that you were supposed to get your clothes cleaner.

Canadian grocer January-June 1908. If your customers say SURPRISE Soap is thebest Soap, the most economical to use, and want it,you give it to them of course—its business to do so.A satisfied customer brings you more money thanone whose wants are ignored and overlooked.. Made by The St. Croix Soap Manufacturing Company BRANCHES—Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver,West Indies. Factory at St. Stephen, N.B-

CLIPPED FROM
Ottawa Daily Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada29 Aug 1896, Sat  •  Page 8

In 1896 at the Toronto Fair look there was a huge Surprise soap exhibit. There was a big cake of Surprise soap stationed at the Heintzman piano on exhibition. Some one would end up having that piano for nothing if a guess won it– free of charge. The object of this guessing contest was to promote Surprise soap; and to know its good qualities, you will then use it. That’s what we We are satisfied to give this handsome present and get nothing in return but have you interested in Surprise soap. It is the best soap. THE SURPRISE SOAP MFG. CO., St. Stephen, N. B.

Photo click

Crews at a worksite in the New Brunswick town of St. Stephen have found the remains of a long forgotten soap factory – once a big industry in the U.S. border area.

A collection of milling stones was unearthed this month at the construction site of St. Stephen’s new civic centre.

“We got down to…about eight metres in the ground when we got the last ones out. They were way down. They’d been there for some time,” says project manager Kingsley Bailey. “They were in the heavy compacted clay at the bottom.”

Bailey says the area was once home to the St. Croix Soap Manufacturing Company, which was founded in the 1880s by the Ganong Brothers – the same brothers who went into the candy-making business a few years earlier.

The company made Surprise Soap which was marketed across Canada and in the United States and was a big seller for decades. The plant closed in 1946.

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Desperately Seeking Effie Elsie McCallum — Part 2 — Jaan Kolk

Jane McCallum — The First Lady of No-Rub Laundry Flakes

Peter McCallum — From Brown and Wylie Mill Employee to The King of Mack’s No Rub Laundry Soap

In Memory of Peter McCallum –Almonte’s Grand Old Lady

More on Jane McCallum/Jane Moore McNeely — The First Lady Of Soap

Spittle Spatter and Dirty Faces of Yore

Gym? I Thought You said Gin!

I will Wash Your Mouth Out with Soap!

Remember Halo Shampoo?

What the Heck was Electric Soap? Chatterton House Hotel Registrar

CLIPPED FROM
The Windsor Star
Windsor, Ontario, Canada20 May 1937, Thu  •  Page 30

What Happened to the Towels in the Soap Box?

1966

Lever Brothers Ltd. has sold 170,000,000 towels in packages of powdered detergent during the last 15 years in Canada, company executives told the Senate-Commons prices committee yesterday. John C. Lockwood, president, said the premium is so popular with housewives that when the company tried to sell the same brand at a lower price, without a towel, sales dropped so rapidly it had to be taken off the market.

Lever Brothers sells the towels and detergents under the Breeze label. It is their biggest and most profitable seller. Soap plus towels top seller .The normal price is higher, to cover the cost of the towels, and the company can’t get as much detergent in the box as it can with other lines not carrying premiums. The towels were bought “by the millions, at a price cheaper than the housewife would pay retail”. To answer complaints that detergents are packed in odd – sized packages, Lever Brothers told the committee they put a new product, Four Square detergent on the market without advertising gimmicks. The Canadian Association of Consumers urged housewives to buy it, but the company took a loss and had to withdraw it.

Dolly Parton said

On being on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” pulling out giant towels from boxes of Breeze detergent.

We used to have to do our own commercials on those shows. But I still have some of those towels that I’ve kept through the years. Those were the days — “And you can only get them in boxes of Breeze!” And honestly, with that towel inside, there probably wasn’t more than half a box of Breeze. But people didn’t care because they were getting something free.

Johnson City Press
Johnson City, Tennessee
24 Feb 1982, Wed  •  Page 50

The Windsor Star
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
13 Jun 1957, Thu  •  Page 15

related reading

What Did You Use MIR Dish Soap For?

Desperately Seeking Effie Elsie McCallum — Part 2 — Jaan Kolk

Jane McCallum — The First Lady of No-Rub Laundry Flakes

Peter McCallum — From Brown and Wylie Mill Employee to The King of Mack’s No Rub Laundry Soap

In Memory of Peter McCallum –Almonte’s Grand Old Lady

More on Jane McCallum/Jane Moore McNeely — The First Lady Of Soap

The Carleton Place Bathroom Appliance Cars

Spittle Spatter and Dirty Faces of Yore

Gym? I Thought You said Gin!

I will Wash Your Mouth Out with Soap!

Remember Halo Shampoo?

What the Heck was Electric Soap? Chatterton House Hotel Registrar

I will Wash Your Mouth Out with Soap!

Remember  when Mom made the bar of soap wet, and rubbed it in our mouths, and then to make it worse you had to had to bite on it?

Then I once watched my friend’s mother stand him on a chair in the centre of the room for 30 minutes while he held a big bar of soap in my mouth.  He was just covered in slobber down the front of his shirt by the time it was over.

My Grandmother was in on this punishment too, and grabbed my arm, marched me into the bathroom, picked up a bar of plain white soap, and literally cleaned my mouth with it.  Sometimes I wondered what brand of soap was most used for washing out mouths?

One of my readers Clorise Anderson remembered her mom would squirt MIR dish soap in our mouths.  I remember MIR very well but cannot find a darn thing about it on the internet. But, I had no idea about the history of liquid soap. So I looked it up.

The first liquid soap was patented in 1865, by William Shepphard. He’s often credited for inventing it, but considering his patent was officially listed as “Improved Liquid Soap,” it seems clear there was liquid soap around already.

In his patent, Shepphard announced he’d discovered that adding “small quantities of common soap to a large quantity of spirits of ammonia or hartshorn” produced a thickened liquid comparable in consistency to molasses.

Much of the liquid soap that preceded Sheppard’s patent was used for industrial purposes, and much that followed it was as well, with hospitals and public places included in
where you could find it.

Despite its popularity throughout the early to middle 1900’s, it wasn’t until 1980 that liquid soap became mass-produced for domestic use. The Minnetonka Corporation of Minnesota released Softsoap in 1980, and their product benefited greatly from being first.

It took some doing, though, for Minnetonka to get the jump on its larger competitors. Colgate, makers of Irish Spring, and Proctor & Gamble, makers of Ivory, were both positioned to release a liquid soap and take advantage of the wide-open market opportunity.

The key to success was the dispenser. Without a suitable pump – and suitable pumps were made by only a few factories in the U.S. – any liquid soap efforts would fail, regardless of how big the company was.

Minnetonka’s strategy for beating its competitors was to buy up all the plastic pump dispensers in the country. Their strategy worked. Minnetonka enjoyed a virtual monopoly on liquid soap until they were bought by Colgate-Palmolive in 1987. Minnetonka’s strategy is still mentioned in business publications as a model of smart, calculated risk taking. For its part, Colgate-Palmolive has continued to produce Softsoap since it purchased Minnetonka.

Photo-Donna Mcfarlane

The Happy Gang was a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio lunchtime variety show that ran from 1937 to 1959. During the Golden Age of Radio and well into the 1950s, it was one of Canada’s most popular programs. In its heyday, it had about two million listeners a day.The show was known for its “spontaneous humor, music, and corny jokes.” 

The Happy Gang debuted on June 14, 1937 on station CRCT, a CBC affiliate in Toronto, later known as CBL. Originally intended as just a summer fill-in, it gained a following, and was moved to the CBC network four months later. The Happy Gang ran for 22 years, totalling nearly 4900 broadcasts, until it was finally cancelled in late August 1959. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the series also served as the template for CBC’s French language service, Les Joyeux Troubadours, which was broadcast in Quebec from 1941 to 1977.

You can listen to the show right here—http://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/the-happy-gang-1.2801259

What the Heck was Electric Soap? Chatterton House Hotel Registrar

Going through the registrar of the old Chatterton House Hotel (Queen’s Hotel) registrar there were many travelling salesmen that came to Carleton Place as they offered special sample rooms along with the Mississippi Hotel. People from around the many rural area towns came to buy their wares for their General Stores.

Soap was usually made at home, but Dobbin’s Soap from Pa. came into the limelight offering a soap made with no clay, grease or resin residue. Soon it was a or commodity for every homemaker to have. They first sold it for 20 cents a bar and then lowered it to 8 cents and finally got it down to 5 cents a bar in 1898. Dobbin’s advertised that Mrs. Enterprise used it and finished her wash by 9 o’clock. Mrs. Fogy however didn’t use it and had to work hard until 12 o clock. Of course there was no word on what time these women got up to begin their wash. It was also touted as the only soap you could use to make household soap for one cent a pound,

So there lies a signature of one Jno. J. Stock hawking his Dobbins Electric Soap selling Lanark County his Dobbin’s electric soap.

Buy Linda Secaspina’s Books— Flashbacks of Little Miss Flash Cadilac– Ttilting the Kilt-Vintage Whispers of Carleton Place and 4 others on Amazon or Amazon Canada or Wisteria at 62 Bridge Street in Carleton Place

More stories from the Desk Books of The Chatterton House Hotel (Queen’s Hotel) Carleton Place from the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Part 1- Tales of the Chatteron House Corset — Queen’s Hotel in Carleton Place- can be found here.

Part 2- Hell on Wheels at Lady Chatterton’s Hotel in Carleton Place– can be found here.

Part 3- I Will Take Some Opium to Go Please —The “Drug Dispensary” at the Chatterton House Hotel

Part 4- Chatterton House Hotel Registrar- George Hurdis -1884

Visit the Drama Free Zone Wall at The Carleton Place Farmer’s Market

Some days it’s not my circus, and definitely not my monkeys. You know the feeling—today was going great until people—- yadda yadda yadda. A few weeks ago I found the perfect drama free zone at the Carleton Place Farmer’s Market. I mean you can’t keep a clean reputation hanging out continually with messy people. Wait? What?

As I leaned against the wall situated between Ken Strangway’s delicous food and the scent of Francois Maltais soap; I gazed at the Farmer’s Market and felt a strange wave of serenity. And, not in the serenity now serenity now form of Seinfeld.

Stop in to the Carleton Place Farmer’s Market. Roll out your worries, and all your weekly drama might just be censored with love. Join us please. You might just be surprised!

100 Feet of a Drama Free Zone awaits you every Saturday on the Drama Free Wall.

Linda Seccaspina–Wendy LeBlanc–Cathie Hawkins McOrmond–Lisa Strangway chillin’ at the drama free wall

Carleton Place Farmer’s Market

7 Beckwith St.

Carleton Place, Ontario

 

(613) 809-0660

 

http://www.cpfm.ca/

830 am to 1230 am

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