The following article was authored by long-time contributor and supporter of the Elgin and Area Heritage Society, Neil Patterson.
The Elgin Pickle Factory began operation in 1951 by Patrick McCoy. Patrick had been born in Ireland in 1902 and emigrated to Canada in 1923. He took a job with Libby, McNiell and Libby in Chatham, Kent County at their pickling and canning operation. When he was 24 years of age he married Mary Rice in Chatham. It was in the Chatham Plant in the 1930’s that he learned formula and process for making Sweet Pickles. In 1938, Libby, McNiell and Libby moved the growing Sweet Mixed Pickle manufacturing and bottling operation to Guelph.
At some point after the Second World War, Patrick began looking for somewhere he could produce his own Sweet Mix Pickles. He found that the Elgin Cheese Factory was for sale as the former cheese maker had died.
The Cheese Factory had been constructed by Dargavel and Murphy as a Model Factory and sold it to Cheese Maker Thomas Wright in 1899. Six years later Wright sold to Francis Levine and he employed William Welch as the cheese maker. In 1932, when William married Beryl Mildred Adrain, he was listed as a cheese maker of Elgin. In 1941 the owner of the factory was George Mustard and William Welch was still the Cheese Maker. In 1949 Welch bought the factory from Mustard, however, he only lived for another year. Mildred Welch sold the factory to Patrick McCoy on the 3rd of August, 1951.
McCoy scrambled to get the factory ready to make pickles. He set up the washing and cutting of the cucumbers inside the factory and the hug barrels for brining the pickles outside. He hired local ladies for the pickle making and bought cucumbers wherever he could. The hug barrels to brine the pickles were placed next to the Northeast end of the factory. The barrels were almost 20 feet high and about 10 feet in diameter and made similar to cooperage barrels with iron rings holding the slats together. The barrels had tops with hinged small doors allowing access to the pickles in the brine mixture. That year McCoy was able to bottle many cases of what was named, “PatMac Sweet Pickles”. The following year dozens of Elgin and area gardens grew large quantities of cucumbers for the pickle factory and it looked as though Elgin was going to have a thriving business for the future.
Farmers and local gardeners planted even more cucumbers than the previous year only to learn in mid-summer that McCoy had sold the Elgin factory and moved the pickle production to a much larger plant in Prescott. Elgin was left with nothing but tons of cucumbers and a structure that was torn down 2 years later.