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Author’s new book recalls city’s heady 1970s alt-food movement

Imagine being a young person learning a new job in a small, ramshackle canning factory and, while you’re there alone with another equally inexperienced worker, the jam-making boiler starts unexpectedly spewing its content.
Jan D
Author Jan DeGrass, at the Sechelt Arts Centre on March 16, shared stories, photos and a reading from her new book The Co-op Revolution.

Imagine being a young person learning a new job in a small, ramshackle canning factory and, while you’re there alone with another equally inexperienced worker, the jam-making boiler starts unexpectedly spewing its content.

Jan DeGrass doesn’t have to imagine it – she lived it. “Feverishly we jumped into action, sliding the sterilized jars under the spigot, wiping them off and capping them. Panicked, we yelled at one another, sweat dripping from our brows until Roger had a brainwave. He reached over and turned off the machine. ‘We can turn it off,’ we reminded one another. We were in charge.” 

That is just one of dozens of recollections DeGrass writes about in her new book, The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver’s Search for Food Alternatives, in which she looks back – mostly fondly – on her days as food-sourcing, processing and distribution pioneer in the late 1970s. 

DeGrass spoke about those days and read from the book at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt on Saturday, March 16, recalling that time in her twenties when she and a band of like-minded peaceful revolutionaries formed the Collective Resource and Services Workers Co-operative. 

“It was a worker-owned and managed organization that operated a cannery, a food wholesaler, a beekeeping operation called Queenright and a bakery called Uprising Breads,” DeGrass said. The bakery is still a thriving business at the corner of Venables and Commercial in Vancouver. 

The founders’ motivation was – typical of those days – Utopian, but it did help shape the food industry in B.C. as we now know it. 

“We championed the rights of people to eat wholesome, good food,” said DeGrass, noting that is now a typical consumer expectation. “And we were directly opposed to agri-business that was gobbling up so many small farmers and producers.” 

As writer and editor Betty Keller said in introducing DeGrass, “it is specialized books like this that have the most profound effect on the way we as readers see what we have here, because these books provide the missing parts to the puzzle that is British Columbia.” 

The book, including many photographs from the time, is as much a touching memoir as it is an informative historical text, and is well-told in the graceful style that DeGrass’s readers enjoyed during her 17 years as arts and entertainment writer for Coast Reporter. 

The Co-op Revolution is published by Halfmoon Bay’s Caitlin Press. DeGrass will hold another launch event for the book at Gibsons Public Library on Saturday, April 6 at 2 p.m.