Cane Sugar in Western Canada
BC Sugar’s refinery has stood on the Vancouver waterfront since 1890. Today, the labels on each of its packages say “Refined in Canada Since 1890.” But how Canadian is that sugar, really? This work answers that question, indicating that western Canadian cane sugar has been grown in places around the world, often in conditions of violence and coercion. Research on the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company and indenture at Navua is in Indenture and Canadian Sugar in Navua, Fiji. See also Essays.
Research Articles
-
2023Global Food History 10, no. 1 (2024): 68–86. DOI: 10.1080/20549547.2023.2278391 Open AccessBC Sugar’s advertising presented cane sugar as Canadian-made. This article shows how that claim erased the global and colonial origins of the cane sugar that BC Sugar sold, including on its own sugar cane plantations in Fiji.
-
2020Global Food History 6, no. 1 (March 2020): 41–59. DOI: 10.1080/20549547.2020.1712577 Open AccessBC Sugar constructed a racialized discourse of food cleanliness between 1891 and 1914, arguing that Chinese-made sugars were contaminated and Canadian-made sugars were pure.
Review Essays
-
2025Agricultural History 99, no. 1 (2025): 102–107. DOI: 10.1215/00021482-11470591Featured review assessing Bosma’s landmark synthesis of world sugar history.
-
2023Business History Review 97, no. 3 (2023): 693–696. Free access via Cambridge Core Open AccessA review of an edited collection on Canadian corporations and dispossession at home and abroad.
Media
-
2024Zak Vescera. The Tyee, 16 February 2024. Open Access
-
2023Zak Vescera. The Tyee, 21 December 2023. Open Access
How to Cite
Belisle, Donica. “Cane Sugar in Western Canada.” Donica Belisle. donicabelisle.ca/sugar.html. Accessed