Purity Dairy

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• RE: Me,

  Ahh yes that makes sence now...I do know what park your speaking of, and I vaugly remember that Chrylser plat your speaking of...it sat vacant for years correct?

• Yes that is correct. It stood exactly on the sidewalk and at the corner of McDougall & Tecumseh. I am not sure when that plant closed. Maybe another reader can tell us?

• About the names: Silverwood was a big dairy chain operating in Ontario and out West, It eventually became Silcorp which expanded its milk business to found the Macs MIlk and Beckers chain stores. Twin Pines was a Detroit dairy operation whose name would be well known in Windsor because of a 1950s children's TV show featuring a clown, all dressed in white include facemake up and known as "MIlky" . The clown woud perform magic tricks using the incantation "Twin Pines!" which was the sponsor. I don't know if the Windsor operation had a financial connection to the Detroit one. Some local businesses would adopt Detroit names because of they were familiar to Windsorites because of the Detroit TV ads.

• There was a Twin Pines store in Gateway Plaza. What was the relationship there? They sold all sorts of foodstuffs - not just dairy. I used to like that place. Was kinda like M&M; you could walk in and walk out within ten minutes with enough food to prepare a week's worth of meals.

• Ross: well it's already been answered but yeah the park is mostly used for little league baseball games but has a playground on the North end and the lot now used for the park use to belong to the dairy..... St. Alponsus Cemetery is to the North of the park.....man I remember when Kelsey Hayes was running full too..... and they had a few more buildings South of the one veltri is in but htose are gone now....on Mercer I believe and the another across McDougal that I think is running other operations out of it now....

  I remember when there was a BIG deal about putting food services and a grocery store in at the old Chrysler yard to out of fear of pollutants.... in fact when IK went to Kennedy there were a few times the schools drinking water came into question based on the possabilites of what Chrysler left in the ground at the old yard.... guess that cleared up....LOL!

• It was built by my grandfather Sir Harry E Gignac and was family owned as "Purity Dairies" until the early 70s. Sir Harry passed away in 1968

• hi Andrew, this is a fantasic blog you have here!! i love the history of this city, and i thank you for preserving it's history and displaying it to the world.
  i'm sammy hain's lil brother....and john's ex-subordinate LOL! i have the same recolections of the ault plant as sammy but mine are a little different.....i went inside a few months after ault stopped operations, and before the new owners renovated the interior. it was pretty creepy in there to be honestbut very nice in the office areas, very dark...it stunk like a few months of rotting milk tanks that wern't quite emptied all the way. since i was very young and not exactly safety consious, two freinds and myself found three sets of the roller type conveyors on the second floor, each leading into it's own tunnel. we grabbed three milk crates, said our goodbye's to eachother, and rolled off into the darkness. i couldn't see anyone else during the trip, but i could certainly hear muffled terrified excitment in laughing screams thru the walls, with spinning rollers makin that sound we all know from the beer store, except they sound really different at high speeds in a tunnel lol. the others sounds would get loud or quiet as the tunnels would run apart, then meet again. probly a good 45-60 sec ride thru the plant and various stations. we all ended up getting spit out at the outside loading docks on highland about 5 seconds apart...i suppose depending on the route your rollers went. sorry for the long post.....but i hadn't thought of those times in years.....just kinda came flooding back LOL!!!

  your site rocks man, keep up the good work!

• I worked for Sealtest when they bought Purity Dairy/Peerless Ice cream in 1966. Mr Gignac was a real gentleman..Purity was the biggest dairy in the Windsor/ Essex county area. They prettywell had the business locked up. All Milk and ice cream products were produced on site..Silverwoods was never there, they were over on Huron Line, Twin Pines was a small player, they were located on Howard ave near Wyandotte... Beckers Dairy was strickly Toronto area.....

• Thanks Don Appleyard for the info on when the company was purchased. I have often wondered about what happened to the company whenever I drive by the building. My father owned a dairy farm in Maidstone Twp and shipped to Purity Dairy from sometime in the 1940's until 1968 when he retired. I don't know if this blog is still active but any other facts about the company would be greatly appreciated.

• My father, Cam Schwindt started the ice cream route for Purity Dairy. I am not sure of the year, but we left for Californi in Dec of 1946. I can still to this day remember the smell of the horse barns and the leather harness's. Before starting the Ice Cream route my dad had a horse and wagon milk route and in the winter time it took a team for horses to pull the wagon due to ice etc.