Boycott Kraft
By Joan Baril
Boycott Kraft said the hand lettered sign
above the cash register. It was May, 1973, and the boycott was in full swing,
or so Ken Hamm told me when I dropped into the Thunder Bay Co-op Bookshop on South
Algoma Street. Ken was minding store and playing his guitar at the same time. As usual, he was playing the blues and
singing softly to himself. His long hair
brushed the end of the guitar as he hunched over the strings. No other
customers were browsing the crowded aisles of the little shop.
A pile of information sheets,
small posters, stickers, buttons and bumper stickers rested on a table beside
the cash. The boycott had been started by the National Farmers’ Union,
headquartered in Saskatchewan. I picked up an information sheet and tried to
puzzle through the dense text which described how the Kraft Corporation manipulated
the milk quota system in order to shut out the small independent cheese
producers. I skimmed guiltily. How committed
was I to this issue? How much time did I want to spend studying cheese?
Not much.
As I stood frowning over the
paper, Maurie Green walked into the shop. “I’ve looked into the entire issue
and I think I can explain it clearly,” he said.
“It’s a disgrace the way Kraft is driving small dairy farmers and cheese
factories to the wall. I’d like to speak about it at the next Bookshop
Benefit.” The benefit, held every second Sunday
night in the Little Finn Hall on Bay Street featured folk music, poetry readings,
announcements and, occasionally, a speech or a skit of some sort.
“Far out,” Ken said taking out
the scribbler he used to list the performers at the Benefits. “You can be up first after the break.”
During the following week, I
seemed to be drawn into the issue. I pasted a Boycott Kraft sticker on the
rusty bumper of my old truck, I switched to Black Diamond and I even went to a
meeting where a small group brainstormed the subject in order to
write a skit about it. They planned to present it at the Bookshop Benefit,
But I did not go to that
Bookshop Benefit to see the skit or hear Maurie speak. It was one of the few I
missed. Instead my vacation arrived and I went to Ottawa to visit Maggie Rose, an
old high school buddy. During the day, when she was at work, I visited other people
in Ottawa that I knew, among them Lisa Smith, a friend from university and the
White family: Major General Leslie White, his wife Mary and their two children.
Eight years before, when my
husband was alive, and he and I and our two girls were living at the military
base in Val Cartier outside Quebec City, we had become close friends with the
Whites. At that time Leslie White was a
major in the signal corps, a rank one step ahead of my husband who was a
captain. One evening, when we were at a
dinner party at the Whites’s, I mentioned that I had a hard time getting something
to read because the closest English library was in Quebec City, sixteen miles
away. Mary White got up from the table, walked
me into the living room and waved her hands at the bookcases lining the walls.
“Help yourself,” she said. I almost
fainted with happiness. Thus a close friendship began.
In Ottawa, the White’s were at
the door to greet me. Leslie was a tall studious-looking man with round glasses
and a shy manner. He walked with a
slight stoop. Mary White was also tall, but
with a booming laugh and an open cheerful face. They seemed genuinely glad to
see me.
Their large house, full of
expensive rugs and furniture, backed on to a park. Mary, who I remembered as a
slap-dash dresser in Val Cartier, wore pearls and a dress while I was in my usual
counter-culture clothes of bell bottoms, corduroy shirt and an old jacket. It was obvious we were living on different
planets. As we drank tea, they chatted
of overseas postings, mess dinners, social events at the various embassies, tossing
out references to NATO, NORAD, and the UN. For my part, I described the log
house I was building in the country.
After lunch, Leslie suggested
he show me the river walk in the park behind the house. Mary stayed behind. She
explained she was expecting an important phone call. As the general and I walked along chatting of
this and that, he suddenly said,” Did you hear a group of people are boycotting
Kraft cheese?”
I
was immediately on the alert. Surely this could not be some sort of wild
coincidence. I had not mentioned Kraft
in any of the few letters I had written to the Whites. Paranoia, always lurking on the sideline in
the 1970’s, slid into my brain.
“Really,”
I said, evenly. “Why?”
“Some
new farm group has set the thing up. A Communist front.”
“Oh,”
I said. “I like Black Diamond much
better than Kraft.”
Later that evening in bed at
Maggie Rose’s house, I pondered. Obviously, the walk was a set-up. Mary had stayed behind so the general could
have a Krafty chat with me. He obviously knew I supported the boycott or why should
he bring the subject up and in such an awkward manner.
But how did he know about
Kraft and me? Where did he get his
information? Was there a spy in the ranks of the local Anti-Cheesies? I had no idea who it could be. Maybe some kind of a double game was afoot. His plan was that I would return to Thunder
Bay, tell the story, and make the suggestion that one of our number was an
informer, perhaps working for the Mounties. Thus dissention would be sown. Our friendly group of Anti-Cheesies would
turn nasty, suspicious of each other.
Or perhaps, White just wanted
to let me know that he knew the type of people I was hanging around with and
warn me against them, in a sort of paternal but meddling way. If so, I was cross. It was not illegal to boycott a company for
whatever reason. I whispered to the
dark, “Bugger off, General.” I returned home the next day and said not
one word to anyone about the General’s interest in Kraft Cheese.
Nor did I keep in touch with
the Whites. More than Kraft got
boycotted.
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