It is the soul of the city of Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce. It is also its smell, the days of cooking. The Vachon cake factory celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year. The duty traveled to Beauce to retrace the history of these little treats that are now part of Quebec’s gastronomic pantheon.
You can not make that up. Jacques Vachon, grandson of the founders of popular cakes, is waiting for us on “Avenue des Milles-Feuilles” to reveal his secrets.
“At the time, each village had its own bakery,” says the businessman, now in his eighties. What struck me when I was young was to see the evolution. I saw growing it year after year. I didn’t ask questions, but I understood that things were happening. »
His father, Benoît, is one of the five Vachon brothers who started the business from the ground up. The honor of the foundation, however, goes to the matriarch, Rose-Anna. It was she who negotiated the takeover of the local bakery in 1923. Even if it was her husband who then signed the papers, we can say today without being mistaken that Rose-Anna Giroux was one of the first entrepreneurs in the Quebec. “She was a very tall, very corpulent, very imposing woman. I don’t really have memories with her, but I have memories with my uncles and my father. They worked a lot. »
The spirit of the “industrial Beauce” is quickly put to the test in the hypercompetitive pastry market. The five children multiply tricks and shenanigans to ensure their prosperity: from cake molds made from electrical boxes, to using a car cooling system to cool cakes, to jobs of pumpkin-based icing to cut into costs.
“They elbowed,” says Jacques Vachon. When the war and the sugar rations came, there was a barn not too far from the house where we hid him. [les frères volaient les coupons de rationnement]. When the inspectors came, you had to hide the sugar. We told them that we weren’t capable of cooking, that we didn’t have any and that we were on rations, even though the barn was full of them! The building has even collapsed under the weight of the sugar. »
Ironically, Vachon cakes also supply the Canadian army. This lucrative contract is part of the long list of successes that will keep the company alive.
The Jos Louis, beyond Vachon
Nowadays, artisanal emulators of the Jos Louis can be found all over Quebec, from Montreal to the North Shore.
But this iconic cake was first born on June 24 in the early 1930s, explains the Duty Maude Poirier, director of the Sainte-Marie house-museum dedicated to the Vachon family.
“One Saint-Jean evening, Rose-Anna thought it would be nice to give something for the national holiday. A product to be distributed quickly. Paul, pastry chef, tries something: a cake red velvet, with their pastry cream. We’re going to make a cake sandwich! It wasn’t originally covered in chocolate. »
The cake is rapidly gaining popularity. We want more in the shops and at the local train station, where we sell the goods. We end up coating it with chocolate, but the name remains to be found.
The revelation came when Paul witnessed an argument between two of his brothers, Joseph and Louis. “He will bring his brothers together in a cake because in life, they were difficult to bring together”, summarizes Mme Pear tree.
Jacques Vachon nuances this story. His father was also a boxing enthusiast, and the champion at the time was named Joe Louis, an African-American.
The “fist-shaped, round and black” cake allows the company to ride on the popularity of the athlete, despite a lawsuit brought by his entourage. He is told that between “Jos” and “Louis” there is an “and” written in very small letters. “That’s the name of our guys. It has been thought of! They played on it, ”recognizes Jacques Vachon.
History holds that the May West is the later creation (a pale copy, some would say) of a competing bakery, the Vaillancourt bakery in Quebec.
You don’t change a winning recipe
Vachon cakes take off after the war. The siblings and their hundreds of employees embark on the production of eggs, peas or even jam, another way of cutting out expensive intermediaries, explains Jacques Vachon. “They bought almost everything strawberry was made on Île d’Orléans and made jams and creams for the cakes. »
A few hints of prototypes dating from that time come to mind. “A peanut butter cake” and a “kind of strudel” almost landed in our grocery stores, the fruits of the invention of a German chemist hired in the 1960s. in addition finish. But I think mass production was the problem,” says the Vachon heir.
Cakes dominate all of Canada at this time. These sweets can be found in stores across the country. “One of Vachon’s strengths in Ontario is its name. For the English, buying a cake with a French name had a connotation of freshness. It’s different,” said Mr. Vachon.
The years pass and the Vachon family can no longer take care of all this business alone. The only two brothers still alive resigned themselves to selling the factory in the late 1960s. An American company, Beatrice Foods, volunteered to get their hands on the Beauce business, but without success.
It is that the political class is moved by this Quebec flagship which already sits very high in the collective imagination. The government blocks the transaction in disaster. A few hours before the final signature between Vachon and the Americans, the Quebec Trust Company intervened so that everything could be sold to Quebec interests.
The new owners are trying to transform the brand, but it’s a waste of time, underlines Jacques Vachon. “They wanted to change the logo and remove the ‘V’, but when they saw the numbers going down, they quickly reversed course! One hundred years and the name still remains. The brand evolution specialists tried to crack that. They broke their teeth. »
Saputo then bought the company, which is now in the hands of the multinational Bimbo (see other text).
This story full of adventures has also failed to be brought to the big screen. A full screenplay was written in 1999, but production never saw the light of day for reasons that remain unclear.