Richard Feltoe has spent more than four decades steeped in the history of Redpath Sugar.

The curator and corporate archivist of the Redpath Sugar museum, not to mention sole staff member, Feltoe, a prolific author and military historian, has dedicated most of his working life to sourcing stories and signatures, memorabilia such as photographs of sugar cones outside a store in England and boys climbing into a wooden sugar barrel around 1846, and even an industrial vacuum pump to bring the company legacy to life.

“Every item in here has its own story. So I don’t have a favourite,” said Feltoe, during a recent tour.

Feltoe intends to retire in spring about 43 years after was given the go-ahead to transform part of a sugar bag storage facility into an archive of company history. The history buff spent most of his working life within its walls and written 10 historical books, three about Redpath.

He doesn’t know who will take the museum over from him, though he’s been assured his decades of effort, pouring through ledgers and historical records and juggling questions from visiting school groups, will not go to waste.

“You do not go into museum work for the money,” Feltoe said, sharing a lesson from an early mentor. “But it is one of the very few jobs you can do where you go into work day after day after day and have the most incredibly chaotic time or stressful time, go home at the end of the day and still say I can’t wait to get into work tomorrow morning.”

The museum is tucked within a 24-7 working refinery at Queens Quay East near Lower Jarvis Street. Feltoe opened the museum in June 1979. He was tasked with running the site after a chance encounter arranged through the help of his father-in-law, but — looking back — his path to Redpath seems almost preordained.

Company founder John Redpath was born in 1796, in Earlston, within the Scottish Borders. The son of a farm worker, he lost his parents early and ended up working as a stone mason’s apprentice, starting at age 13, then immigrated to Quebec in his 20s. He opened his first sugar company in 1854.

Feltoe was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, about 65 kilometres from the birthplace of Redpath, and when he was 13 Feltoe immigrated by ship to Montreal.

Feltoe then met a girl in high school there, who’d eventually lead his path back to Redpath.

But first he returned to England during his late teen years to study and while at college in Newcastle visited a local museum and Feltoe, who made models at the time, asked the curator if he could clean up some artifacts in the collection.

That attention to detail led to an offer to curate a weapons exhibit and Feltoe, about 17 years old at the time, was led down a spiral staircase to a basement room filled with centuries old swords and axes thick with dust. He took them home, one-by-one, wrapped in towels on the bus, cleaned them and brought them back. “I just used soap and cleaning stuff and just treated the things with all the love and care and attention I could.”

That young woman he met in Montreal came to visit, then arranged to stay and the couple were eventually married, before returning to Canada and have been together for 43 years.

“I keep looking for the expiry date on the marriage certificate but I just can’t find it,” said Feltoe, quickly noting it is a long-standing joke the couple shares.

When the couple first arrived back in Canada, Feltoe needed to find work but was not sure how to approach the Canadian job market.

“My father-in-law got me some practice mock interviews with some of his business friends. One of them just happened to be with Redpath industries,” he said.

During that interview the prospect of a Redpath museum came up and Feltoe didn’t think much more of it until a year later when he got a call asking if he would be interested in taking on the role. The museum was opened in 1979.

Appointments are strongly suggested. Guests sign in at the main gates then take a short, escorted, walk outdoors which can include a whiff of warm molasses as it is loaded from tanks into nearby trucks. Sometimes the air escaping from the holds of the cargo ships, bringing raw product from across the ocean, also releases a sweet waft into the air.

The museum outlines how when Redpath, the man, stepped off a ship in Quebec City with hardly a penny to his name and then, according to company legend, walked about 250 kilometres barefoot to Montreal — to preserve his shoes in case he obtained interviews on arrival. That city was where he began his construction business and would build his fortune.

The John Redpath Canada Sugar Refinery was built on the edge of the Lachine Canal in Montreal, in 1854. Redpath, the man, had been involved in the building of the Lachine Canal, the locks on the Rideau Canal, the Notre-Dame Basilica and parts of McGill University. Another Redpath Museum sits on that campus and was completed in 1882, according to the McGill website.

The opening of the Toronto site coincided with the official opening up of the St. Lawrence Seaway for commercial trade, Feltoe explained, which is why Redpath was visited by the Queen and Prince Philip for the grand opening in 1959. A copy of the Queen’s signature is in the museum.

Packaging is part of the Toronto museum’s collection and is also tightly linked to the company’s perspective on labour.

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In 1912, the company began making prepackaged sugar and women were selected for the work, as it was expected smaller and more nimble hands suited to the finer work. What stirred up some serious dust was the news they would be paid as much as men working in other areas of the factory. The union, Feltoe cannot recall the name, threatened to strike and the company backed down.

But what the owner then did, Feltoe said, was make the packaging department into a special work category with pay comparable to what men earned for manual labour and then only hired women to do the work.

Other items included in the collection:

A letter to John Redpath’s eldest son Peter from his soon-to-be daughter-in-law Grace Wood, regarding Peter’s proposal of marriage and written in the style of the day with criss-crossing sentences, to use less paper as the recipient had to cover the postage costs, that must be read on a tilt (he was delivered an almost cryptically reserved yes).

A large sterling silver cup presented to John Redpath on completion of the Rideau Canal. “That is a piece of Canada’s history and there are only four in existence,” Feltoe said.

A wood and metal punch clock manufactured by International Business Machines Company Ltd. — more commonly known by its modern name, IBM.

A seven-and-a-half-tonne vacuum pump from about 1890 and sourced from an old beet sugar factory in Michigan, similar to one used in factory, and restored by Feltoe on Redpath grounds for the museum. Refining sugar requires a certain level of temperature and air pressure and suction is, Feltoe explained, a key part of controlling that process.

A copy of a ledger page, discovered by Feltoe, which shows Redpath practising the signature that would become the company logo. “I almost stood up and yelled ‘Eureka.’ How close can you get to an individual from history when you are not seeing an official document. Just somebody sitting in a tent, with a pen, just scribbling away practising.”

Visitors are also reminded of sugar’s brutal origins — how an industry built on abduction and slavery helped make the raw product into one of the most profitable commodities in the world.

“The fact is that the sugar industry as a whole is tied to slavery, it’s there, you can’t hide it,’ Feltoe said. “Once John Redpath actually started his sugar company we actually have a list of the companies he bought his sugar from. Every single one of them is a nonslave source. We are talking ethical sourcing in 1854.”

While the history can’t be hidden, the company did bristle when Toronto’s poet laureate, in a work commissioned for the 60th anniversary the Toronto facility, included references to sugar’s bloody past and the reading was struck from what was designed as a lighter and more celebratory event. Nancy Gavin, who handles communication for Redpath, told the Star that they will be redoing some exhibits and the poem will be part of the museum.

After he retires, Feltoe’s immediate plans include spending time with family, working on three non-fiction and one novel and a short story for youth, participating in military re-enactments and perhaps assisting with the occasional exhibit or event at other museums.

“I want to be able to walk out of this place with a firm feeling that I have done my duty.” He also hopes to spend a bit of time travelling and watching his three grandsons, all accomplished wrestlers at the provincial and national levels.

I don’t know and won’t know until I’ve done it. I intend to continue enjoying the work that I do, whatever that work may be, whether its paid or not, recreation or not, my goal is to enjoy what life brings me.”

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