Draft:Habitant (food brand)

Habitant is a brand of soups, jams, and condiments originally created and manufactured by the Dominion Preserving Company in Montreal, and now owned by Campbell's. Its pea soup in particular has achieved cultural recognition in Quebec, as a representative of the traditional cuisine of the early French-Canadian settlers.

One of Dominion's buildings has been readapted for use as a condo.

Founding and early history
Habitant's signature pea soup was first created in 1918, at the Outremont grocery and butcher store owned by Philias Morin (1884-1957). Born in Sainte-Claire, Quebec, to a family of farmers, Morin was looking to expand his business and established a small plant for canning jams and pickles. One of Morin's fifteen children, Marie-Blanche, cooked the first batch of pea soup, using the family recipe of yellow peas, pork fat and savory spices that Rose Aimée Couture, Morin's wife, had been making for years. Morin canned those first batches, gave away free samples to his salespeople, and "everyone who tried it ordered some more."

To market the soup, Morin and associates Rémi and Albert Limoges create the Dominion Preserving Company Ltd. in 1920, with Morin as President. The first factory is located in Montreal at 8455 Saint-Dominique street (45° 32′ 29″ N, 73° 38′ 13″ O). The name "Habitant" is registered by the company as a trademark in 1929.

In 1938, the company expands to the United States by opening a plant in Manchester, New Hampshire, close to the large French-Canadian populations of New England that had emigrated in the previous decades to escape poverty. Morin established the plant in a building of the Amoskeag mills which had recently closed. Headed by Gilles Morin, a son of Philias, the plant remained in operation until 1983. At its peak, it produced as much as 80,000 cans of soup per day.

Subsequent ownership
In 1954, the company was sold to Montreal-based Catelli, the largest manufacturer of macaroni products in the Commonwealth, with the new entity renamed Catelli-Habitant. In 1958, Catelli-Habitant is bought by Ogilvie Flour Mills Company Ltd., builders of the famous Five Roses flour mill in Montreal. Ogilvie Flour Mills Company is purchased by John Labatt Limited in 1968 as part of the trend for corporations to diversify their assets. In 1989, Borden purchases Catelli from Labatt for an estimated $225-$300 million, and as part of the deal, sells Habitant soups to the Campbell Soup Company. Campbell announces shortly after the purchase that manufacturing of the soups will be transferred to its Etobicoke plant in Ontario. After that plant closed in 2018, Campbell Soup moved production to the United States. Campbell sells the Saint-Hyacinthe factory along with its jam, jellies and syrup product lines to E.D. Smith & Sons in 1991.

As of 2022, Habitant brands and products are owned and manufactured by three distinct food conglomerates: Campbell Soup for the soups; ED Smith, for the jams and jellies; and Smuckers, for condiments. A Campbell executive noted that "Quebec people are simply very loyal to certain products," and Campbell reportedly continues to sell 18.3 million cans of Habitant pea soup per year in Canada, 10 million of which are sold in Quebec. Smuckers dropped the Habitant Mustard Pickles from its Canadian product line in 2016, creating a “condiment crisis” in Newfoundland. ED Smith dropped the Habitant table syrup from its product line at an unknown date.