VENDOR PROFILE

With each newsletter we plan to bring you a bit of the inside story of one of our vendors.

If there is a "Right Honourable Member" of the Kingston Market community, then Doris Thompson is that person. Doris is over 90 now and has been coming to market for 66 years. In 1936, when her husband John lost his job as a teamster they decided to try their hand at market gardening. They rented a farm at Sunnyside. The landlord also supplied a team of horses.
"We had hotbeds. That's like horse manure - we saved it all winter and it heated. Then we put soil over top and then panes of glass. We'd have to lift them in the daytime or it'd get too hot. We grew everything in those hotbeds. Out in the field we grew every vegetable you can think of. Turnips - they were my favourite. And Earliana tomatoes. They weren't smooth but you could sell them because they tasted so good.
We never bought anything in those days. " I don't know how we got into buying (vegetables and fruits) but we did. Sam - Tony Deodato's father - used to come with their truck - they used to guess at what we'd need - and we took what we didn't have of our own - strawberries and raspberries.

"The market was very poor, then. We'd go in all year with our produce and took in less than $1000 (per year) and that had to pay for the rent and groceries and everything." But then the war came and Doris remembers how, by the spring of 1940, Market had picked up quite a bit. "We had a few years of making money and we were even able to save some. We thought we were in heaven. Market wasn't like it is now. On the corner was Cooks. They had ten or twelve men working. They grew ten acres of vegetables. We were next and then George Murray. And I can remember Bakers - that must have been an uncle of Larry's."
I asked Doris about her present green truck. It's thirty years old. She says she loves it because it still goes. It's such a straight forward unsentimental answer that she catches me off guard, "This afternoon the mechanic's coming to pick it up to get it ready for the season she says. I'm aiming to go (to market) for Easter."
I can't leave without asking Doris one last question, even though she's getting tired. Health wise, she's had a rough go of it this winter.
"Doris," I say, "What is it that you like so much about going to Market?"
She's quick with her wit. "I can't answer that," she says. "I just love going. And I hope to go 'til I'm old."