I remember believing that all the Coke in the world came from the bottling plant on King Street East using water from nearby Rockway Gardens. The soft drink had been served in Canada since the early 1890s, and the first Canadian bottling plant was on Bellwoods Avenue in Toronto in 1905. Veteran drivers told Jim of a memorable 1954 event involving the Coke trucks. Plowing contests took place in a sea of mud well past horses’ fetlocks and Hazel’s winds flattened portions of the tented city … but the Coke trucks always got through. Over the half-century of the Coca-Cola bottling operation on King East at least eight men managed the plant before it shut down in the mid-1990s.

Source: The Star December 24, 2022 01:01 UTC