Page 52 More Big Hill Country 2009
Ebeneezer Healy was born in Nova Scotia, and he married Sarah Pepper, who was born in Ontario in 1849. They had six children: Glen, Gordon, George, Robert, Sidney and Blanche.
In 1889, the Healys arrived in the Brushy Ridge area south of Cochrane where they homesteaded the NE Sec 12 Twp 25 Rge 4 W5M. They also purchased the S Sec 13 Twp 25 Rge 4 W5M and pre-empted the SW Sec 12 Twp 25 Rge 4 W5M. Then Gordon Healy homesteaded the S Sec 1 Twp 25 Rge 4 W5M.
Ebeneezer was an experienced dairyman, and he brought twenty milk cows, travelling by covered wagon from Regina, where he had established a dairy farm. His family, his wife, five sons and one daughter travelled by the CPR to Cochrane.
The experience he had in Eastern Canada likely prompted the idea that the surplus milk produced in this area could be made into cheese and shipped to outside markets. In doing so, he solved not only his own problems of excess milk but his neighbours’ too.
This project was closely watched by the community, and records show that in 1890, he made ten tons of cheese during the season, valued at an average of twelve and a half cents a pound. The daily milk supply was valued at $12.40 per hundred pounds of milk and he received 3000 pounds per day.
The factory operated until 1896 after which it was converted into a cream separating station operated for a season by Mr. Healy for the Dominion Department of Agriculture. The cream from this station was taken to Calgary and made into butter at the newly formed government creamery.
Ebeneezer Healy then turned to cattle ranching, and the factory became a barn.
The significance of the establishment of Mr. Healy’s cheese factory lies in the fact that it marked the beginning of the industrial phase of dairying in Alberta. Sometime during the 1890’s he shipped some cheese to the Chicago Fair and he won a prize.
Mr. Healy retired from active business in 1907 and died July 14, 1937 at age 92. A cairn was built and on October 27, 1938 it was unveiled on the site of Mr. Healy’s cheese factory commemorating “50 years before, a cheese factory had been built on this site”. The Alberta Dairymen’s Association and the Provincial Government of Alberta erected this cairn.
Currently the plaque from the cairn has been placed in safe keeping at Heritage Park in Calgary.
