Pictured: Truck carrying fish casks from James A. Garland’s cooperage, Point of Beach, Harbour Grace, 1947.

Garland’s cooperage was once described as “one of the busiest firms in Harbour Grace.” Forty-five employees manufactured herring, cod oil, and berry barrels; fish casks and drums; salmon tierces; oil casks; Coca-Cola boxes; and a host of other wood containers carrying Newfoundland products around the world.

One of Garland’s main customers was William Azariah Munn, a leading producer of medicinal cod liver oil, whose production plant was adjacent to Garland’s cooperage. In the words of James’s son Charles, the firm “supplied [Munn’s] with thousands and thousands of barrels, each one with a tin liner. I suppose we made 160 or 170 barrels a day.”

Photo courtesy The Evening Telegram, September, 1947.