Our One-a-Day

Some call it the national apple of Canada.  And why not?  The McIntosh apple is Canadian born and bred. 

Oh, it’s a big deal!     

Although apples are not native to North America (Central Asia boasts that title), they were brought along by the French colonialists back in the 17th century when they moved into Nova Scotia.  But the apples they brought certainly weren’t Macs, and how apple seeds would even make their way into the thickly forested area of what would come to be called Eastern Ontario, is a mystery.

Almost all types of apple trees will produce apples if left to their own devices, but there is no guarantee of what the variety will be.  Apples are like humans—their DNA is a complicated issue—and even two apples that have grown side by side, will have different DNA from each other and will produce apples from their seeds that won’t likely carry the same qualities that they have. Weird, right? That’s nature for ya.  

None of these complexities were swirling around in John McIntosh’s head in 1811 as he was working to clear his newly acquire land in Dundela, a small community then as now, 100 kilometres south of Ottawa and close to Morrisburg (home of Upper Canada Village). 

John was an unlikely Canadian as his parents had left Scotland to settle in New York State.  When he was 19, he had a falling out with his folks and set out after his sweetheart, Dolly Irwin, who had been taken off to Upper Canada by her parents.  When he got to Canada, some time around 1797, Dolly had died (or so her parents told him!!!) so, having burnt bridges to get here, he decided to make a life for himself in Canada as a farmer.  He worked a plot of land near the settlement of Iroquois, on the St. Lawrence.  Four years later, in 1801, he married Hannah Doran.  That must have worked out okay because they went on to have 7 sons and 6 daughters together and were married for 44 years before John passed away!  The growing family lived on the land that John had been farming in Iroquois until they decided to switch properties for something a bit further in-land that Hannah’s brother Edward owned but hadn’t done much with. 

As John set to clearing the land in their new spot in Dundela, presumably to grow crops, he stumbled across a little stand of apple saplings.  Although he took several of them to transplant closer to the house, only one survived and Hannah is the one credited with providing the care that it needed to thrive.  The apples from this one tree turned out to be terrific.  They were sweet with a bit of tart, and their texture was ideal for eating and for cooking.  The McIntoshs became well known in the area for their tasty apples and John generously offered seeds to anyone who wanted them.  As we now know, the apples from those seeds were never able to produce the same appealing variety that they came from so for years the McIntoshs had the only tree of Macs in the world. 

One of John and Hannah’s sons was named Allan, and it was he who picked up the art of grafting, around 1835.  Grafting is a sort of arranged marriage that requires the bud or shoot of the tree one wants to clone, to be attached onto the young rootstock of a species of tree chosen for its hardiness and size (dwarf rootstocks are often used in order to aid in harvesting).  Through this method, along with Allan’s generous gifting of seedlings throughout Eastern Ontario and into the north-eastern United States, where he roamed as a travelling preacher and some say medicine man, the McIntosh family was able to start building a following for their apples and eventually began to monetize their crop by planting an orchard of this delicious apple and raising a nursery of seedlings for sale, as well as selling their apples directly to their customers. 

Their Dundela orchard apple began to find itself in demand and by the late 1830s, the apple became known as a McIntosh Red (still their official name). It wasn’t until 1870 that they started to be commercially produced and marketed, both through the McIntosh’s efforts as well as other orchards throughout Canada and the States, eventually becoming so well known that by 1960 they would make up 40% of the apple market in North America. 

Back on the McIntosh farm, the original tree that John had found as a seedling and that Hannah had nurtured into maturity, was badly damaged in 1894 when the house caught fire and burnt to the ground.  Having barely survived that ordeal, the tree limped along until 1908 when, at almost 100 years old, it produced its last crop of fruit and falling over 2 years later.    

The deep legacy from that one tree continues to be recognized by the fact that McIntosh apples are named as a contributing parent in over a hundred different varieties of apples, including Cortlands, Empires, Macouns, and Spartans, to name a few favourites.  McIntosh are the most prominent apples used in the making of apple juice—2 medium Macs will produce about a cup of raw juice—and have become a baking darling because they take less time to cook than other well known varieties. 

And then there’s the computer. 

In 1979, when Jef Raskin was working on the latest line of computers for his bosses at Apple Inc., he decided to name the line after his own favourite apple. The McIntosh.  As luck would have it, there was already a hi-fi company (remember those?) using the name McIntosh (still in business, by the by), so in order to satisfy everyone’s lawyers, Jef changed the spelling to MacIntosh, and that legend was born. 

Although our consumer tastes have moved more towards the sweeter apples available in our supermarkets today, the rich history of the McIntosh Red has vaulted it into a seat at the table of what makes Canada so darn Canadian.  And even if not an actual seat, you can confidently count on it showing up at some point during the meal (hopefully dessert!).