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BC Almanac Book of Greatest British Columbians (Harbour $39.95)
I am the egg carton man
Co-compiled with his CBC radio producer Greg Dickson, Mark Forsythe's BC Almanac Book of Greatest British Columbians (Harbour $39.95) includes entries for the likes of Emily Carr, Terry Fox and W.A.C. Bennett, plus a few surprises.
Take, for instance, the man who gave the world the egg carton.
Joseph Leopold Coyle, who lived in tiny Aldermere, a community close to Smithers, evidently invented the egg carton after a local rancher named Gabriel Lecroix was having difficulty shipping his eggs in tact to the Aldermere Hotel. The rancher and the hotel were forever squabbling about who was responsible for the broken eggs. Coyle, who ran the nearby newspaper office, was privy to this bickering and decided to fix the problem.
Having taught himself how to construct most of the machinery necessary to produce Smithers' first newspaper, the Interior News (still publishing today), Coyle, a do-it-yourselfer, was a man who relished a challenge. After he designed the prototype of the modern egg carton, he sold his newspaper in 1918 and moved to New Westminster to mass-produce his product, eager to make a fortune. It was not to be. Coyle ran low on funds, sold his patent and died in New Westminster, so un-sung that his name does not appear in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of B.C.
Coyle's little-known story emerged after Mark Forsythe requested his province-wide listeners to submit nominations for the 100 Greatest British Columbians. Suggestions from the public were augmented by invited submissions from provincial experts to complete Forsythe's second book project.
1-55017-368-5
[BCBW 2005]
Co-compiled with his CBC radio producer Greg Dickson, Mark Forsythe's BC Almanac Book of Greatest British Columbians (Harbour $39.95) includes entries for the likes of Emily Carr, Terry Fox and W.A.C. Bennett, plus a few surprises.
Take, for instance, the man who gave the world the egg carton.
Joseph Leopold Coyle, who lived in tiny Aldermere, a community close to Smithers, evidently invented the egg carton after a local rancher named Gabriel Lecroix was having difficulty shipping his eggs in tact to the Aldermere Hotel. The rancher and the hotel were forever squabbling about who was responsible for the broken eggs. Coyle, who ran the nearby newspaper office, was privy to this bickering and decided to fix the problem.
Having taught himself how to construct most of the machinery necessary to produce Smithers' first newspaper, the Interior News (still publishing today), Coyle, a do-it-yourselfer, was a man who relished a challenge. After he designed the prototype of the modern egg carton, he sold his newspaper in 1918 and moved to New Westminster to mass-produce his product, eager to make a fortune. It was not to be. Coyle ran low on funds, sold his patent and died in New Westminster, so un-sung that his name does not appear in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of B.C.
Coyle's little-known story emerged after Mark Forsythe requested his province-wide listeners to submit nominations for the 100 Greatest British Columbians. Suggestions from the public were augmented by invited submissions from provincial experts to complete Forsythe's second book project.
1-55017-368-5
[BCBW 2005]
Submitted on September 29, 2005 in By David.
