Preservation Society

Camilla Wynne cuts white daikon radishes into 1-inch cubes, drops and shifts them in tall narrow jars and oversees raspberry jam on the stove, deep and radiant in a copper pan. She is as focused on exacting the right rhythm as she would be at a percussion table playing the drums and keyboard. “We tried long pieces and coins before we found this shape,” she explains.

In 2010 Camilla was in Vancouver when she received two different phone calls from Montreal media about preserves.

“It used to be that preserving was just something everybody did until industrial became the fashion in the 1950s,” Camilla points out. “Both my grandmothers made awesome preserves. Today, if the celery in your restaurant’s Bloody Caesar is a homemade pickle, that really shows you care.”

Taking the media curiosity as a sign that something was astir in Montreal’s artisanal preserves scene, Camilla returned to her adoptive city. She found that many of her friends from the pastry school she’d attended in Montreal had become chefs. Realizing her indie rock band was not going to get back together and that she “didn’t want to work in friends’ restaurants forever,” Camilla founded Preservation Society in November 2011. “I knew I had to do my own thing,” she says.

During her first season at Montreal’s Christmas DIY fair, Puces Pop, Preservation Society sold out a day early. But that was just the start for Camilla’s venture.