Canada’s growing wine industry turns to seasonal foreign workers

(CronkiteNewsOnline) - It’s nearly spring in Ontario, Canada. Outside you can feel it. It’s still chilly, but there’s a sense that the worst of winter is over. There’s a thin layer of melting snow, pooling in shallow ground and mixing with the dirt to create a thick layer of mud – making it hard to walk through the grass.

For an outsider, you can tell spring is coming from the noise. Sounds from dozens of different birds, back from their southern vacations, fill the air. But for Jane Andres, a lifelong resident of southern Ontario, the real sign of spring comes from the town’s other returning residents – seasonal farm workers, all the way from the Caribbean.

Andres describes the history of Niagara-on-the-Lake, nicknamed “the loveliest town in Canada,” over the crackle of a fireplace that is warming up the open living room inside her two suite bed and breakfast.

She says the town didn’t used to be a mecca for wine-lovers, that for many years the region was dotted with tender-fruit farms and canning plants. But when the last plant closed in the mid-2000s, farmers were forced to find a new crop, one that would be in-demand for years to come.