Calgary Italian Bakery:
60 Years of Local Daily Bread BY ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH
Thick Noodles
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s local food movements continue to grow and become a priority for consumers, it’s important to recognize that even in a province as young as Alberta, “eat local” isn’t purely an invention of the social media age. Local independent businesses have always existed here and plenty of our province’s early community builders are still going strong, even if they don’t always get the same fanfare as new and flashy restaurants and food producers. The Calgary Italian Bakery is one of those old school stalwarts that was practicing an “eat local” philosophy long before it was cool. Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the bakery has been putting wholesome bread and buns on
20 Culinaire | March 2022
tables in Southern Alberta since 1962. Like many small or medium-sized businesses that have been in operation for over a half-century, Calgary Italian Bakery is a family-run affair that is now overseen by the second generation of its founding family. The bakery was first established by the late Luigi and Myrl Bontorin — Mrs. Bontorin was a born and raised Calgarian while her husband immigrated to the city in the 1950s. Their son Louis, who now runs the business with his brother David, remembers playing hide and seek with his siblings among industrial-sized bags of flour and being put to work bagging buns as soon as he was old enough to count to 12. The Bontorins didn’t start their
business to make a gourmet or artisanal product — back in the ‘60s Europeanstyle baking wasn’t fashionable like it is now — but simply wanted to make nourishing bread and buns that don’t break the bank. “We consider ourselves a blue-collar bakery,” says Louis Bontorin. “There have been some bakeries that have done a fantastic job differentiating themselves, and being that high end and addressing that market. We're that local option for something more affordable. And we're the option that has been here for 60 years.” Over the years the Bontorins have grown their bakery into a 40,000-square foot facility that is able to produce about 3,000 loaves or 1,500 dozen buns an hour,
