
Quebec company hopes its plan to sell bananas, other exotic produce bears fruit
SAINT-EUSTACHE, Que. — Thick, humid air envelopes Myriam Claude’s banana tree, which bears a beautiful cluster of fruit, not yet ripe. Beside it are several trees blossoming with flowers, citrus fruit, and tiny pomegranates waiting to explode with flavour.
But Claude’s bounty isn’t in the tropics. It’s in an 8,750-square-foot greenhouse northwest of Montreal, in the dead of a Quebec winter. Claude is making a big bet that her family’s greenhouse, once dedicated to growing plants, will be able to produce more than 100,000 bananas per harvest, along with other exotic fruit.
“Three years ago, when I said to my father, ‘Dad, let’s try this,’ I didn’t even believe it would work; it was experimental,” she says of her fledgling project at the nursery — Éco-Verdure — in St-Eustache, Que.
“But I thought, why not?” says Claude, daughter of Jacques Claude, who founded the family business. So she set about proving to her father that her idea wasn’t so far-fetched.