The Rural Voice, 1989-03, Page 29countries where garlic is consumed
generously and regularly, the incident
of heart disease is very low."
For all of these reasons, garlic is in
the news. Reuters picked up the story
Maczka provides his garlic
with a role model.
of "The Garlic King," and Maczka's
face was reproduced in regional
papers across North America. He
wore a 25 -pound, three -tiered, braided
garland of perfect white bulbs of
garlic and a sweat shirt proclaiming
him the "Fish Lake Garlic Man." The
headlines in the papers varied from
"Phew! He loves his stinkin job," to
"Farm is off limits to vampires."
There is no doubt that Maczka
thrives on the publicity, but he also
believes it will help him achieve his
long-term goal. He wants to establish
a research station to study Canadian
garlic and foster new varieties. "I
want to have a Garlic Foundation of
Canada, so that everyone interested
can get involved. I want to grow
varieties of garlic that people need."
Maczka looks to the statistics to
prove the need for his garlic research
station. In 1986, Canada consumed
just over 6 million pounds of fresh
garlic. Of this, 5,914,000 pounds was
imported and a mere 222,000 pounds
was domestic — a staggering 96.4 per
cent is imported. There is no good
reason why Canada should not be self-
sufficient in garlic. It can be difficult
to grow disease-free white garlic in
our relatively humid climate, but the
pink garlic, the variety that is more
desirable to good cooks, grows very
well in Southern Ontario's heavy clay
soil, especially if there is irrigation to
ensure regular growth during the
drought of summer.
Maczka has been conducting
research on his farm. For the past 10
years, he has kept meticulous records
of the varieties he has grown, where
the variety came from, how it per -
In 1986, Canada consumed just
over 6 million pounds of fresh
garlic. Of this, 5,914,000 pounds
was imported and a mere 222,000
pounds was domestic. There is no
good reason why Canada should
not be self-sufficient in garlic.
formed, and records on varieties that
he has bred himself (a variety he calls
"Fish Lake"). Most of his research is
done in an old yellow school bus that
has been gutted of its seats. There are
shelves and compartments with seeded
and dried garlic, a place to keep track
of his correspondence, and a pile of
milk canons that he cuts into boxes to
fill his mail orders.
Everything Maczka has achieved
has been done independently. And his
research ambitions are being thwarted
because he does not look like, or
act like, the typical white -gowned,
bespectacled research scientist.
He has been fighting to get sup-
port. He has fought with the "experts"
at the universities and with the "ex-
perts" in the agricultural departments.
He doesn't mind talking about how he
"foxed" the authorities. When he got
the idea for a garlic research centre, he
spent months trying to get information
out of Agriculture Canada. "I was
hungry for any information on garlic.
I knew that they must have the
information, but they were too lazy to
go and find it. They just sent me a
zerox of seven pages out of the French
encyclopedia."
"So eventually I got real clever. It
A visitor from the Ottawa
region does his shopping.
was during the time when Eugene
Whelan was minister. I got hold of
the name of the director of the library
at Agriculture Canada. I came up with
the idea of calling myself the Fish
Lake Garlic Man Research and
Experimental Station, so that when I
wrote to the librarian I would get some
respect," says Maczka, throwing back
his head and laughing.
"Suddenly I got all of this mater-
ial." Maczka pulls out a Large pile of
photocopies from under an even larger
pile of news clippings, old magazines,
and envelopes from interested readers,
all weighed down with a kettle filled
with tea made from homegrown
raspberries.
After so much effort to get hold of
the data, Maczka found most of it use-
less because they were research papers
focusing on large-scale commercial
enterprises based in California and
MARCH 1989 27