OLD QUÉBEC MEDICINE BOTTLES
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So far, only the homepage and the "Contact Me" page are available in English. I wanted this website to be entirely bilingual, but I realised I would make it twice as big by doing so, and I'm reluctant to undertake this right now. I might eventually do it if there is a demand for it. In the meantime, you should be able to browse around without too much trouble.
I created this website in order to share information on a specific field of antique bottle collecting, but also to get in touch with other collectors. Although there are plenty of bottle collectors in the province of Québec, those interested in medicine bottles remain scarce.
This website is mainly a database in which I am trying to enter all known antique medicine bottles from the province of Québec, a project that may be a little too ambitious to do on my own. That is why I invite fellow collectors to help building up the database by adding bottles that do not appear on this website. This will eventually give us a good idea of what still remains of yesterday's pharmaceutical industry in Québec.
Of course, such a website will never be complete: there will always be an unknown bottle that will turn up somewhere. You can get a good idea of what is yet to be found by viewing the medicine advertisements page.
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Like many other collectors, I have often been disappointed by the lack of good information on the field I am interested in. Books about antique bottles are usually too general and seldom talk about Québec bottles, with the exception of "Bouteilles de Boissons Gazeuses du Québec au XXième siècle" (XXth Century Québec Soda Water Bottles), by Pierre Gagné, and "Cruches de Marchands du Québec" (Québec Merchant Crocks) by Maurice Richer.
Books are an excellent source of information, but it is very difficult to find (and to come up with) complete books in a field where new pieces can turn up anytime. In such a case, a website is of great use since the contents can be modified or updated whenever it's necessary.
About the contents, you will also find household
product bottles (machine oil, cleaning products, disinfectants, poisons,
etc.), as well as bottles from the Ottawa valley (Québec side) and from the
city of Ottawa that predate 1930.
The year 1930 was chosen because most bottles produced after that are often quite ordinary, lack embossing, and are not as much interesting as those that were still in use 15 years before. I made a few exceptions for bottles of that period that were different.
A website containing all antique Québec bottles would be a major undertaking: soda bottles alone could fill a whole website ! That is why I will let the experts deal with their own interests: the links section will direct you to two complete websites on soda and milk bottles.
Enjoy your visit !
Online since April 10th 2009 Updated: April 24th 2010