Charles Eaves

Charles Eaves (1908–2006) was a Canadian scientist who extended the storage of apples by controlling levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Charles Eaves was born in Liverpool, England on February 21, 1908.

His mother, Amy Elizabeth (née Potts), died at his birth.

His father, Frank Albert Eaves, a marine engineer specializing in propeller design, died following a workplace injury shortly thereafter.

Eaves' guardians placed the sickly 2 year old in the country with the family of a gentle basket weaver.

During the First World War, at age 8, he was sent to boarding school - a move he found difficult.

However, there he discovered a fondness for music, poetry and theatre – and roles in school plays made classes bearable.

Eaves graduated from school at age 14, but unable to find work his guardians insisted he go 'on the dole'.

This instilled a lifelong empathy for others in need.

Later, as a junior shipping clerk, he entered a Canadian Pacific Steamship office where a striking poster beckoned "Public School Boys Wanted – to learn farming in Canada".

In March 1926, after a rough Atlantic crossing, 18-year-old Eaves entered Macdonald College of McGill University, where he fell in love with Canadian optimism.

He learned numerous farming methods and completed the 2 year diploma course in 1928.

To earn money to continue his college education, Eaves joined the last major harvest excursion to Western Canada.

There he witnessed one of the first, labour-saving, combine harvesters in action.

Eaves completed his BSc.

in agricultural science at McGill University in 1932 with summer employment at the Ottawa Experimental Farm.

In 1933 the IODE awarded him a one-year scholarship to study plant nutrition and produce storage at Cambridge University in England.

Upon his return to Canada he reunited with Margot Vernon Smith from Ottawa and they married in 1934.

Accepting a temporary position at the Experimental Farm in Kentville, Eaves was made responsible for produce storage.

Eaves transferred from the Central Agricultural Research Centre in Ottawa to Kentville, Nova Scotia in 1934 to develop cool temperature apple storage.

He had studied plant nutrition and storage research in Ottawa under Dr. W. Macoun and Dr. M. Davis, and had recently returned from the Low Temperature Research Station in Cambridge, England where Dr. F. Kidd and Dr. C. West were studying the physiology of fruit in controlled-atmosphere (CA) storage.

In Kentville, Eaves quickly established research trials in cool temperature storage.

Over 3 million barrels of apples were exported annually to England, but without pre-cooling spoilage was a major concern.

Eaves developed the concept of rapidly cooling picked apples, then storing them in a controlled atmosphere.

In 1936, George Chase, a forward thinking apple grower and shipper, asked Eaves to accompany a 200-foot refrigerated Danish banana boat leaving Port Williams for England with 1200 barrels of apples.

After earning his MSc from McGill in 1937, he returned to work full-time at the Experimental Farm in Kentville.

He built the first controlled atmosphere (CA) storage in the Western Hemisphere in 1939 at Port Williams in Nova Scotia.

After World War II his research at the Kentville Experimental Farm established storage methods that were adopted worldwide.

He later advanced fruit storage in Turkey and Brazil for the United Nations

In 1939 Eaves established the first atmospherically controlled fruit and vegetable storage facility in the Western Hemisphere.

However, later that year, with the Second World War imminent and with his daughter Elizabeth a year old, Eaves enlisted in the Canadian Army.

He saw his newborn son Allen briefly before shipping overseas in 1941.

Throughout the Italian campaign and the liberation of The Netherlands, Eaves was admired, stalwart and lucky.

In 1945 following the War, he worked initially at the Ottawa Experimental Farm, but returned to Kentville and his beloved apples in 1948.

There he enjoyed a long distinguished research career, but also remained active in the militia, serving as Colonel of the West Nova Scotia Regiment (1957–60).

Mandatory retirement in 1973 resulted in Eaves working for the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization and travelling to establish post-harvest physiology laboratories in Yalova Turkey (1972–73) and Salvador, Brazil (1973–74).

He then returned to Upper Canard and for another 25 years was an active volunteer for many educational and community causes.

and in 2000 was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and Dalhousie University.

On October 25, 2000 he received an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

Eaves died at age 98 on July 2, 2006 and was buried in St. John's churchyard near Upper Canard.