Canada was in the decade of the Great Depression (1929-1939), when two businessmen, (Clarence Sprott and Leverett Hatt), one from Canada and the other from Britain discovered their mutual interest in the food industry. Optimistic and entrepreneurial they decided to form an alliance to import hard to find ingredients from the UK for the bakery, dairy, and food manufacturing industries in Western Canada. This was the start of British Canadian Importers, an organization created to honour their countries of origin, a symbol of unity which continues in the culture of BCI today, through its collaborative, united approach to sales and service in Canada.