Perogy Story
By Christalee Froese

A small-town church basement is an unlikely place to find a fully functioning factory and assembly line.

But that’s exactly what is located in Montmartre’s Catholic Church basement. It’s not car parts, tractor tires or running shoes that are being made, however. It’s perogies … and lots of them.

The grand total has surpassed well over a million, meaning 120,000 lbs of potatoes have been peeled and mashed, 32,000 lbs of flour have been turned into dough and 6,000 lbs of onions have been peeled and cooked over the years.

“We used to have a lot of rejects,” laughs perogy pioneer Arline Sebastian, one of the initial group of five who came up with the idea of making the tasty Ukrainian delicacies as a community fundraiser. “but now everyone’s pretty good at pinching and we actually have to cut into our profits if we want to have perogies when we stop for lunch.”

It’s been two decades since volunteers of this tiny village of 500 people, located east of Regina, began meeting to churn out 5,000 perogies at a morning sitting. Each of the 50 or so regular volunteers has honed their skills to make the perogy process a fine-tuned one which operates like a well-oiled machine. There are dough rollers, circle cutters, bowl fillers and perogy pinchers. And then the work starts for the boilers, the spreaders, the sorters, the baggers, the coolers and the dishwashers. And don’t forget the runners, who make sure the dough gets to the rollers, the circles get to the pinchers and the perogies get to the spreaders.

It wasn’t always a smooth-running assembly line though. When the perogy idea was first hatched in 1982 over a few cups of coffee, it was decided the perogies would be made in someone's home. But the operation soon outgrew those premises, moving to the town’s rink. While the arena wasn’t a bad venue for perogy production, it did have its pitfalls.

“We got the idea to cool the perogies on a plastic on the curling ice. So we threw them on there thinking they’d cool really fast, which they did, but when we were finished, we saw the perogies had left little indentations in the ice,” chuckles Sebastian. “The curlers were not happy with us, so we were soon booted out of there, but it did work good because it cooled fast.”

The perogy makers then moved to their current home - the town’s church basement, which has been tailored to suit the needs of the expanding perogy operation. Stoves were brought in, industrial-sized potato mashers were purchased and deep freezers were installed.

The perogy makers now churn out $1,000 to $1,200 worth of perogies each Wednesday, which is pretty much clear profit since all of the labour and most of the ingredients are donated. The money raised over the years, which is in excess of $100,000, has been used for such community projects as refurbishing the arena and remodeling the church. And even though making perogies can be hard work, the volunteers don’t seem to mind at all.

“We have lots of laughs and we have good giggles while we’re making,” says Sebastian. “We even have people that don’t belong to our church that come and help. It has sort of made a community within a community.”

As for sales of the Ukrainian dish, that has never been a problem, as the perogies sell as fast as they are made strictly on the strength of word of mouth.

And as long as the demand remains, this perogy factory will continue to operate and the men and women of Montmartre will continue to mash, pinch and cook all for the sake of helping their community.