DCHP-3

CPR strawberries

DCHP-2 (Oct 2016)

Spelling variants:
C.P.R. strawberries

n. — Food, historical, slang

prunes.

Type: 1. Origin — Railway worker slang from the days of construction of the CPR until about the 1930s (note the 1986 quotation seems to date the term incorrectly). Now used merely in historical contexts (see the 2001 Gerylo quotation). Prunes were also known as lumberman's strawberries.
COD-2 labels the term "Cdn informal jocular" and defines it as "prunes or dried apples"; we found no evidence that the term referred to apples.

Quotations

1919
What do you want real strawberries for, when you have a big supply already of C.P.R. strawberries?
1964
When I suggested we might have a little fruit for breakfast Jack laughed uproariously and asked if I expected CPR strawberries with 50-cent-a-day board. I understood he meant prunes.
1985
"CPR strawberries" were part of the language of the time. They were prunes of a size which may have been carried by grocers to the rich in Montreal or Toronto but which were never seen in ordinary stores.
1986
CPR strawberries are prunes, said Thain, noting that the phrase originated in the Depression.
1999
We called prunes CPR strawberries and it was not meant in a positive way I might add.
2001
After reading Jack Lee's Feb. 9 letter about changing the name of prunes to dried plums, I have to tell him that "CPR strawberries" were very real to railway maintenance workers of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
2001
He told us that the construction crews building the CPR in the late 1880s were fed prunes so often in their camp dining mess tents that they finally called them "CPR strawberries" to get relief from the boredom.