COMFORTABLE ESTABLISHMENTS IN CANADA
LADIES’ AND GENTLEMEN’S ORDINARY
DAILY FROM 12 TO 3 O’CLOCK, P.M.
BREAKFAST 8 TO 10 A.M.
SUPPER 6 TO 8 P.M.
Full Board, $4.00 per Week.
Dinner, $2.00 per Week.
LADIES’ ICE CREAM & REFRESHMENT SALOON.
The Proprietors have fitted up the Upper Part of the Building adjoining their Restaurant, having a private entrance from Notre Dame Street, in the most sumptuous and costly manner for the accommodation of Ladies and Families, as an ICE CREAM and REFRESHMENT SALOON — where can be procured all delicacies of the Season.
DISHES OF GAME, &C.
Boned Turkey, Jellied Hams, Tongues and Game, Chicken and Lobster Salads, Oysters, &c., furnished to Families and Parties in the City, or sent to the country at the shortest Notice.
ICE CREAM AND JELLIES
HAVANA CIGARS
Of the finest brands, direct from the Importers, for sale by the Thousands, Box or in smaller lots.
MEERSCHAUM PIPES, CIGAR HOLDERS,
AND FANCY GOODS
IN GREAT VARIETY.
CARLISLE & McCONKEY,
PROPRIETORS.[12]
As the Victorian period drew to a close with Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, we have a description of meal preparation by our fellow Canadians in the Arctic written by a visitor:
The preparation for dinner, as I watched them on blizzardy days when we did not fish, started soon after the eleven o’clock lunch. Two women would go out together, one climbing up on the platform to select fish for the meal, the other standing below it with a whip to keep the dogs at a respectful distance from the food. The fish chosen were those judged fattest, for these were preferred to others where the desired fat had to be supplied from our store of white whale oil.
At home the fish were rolled out gently over the floor planking. They were hard as glass and required the same care against breakage. After an hour or so on the floor, when the fish were soft enough to indent slightly when the women pinched them, the heads and tails were cut off and placed as tidbits in a pot for the children’s dinner, which was earlier than ours. The rest of the fish was cut into three- or four-inch segments and the entrails removed and set aside for the dogs. Since the river was convenient to our house, water was fetched and enough poured into each pot to cover the fish segments. The pots came to a boil slowly. At the very first bubbling, they were removed from the fire and set aside to cool…. With our fish at Tuktoyaktuk there were standard preferences, for example, species of fish, part of the fish, fatness. The women went through a friendly and complicated process in selecting pieces for each diner’s taste. In the family they were familiar with the preferences of all of us; with visitors they inquired solicitously. When the piece had been selected, the server would squeeze it so that nothing would later drip from it, for we ate without plates, picnic fashion, and sat on a bed platform covered with fur bedding that must not get damp under any circumstances.
The extreme heat produced by the cooking began to decrease while we had dinner. In two hours or so it would be something like 70° F. at our shoulder level as we sat listening to stories, singing songs, or conversing…. As we had our nine o’clock supper of cold fish leftovers, the warmth remained constant. We then went to bed and slept naked…. By the end of January, 1907, I was convinced that I was healthier on the Stone Age regimen than I had ever before been on any diet or in any way of life…. I was looking forward to every meal.[13]
The Victorian period lives on in the memories of many Canadians as a time of prosperity, opulence, and gracious living. While that may have been true for some families, many others were still very much the pioneers, struggling to survive and prosper, to improve their everyday lives and the quality and quantity of food and beverages on their dinner tables.
CHAPTER NINE
Rupert’s Land Became the Breadbasket of the World
WHEN CHARLES II GRANTED THE COVETED AND exclusive trading rights for all the lands draining into Hudson Bay in 1670, no one knew the extent of the territory involved. For almost two centuries, until 1869 when the new dominion government purchased Rupert’s Land for £300,000, that still remained largely a mystery. During that period, both the Hudson’s Bay and North West Companies exported hundreds of thousands of pelts and left behind mountains of trade goods, while explorers, adventurers, and cartographers attempted to plot the size and shape of the land and water that blocked their way to the Western Sea, and thence to China.
The fur-trading posts often developed farms and gardens to augment the staple diet of pemmican as Alexander Henry explains in his book New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest:
The amount of flesh or fish required to provision even a small trading post was staggering. In one winter at Alexander Henry the Younger’s Pembina [Manitoba] post, seventeen men, ten women, and fourteen children “destroyed” to use Henry’s own phrase, 63,000 pounds of buffalo meat, 1,150 fish of different kinds, some miscellaneous game, and 325 bushels of vegetables from the garden. It added up to about a ton of meat and fish for every man woman and child in Pembina.[1]
Small communities grew up around trading posts like Pembina. The residents were guides, canoe men, coureurs de bois, clerks, and traders, many of whom married Native women. Their resulting families, called Métis, combined the best of the French, Scottish, and other European traditions of their fathers with the food traditions of their Native mothers — all the cultures mingled freely over their cooking fires.
Into the midst of the fur traders, the earl of Selkirk arrived on the Red River in 1812 with the first group of agricultural settlers, Scots who had lost everything in the Highland Clearances. Selkirk brought with him a concession of forty-five million fertile acres in the Red River Valley of present-day Manitoba, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Miles Macdonnell, governor of the Red River Settlement, issued a proclamation on January 8, 1814, forbidding the export from the colony of pemmican and other dried provisions (jerky and pounded meat).[2] This edict was a blow to both of the fur-trading companies and led to the conflicts known as the Pemmican Wars. The North West Company lost, for without this irreplaceable commodity to use on their long canoe trips to the interior and as a staple food for the First Nations over the winter, the trade was crippled and many historians believe this led to the demise of the North West Company and its union with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
The newcomers who accompanied Selkirk brought their own traditional Scottish food, like Black Bun, Haggis, Honey Cakes, and Buttery Rowies. Unfortunately, the rigours of homesteading and the lack of ingredients forced them to put aside their culinary traditions temporarily. The river was the centre of the colony, and farms were allotted in strips of land fronting on the river, for ease of transportation and irrigation. The main settlements were Pembina, Upper and Lower Fort Garry, Point Douglas, Selkirk, Kildonan, St. Boniface, and the growing town of Winnipeg. The new arrivals quickly learned from their Métis neighbours how to survive by organizing buffalo hunts in the spring and fall, not only for the meat but also for the robes that could be made from the hides.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, signs of change were in the air. Civilization was encroaching, and steamships were beginning to appear more frequently on the waterways. The age of the canoe and Red River cart was soon to be supplemented by the construction of the railway. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), completed in 1885, brought westward immigrants who were to change forever this untamed expanse of isolated trading posts and scattered communities.
The food traditions of what were to become the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta were about to be influenced by successive waves of people from every walk of life and every corner of the globe. Despite their diverse backgrounds, they shared a common bond. They were all searching for the fertile soil that would ensure secure futures for their families.
With the construction and opening of the CPR, both the government and the
railway (with millions of acres adjacent to its track) began intensive advertising in the United States and overseas to lure families as homesteaders to the forests, tundra, and prairies. How could anyone resist such superlatives as those expressed in the Manitobian, which were used to describe the agricultural potential of the new province?
Whatever exaggeration there may have been with reference to other matters, there never could have been any with reference to the fertility of the soil. The land of Manitoba is probably so rich and fertile as could be found in this wide world. Wheat ripens there in 90 days and 50 bushels to the acre have been realized from the virgin soil…. A visit to the garden of a new settler had shown a crop of 1,000 bushels of fine potatoes, peas, parsley, onions, leeks, cucumbers, radishes and other vegetables, growing most luxuriantly. A bed of sunflowers had attained a height of 11 feet, and there were excellent strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, and gooseberries.
As well as the First Nations, the Métis, and the Red River (Scottish) settlers, new arrivals from French Canada and Ontario were soon flooding into what in 1870 was to become the new province of Manitoba, It was soon to become a cultural crossroads as British, Icelandic, German, Chinese, American, Ukrainian, Polish, Belgian, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Greek, Danish, Dutch, Czech, and Slovak, as well as Mennonite and Jewish settlers, each claimed 160 acres for a $10 filing fee.[3]
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, newspaper advertisements, brochures, booklets, and broadsides were circulated to lure settlers, merchants, and businesses to western Canada.
Archives of Manitoba
The government built Immigration Halls in centres such as Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Prince Albert and supplied thousands of meals every month to newcomers. The food was simple but nourishing, with soups, stews, bread, and biscuits the basis of their fare. More than a million settlers arrived between 1895 and 1910 and travelled as far as they could by rail and then completed the journey on a wagon pulled by oxen or on foot. As they made the long trek across the prairies to their newly acquired homesteads, they stopped at the isolated homes along the way for food and shelter, and so the tradition of western hospitality was born. The first home of the newcomers was often a one-room sod or log shanty. The cookstove was often set outdoors in good weather, and everything possible was used for food.
Several factors combined eventually to turn this vast territory into the breadbasket of the world. They included the rapid growth of the great industrial cities in both North America and Europe with their demands for food, improved transportation on both land and water, and the incredibly rich soil of the area. Added to this was the miraculous preservation by Ontario farmer David Fife of a few grains of wheat he had received from a friend in Scotland.
Fife, his parents, and his brothers had arrived in Otonabee Township, Canada West (Ontario), in 1820 to take up a land grant. By 1842, Fife was farming his own two hundred acres and was unhappy with the wheat seed available to local farmers. He asked a friend, Will Struthers, a clerk in a Glasgow seed house, to watch for some seed that could successfully survive the northern climate and the short growing season on Canadian farms. Losses to early frost, rust, and other diseases also frequently proved to be disastrous. When Struthers sent a sample of Galician wheat from Gdansk, Poland, Fife did not know if it should be planted in spring or fall, so he sowed a little in each season. His wife, Jane, is credited with rescuing three heads from their wandering herd of cattle, which were munching in the experimental plot. By 1843, Fife realized the potential of this new, rust-free, disease-free variety and was supplying samples to some of his neighbours and harvesting forty-eight bushels for every bushel sown. Within a few years the wheat’s special qualities, combined with the superior flour it produced, led to its adoption by farmers across Ontario and many American states. By the end of the century, Red Fife, as it became known, was famous in all the wheat markets of the world.[4]
Two new provinces sprang from the breadbasket when, in 1905, Saskatchewan and Alberta were created. Saskatchewan Homemakers’ Kitchens, published in 1955, the jubilee year, pays tribute to the farmers, the farms, and the famous hospitality of western Canada.
The history of the West would not be complete without a record of the young men who, never having done any cooking until their homesteading days, learned in their solitary shacks to make Flapjacks and Baking-Powder Biscuits, the latter often being cooked on the hot stove lids. The staple groceries for every homesteader were flour, dried beans, prunes, corn syrup, and perhaps canned milk. This diet, supplemented with eggs and salt pork, was reasonably adequate nutritionally, except for vitamins, but the early pioneers were not concerned about nutrition and were so full of light-hearted optimism that “prunes” became “CPR strawberries” in their colourful vocabulary.
Not all of the pioneers were bachelors. Some of them were accompanied by their womenfolk, and these courageous women often baked bread for all their unmarried neighbours. A few of the earliest cooks employed the salt-rising method for making bread, but they soon learned to use hops to make “starter,” which kept from week to week. When the cheap and reliable Royal Yeast Cakes appeared on the market, homemakers were released from the uncertainties of using homemade bread starters, and for many years the yeast cakes, first round and later square, were found in every home.
Such recipes as Bread and Butter Pickles, Steamed Carrot Pudding, and Shepherd’s Pie may have come from the cookbooks of the grandmothers of Saskatchewan pioneers. These same grandmothers may have compiled many new recipes for utilizing rhubarb, the versatile fruit that was brought west by the first settlers and which has been the homemakers’ standby through all the intervening years.
Cranberries could be baked into mock cherry pies, while saskatoons, those wild, succulent, flavourful berries were good in preserves and pies. Lamb’s quarters (called pigweed in many other parts of Canada) made a tasty vegetable if picked while young and tender, washed, boiled in salt and water, and served hot. Dandelion leaves sprinkled with salt and pepper, bacon fat, and vinegar made a good salad. Of course, wild rice and Winnipeg goldeye were special treats.
Homesteaders from Germany introduced sauerkraut with its high vitamin C content and encouraged their neighbours to eat it to prevent scurvy. Easy to grow, cabbages soon became a familiar sight in every garden, and in August the sauerkraut cutter was shared among neighbours. The cabbages were shredded and packed into crocks between layers of salt. Approximately ten pounds of cabbage to one and a half cups of salt were put in the container in layers until the crock was full. A plate or wooden lid was placed on top and weighted with a stone to hold it down as the container’s contents fermented. The sauerkraut was ready to eat in about a month, but it would keep for several months in a cool, dry place.
Many women became concerned about the need to provide or support programs about community life, health, education, recreation, and other matters of mutual interest. In Saskatchewan in 1907 the Prosperity Homekeepers’ Society was formed near Rocanville, and in 1909 the Open Door Circle emerged in Mair. Other groups were encouraged to form along the CPR line, and in January 31, 1911, forty-two interested women representing eighteen communities held a three-day conference in Regina under the auspices of the University of Saskatchewan. The conference resulted in a constitution, with the object being “the promotion of the interests of the home and community” and the name “Homemakers’ Clubs.” They launched projects that supported clinics, hospitals, community halls, educational programs, libraries, exhibits, and festivals. Their work was similar to, and often in co-operation with, the Women’s Institutes in other provinces.[5]
The drought and depression in the 1920s and 1930s brought devastation to many communities. One prairie wife recalled: “There was no water, no toilet, no jobs for the young, and the nearest doctor was seven miles away by horse.”
In many homes, food was limited to what the farmer could produce
— homegrown flour, boiled wheat porridge, garden vegetables tha
t survived the drought, eggs, home-cured meat, and coffee made from roasted barley, dandelion root, or dried bread crusts. Many townspeople and farm folk depended on relief and shipments of food from other provinces.
There was so little currency that doctors and ministers of the church were often paid with produce. One year almost every parishioner at a certain church left turnips at the parsonage — in lieu of money. The minister said nothing, but invited the church officials to his home for a meal. His wife served: Turnip Soup, Turnip Loaf, Mashed Turnip, Turnip Salad, and Turnip Pie. History does not record whether the church officials found some money, after all.
The Great Depression lasted until 1939, and then the farms began to flourish again. Later, the discovery of oil and gas, potash, and uranium strengthened the economic base and helped make Saskatchewan a well-todo province. Its fields of ripening wheat have earned it the name “The Breadbasket of the World.”[6]
Despite the hardships, Winston Churchill’s famous words “This was their finest hour” come to mind, for during this gruelling period new clubs were organized, membership grew, services were not only maintained but expanded, Youth Training Courses, Homecraft Clubs, and Summer Short Courses were promoted. Many families moved from the drought-stricken areas to more northerly parts of Saskatchewan. This again was a pioneering experience, and women who had familiarity with Homemakers’ Clubs established new branches that grew to be among the most successful in the province.[7] In 1955 there would be 330 Homemakers’ Clubs with a membership of more than five thousand women.
To the west, in the rich grassland and rolling hills of what had become the province of Alberta, change was everywhere. The Hudson’s Bay fur-trading post, Fort Edmonton, where countless voyageurs, trappers, and traders had been launched into the fur-rich Northwest, had become the capital.
Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore Page 9