Bunny Barss reminds us in her many books about Alberta food traditions that
it was the sun ripened grasses and wide open spaces that lured the first ranchers and cowboys to Alberta and the flat prairies and rolling parklands attracted homesteaders too. They planted grains where there had been only tough prairie sod and when those waving fields of grain were harvested, they served up splendid spreads of food, succulent roasts, crispy fried chicken, homemade breads and pickles, mouthwatering pies and cakes fresh from the oven.[8]
One of the best-known “splendid spreads” that appeared annually on any farm in Canada where grain was grown was the one laid out at a threshing bee. Instead of owning a large and expensive threshing machine, many farmers relied on a hired thresher who, along with his machine, came with two or four teams of horses or a portable steam engine for power. The approach of the threshing bee sent not only the farmers but also the womenfolk in the family into high gear. A visitor from England, Isabella Bird, describes this social phenomenon:
When a person wishes to thresh his corn [in England wheat was called corn], he gives notice to eight or ten of his neighbours, and a day is appointed on which they are to meet at his house. For two or three days before, grand culinary preparations are made by the hostess, and on the preceding evening a table is loaded with provisions. The morning comes, and eight or ten stalwart Saxons make their appearance, work hard till noon, while the lady of the house is engaged in hotter work before the fire, in the preparation of hot meat, puddings and pies; for well she knows that the good humour of her guests depends on the quality and quantity of her viands. They come to the dinner, black (from the dust of a peculiar Canadian weed [i.e., from smut]), hot, tired, hungry and thirsty. They eat as no other people eat, and set all our notions of the separability of different viands at defiance. At the end of the day they have a very substantial supper, with plenty of whisky, and if everything has been satisfactory, the convivial proceedings are prolonged till past midnight.[9]
The western provinces and their rich natural resources continued to attract new arrivals whose culinary traditions added greatly to local culture and to community meals as they shared their recipes at bazaars, socials, and potluck suppers, as well as at threshing time. Treasured recipes for Bleenies (Russian Pancakes), German Coleslaw, Kourabiédes (Greek Shortbread), or Krammerhuse (Icelandic cookies shaped into cones), the last filled with sweetened whipped cream and garnished with fruit, mingled with specialties such as Ukrainian Perogies, Polish Cabbage Rolls, and Sour-Cream Pies, while their creators basked in the compliments of their peers.
Manitoba Party, painted by William Kurelek in 1964, highlights the famous cooking, baking, and hospitality, both at home and at community events, in western Canada.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Meanwhile, the chuckwagon cooks became famous. They were attempting to provide three hearty meals a day — often from one large pot — for the cowboys working on the trail or on the wide-open range. The chuckwagon cook was boss of the wagon and the space around it. There were unwritten rules regarding manners and deportment. When riding into camp, a cowboy always stayed downwind, and woe betide the unlucky one who stirred up a cloud of dust or tethered his horse too close to the wagon. A visitor to the outfit would not dream of helping himself to a snack or a cup of coffee until invited to do so. When a meal was ready, the cowboys held back until the cook yelled, “Come ’n get it,” or gave some other signal for them to help themselves. Then they would fill their plates, sit down on their bedrolls, and begin eating. They did not wait for others to serve themselves, nor did they make polite conversation. “Eat now and talk later” was the rule. Hungry men could go back for seconds, but they never took the last portion of food unless everyone else had been served first. Generally, they ate with their hats on; only when eating at a proper table in the presence of a lady did they remove their headgear, though if they left it on the faux pas was not regarded as offensive. Only a greenhorn broke these rules, and then just once.
In the days of the open range, a well-run chuckwagon was highly regarded. Not only did it attract good cowboys, but it reflected a well-managed ranch, as well. It can be said truly that chuckwagon cooks made a significant contribution to our history and deserve a place of honour in our folklore.[10]
By the middle of the twentieth century, chuckwagon outfits (wagon, horse, driver, outriders, and equipment) were competing in chuckwagon races at fairs, exhibitions, stampedes, and other special events. The entrants are required to break up an entire camp — including a burning stove — load all the paraphernalia into a wagon, do a series of figure eights around barrels, and then ride once around the track.[11]
The Calgary Stampede draws visitors from around the world. One of the greatest pleasures of fairgoers is to enjoy some of the simple traditional foods — Pancakes, Flapjacks, Griddle Cakes, or Hot Cakes served with maple syrup, mock maple syrup, or homemade jams; Bannock or fried bread; Beef-on-a-Bun dressed with onions and sour cream — that have delighted the residents since the early days of settlement.
For serious diners, the following menu appeared in A Collage of Canadian Cooking in 1979:
STAMPEDE BRAND BARBECUE
Tossed Bronco Salad
Rolled Rotisserie Roast Beef
Rum Trader Beans Saddle Bag Spuds
Homesteader Bread
Old Fashioned Ice Cream[12]
As the chuckwagon cooks said, “Come ’n get it!”
CHAPTER TEN
All Aboard!
ON JULY 21, 1836, THREE HUNDRED GUESTS watched the first Canadian train roll along the flimsy wooden tracks from Montreal to St. John, a prosperous village on the Richelieu River. At the end of its sixteen-mile journey “the guests enjoyed a magnificent collation as they feasted and consumed madeira and champagne galore in the brand-new railway station in St. John.”[1]
This railway was built to move freight and goods and appears to have been a dismal failure in that regard, but a great success with passenger traffic, as Montreal families were eager to join excursion parties. They would travel at an astonishing twenty-five miles an hour and then unpack their picnic baskets and sit near the rails to eat.[2]
Fourteen and a half miles of straight line from the hamlet of La Prairie to the village of St. John, the railway appears to have been the catalyst for many short lines in the first half of the nineteenth century. The most unusual was probably the London and Port Stanley line, which appears to have been built mainly for social purposes. It opened on October 1, 1856, having cost £205,000, to take passengers for a day “at the seaside” in Port Stanley on Lake Erie. Masonic Lodge picnics, Oddfellows’ picnics, Grand Union Temperance picnics, Irish, English, and Scottish picnics, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Catholic picnics were the order of the day, but turning a profit was not, and this ill-fated line would finally become an element of Canadian National Railways (CNR) in the twentieth century.[3]
Despite this uncertain beginning, British North America appears to have been thrown into the grip of railway mania as a flurry of construction aimed to draw together the communities scattered across the country. As the nineteenth century progressed, the challenge of constructing longer railways and linking many of the existing ones was too great to resist. Dreams of lines to link the provinces and the United States and ultimately to span the continent from east to west were all to become realities before the century ended.
No matter how long or short the line to be constructed, the survey party went first to begin the task of selecting a route and creating the roadbed. The ideal route was the most direct one possible — which also avoided excessive grades and curves.[4] The survey crews looked after their own supplies and were very vulnerable to shortages, as survivors can confirm:
In the spring, the freshets took their toll of the supply canoes, which were tracked by hand lines up swollen streams. If a party came to disaster, no one might know of it for days or even weeks. Sometimes the pack parties deserted, declaring th
e passage to be too dangerous. There were no medical services; if a worker became seriously ill, the rigors of his evacuation often were enough to kill him.[5]
In 1911 when the Moose River Basin was surveyed, Surveyor Ells’s Gross Section Book gives us a brief list of his supplies: “beef 20, pork 15, corn 2 dozen, beans 15, peas 11, toilet soap, string, tea, coffee, bread, clock, lard, bacon, soap.”[6] This crew probably included eighteen men: a chief, a transit man, a picket man, five axe men, a level man, a rod man, two chainers, a topographer, a cook, two cookees (who helped the cook), and two dog drivers for the dog teams.
Once the route was chosen, construction could begin, and it appears the construction crews for the early short lines were often local men. However, this trend was to change as the projects became larger and more complex. When the Canadian main line of the Grand Trunk Railway was started in 1853, it was estimated that twelve thousand unskilled labourers would be needed, and the contractors thought they could be recruited in Canada. This goal proved impossible, for Canadians did not want to work in the winter, did not know how to work frozen ground, had no interest in team tasks that were absolutely essential in railway construction at that time, and perhaps, more important, believed that joining a railway construction gang was about as respectable as running away with a circus.[7]
Thus began the tradition of recruiting workers from abroad for large construction projects in Canada. A report dated November 1, 1884, confirms the size of the Chinese construction crews working on the western end of the Canadian Pacific Railway: “On Kamloops Lake Section, I have in all about 1600 Chinese, besides a good force of whites.”[8] Later the same report continues:
Above Kamloops … we have now on this portion about 650 Chinamen and 200 whites. I have arranged to increase this force to 1300 for the winter, and I have supplies for that number being delivered at several different points. We passed by a number of gangs of Chinamen by the way, both during the day when they were hard at work with pick and shovel and in the evening when they were at their camps. Each camp has its Chinese cook paid by the gang, who prepares all the meals. I saw one cooking rice in large tin pans and it looked to me both white and good. Another was chopping meat for a stew.[9]
What if you were organized into one of the gangs that was not made up of Chinese workers? What would your cook have as provisions for the month? Here are the supplies for one gang working on the prairies: “2 sacks flour, 25 bacon, 65 ham, 1/2 barrel corned beef, 26 sugar, 10 tea, 5 coffee, 1 keg syrup, 30 oatmeal, 25 beans, 11 split peas, 25 dried apples, 10 baking powder, 1 package yeast cakes, 20 rice, 11 hops, 1 packet salt, 1/2 pepper, 1/4 mustard, 10 bars soap, 11 wax candles, 1 quarter gross matches, 1/2 doz. mixed pickles, 1 case tomatoes, 6 cheese, 1 tub butter, 1 pail lard, 6 currants, 1 box raisins, 1 doz. corn, 1 doz. peas, 1 doz. canned milk, 1 case canned apples, 1 case canned plums.”[10]
In eastern and central Canada, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth century, one of the largest cultural groups to join the construction crews was Italian men. These crews often lived in the most primitive of camp accommodation, or in boxcars.
Each had a small coal stove in the centre of the room or boxcar, with wooden bunk beds around it to accommodate twelve men. The men were earning about $2 a day, and this accommodation cost them $1 per month. In order to save money, the Italians preferred to cook their own food rather than eat in the railway boarding trains.
The camp cooks could find catering companies that promised specialized foods such as “pea soup for French Canadians, macaroni with parmesan cheese for Italians, roast mutton and tripe for Englishmen, caraway seeds for Finns,” and so forth. Despite this facility, “Italians liked to grub in pairs. Two of them would lay in a month’s supply as follows:
1 large wooden box macaroni $3.50
1 bag potatoes $2.00
bread, 1 loaf each per day $4.50
1 pail lard, l0 lbs. $2.50
smoked bacon, side, 22 lbs. $4.00
tea, incidentals, etc. $2.00
Thus, two Italian workers, cooking for themselves, would live quite well, and for less than $10 each per month.”[11]
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, catering companies began to provide an increasingly important service to both construction contractors and railway maintenance crews. Contracts could be negotiated for provisions only, or for a complete service that included a clerk, a cook, cookees, and hot meals cooked and served on the spot. One of these companies, headed by F.C. McCracken and Murray Crawley, signed a contract on May 2, 1914, with J.J. Scully, general superintendent of the CPR at North Bay, Ontario, for boarding, maintenance, and construction gangs in the Algoma District. This contract had formerly been held by the Harris Abattoir Company, Limited, and involved two thousand men in sixty different camps, scattered over eleven hundred square miles of territory.
McCracken and Crawley soon realized their spare equipment would serve only five camps, they could not buy on the spot, and stoves would have to be custom-made.[12] The dilemma was finally solved by their rival, Harris Abattoir, selling them the existing equipment at reasonable prices, and they were relieved to turn their attention to finding
In December 1934, Crawley & McCracken Limited, “Canada’s Biggest Cooks,” published the first issue of The Skillet to serve its staff and alert the public to the success of the firm.
Estate of H.E. Handley
and training staff for the camps. This task was not an easy one, for railway work was often done entirely in the summer months, with the camps closed in the winter, and it was a challenge to find competent temporary staff.[13] Crawley & McCracken Limited — “Canada’s Biggest Cooks,” as the firm became known in 1918 — strove valiantly to live up to its name, for it was also the successful contractor in 1916 to feed the construction workers on the Canadian Northern Ontario Railway (CNOR), then being built, as well as the CPR line in New Brunswick and the CNR gangs in the Montreal district. The company provided its staff with recipes for a wide range of dishes, including Blanc, Chocolate, and Pineapple Mange; Butterscotch, Maple Nut, Snow, and Lemon Pudding; Fresh Strawberry Whip; Brown Sugar, Butterscotch, Lemon, and Custard Sauce; Lemon, Chocolate, and Rhubarb Custard; Raisin and Blueberry Pie; and English Tarts.[14]
Despite the firm’s best efforts, however, it was far from a perfect world out in the camps. Labour disputes could affect vital supplies, as J.E. Cahoon, vice-president and general manager of Crawley & McCracken, described to the officials of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway (T&NOR):
We are worried about the impending packing house strike and think that you should be made aware of the serious situation that can develop. Our camps may have meat for a few days after the strike takes place but, if it lasts for long, there will be no meat for the men. We will be reduced to the position of just serving what food is available. There will be no meat, butter, eggs or shortening for baking and no fat for beans. It may mean porridge and milk, and whatever fruits etc. are available.
Under the restricted diet, it is natural that the men will not be in condition to do a day’s work, as they could do if given full meals. They will not fare better in case they decide to quit work and go home, because the meat shortage will also exist at their homes.
The men in the camps should be advised of the impending situation instead of letting them face it suddenly, as it would create confusion and unrest. Representatives in charge of the men should prepare them for the trouble and ask for their co-operation and support.[15]
These challenges continued as correspondence thirty years later confirms:
May 29, l946 This letter is to advise you that the men in my gang are complaining about the board. I took the matter up with the cook, asking to have same improved, and the answer was that he cannot get supplies.... I cannot understand how the cook can feed this gang of men without adequate supplies.... And about the sweets such as syrup, jam, molasses, apples, prunes, etc. We have not seen any on the table for the l
ast 2 weeks. Kindly check up and see if these orders can be filled more fully in the future. If not I expect to have trouble with my gang.
August 8, l946 This cook was sick upon arrival and did not get up to make breakfast on July 3lst, with the result that there was a very poor breakfast and these sixteen men quit. There is no eggs. Milk or bacon or seemingly anything that can be cooked for breakfast to take the place of these.
Extra gang foreman advises that he now has only eighteen men in the gang, and Edwards has only sixteen men despite inquiries at Kirkland Lake Rouyn and Timmins we have been unable to secure labourers. Can any thing be done at North Bay as our whole program is being interrupted. I have noticed that when the meat supplies come in the butts were addressed to the Ditcher and gas shovel gang while we get the ribs so that we have stew, stew and more stew.
When sweets come in, there is only enough for one or two breakfasts and then no more for a week or more. There has been no toast for the breakfast since the gang went out this spring and there are very few greens.[16]
Labour shortages also affected the staff, despite wages having risen from
$40 a month in 1903 to $150 per month for cooks and $60 a month for
cookees by 1945 when the T&NOR suggested hiring women as cooks to the catering company. There was some reluctance to act on this suggestion, as this response suggests:
You called this morning in connection with using Women as Cooks and Cookees on boarding outfits in event of you finding it impossible to secure suitable male help for these positions.
Should you find it absolutely necessary to employ Women for this work, it will be in order to do so. You understand of course, in view of the difficulty in providing suitable sanitary arrangements for Women, and also the possibilities of they being injured, it is most undesirable that we should have Women employed on these Gangs.[17]
Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore Page 10