Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore

by Dorothy Duncan

  Manitoba is home to at least two well-known winter celebrations. The first is the Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, which began in 1970 and honours the French Canadian voyageurs of the fur trade, remembering their music, food, clothing, and way of life. The Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival, held annually in February in The Pas (four hundred miles north of Winnipeg), features both traditional foods and traditional cooking skills. Lunch is served in the basement of the community hall, and for $5 you can enjoy breaded walleye, fried to a golden brown, home-style baked beans, pan-fried potatoes (with onions), and a ball of Bannock twice the size of your fist. If you are still a little peckish, add a bowl of beef stew chock full of root vegetables.[18]

  If you want to compete at the festival, brush up on your culinary skills. When was the last time you built a fire? Filleted a fish? Whipped up a batch of Bannock or cooked it over an open flame? Okay, it’s likely been a while. And that’s why the Trappers’ Festival is the perfect cooking school: you’ll learn to separate a fillet from a fish with half-frozen hands and to cut lard into a mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt — no small feat when done outdoors in temperatures that are more than a few degrees below freezing.

  And, hey, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Just think how easy things will seem later, back in your own kitchen, when you fire up the gas range, pull out the pastry board, and have a Henckels knife at your disposal.[19]

  Many Canadian provinces have vineyards that produce wine from local harvests. Commercial vintners have partnered with communities to host a variety of festivals featuring grapes and wine, wine and cheese, food and wine, and a variety of other delicious combinations. One of the newest is the Icewine Festival that has emerged in recent years. This famous winter wine festival began with a Riesling icewine made by Walter Hainle in British Columbia in 1973. Ontario vintners soon followed and, like their western colleagues, have won many international awards for this unique beverage. Grapes for icewine must be picked at temperatures between –8°C and –10°C, usually very early in the morning. This ideal temperature can occur any time between mid-November and January, and the winery staff and volunteers must be prepared to spring into action immediately. The frozen grapes are hard as marbles and transform the water they contain into ice, leaving only the rich, concentrated grape nectar to ooze from the wine press. Some of the Icewine Festivals feature every aspect of the process and give the participants the opportunity to do the work as well as enjoy the final product. Such a small volume from so many grapes helps to explain the premium price one must pay to experience the magic of icewine!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Twentieth Century Brought a Revolution to Canadian Tables

  THERE WAS A MOOD OF OPTIMISM IN Canada as the twentieth century began. For nearly thirty years, there had been long periods of depression, but now trade was increasing, agriculture and light industries were prospering, and prices were rising as Canadian-made products were in demand. The first Canadian hydroelectric power was produced in 1895, just in time to serve the new industries.

  In the first decade of the twentieth century, nearly three million immigrants arrived in Canada from the United States, Great Britain, and eastern and southern Europe. Many of these newcomers were headed for the territories between Manitoba and British Columbia, soon to be known as “The Breadbasket of the World.”

  A significant number were also headed for the new industries in central Canada and for the Great Clay Belt in Northern Ontario, where a railway construction worker found silver in 1903 near Cobalt. Intensive prospecting in the Precambrian Shield, said by geologists to be the oldest rocks in the world, soon led to the discovery of gold at Porcupine and Kirkland Lake, and these strikes were the catalyst for fresh waves of newcomers.

  In 1901 the population of Canada was just over five million and included one of the most diverse groups of people in any country in the world. In settled towns and cities such as Halifax, Fredericton, Montreal, Toronto, and Victoria, lavish dinner parties, elegant luncheons, and bountiful picnic baskets were the norm, while recent arrivals were riding the rails or travelling in ox carts over rutted trails to locate their newly acquired farmland in western Canada, not sure where and when they would find their next meal. Even in well-developed areas there was a great difference between urban and rural Canadians. For decades Canada was basically an agricultural nation, with the focus on owning land and either hunting, fishing, or foraging for food, or farming it to produce a good harvest that would make the owners self-sufficient for the coming year. Hospitality and sharing resources were everyday ways of life. As we have seen, dinner was at noon as the men and boys came in from the fields to eat a substantial meal of potatoes, root vegetables, meat or game, and pies, pudding, or home-preserved fruit for dessert. Visitors were always welcome, and extra places were quickly set at the table for unexpected guests.

  As tiny communities grew into towns and cities, we find that an increasing number of men worked in offices, mills, factories, or other industries and carried a lunch pail to work, containing cold sandwiches to eat at noon. Miners were also carrying lunches that had been packed at home to eat underground. This account from Cobalt confirms how the miner’s children searched the pail for treats, especially cookies that had not been eaten but had been softened by the dampness in the mine.

  It was a treat for the children to see what Dad had left in his lunch pail after a shift underground. Sandwiches were not palatable having absorbed an unpleasant flavour and being unrefrigerated in the humid and hot atmosphere underground. Apples and oranges were Evelyn’s favourites and she does remember that cookies softened after a shift in a mine. Her French-Canadian mother packed a good lunch and there were cookies returned for the kids. Evelyn doesn’t think that this practice was restricted to any ethnic group; more likely an industrial group.[1]

  The above description is quite a contrast to the routine of miners in Cape Breton a century earlier, as we learn in A History of the Island of Cape Breton:

  The working time for an 1827 Cape Breton miner extended from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. with a one hour breakfast period at 9:00 a.m. and the same for dinner at 1:00 p.m. Summoned by a bell at 9:00, the workers all rushed to the store, swallowed a glass of raw rum and went to breakfast. The same process was repeated at 1:00 before dinner and again at 7:00 when the day’s work was done.[2]

  By the twentieth century, dinner was now in the late afternoon or early evening when the men arrived home from work, and it was prepared with ingredients that may have come from the gardens but were often supplemented by items purchased from local merchants and nearby markets.

  The T. Eaton Company Limited, founded in Toronto in 1869 as a dry-goods store, became one of the most important suppliers of household utensils and equipment in Canada because of its booming mail-order business. This success was inspired by the firm’s catalogues, which it began publishing in 1884 and continued until 1976.

  “Goods satisfactory or money refunded,” the guarantee of the T. Eaton Company, won the loyalty of Canadians from coast to coast for almost a century.

  Sears Canada Inc.

  The 1902 spring and summer catalogue was designed to serve and to tempt both rural and urban housewives with advertisements for:

  Leader churns, #1, 9 gals, $4.40; butter ladles 5¢, 8¢; salt boxes 10¢; butter moulds, 1/2 and 1 lb. 20¢; butter spades, 5¢ each; maple bowls, 10¢, 20¢, 35¢, 50¢; as well as chafing dishes, nickel plated, nickel stand, complete, 3-pint size, $5.00, “Marion Harland” coffee pots, well made strong and handsomely nickel plated parts, cannot possibly get out of order, 1 pint size, 85¢.[3]

  In 1903 a special settlers’ catalogue was issued, recognizing the influx of newcomers and using the chatty and fatherly approach that had evolved by then:

  Have You Tried Eaton’s Mail Order System?

  Most people have. If you have lived in Canada any length of time in all probability you have and are using it to-day. If you and we are strangers we want
to get acquainted with one another, that is why we send you this little catalogue. In compiling this booklet one of the objects kept in view is that of giving useful and accurate information to the new Settler and Home Seekers in the Great Canadian North West. To them the store’s usefulness knows no limit. It provides every possible need for furnishing the home from the cellar to the attic; its stocks embrace every Household Help and also include wearing apparel of every reliable kind for man, woman and child. The distance need be no barrier for the Eaton Mail Order System extends to every Town, Village and Post Office in the Dominion of Canada from the Yukon to Nova Scotia.[4]

  The January-February 1909 catalogue must have been hard to resist, for it featured:

  Our Clyde Shaped Tea Set, 12 Tea Plates, 12 Cups and Saucers, 2 Cake Plates, 1 Slop Bowl, 1 Creamer, $1.85; A Charm Table Set of “Press-Cut” Glass, 1 Butter Dish, 1 Cream Jug, 1 Sugar Bowl, 1 Spoon-holder, 1 8-inch Fruit Nappy, 12 4-inch Nappies, 1 11-inch Celery Tray, 1 5inch Handled Nappy or Pickle Dish, 1 9-inch Cake Plate, 1 Salt Shaker, 1 Pepper Shaker, 1 Oil or Vinegar Bottle, Complete Set, 23 pieces, $1.58. If you needed to replenish your drinking glasses, a set of 6 Thin Blown Glass Table Tumblers with engraved star and band pattern, packed in a paper box could be yours for 25¢![5]

  By 1913 the standard grocery items of Ceylon or China black teas, green teas, coffees (Mocha, Java, Jamaica, or Guatemalan), green coffees, and a wide range of dried fruits were supplemented by canned fruits: “Lombard Plums in syrup, 10¢; Choice Strawberries, Red Raspberries or Pitted Cherries, 20¢; California Apricots or Delicious Pineapple, 30¢.”[6]

  These prices appear to be ludicrously low; however, we must compare them to earning power in the same period. In 1905 wages were rising and hours of work were dropping. A very few trades were gaining the eight-hour day. Perhaps the greatest advance was made by workers in seven British Columbia smelters, who had their working hours reduced from eighty-four to fifty-four per week. In that year, stonemasons earned 45 cents an hour. Snow-shovellers in Prince Edward Island, after a brief strike, won a raise from $1 to $1.25 per day. Farmhands received $100 to $250 per year, according to experience. The chief of police in Saint John, New Brunswick, had his annual salary increased from $1,200 to $1,500. In Toronto a young lady might earn $3 per week for “light office work,” a “smart boy” $2.50 a week for work in a factory. Stenographers started at $8 a week. In Hamilton workers in a canning factory made $2 or more a day peeling tomatoes. Sirloin steak sold for 12 1/2 cents a pound, rib roast for 10 cents, tea for 25 to 60 cents a pound, depending on quality and kind. Bread was up to 4 cents a loaf.

  By 1915 some wages were still being raised, but many were dropping as the economy settled down from a period of inflation. Food prices had gone up substantially. Sirloin steak was 23 cents a pound, loin spring lamb was 24 cents a pound, and chicken was 28 cents a pound. Bread was 6 cents a loaf, while butter was 32 cents a pound.[7]

  World War I had begun in 1914 and brought honour and recognition to Canada and Canadians on the battlefields of Ypres, Vimy Ridge, and Flanders, but it also brought conscription in 1917, which seriously divided the rural and urban dwellers of Canada. “Food will win the war” was Germany’s slogan as its submarines tried to cut Britain off from food supplies in Canada and starve the Mother Country’s people into submission. In Canada farmers believed in the same slogan and that their place was at home on the farm and not in the armed forces. They and their families resisted conscription to the contempt and abuse of urban dwellers who were facing problems of their own. Their domestic servants were vanishing into the munitions factories, leaving many a housewife facing a rebellious coal or wood stove with a worn copy of The Home Cook Book in her hand.

  When the war ended in 1918, Canada faced a short but severe depression and farmers were hard hit, because during the war they had dramatically increased the production of food, investing heavily in machinery. Suddenly, prices were radically reduced, and farmers were facing heavy losses. The farm was also perceived to be a dull, dreary, second-class place to be, and the exodus to the towns and cities that started during the war continued as young single men and women looked to urban centres for work. One of the major complaints of farm women was the shortage of labour to help do the work indoors and outdoors. Another grievance was the total lack of electricity, believed to be the answer to all of their problems. These issues would continue to cause tension between farmers and town dwellers.

  The war years and the years immediately following also saw increased pressure from the temperance movement across Canada. In 1918, for the first time, legislation covered all jurisdictions when the federal government finally stepped in to shut down liquor traffic completely.[8] It was unlawful to possess beer or liquor except in one’s own home, or to sell liquor as a drink. Taverns, bars, and all liquor outlets except government distilleries were closed. It was possible for a doctor to prescribe alcohol to a patient thought to be in need of it, so liquor as a drink could be legally obtained by simply being “ill” and having it prescribed to you for “fainting fits” or “bites of mad dogs.” Illegal stills and outlets, known as “blind tigers” and “blind pigs,” flourished to such a degree that bootleggers and rum-runners became very wealthy while ordinary citizens struggled along in relatively hard times. The reality of growing up in a temperance home and signing the pledge usually meant that spirits were available for seasonings and for medicinal purposes only.

  When the Great Depression began in 1929, it brought many young single children home to the farms they had abandoned earlier, and in the towns and cities thousands of people were suddenly out of work, dependent for food and clothing on bread lines, soup kitchens, and relief programs provided by governments, and usually referred to by jealous neighbours of the recipients as “pogey.” Many families realized for the first time that popcorn went a long way towards filling empty stomachs.[9]

  “Make it do, make it over, use it up” became the Canadian slogan. Farm families had the best and worst of the Depression, for they had some degree of self-sufficiency with their gardens and livestock. However, they now had to cope with the sudden return of family members who had left the farms years before for high-paying city jobs and now, having lost those same jobs, were back on the farm to survive. As well, there were the “tramps,” that steady stream of men knocking on doors looking for handouts and willing to do anything to pay for it. Tales were told of the marks tramps put on gateposts if they were treated kindly and fed before being sent on their way. Such signs told other homeless men where they could find refuge for a few hours at least.

  In Canadian kitchens, cooks learned how to make something out of nothing, or next to nothing. Recipes like “Economy Cake,” “Save All Pie,” and “Economical Chicken Salad,” which used only one cup of chicken to feed a family of ten, were used whenever a family was fortunate enough to have the ingredients to make them. Those still eating three meals a day could expect to have porridge for breakfast, bread fried in lard or drippings at noon, and macaroni for supper, all washed down with strong, hot tea.

  Enterprising and innovative cooks developed new recipes for Macaroni and Cheese, Macaroni and Tomatoes, Fried Bread, Bread Pudding, Bread Sauce, casseroles of bread stuffing, and every conceivable form of baked and steamed bread, biscuits, dumplings, and puddings. The skill of using up leftovers by combining them with other leftovers and perhaps adding a new ingredient was honed to a fine art.[10]

  From the desperation of the Depression, many positive things emerged — credit unions, buying clubs, cooperative canneries, turkey pools, a revival of beef rings and the barter system, as well as many other enterprises that helped thousands of Canadians to earn their own living through their own efforts.

  Soon the motor car, airplane, radio, and a thousand other inventions swept into use and revolutionized ways of doing things in business, factories, farms, and homes. For instance, radio eventually brought the voice of Kate Aitken, food editor of Montreal’s Standard, director of women’s activiti
es at Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition, and director of the Exhibition Cooking School, into every home with her tested recipes and cookbooks dedicated to inexpensive daily living. Her theme was “In the hands of Canadian women lies the health of the people of Canada. Food is our Business. It’s an intelligent business and its dividends are paid daily in the health and happiness of the members of our family.”[11]

  World War II was well named the Global War as Canadian men and women served around the globe from 1939 to 1945. The conflict also brought conscription, food rationing, munitions factories, instant towns such as Ajax (which covered some of Ontario’s best farmland), shift work, training locations for airmen from the British Commonwealth, and eventually “war brides” coming home with their husbands to make a new life in Canada. In all, 64,451 war brides and their children were transported to Canada across the Atlantic between 1942 and 1948, bringing with them food traditions from all over the world. The postwar years also brought new waves of immigrants who influenced farming, agriculture, and new tastes in food, for the new well-spiced international cuisine they introduced was a great attraction for Canadians after the blandness of wartime foods. These new arrivals made many contributions to Canadian life. For example, the Dutch from Holland bought land in the Holland Marsh area in Ontario, reclaiming it and turning it into one of the best areas in Canada for growing vegetables.

  The postwar years also found manufacturers trying to place every sort of tinned, packed, packaged, bottled, and frozen food into the hands of the servantless housewife. Television had had its inauguration in North America at the 1939 world’s fair in New York City, but it did not begin to fulfill its function as an advertiser — a function that has almost swamped it today — until 1946. In that year Standard Brands realized the potential of television for food and beverage advertisements and sponsored Hour Glass, which advertised the firm’s products at regular intervals during the first hour-long entertainment. Television sets became an indoor status symbol in the 1950s, and those tiny black-and-white screens prompted a flurry of new products such as TV dinners by Swanson in 1953, as well as the TV tables that in many homes brought the daily family conference around the dinner table to an end.