The Unwritten Rules of History
Two historians of 20th century domesticity in Canada give you the dish on CBC’s Back in Time for Dinner.
A Home Economics class receiving instructions on cooking. Ottawa, Ont. Chris Lund. 1959. Library and Archives Canada. Copyright expired.
Welcome back to part two of our mini-series reviewing CBC’s new show, Back in Time for Dinner!
Note from Andrea: I’m just finishing up my marking for my condensed summer course, so we have another special guest post for you today! When I found out that Heather Green was researching beer in the Klondike, I just knew I had to talk her into a blog post. Enjoy!
Heather Green recently received her PhD from the University of Alberta studying environmental and indigenous histories of gold mining in the Klondike region of the Yukon from 1890 to 1940. She is an incoming Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University where she will research trophy hunting tourism in the southern Yukon from 1920 to 1950.
This blog is the early research for a larger collaborative project with Matt Papai (University of Alberta) on the connections between local identity, environment, and beer production in the Yukon. Both collaborators are craft beer enthusiasts, and the idea for this project arose in 2015 from discussions about the environmental impacts of Northern beer production while researching in the Yukon and Alaska. Our next steps include examining liquor laws, temperance, and prohibition movements in the Yukon, as well as tracing commodity chains of brewing ingredients into the North. We also hope to investigate how successful O’Brien’s ad campaign was in reaching the public.
The craft beer movement has gained momentum over the past few decades with new microbreweries popping up each year all over North America and around the globe. In Canada, the microbrewery movement began in the 1980s, primarily in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Vancouver, British Columbia. Today, you are guaranteed to find at least one craft brewery in most towns and cities in Canada. Around the world one thing seems to ring true no matter where you go – breweries, and the beer they produce, hold a connection with place and local identity.
Note from Andrea: I’m super busy this week, plotting for Unwritten Histories’ two year anniversary (next week!). So today we have a special guest post from Kesia Kvill about the history of Jell-O, and her experience recreating a vintage Jell-O recipe. The results are hilarious and vaguely terrifying! Enjoy!
Kesia Kvill is a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph. Her dissertation focusses on food control in Canada during the First World War and the relationship between government and women. She received her MA from the University of Calgary where she wrote about public dining and Western Canadian identity. Kesia’s research interests include food, cultural, rural, gender, domestic, and public history. She also maintains a personal food history research blog, Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox.
Over the past year I have been spending some of my time listening to old radio comedy programs. Television sitcoms have always been one of my favourite ways to relax and disconnect from my day-to-day life and old radio comedies have offered me a way to wind down and relax my brain with the added benefit of being more portable as I get ready for bed. Listening to these programs has made me very aware of how many jokes rely on a culture and context that is tied to the time of their creation. While some jokes are timeless and some can regain their humour with a bit of context, other jokes that rely on racial or gender-stereo types will (thankfully) never be funny again. Besides enjoying the simple and formulaic nature of the comedies, I have also enjoyed how the largely food product sponsored commercials of these old programs offer further insight into our cultural history. While I love listening to a variety of old radio comedies, I’ve found a particular fondness for the JELL-O sponsored programs of the Jack Benny Show and the radio predecessor to Lucille Ball’s I Love Lucy television show, My Favorite Husband. It was while I was listening to these programs that I heard the following ad:
Here’s a letter from Alberta, Canada written by a young wife who asks me not to mention her name but gives me full permission to read this experience of hers: ‘My husband came home the other day with a gelatin dessert not manufactured by the JELL-O Company. Being a dutiful wife, I mumbled something about having just purchased three packages of JELL-O and let the matter drop. But I knew that this was my opportunity to prove that I know food values and quality in purchasing. So I made the gelatin dessert my husband brought home and I also made JELL-O. JELL-O gave me a more richly flavoured, firmer dessert that set in half the time. And now friend, husband is thoroughly convinced that I know my business.’ Well, we’re grateful to you young lady for sending us that letter. It bears out what I’ve so often said, ‘That JELL-O’s fine, fresh fruit flavour is tops in taste. No other gelatin dessert can equal the famous extra rich fruit flavour of genuine JELL-O. But remember, there is only one JELL-O! So always be sure to ask for it by name. Look for the big red letters on the box! They spell JELL-O!’ [1]
Today, JELL-O is most associated with the Baby Boom era, particularly with its focus on convenience foods, and a bizarre obsession with gelatin “salads.” Of course, if you’ve spent any time on social media in the recent past, you’ve likely come across the latest generation of DIY projects, often in the form of a 60-second montage on Instagram, which often feature JELL-O in a starring role (particularly if you are making galaxy gummy bears!). But the history of JELL-O, and its relationship with domesticity, is much older.
By dave_7 from Lethbridge, Canada (Crowsnest Pass) CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Note from Andrea: Today we have a very special guest post from Laura Larsen on the adventure that is oral history! As a fellow oral historian, this is right up my alley. Enjoy!
Laura Larsen is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. Her dissertation explores rail rationalization and agricultural policy under the Pierre Trudeau government. It focuses on the tensions between government, farmers, grain companies, and railways created by attempts to modernize the grain handling and transportation system as well as the substantial changes to the underlying structure of prairie agriculture caused by these changes.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that oral history changed my life. If I had not conducted oral histories I probably would be doing a different dissertation project than I am.
On paper, doing oral history sounds relatively straight forward. Do some background research. Come up with a list of questions. Find a person. Ask them your questions. However, in reality, oral history is a messy and complicated process that, while at times extraordinarily difficult, is immensely rewarding on both a professional and personal level. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about my personal experiences doing oral history, how the interviews I conducted for my master’s thesis shaped my doctoral dissertation, and, hopefully, convince you to integrate some into your future research.
There’s no power, there’s no food,
There’s no nothing, we’re all screwed.
While I was compiling the roundup a few weeks ago, I came across a reference to the 20th anniversary of the 1998 Ice Storm. My first thought was that it couldn’t possibly have been twenty years, since it didn’t feel like it was so long ago. I have to admit, I’ve been rather bemused by the media coverage of the 20th anniversary of the 1998 Ice Storm. Most of the stories that I’ve read are of the “feel good variety,” like this one, where “Quebecers recall funny and heartwarming moments.” Or this interview with Jean Chrétien, who, when asked whether people would be so resilient in the face of another ice storm, replied, “I guess so. I hope so. I think so. We’re still Canadian, you know.” Meanwhile, this piece even has a nifty infographic of the Ice Storm, including the percentage of maple syrup taps that were under more than 40mm of ice (20%, in case you were wondering). Aside from a few photographic essays and a couple of more somber pieces, the overall emphasis has been on the indomitable spirit of those affected. And this is not at all what I remember. Memories, however, are funny things. So in today’s blog post, we’re going to take a look at the 1998 Ice Storm, the relationship between personal and collective memories, and how we use the past to make sense of our lives.
Compliments of the Season, Young Canada on Snow Shoes. 1873-1878. Christmas card that was part of G. & W. Clarke’s first Scenic Series. Card has a scene of father and son snowshoeing. Child is a popular image used widely in Canadian imagery, known as “Young Canada”. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Arch. Ref. No. R11648, album 9, item 12 ; Copyright: Expired.
It’s always a little strange being Jewish around Christmas. When I was growing up, Chanukah wasn’t really a big deal. My sister and I would each get a gift (just one, not eight), some chocolate money, and we would light the menorah. My mother would make latkes, but I never really liked them (turns out the problem was her recipe, not latkes in general). Christmas wasn’t really a big deal. We did put out milk and cookies, though in hindsight, this was mostly for my dad. I do remember being convinced by my dad that Santa had to be real, since CTV News was tracking him via radar. But this was pretty much the extent of it. Because Santa didn’t give presents to Jewish girls.
But one year the impossible happened: Santa came! My mother, for reasons that I still don’t know, put out presents on the two living room chairs. One chair was for me, and the other was for my sister. They contained a board game, some other little things, and a chocolate advent calendar. It was magical. I was so excited. Santa didn’t forget me! And while from that point on my mother would always give my sister and I chocolate advent calendars on Christmas, our Christmas chairs remained empty. And yes, my mother is very well aware of how advent calendars work. She’s just repurposed them for our family tradition.
These days, in shopping centres, online stores, and social media, you’ll find a wide array of gifts and decorations specifically for Chanukah. From strings of lights with Stars of David and menorahs, to the hilarious Mensch on the Bench, the options are really quite endless. But this is a very recent phenomenon, as I mentioned last week. I just couldn’t keep you guys hanging like that! So in today’s blog post, we’re going to take a look at the emergence of Chanukah as an important holiday celebration in North America, its relationship to Christmas, and the religious aspects of Canadian identity.
“What the boys did to the cow.” Postcard. Date unknown. Toronto Reference Library. Arts department. ARTS-PC-117. Public Domain.
Note from Andrea: When I found out that Stephanie is doing her dissertation on the history of witchcraft in early French Canada, I immediately started harassing asking her to do a special blog post about her work for Halloween. Because how super cool is that topic? And, kind person that she is, she has obliged. Enjoy!
I spent the first few years of my life in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia. After moving with my parents to Sydney, I channeled my teenage resentment into learning as much as I could about my real home at the library. This is where I first heard the story of the Cheticamp witches, in an old collection of Cape Breton ghost stories. Around the turn of the twentieth century, two warring camps in the village, the Acadians and the Jerseys, would take turns casting spells upon each other. The Jerseymen had their witch, and the Acadians had their “counter-witch.” When the Jerseys were displeased with someone in the community, they would respond with witchcraft, and the battle would begin. For example, if a fisherman didn’t come in with the expected haul, he might come home to find the family cow had stopped milking. He would call the “good” Acadian witch to solve the problem, and “unbewitch” the cow. There was one particularly amusing story of the Acadian witch getting particularly frustrated and enchanting a number of buckets to chase after the suspected Jersey witch.[1]
I had never heard of any of this growing up, and my grandmother didn’t think it was important. Having grown up in a fishing family, I think my focus on the past worried her a bit. She wanted me to be a woman of the future, with an education and the ability to depend only on myself and nobody else. We did, however, live next door to the run-down Anglican church, which by my time was an extremely spooky place, and my dad has told me stories about using his shotgun to scare off Satanists. But since Satanists are not witches, I’ll move on.
Fast forward several years, and I came across a casual mention of the 1684 witchcraft trial of Jean Campagnard in Beaubassin, Acadie. I nearly jumped out of my chair. If you can imagine me yelling “WHAT!” and spilling my coffee everywhere, that was essentially my reaction. I had no idea that Acadia had ever had a witchcraft trial. None. And a passing mention in a book that I can’t even remember the title of now was not going to be it for me – I needed to read that trial. It turns out that Jean Campagnard was Acadie’s only prosecuted witchcraft case. An expert dyke builder from Aunis, he was accused of causing the death of his employer by blowing a mysterious substance into his eyes. My favourite part of the case is during the confrontation, when one of the witnesses has his testimony read out loud
“The witness states that he saw the accused spread mysterious seeds into the marsh while reciting an incantation and the next fall he had a terrible crop,” and Campagnard replied, “He doesn’t need magic to be a terrible farmer.”
So of course, this led me down the academic rabbit hole, and now here we are.
When most people think about witchcraft in early colonial North America, they immediately think of Salem, Massachusetts. In fact, those trials are so ubiquitous that I don’t even need to explain what I am talking about. But witchcraft and witchcraft trials were also relatively common in another part of early colonial North America: French Canada. However, these two locations had very different experiences with witch trials. So in today’s blog post, I am going to talk about the history of witchcraft and witchcraft trials in colonial French Canada and share some of my favourite stories!
By sookie from Vancouver, Canada (CMC Ottawa Uploaded by Skeezix1000) CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
As many of you already know, on July 1st of this year, Prince Charles officially opened the new Canadian History Hall, at the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa. Taking over five years to plan and execute, the Hall is the largest exhibition on Canadian history ever produced and includes 1,500 artefacts in 4,000 square metres, covering 15,000 years of history. Of course, since I live in BC and airfare is obscenely expensive, I likely won’t have the chance to visit any time soon. But thankfully, I have some absolutely amazing friends! Today’s guest post features the lovely and talented Elizabeth Della Zazzera. Elizabeth and I met back in grad school at UVic, when we were both wee little baby historians. When I found out that she had visited the Hall on a recent trip to Ottawa, I asked her to write a review for Unwritten Histories, and, of course, she was gracious enough to agree (even though she’s in the process of moving)! Enjoy!
Elizabeth at the old Canada History Hall!
Elizabeth Della Zazzera only discovered how Canadian she was when she moved to the United States in 2009. There, she received her PhD in Modern European History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a scholar of Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary France whose work emphasizes the intellectual history of material texts and urban environments. Her current project “Romanticism in Print: Periodicals and the Politics of Aesthetics in Restoration Paris,” examines the role played by the bataille romantique—the conflict between romanticism and classicism—in French political life in Paris between 1814 and 1830. She is excited to return to Canada this fall as the Margaret and Wallace McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at Mount Allison University
Growing up in Montreal, hockey was very much a part of my cultural landscape. I’m not really even sure that I ever made a conscious decision to be a Habs fan – it just came with the territory! The names of Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Saku Koivu, and Patrick Roy were as familiar to me as the names of Sesame Street characters. I vividly remember the elation of the Habs winning the Stanley Cup in the 1992-1993 season, the sense of betrayal when Patrick Roy left the Habs for the Avalanche, and being annoyed when the team moved from the Forum to the Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre). I even own my very own copy of The Hockey Sweater, in both book and video formats.
So, several weeks ago, when I was offered the chance to sit down and speak with Dr. Jenny Ellison about the new exhibit at the Canadian Museum of History, “Hockey,” I of course jumped at the opportunity! The blog post that follows is the result of that conversation, a behind-the-scenes look at the new exhibition and about Ellison’s work on the project.
*Please note that all images, with the exception of Jim Logan’s “National Pastimes,” are courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History, and used with permission. The images of Jim Logan’s “National Pastimes” have been made available by the Canadian Museum of History, and are used with permission from Jim Logan. Please do not reproduce.
Photo credit: Stephen Darby, CMH.
Jenny Ellison joined the Museum’s staff in 2015. Her research examines the representation and experience of sport, leisure, physical fitness and health. In keeping with the priorities identified in the Museum’s Research Strategy, Dr. Ellison will be looking at how sports and leisure shape Canadian experiences and help us understand the past. In terms of collections development, this includes research on sports and health activism, adaptive sports, representations of the body, games and government-supported physical fitness programs.
Dr. Ellison has published articles in the Journal of Canadian Studies, the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association and the award-winning Fat Studies Reader. She is also the co-editor of Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives.
Dr. Ellison holds an Honours BA in History from the University of Toronto, an MA in Canadian Studies from Carleton University and a PhD in History from York University. She completed her postdoctoral training at Mount Allison University’s Centre for Canadian Studies, and has worked as an assistant professor of Canadian Studies at Trent University and as a researcher at the Australian Museum.
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