First Nations farmer ploughing field on Western Canadian Indian reserve, 1920. Source: Library and Archives Canada.
The history of Canadian food and agriculture is an enormous topic with both a global and deeply personal scope. All humans require food to live and agricultural products become food for our consumption, demonstrating the profound interrelatedness of food and agriculture. Beyond sheer survival, food serves social and cultural purposes for all people, from planting and harvesting, through preparation, and ultimately with consumption. Communities and families coalesce around these activities and have done so for all of human existence. Food is a source of pleasure and for many people is intricately linked with spirituality. Examining the environmental history of food and agriculture in Canada reveals the ways in which our complex relationships with nature and each other inform this most intimate aspect of our daily lives.
On this second part of our look at agri-food systems in Canadian history, we discuss Canadian food history and we speak with the editors and authors of a new anthology from University of Toronto Press called, . This round table interview features , , , , and .
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Suggested Readings:
- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
- Andrews, Geoff. The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure. Montreal: McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2008.
- Bradbury, Bettina. 鈥淧igs, Cows, and Boarders: Non-Wage Forms of Survival Among Montreal Families, 1861-91,鈥 Labour/Le Travail, 14 (Fall 1984), 9-46.
- Carter, Sarah. Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 1993.
- Derry, Margaret. Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
- Iacovetta, Franca, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp. Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
- Mosby, Ian. 鈥溾楾hat Won Ton Soup Headache鈥: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968-1980.鈥 Social History of Medicine 22, No. 1 (April 2009): 133-151.
- Murton, James. Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
- Russell, Peter A. How Agriculture Made Canada: Farming in the Nineteenth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2012.
- Turner, Chris. The Walrus, October 2011.
- Wall, Ellen, Barry Smit, and Johanna Wandel. Farming in a Changing Climate: Agricultural Adaptation in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
- Winson, Anthony. The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Works Cited
- Iacovetta, Franca, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp. . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Music Credits
- by NiGiD
- by Javolenus
- by NiGiD