About

The Linda Miron Distad Culinaria Collection, housed at University of Alberta Library, consists of more than 3,000 food-related texts from around the world, spanning several centuries. This digital exhibition—Culinaria: A Taste of Food History on the Prairies—and a related in-house exhibition and catalogue—Collecting Culinaria (2013-14)—feature cookbooks and household guides from the collection, as well as other selected items from Bruce Peel Special Collections. Together they highlight some of the collection's most intriguing texts and their themes, including manuscript cookbooks, dietetics and health, and celebrity chefs, drawing from and celebrating this vast and diverse trove of social, cultural, and gastronomic history.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to many people for their contributions to this exhibit. First, we would like to thank Robert Desmarais and Linda Quirk of Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta for enthusiastically supporting our idea. We are immensely grateful to Jeff Papineau for his assistance in finding and scanning texts. Natasha Nunn beautifully designed and laid out our exhibit, and Leslie Vermeer was an invaluable editor. We would also like to extend our appreciation to those people who lent us works from their private collections or provided valuable historical information, including Verna Larson, Thelma Spielman, Janice Wong, Mireille Lavoie-Beaupré, Teresa Spinelli, Patricia Larkin-Lieffers, Elizabeth Hunter, Len Skowronski, Alina Ianson, Del Windrum, and Marg Johnson.

We thank the following organizations and their representatives for permitting us to use images from their books: Scouts Canada, Scouts Canada Northern Lights Council, Girl Guides of Canada Saskatchewan Council, Quesnel & District Museum and Archives, Federated Co-operatives Limited, Alberta Social Credit Party, Lantic Inc., Saskatchewan Society of Medical Laboratory Technologists, Royal Alexandra Hospital Women’s Auxiliary, Calgary Public Library, The Vancouver Province, Paterson GlobalFoods Inc., the Adelle Davis Foundation, Mayfair United Church, the Vasa Order of America, Historic Markerville, the Stephan G. Stephansson Society, and the Government of Alberta, the Government of British Columbia, and the Government of Manitoba.

Caroline Lieffers and Kristine Kowalchuk, Curators