War, Politics, and Social Engagement

Although Canadian women were not able to vote until 1919, they still engaged in various forms of social activism. Many participated in service groups, women’s auxiliaries, and politically minded organizations. Expertise in food and cooking empowered them to take charge of cookbook initiatives and raise funds for worthy causes or projects.

The first fundraising cookbooks were produced in the United States around the time of the Civil War. In 1877, Canada produced its own version: The Home Cook Book, a fundraiser for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, which would sell over 100,000 copies by 1885 (Driver, “Canadian Cookbooks” 29–30). Western Canadians must have been inspired by this book’s success, for by 1912 the women of Edmonton’s Ladies Hospital Aid raised money through the Royal Alexandra Hospital Cook Book. Such participatory cookbooks, developed through local contributions of both recipes and funds, helped strengthen community ties: a woman would be reminded that she was making her neighbour’s recipe, and both the cook and recipe donor would be working together for the common good.

Fundraising cookbooks were a contrast to mass-produced or corporate advertising publications, instead offering accessible recipes that appealed to local palates and practices. Indeed, in bringing together recipes from local cooks, publications like the Rebekah Lodge cookbook are some of the best evidence we have for how early manufactured food products were actually used by Western Canadian families, for example. Multiple recipes for the same dish might also appear in these books, testifying to the variety of cooking practices. Modern readers might balk at the absence of detailed instructions, but the editors assumed women’s familiarity with cooking procedures and their own equipment: each stove, for example, heated differently, and many did not have thermometers. The advertisements in these local cookbooks also hint at the state of contemporary life: an ad in the United Farm Women of Manitoba Cook Book, for example, testifies to the rise of rural telephone access.

Fundraising cookbooks were employed by groups as diverse as laboratory technicians, political parties, rural women’s organizations, and Scouts. Many such associations transcended cultural or religious divisions, asking contributors to participate in larger social and sometimes political goals. But texts exemplifying social engagement also overlap heavily with those produced by cultural groups: the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire cookbook, for example, contains recipes for “Aberdeen Sausage” and “Cornish Pasties,” speaking to the organization’s predominantly Anglo-Saxon membership. Religious groups could also serve as centres for community activism. Both the Victory Cook Book and Cook to Win were created by United Church groups, which had access to wide resources and are still noted for their political engagement. These books also testify to the challenges of cooking in wartime, particularly under rationing, as well as to emerging government programs for voluntary public nutrition, which continue to evolve today. Cooking, especially in times of national stress, was a public project.

Men, too, contributed to discussions about food and politics, but not generally at the level of the cookbook. This section includes two brochures about Canada’s (and particularly the Prairie provinces’) food strategy during the two World Wars; likely aimed at male readers, these brochures point clearly to food’s importance for national and international interests in a time of crisis. Another brochure, Oleomargarine and Its Relation to Canadian Economics, defends dairy producers against the threat of legalized margarine, a food that received extended attention from federal legislators. These texts and the cookbooks produced by activist women are but two sides of the same coin, speaking to the complexity and political overtones of food production.