Browse Items (73 total)

Home Canning and Freezing followed multiple editions of Home Canning, distributed by Canadian Western Gas Company (Calgary) and Northwestern Utilities (Edmonton) in the 1930s and 40s. Although this book is not dated, the “freezing”…

Although this is an American cookbook, originating as a semi-literary series for Good Housekeeping, this particular copy belonged to Albertan Lilian Leversedge (1913–2001), perhaps the daughter of Anglican minister Walter Leversedge and his…

Margarine was illegal in Canada from 1886 until 1917, when the ban was temporarily lifted to compensate for the shortage of butter during World War I. This brochure, published in March 1923, argued for a renewal of the ban, as margarine posed a…

Tobacco gets its own chapter in this reader, part of a series on “the great industries of the world.” This copy was once in the library at the Camrose Provincial Normal School. The book’s treatment of ethnicity and cultural…

Canada practiced rationing from 1942 to 1947. It began with sugar, but soon extended to beer, wine, and spirits, tea and coffee, butter, and meat. Rationing in Canada was relatively mild compared to England, where the policy lasted from 1940 to 1954.…

The British Women’s Co-operative Guild was first founded in 1883, and it became a model for the retail co-operatives that were founded across the Prairie provinces in the early twentieth century. These retail co-ops joined to form provincial…

Many Chinese immigrants came to Canada to work on the railway, but after these jobs ended, they were prohibited from entering or training for many professions. Many turned to restaurants to make a living. The earliest Chinese restaurant menus…

As immigration to the Prairies exploded in the first decade of the twentieth century, railway companies like the CPR, CNR, and Grand Trunk Pacific competed to bring prospective farmers to Western Canada. This brochure, cleverly shaped like a…

Buckskin Cookery was originally self-published by Gwen Lewis of Quesnel, British Columbia, in 1957. It consists of two volumes: “The Pioneer Section” and “The Hunter Section.” In reality these two groups overlapped greatly, as…

The aptly named Dianne Watt, Director of the Home Service Department of Canadian Utilities Limited, had a useful mascot in “Reddy,” the helpful bulb-nosed electricity representative who also graced Calgary Power’s advertising (see,…