Browse Items (73 total)

This elegantly designed menu from approximately 1928 features a delightful poem about the joys of riding on the Canadian National Railway. Much of it concerns food: If you follow the magic carpet‘Twill lead to a fairy car,Where all things good…

The domestic science movement, which arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and encouraged women to apply scientific knowledge to their household work, is exemplified by this American textbook. This edition was used at the…

Sold at the modest price of one dollar, this cookbook was meant as a fundraiser for Edmonton’s first Scouts group. Although Scouts have a long tradition of camp cooking, this book contains household recipes, most likely provided by the boys’…

The Lake of the Woods Milling Company, which produced Five Roses flour, was founded in 1887 in Quebec, but the company proudly celebrated its grain, “from the sun-flooded prairie lands of Western Canada.” The first edition of this book…

Though published by the Department of Education for the Province of British Columbia, versions of this book were used as curriculum and reference texts for Alberta junior and senior high school students from 1937 to 1969 (“Alberta School”). This…

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…

Medicine Hat had a vibrant Jewish community: although it numbered only about forty families, their impact on city life was substantial. As S.M. Selchen wrote in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle in 1954, “This tiny Jewish island among a non-Jewish…

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”…

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…

This reader, employed as a textbook in Alberta schools in the 1920s (“Alberta School”), creatively approaches geography lessons through the accessible medium of food. The author, James Chamberlain, writes, “The natural connecting…