First Edmonton Group 50th Anniversary, 1910-1960: Cook Book
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’ mothers. In addition to generally predictable fare, the book includes a special section of international recipes (on blue rather than white paper). While most “ethnic” recipes were contributed by women who brought only dubious cultural experience (witness Mrs. P. Yurkiw, an unlikely expert on “Eggs-Fu-Yung”), the recipes for “Turkish Pilav” and “Turkish Shish Kebab” were in fact contributed by Kumran Senturk of Ankara. The recipe for “Chinese-Style Hotdogs” also speaks to widespread adaptation of the idea of Chinese cuisine: the recipe calls for sliced hot dog wieners cooked with pineapple, soy sauce, and sauerkraut—a true hybrid!
Boy Scouts Association of Canada Edmonton Regional Council
With permission from Scouts Canada, Northern Lights Council.
According to the Scout Memorabilia Collectors of Canada, this edition of the Canadian Scout Handbook was published in 1968. It is inscribed with the name of Cliff Lewis, who lived at 1813-17th St SW in Calgary in the early 1970s (Henderson’s ... Calgary). Boy Scout groups were formed in Canada as early as 1907, and the Canadian General Council of the Boy Scout Association was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1914 (Scouts Canada). Camp cooking has always been a key component of scouting: a special Canadian edition of Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell’s Scouting for Boys noted that “the three B’s of life in camp are the ability to cook bannocks, beans, and bacon” (120). Laid on the ground, a Scout’s coat was a fine surface for mixing bannock dough, according to Lord Baden-Powell, while other Scouting books illustrate the process of skinning a rabbit. By the 1970s, Scout cooking was a somewhat tamer affair, with suggestions for cooking desserts, potatoes, and meats, including “Tarzan Steak” placed right on the coals. This book also has a miniature food guide, based on Canada’s 1961 Food Guide, prescribing four or more servings of milk, four or more fruits and vegetables (with one citrus fruit daily and dark green or yellow vegetables), two or more servings of meat, and four of more servings of bread products per day.
With permission from Scouts Canada.
The Real Home-Keeper: A Perpetual Honeymoon for the Winnipeg Bride
Clearly serving as a local business advertiser as much as a household guide, the first edition of this series was published in Vancouver around 1911–13, but versions soon followed for Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto, and Montreal (Driver, Culinary 1094). The series was retitled The Bride’s Book in 1928. It highlights forgotten food products like Hudson’s Bay Tea and suggests the novelty of electric cookers and dried pasta in the early decades of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Driver ventures that the recipes may have been taken from an American source (Culinary, 1082). Titles such as “Chicago Sponge Cake” seem to suggest as much, and the San Francisco Sunday Call for 16 June 1912 carried the same recipe. Advertisements in The Real Home Keeper also reveal concerns about germs and sanitation in this period: the Arctic Ice Company advertisement assures customers that its product is safe.
Foods, Nutrition and Home Management Manual
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 copy in particular belonged to Zenovia Pidruchney of Vegreville High School. Her homework is evident on page 83. In addition to simple recipes (with relatively vague directions), the book contains basic nutritional information, including a chart dividing foods primarily by their effect on the body: “Foods which Furnish Fuel,” “Foods that Build Muscle,” “Laxative Foods,” and “Foods Rich in Mineral Matter or Ash.” The table of oven cooking temperatures and “simple home tests” speaks to readers who may not have had an oven thermometer or thermostat, both of which were relatively uncommon until after World War II.
British Columbia Department of Education
Elizabeth Driver notes that this booklet must date from at least 1928, when the Border Canning Company of British Columbia opened a new plant in Edmonton (Culinary 1114). A thousand acres of land were leased and seeded to supply the new plant, which produced Royal City brand peas, a label for which is tucked into the cover of the book. The text emphasizes the freshness and quality of the Royal City peas, as well as their vitamin content, which the commercial canning process, the company declared, preserved better than the home process. The specification of different sizes and qualities of peas and the statement that “the Canadian label law protects the consumer” point to relatively new developments in Canadian food legislation. While the first food grading in Canada was the Canada Fruit Marks Act in 1901 (Ferguson and Fraser 5), federal regulations in early 1928 established the size and quality grading seen here (“Regulations”).
5 printed lead sheets, each 12 x 9 x 1/2", seven pages of text, plus title page, in two wooden cartons.
Sequence of photographs on a large folded sheet. Printed cover opening to a sequence of photographs printed on a single sheet. 4' x 3' of the burning of a photograph.
Printed and bound, title is written on two lines: Clea and Rsky, or Clear Sky. Full colour photographs of various shades of blue. Signed on the back.
Trail Blazers: The Story of Burns & Co. Limited
P. Burns and Co. was a large Prairie abattoir and packing-plant company. Established by Pat Burns in 1890 in Calgary, the company soon expanded to Vancouver and Edmonton, and changed its name to Burns and Co. in 1923. Though Burns and Co. specialized in meats and related products, their manufactures also included fruit, cheese, dairy, eggs, and animal feed. This brochure emphasizes that the products were made under the highest scientific standards, an important fact given chronic public skepticism about sanitation in packing plants. However, the brochure sidesteps questions about the workers, including the “girls” (in 1945, thirty per cent of packing-house employees were women [Chambers 10]) who test the eggs sent overseas to war-torn Britain. Edmonton packing workers set up an early union in 1937, but packing-house workers’ right to organize was not recognized until 1944, after the United Packinghouse Workers of America expanded to Canada (Chambers 7–8).
Kodachrome was one of the first widely-used colour films, introduced by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1935. Here, Kodachrome film was used to create colourful pictures of the Canadian Rockies. Printed as postcards, the pictures were sold as souvenirs of one’s travels. They could be preserved as a set, as was the case with this particular example, or sent through the mail. Many of the photographs taken with Kodachrome film were printed as slides. To see examples of Kodachrome slides, visit the Anonymous Project. Created by Lee Schuler, the website features digitized slides that “preserve this collective memory and give a second life to the people forgotten in these timeless moments captured in stunning Kodachrome film.”