Trucks, food shortages and coping with life were all part of building the Alaska Highway in 1942-43 when the US and Canada collaborated on this epic project under threat of war. The following excerpt from a family history, written by Anne Seierstad, shows how it was like in Dawson Creek, British Columbia for the eight […]
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Food Processing and Marketing
Food Supply Chains
By Mary Leah de Zwart on January 22, 2022 in Food Processing and Marketing, Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Food supply chains involve all levels of the economy. These days we hear about food supply chains in terms of obtaining imported out of season foods, but the concept also applies to maintaining food sufficiency and security. I remember seeing a “For Better or Worse” comic strip by Lynn Johnston, where her protagonist Elly Patterson […]
BC Recipes 1979
BC Recipes, 1979 It’s been forty-two years since one of the first recipe books attempting to define BC cuisine was published. It was titled This…is British Columbia: Recipes Through the Years and was a collaboration between Beautiful British Columbia magazine and the Ministry of Agriculture. You might have bought it for the amazing photographs of […]
Woodward’s Food Floor
By M. Gale Smith on September 15, 2021 in Food Processing and Marketing, Innovations and Inventions Related to Food
Woodward’s Food Floor I recently reviewed Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days by Margaret Cadwaladr[i]. It’s a memoir of the author’s experiences, as a high school, then university student, working part time on Woodward’s Food Floor in Vancouver, in the late 1960s and early 70s. It is a little book (only 65 pages) of stories and […]
Butter – Early BC staple
Butter – An Early Staple We have had several past blogs about butter and I remain fascinated by it and its apparent importance during the settler years of the 1800s. One past blog was on butter making: https://bcfoodhistory.ca/butter-making/ In a second blog I claimed that “How to Make Butter in Five Minutes Without a Churn!” […]
Summer Strawberries
By Linda Peterat on June 7, 2021 in Food for Holidays and Special Occasions, Food Processing and Marketing
Summer Strawberries Before the end of May, the strawberry stands opened along the roads in Chilliwack and now we are well into the peak season. It’s an exciting moment when the first strawberry stand opens. There is anticipation of the delicious flavour and assurance that summer has indeed arrived! In an earlier blog, […]
Jan Peskett Nabob Foods
Jan Peskett – Nabob Foods Jan Peskett was the first and last person to fill the role of Jean White, home economist for Nabob Foods. The pseudonym of Jean White joins other home economics business personalities in BC, including Edith Adams and Penny Wise. Peskett started to work at Nabob shortly after her 1966 […]
Nabob Foods Home Service
Nabob Foods Home Service Nabob Foods Home Services department produced cook books, spice charts, and other educational materials until the 1970s. Consumers who sent in 25 cents and labels from four different Nabob products would receive “Time-honoured Recipes of the Canadian West”, all selected by Jean White, Director of the Nabob Home Services Department. In […]
Nabob Foods
Nabob Foods Nabob Foods is a BC company! This surprising fact was brought to our attention in a recent Culinary Historians of Canada post. The next couple of blogs will focus on the rise, fall and rise again of Nabob. In 1896 Nabob Foods was founded by Robert Kelly and Frank Douglas in Vancouver, BC […]
Butchers of Barkerville
Butchers of Barkerville By guest blogger Ken Mather, author of several books on pioneer and ranching history, including Trail North, Ranch Tales, and the most recent Stagecoach North. Ken has worked in curatorial, management and research positions at Historic O’Keefe Ranch, Hat Creek Ranch, and Barkerville. As I wrote in a previous blog, the […]