With summer in full bloom, it’s time to enjoy Canadian Literary Fare al fresco. Whether it’s a barbecue in the backyard, a picnic in the park, or a beverage on the terrace, it’s nice to have a good book close at hand.
When summer arrives, I think of gardening and the poet Lorna Crozier.
As for the food, I vowed never to mention it to my father, who managed once or twice a month to snare a few rabbits in the woods behind the house so we could have our meal of meals, rabbit stew, our only fresh-meat meal. My mother sometimes cobbled together “shipwreck” dinner or jig’s dinner, boiled cabbage and potatoes and salt beef, along with pease pudding made from peas boiled in a cloth bag. Mostly we ate salt cod and potatoes.
Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, 24
For Joey Smallwood (first Premier of Newfoundland, narrator of Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams), rabbit stew is the meal of meals – the occasional hint of fresh meat in a diet of sald cod, salt beef and more than a fare share of hunger.
Recipe Notes (by Alexia Moyer)
I bring you two “meals” this week – neither of which I cooked. There is much satisfaction to be had in artfully arranging croissants on a plate and then calling it a day.
The meals in question hail from Mylène Gilbert-Dumas’ Les Deux Saisons de Faubourg, set in the Faubourg St. Jean-Baptiste neighbourhood of Québec city. Adélaïde lives with her daughter, Marjolaine, on the second floor of a triplex. Accounting clerk turned chocolatière, Adelaïde is very careful with her money. Once a week she allows herself a treat: one café au lait on the way home from work. Here, in this café, she cuts out her coupons and writes out her weekly shopping list in accordance with said coupons.
Welcome to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and the birthplace of Confederation!
A tour of Charlottetown’s literary fare would not be complete without a mention of the island’s most famous author L.M. Montgomery and the iconic 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables.
Although this young orphan grows up in the country near the town of Avonlea, Anne makes memorable trips to the capital. In the chapter “An Epoch in Anne’s Life,” a young Anne is invited to travel with her friend Diana Barry to visit wealthy Aunt Josephine Barry. Miss Barry takes the girls to the Exhibition grounds where many Avonlea residents are in attendance, winning competitions for their prized agricultural products and home-made edible goods.
The next evening, the girls attend a concert at the Academy and afterwards go to a restaurant for ice cream at 11:00 p.m. Oh the decadence of city life—Anne isn’t sure at first how she will “ever return to common life again” (270). But upon reflection, she realizes what she truly values:
“It’s nice to be eating ice-cream at brilliant restaurants . . . once in awhile; but as a regular thing I’d rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook” (270).
Photo Credit: Shelley Boyd
Canadian Literary Fare 