Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore Read online

  There may have been many waves of newcomers moving across the land, but it is now believed the final migration could have been that of those people who braved the ice of Arctic Canada as they followed herds of caribou and musk ox into this unknown territory. They built winter homes of snow and summer homes framed with whalebones and covered with skins. They travelled in hide-covered watercraft called umiaks and kayaks, or by foot and eventually by dogsled as they moved across the frozen tundra in search of food.

  Fish, seals, whales, caribou, bears, and waterfowl were their quarry; harpoons and spears were their weapons. They, too, used their ingenuity to settle into the harsh environment of northern Canada and become self-sufficient, exploiting everything available to them to survive.

  Despite their diversity of cultures, lifestyles, traditions, languages, and beliefs, and the rivalries that sometimes led them to war, these first peoples developed well-organized barter systems that spanned the continent from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. This feat may have been accomplished through a multitude of hand-to-hand transactions. Thus, diverse items such as tobacco, feathers, seashells, furs, copper, mica, and chert were moved into new regions of the country to supplement what may originally have been found there.

  Just as important were the food items that could have been exchanged on that barter system, long before European contact. Consider plums, maize (corn), wild rice, beans, squash, hazelnuts, black walnuts, butternuts, sunflower seeds, maple syrup, maple sugar, and more!

  Hence, long before contact with the rest of the world, the First Nations had learned how to use the indigenous plants, trees, animals, marine life, and other resources that surrounded them, not only for food but for medicines, insecticides, clothing, tools, construction materials, and firewood. Eventually, food for their dogs (probably European stock that had interbred with North American wolves) came from the same source.

  Was life for those First Nations just an endless round of hunting, fishing, foraging, farming, and making weapons, tools, and equipment so there was food for the next meal? Until the fifteenth century, when newcomers began their quest for the precious spices of the Indies, the history of the First Nations is, for the most part, an oral one, as their traditions, beliefs, and legends have been recounted through the centuries by their elders and storytellers. In addition to this oral history, we have some artifacts and images created by the First Nations. They range from spectacular crest (totem) poles to tiny bone carvings and delicate moose-hair or porcupine-quill embroidery that have endured. We also have the description by Sarain Stump, a First Nations artist who in the following excerpt from Two Forms of Art published in Saskatchewan in 1973, identifies her people by the names given to them when newcomers from Europe arrived:

  Although it is generally accepted that no proper writing was invented and used by North American Indians before historic times, it is certain that our ancestors supplied their need for a graphic recording system by using ideograms. These were usually codified symbols … the Ojibwa Indians and related Algonkians of the Great Lakes region fixed on birch bark rolls instructions for the proceedings of their complicated ceremonies. The Plateau people engraved, by burning, on chips of wood. Petroglyphs (messages concerning a particular location) are found in many areas of the continent.... The Wanapum (Wampum) belts of the Iroquois, capes and collars worn by Wabnaki dignitaries, quilled and bead embroidery created in the Plains and McKenzie Delta region and many of the ornamental designs on the baskets, pottery and textiles are informative symbols combined in artistic compositions. The creator is also trying to transfer, as faithfully as possible, the physical beauty of the natural world and all its creatures.[12]

  Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of Upper Canada’s first lieutenant-governor, illustrated the food traditions of the First Nations in pictures, as in this sketch, and in words.

  Archives of Ontario

  Little did the First Nations know that their natural world would one day be turned upside down. Life would never be the same again after people they had not even known to exist began to brave the northern Atlantic Ocean in search of the exotic and elusive foods and other resources they either needed or desired at home. Two worlds were about to collide, and when they did, the newcomers realized they had stumbled on a land of incredible harshness, beauty, and bounty. That bounty was at times destined to appear not only on Canadian tables but on the tables of the hungry around the world.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They Had Never Known Anything to Taste So Sweet

  WERE THEY SETTLERS OR SOJOURNERS? Or were they simply searching for wood, so desperately needed at home in Greenland to build and repair their vessels, dwellings, and farm and household items? The “Men from the North,” also known as Norsemen and Vikings, were reputed to be pirates, raiders, traders, and at times colonists. They were feared and respected from Russia to the Mediterranean Sea for their bravery and exploits. Many aspects of their life were simply a continuation of the ancient customs and traditions they had practised in their home countries — such as their long sea voyages, their construction of houses from stones and turf, their clearing of rocks and stones from patches of meadow, their hunting of whales, seals, and wild reindeer, and of course fishing. They lived by raising livestock as well as by hunting and fishing. In their native lands it was not possible to grow grain, but the sparse vegetation was nutritious and enabled them to keep many cows, sheep, and horses. They also made butter and cheese. Their most important implements and weapons were axes, knives, scythes, sledgehammers, blacksmith’s tongs, harpoons and other fishing gear, bows and arrows, and spears.[1]

  For centuries the Vikings were known for their daring adventures, which were recounted in their sagas, told and retold around the long fires at home in Iceland and Greenland by hardy sailors and storytellers.[2] A fascinating parchment map, known as “The Vinland Map,” bears the inscription:

  By God’s will, after a long voyage from the Island of Greenland to the south towards the most distant remaining parts of the western ocean sea, sailing southward amidst the ice, the companions Bjarni and Leif Eiriksson discovered a new land, extremely fertile, and even having vines, the which island they named Vinland.[3]

  The sagas differ in some details, but have much in common. One of the sagas describes the voyage of the merchant Bjarni Herjolfsson, who was en route from Iceland to Greenland when his vessel was caught in a violent storm with strong north winds and dense fog that carried him off course to the west. There he and his crew saw an unfamiliar forested shore. When the storm abated and the sun came out, Bjarni was able to get his bearings and sail his vessel to Greenland, where he described what he and his crew had seen. His description raised a number of questions. What was the new country like? Was it a good and fertile land, a place where perhaps one could settle down and live permanently?[4]

  It was Leif “The Lucky” Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, who decided to investigate. His ship was fitted out, the women busying themselves with the big woollen square-sail, mending and strengthening it, while the men and eager youngsters carried provisions and equipment on board, including dried fish, smoked meat, butter, cheese, and water for the large barrels. They also brought axes, tongs, and a sledgehammer for a smithy, various kinds of gear for hunting and fishing, and weapons. It was rather sparse equipment for a long voyage into the unknown, but the thirty-five people on board knew how to live off the land. The next autumn a weatherbeaten ship returned. Yes, the new land in the west had been found; it was a large and strange country, with riches of many kinds — pastures for cattle, forests, game, seals, walrus, and fish. Leif had built substantial houses in the new country, and he had called it Vinland.[5]

  The Vikings’ distinctive wooden ships and the men who sailed them were known and feared from Russia to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.

  Tom Henighan

  Detailed references are included in the sagas, not only about what this group found when they landed on that forested shore but to what subsequent gr
oups found, as well: “They touched the dew with their hands and they thought they had never known anything so sweet…. Every brook was full of fish. They made pits where the land met high-watermark, and where the tide ebbed there were halibut in the pits. There was a great quantity of animals of all sorts in the woods…. There was no want of salmon either in the river or the lake — salmon bigger than anything they had ever seen before…. Fields of self sewn wheat grew there.” One of the crew, a German called Tyrker who was also known as Leif’s foster father, explored the area and found what he believed to be vines and grapes, something he said he recognized from his homeland in Europe. Many historians and botanists have questioned his description and his judgment. Were these really grapes, or could they have been another “wine berry,” such as wild currants, gooseberries, raspberries, squash-berries, or cloudberries?[6]

  The sagas tell us that Eiriksson’s group built huts and wintered there, and as there was no frost that year, their cattle browsed outdoors. In the spring, they took a load of wood (probably a combination of driftwood from the shore and timber cut from the forest) home to Greenland, along with the unexpected and incredible stories they had to tell about what they had found. The first arrivals were soon followed by other vessels loaded with passengers. One of the expeditions brought 160 men, in addition to women and livestock.[7]

  Archaeologists and historians have now confirmed that Vinland (or Vineland), one of the communities described in the sagas, was at L’Anse aux Meadows. The settlement has been uncovered at the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula in western Newfoundland, which proves the Men from the North were probably the first Europeans to realize, as early as the year 1000 AD, that North America existed. Close to one hundred men, women, and children lived at the settlement for nearly three decades while they tended their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats, spun and wove clothing from the fleece, fished the rivers and the ocean (cod bones, seal bones, and whale bones have been found in the excavations), foraged for fruit and herbs in the forest, and developed gardens with the vegetables and herbs from home that they trusted to grow and flourish in that climate. These would have included turnips, carrots, cabbages, beans, peas, onions, and garlic. Meanwhile, they continued to explore the eastern shores of present-day Canada, for North American butternuts have been found at the site, although their known range is farther south in what is now New Brunswick. As there are similar European species, the Norse were familiar with butternuts and considered them a delicacy. As well, growing in the same area one can find wild grapes known today as riverbank grapes. Both of these can be harvested in late August and would have been of great value in Greenland.[8]

  The Norse men and women constructed many buildings of timber frame covered with turf; they had earthen floors, low doors in the walls, and smoke holes running along the roof ridge. There were several dwellings with benches along the walls that were used for sitting or reclining during the day and sleeping at night. Remnants of long fires (like those in the homeland) that burned in the centre of the floor to provide for cooking, heating, and light have been found. They also developed small slate-lined compartments in the earthen floors next to the fireplaces that could be used as ember pits, into which the embers were swept at night and covered with ashes, making it unnecessary to light another fire in the morning to cook the first meal of the day. This technique, again, is a well-known feature of larger homes in Iceland and Greenland.[9] Ancient cairns have been discovered, which were aligned in such a way that they acted like sundials for telling time. As they could be seen from the dwellings, they would have indicated times for meals.[10]

  The dwellings differed in size and comfort, suggesting there was probably a class structure in the community that may have ranged from chieftain to slave.[11] As the years went by and the settlement grew, it is obvious that some of the existing buildings had additions added to accommodate new arrivals or larger families. Four workshops and a smithy confirm that ship repairs and blacksmithing were regular skills and trades carried out by the craftsmen in the community. Bog iron was smelted in the smithy, a skill not known at that time to the Native people.

  The sagas describe the encounters between the newcomers and the Native people, whom they called Skraelings. Some of the encounters were peaceful, while they bartered and traded, but others were fierce encounters, leading to loss of life on both sides.[12] Such conditions may have contributed to the ultimate decision of the Norsemen to leave the rich resources they had found rather than live in a continual state of anxiety.

  These courageous and enterprising explorers eventually returned home with their final cargoes of wood, taking with them their memories and their stories of a rich and fertile country that became the foundation for the famous sagas. Two worlds had met and parted. It would be almost five hundred years before they would meet again, and almost a thousand years before extensive archaeological research proved that the ancient folklore and legends of the countries bordering the North Atlantic were not fiction but fact.[13]

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Sea Was Covered with Fish

  SPICES WERE AMONG THE MOST COVETED OF trade goods to the fifteenth-century merchants of Europe. At that point in the world’s history, spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon were often as valuable as gold. They were brought overland by camel caravans from the spice-rich areas of India and the Orient to the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. This kind of enterprise was always dangerous and expensive, and merchants were both eager to expand the trade and willing to finance increasingly ambitious ventures to reach the spices by alternative routes. Why not sail west to the lands where they grew rather than take the long and treacherous overland route to the east? So began a series of voyages of discovery during which those early explorers who risked their lives and fortunes by sailing west found instead a vast new land mass that stood in their way — or was it perhaps an unknown and unexpected segment of a shoreline of either India or China? Hence, they gave the name “Indians” to those members of the First Nations whom they met when they landed.

  One of those explorers was Giovanni Caboto, a Genoese native and Venetian citizen with long experience in the eastern spice trade. Sailing under an English banner, he is credited with “discovering” the Grand Banks in 1497. Like so many other explorers, he was attempting to find the riches of the Orient, but instead returned to England to report to the Bristol merchants who had hired him and to King Henry VII “that the sea was covered with fish which could be caught not merely by nets, but with weighted baskets lowered into the water.”[1]

  With this information, the merchants and traders of Bristol and Devon realized they no longer needed to rely on importing vast quantities of fish from Iceland to satisfy their customers. They turned their attention to this new and unexpected source of cod, which was so plentiful that it became known as the “Beef of the Sea” and was soon synonymous with the word fish. The soft gelatinous flesh of the cod dried quickly and could be stored for long periods without refrigeration, filling an economic need at the time in the markets of Europe. When those first fishing vessels arrived, the crews would fish for cod from the rail of their ships with hand-held lines and then take the catch ashore to Cabot’s New Founde Lande, where it was cleaned, salted, and spread to dry. After that it was loaded in the ship’s hold and transported home to England to be sold at the markets there.

  Seeing Britain’s success, other countries quickly followed suit, and fishing fleets from Portugal, Spain, and France struggled with England — both physically and politically — for supremacy in the area and control of this resource. It was the French fishermen who introduced a different method of fishing and preserving the catch called “greenfishing.” Instead of drying the fish on shore, the fishermen gutted and salted the catch before stowing it in the ship’s hold. Months later, when the vessel returned home, the fish were still moist or “green.” The crews that used this method also fished from the deck with hand-held lines weighted with lead and pro
tected from the spray and wind with small screens attached to the sides of the ship. When the hold was full, the greenfish (salted and wet) were taken back to France to be dried and sold.

  Early European explorers described the codfish on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland as so plentiful that they could be caught in weighted baskets lowered into the water.

  Early European explorers described the codfish on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland as so plentiful that they could be caught in weighted baskets lowered into the water.

  Exploitation of this rich resource was one of the great economic activities of Europe during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a venture that every year lured hundreds of vessels across the ocean, drew upon and fostered seafaring support systems along much of the Atlantic fringe, and marketed its catch through a network that reached far into the European realm. Thus it trained generations of mariners, employed thousands of craftsmen and suppliers, and involved families and friends, syndicates, and whole communities in North American activities.[2]

  In 1622, Captain Richard Whitbourne of Exmouth, Devon, one of the captains who by then had spent forty years trading to the Grand Banks and Newfoundland, gives us a vivid but often questioned description of the land and its fruits, vegetables, and potential for crops: