Tag Archives: food history

Building LGBTQ2+ Communities in Restaurants – What’s Old is News

By Sean GrahamBuilding LGBTQ2+ Communities in Restaurants | RSS.com Alex Ketchum, author of Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses, joins Sean Graham to talk about the book and how these sites build communities. They chat about what constitutes a “feminist’ restaurant, the cultural significance of food, and how the cafes’ business imperatives sometimes conflicted… Read more »

Tenth Anniversary Repost: Gin and Tonic: A Short History of a Stiff Drink

Active History is celebrating its tenth anniversary! As part of our anniversary celebrations we are sharing glimpses of how Active History developed and showcasing our favourite and most popular posts from the past ten years.  Founding editor Jay Young’s post on “Gin and Tonic: A Short History of A Stiff Drink” was one of our most popular pieces in 2012…. Read more »

Eating History: Canada War Cake

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By Sophie Hicks This is the fourth post in a summer series exploring societal, community, and familial connections to food and food history. See the series introduction post here. An earlier version of this post appeared on The Canadian Cooking Chronicles, as part of a final project for an Archives Practicum class. As an unapologetic fan of Ian Mosby’s work… Read more »

Eating History: An Experiential Examination of Pemmican

By Sophie Hicks This is the second post in a summer series exploring societal, community, and familial connections to food and food history. See the series introduction post here. An earlier version of this post appeared on The Canadian Cooking Chronicles, as part of a final project for an Archives Practicum class. When examining the history of Canadian food, the… Read more »

The Secret Ingredient: Using Recipes as Tools in Construcing Historical Narrative

Sophie Hicks This is the first post in a summer series exploring societal, community, and familial connections to food and food history. Exploring food history through archived cookbooks or recipes provides a unique glimpse into culture, place, and identity of communities, families, and individuals. Recipes can hold significance on the family level, a broader community level, while also serving as… Read more »

Holiday Repost – The Great Christmas Bake-Off: Kitschy Americana vs. Canadian Victoriana

ActiveHistory.ca is on a hiatus for the winter break, and will return to daily posts in early January.  During the hiatus, we’re featuring some of our favourite holiday and winter themed posts. Thank you to all our contributors, guest editors, and readers for making 2018 a very successful year. Happy holidays to all and we look forward to continuing our work… Read more »

Connecting Through Cake: The Story of My Fall Fair Mocha Cake

Kesia Kvill An earlier version of this post appeared on Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox. This summer I came across the information booklet for the Fergus Fall Fair. After flipping through it I decided that I would like to enter some items into the handicraft and culinary arts categories. I figured it would give me a good reason to finish some… Read more »

The Great Christmas Bake-Off: Kitschy Americana vs. Canadian Victoriana

During the holidays, the food we eat is often as loaded with meaning as it is butter and sugar, which is good news for those of us looking to eat as many cookies and candies as possible in the coming weeks: it’s not over consumption, you see. It’s research. Holiday cooking is part of a web of meaning, tradition, and… Read more »

Arab-Canadian Foodscapes and Authenticity

Michael Akladios Visiting diverse Middle Eastern restaurants across the Greater Toronto Area, one quickly discovers that they all feature Tabbouleh on the menu. As an Egyptian, I had never eaten Tabbouleh until I started my undergraduate degree at York University in Toronto. It is not part of the Egyptian tradition. Interestingly, while Syrian and Lebanese emigrants found their way to… Read more »

Food Insecurity and the ‘Temporary’ Relief of Food Banks

by Krista McCracken There are currently over 800 food banks and 3,000 food programs across Canada. Each month approximately 850,000 people access services provided by food banks. The distribution of food to people in need is not a new occurrence.  But the food bank model, as we know it today, was started in the United States in the 1960s by… Read more »