The land of Newfoundland is large, temperate and fruitful…. Then have you there fair strawberries red and white, and as fair raspberries and gooseberries as there be in England, as also multitudes of bilberries, which are called by some whortes, and many other delicate berries in great abundance.
Here also are many other fruits, as small pears, cherries, filbirds, etc. And of these berries and fruits, the store is there so great that the mariners of my ship have often gathered at once more than half an hogshead would hold…. There are also herbs for salads and broth, as parsley, alexander, sorrel, etc…. Our men that have wintered there divers years, did for a trial and experiment thereof sow some small quantity of corn, which I saw growing very fair; and they found the increase to be great, and the grain very good; and it is well known to me, and divers that trade there yearly, how that cabbage, carrots, turnips, lettuce, parsley and such like prove well there.[3]
Captain Whitbourne goes on to tell us that “The natural inhabitants of the country are willing to assist the fishermen in curing fish for a small hire … they were able to sew the rinds of spruce-trees, round and deep in proportion, like a brass kettle, to boil their meat in.” On one occasion, three of his men surprised a party of First Nations enjoying themselves in a sumptuous manner:
They were feasting, having the canoes by them, and they had three pots made of the rinds of trees, standing each of them on three stems, boiling, with fowls in each of them, every fowl as big as a pigeon and some as big as a duck. They had also many such pots so fowled, and fashioned like the leather buckets that are used for quenching fires, and were full of the yolks of eggs that they had taken and boiled hard, and so dried small, which the savages used in their broth … also a great store of flesh dried.[4]
The Grand Banks continued for close to five hundred years, serving the First Nations, the newcomers, and the world’s hungry abroad. Surrounding it on the Atlantic Coast and in the waterways of what were to become the Atlantic Provinces was a wealth of marine life of all kinds and descriptions that sea captains, travellers, entrepreneurs, and settlers continued to marvel at. Here is just one account of the bounty in and near Prince Edward Island in the early nineteenth century:
The rivers abound with trout, eels, mackerel, flounders, oysters and lobsters, and some salmon; and the coast with codfish and herrings in great abundance. The latter, soon after the ice breaks away in the spring rush into the harbours on the north side of the island in immense shoals, are taken by the inhabitants in small nets with very little trouble, and as salt is cheap (not being subject to duty) most families barrel up a quantity for occasional use. The lobsters are in great abundance and very large and fine. In Europe this kind of shell-fish is only taken on the sea-coast amongst rocks; at Prince Edward Island they are taken in the rivers and on shallows, where they feed on a kind of sea-weed, called by the islanders eel-grass, and a person by wading into the water half-leg deep, might fill a bushel basket in half an hour. Many schooners are annually laden with oysters from Quebec and Newfoundland.
The plenty of fish, and the ease with which it is procured, is of great assistance to the inhabitants, and in particular to new settlers, before they have time to raise food from the produce of the land.[5]
As the explorers, trappers, traders, missionaries, entrepreneurs, and settlers moved inland, they realized that not only the oceans and the rivers flowing into it teemed with fish, but that the supply of fish in the inland rivers and lakes surpassed their wildest expectations. An interpreter and trader at the Falls of St. Mary (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) said in 1777: “At this place there is an abundance of fine fish, particularly pickerell [sic], and white fish of uncommon size.”[6] And a few weeks later he noted: “We prepared our nets for fishing. The ice was three feet thick, and the snow very deep; this we were obliged to clear away, before we could cut holes in which to put our nets. For the space of two months we had uncommon success, having caught about eighteen hundred weight of fish, which we hung up by the tails across sticks to freeze, and then laid them up for store.”[7]
In 1784, Robert Pagan, a United Empire Loyalist forced to flee from the new United States of America to today’s Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, wrote to his wife (in Falmouth, now Portland) describing the food he was shipping to her: “By the schooner Seafoam, Capn. Bell, I intend to send you a kegg of pickled lobsters, & some smoked salmon, some potatoes, & turnips, some cranberries, some mackerel also a quarter of beef and a side of good mutton, which I shall procure in two or three days.”[8]
From the accounts of both the First Nations and the newcomers, salmon abounded, and it was often smoked to ensure that it would keep. Here is a nineteenth-century traveller’s account of the basic technique of smoking salmon, which the newcomers would have learned from the First Nations:
During our stay on the river [Nepisiguit River, New Brunswick] which lasted a month, we smoked over 120 salmon, which we packed in boxes and sent off to our friends in Saint John. The following is the receipt for that process:
Split the fish down the back and clean them, cutting out the gills at the same time; this should be done as soon as possible after they are caught, or the fish will become soft; immerse for two days in a strong pickle of salt and water, a trough for this purpose is easily hewn out of a fallen spruce or pine, or, in lieu use a dish of birch or spruce bark. After taking the fish out of the pickle, wash them in running water, then hang them in a smoke house for six days. A smoke house is built in the shape of a wigwam, and covered with birch or spruce bark; great care must be taken to keep up the fire, which is placed in the smoke house, always burning very slowly, if it gets too hot the fish becomes cooked and spoilt; it is a good plan to place the entrails of the fish on the fire to keep it cool.[9]
When John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), arrived in 1791, he was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Graves Simcoe, who was an artist and also kept a diary rich in the details of everyday life. There were dozens of diary entries describing the fish to be found in Upper Canada, such as this one on April 6, 1793: “St. Denis of the 5th caught yesterday at Niagara, 500 whitefish and 40 sturgeon; this is common sturgeon, one nearly 6 foot long.”[10]
Settlers often chose to build their homes beside water, both for ease of travel and for the number of fish that could be speared, netted, trapped, or caught with a baited line. Newcomers continued to be amazed at what they found:
I think I may assert, without fear of contradiction, that the angling in Canada is the finest in the world. Many thousands of trout streams and hundreds of salmon rivers discharge their waters into the gulf and river St. Lawrence. From Lake Ontario down to the straits of Belle-Isle, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles; on each shore of the river there is hardly a mile of coast-line without a river or stream. Thousands and thousands of lakes, all of which hold trout, lie hidden in the forest; in the majority of them perhaps a fly has never been cast. Trout fishing is open to everyone … and such salmon fishing![11]
By the middle of the nineteenth century, settlers spread across the country and the fishing industry on the East Coast steadily expanded as demand for cod grew not only in Canada but in the West Indies and South America. The fishing schooners, both from Canada and abroad, now carried dories, small seaworthy craft equipped with a sail and two sets of oars for the crew of two men. The dories left the schooners at daybreak to set long lines of hooks baited with herring, squid, capelin, or salted clams. They made four trips out to the trawl, or longline, each day to check the gear. This endless round of baiting, setting, and hauling trawl ended in the evening when the “dressing” of the cod began. Each fish was gutted, beheaded, split (backbone removed), washed, and placed in the hold, where it was packed in salt. This chore ended about midnight. Then the men slept until 3:30 a.m. when they began the next day’s fishing. The schooners were often out on the Grand Banks for three months, and when they returned, the catch was given to “fish makers,” who washed the coarse salt from t
he cod and spread it to dry in the sun on racks covered with spruce boughs, known as “flakes.” For three weeks the fish was watched so that it would not get wet in the rain or sunburned. When it was hard-dried, it was ready to be packaged in barrels or boxes for shipment to markets at home or abroad.
As we follow the cod from the water to the kitchen to the dinner table, we find the ingenious recipes developed by enterprising cooks over the centuries that used virtually every part of the fish: Fried Cod Roe, Fried or Baked Cod Tongues, Stewed or Fried Cods’ Heads, Fish Hash (made from fresh or salt codfish), Codfish Balls, Cod Sounds (membrane lying along the backbone, first simmered in water, then baked in a casserole with onions, grated cheese, and thin strips of salt pork), Toast and Fish, Roasted Scrawd (small cod culled from the catch), Fish and Brewis, Salt Fish and Potatoes, Boiled Rounders (small codfish with soundbone intact), and many more![12] Codfish was, and is, traditionally served with potatoes, turnips, parsnips, onions, carrots, cabbage, rashers of salt pork or pork scruncheons, and drawn butter.
Drying codfish in the traditional manner at Village Historique Acadien at Caraquet in New Brunswick.
An old Newfoundland custom continues to recognize the importance of cod and other seafood. In many Newfoundland homes, even into the twenty-first century, the celebration of Christmas begins on Christmas Eve with a thanksgiving meal of Salt Fish or Cod Sounds followed by sweet raisin bread called Christmas Fruit Loaf. In this way, fishing is recognized as the main means of livelihood and, as a result, fish has its place in thanksgiving before the day of feasting.
In the 1828–1830 season, the government of Nova Scotia offered bounties on the tonnage and “Merchantable”quality (i.e., that suitable for European and South American markets) of dried cod. These bounties were designed to encourage the outfitting of vessels in Nova Scotia for employment in the cod industry and to capitalize locally on the resources.
This rich resource eventually became the major industry in Atlantic Canada, encompassing not only fishing but everything needed to support it. The latter included the building of fishing schooners like the famous Bluenose, launched in Lunenburg in 1921. After a season of fishing in the Grand Banks, the Bluenose won the International Fisherman’s Trophy and kept winning it for twenty-one years as the fastest sailing vessel in the world. The Bluenose is still honoured on Canada’s dime. The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, pays tribute to this rich harvest from Canada’s eastern seaboard.
Giovanni Caboto did not find the rich spices he sought, but instead discovered a far more valuable resource that over hundreds (and probably thousands) of years has sustained the First Nations, newcomers to Canada, and the tables of the hungry around the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Come Then, Chefs, Cooks, and Boys — All You Who Make Good Cheer”
TWO TINY VESSELS ROUNDED THE SOUTHERN END of Acadia (now Nova Scotia) on an early summer day in 1604. On one of the crafts was Samuel de Champlain; Sieur de Monts, the leader of the expedition, was on board the other. De Monts had a commission from King Henri IV of France as governor of La Cadia (the land stretching from today’s Philadelphia to Newfoundland) to “establish the name, power and authority of the King of France throughout the new territory,” to bring the Natives to Christ, and most significantly, to “people, cultivate and settle the said lands.”[1] He was now searching for the ideal location to build his first habitation. Tragically, he chose Île Sainte-Croix (now Dochet Island) at the mouth of the St. Croix River, for in the months ahead it was to become the last resting place of nearly half (thirty-five) of his total company of seventy-nine men.
Despite their preparations for winter, the members of the party were so cut off from the mainland by huge cakes of ice that it was impossible to procure fresh water and fuel. They had cut down most of the trees on the island to build their log structures, not realizing how valuable they would be as a windbreak and as fuel in the months ahead. As a result, they were forced to eat their food cold and to dole out their frozen cider by the pound. Starvation, cold, and the “dreaded disease” that we now know to be scurvy had taken their toll by spring.
In July those who survived, including Champlain, moved to the mainland and took many of their buildings with them. They called the new habitation Port Royal in honour of their king. Champlain’s sketches show a larger settlement than before, with several sleeping quarters, a storeroom with a cellar (one hopes to keep their cider from freezing), a kitchen, a bakeshop with an oven, and gardens surrounded with a reservoir of water filled with trout. They had gathered some quick vegetable crops from the fertile meadows, and small game abounded: geese, ducks, partridge, and plenty of rabbits and hares. A single musket shot once brought down twenty-eight plover.[2] Despite these improvements and a more adequate supply of food, twelve more men died over the winter of 1605–06.
Champlain did not appear to know what ailment afflicted his men, or that nearly seventy years before when Jacques Cartier spent the winter with the Natives at Stadacona (present-day Quebec City), many members of his crew nearly perished with scurvy. They learned from the First Nations how to make a medicine by boiling the leaves and bark of the white spruce. In eight days they used a whole tree. “Had all the doctors of Louvain and Montpellier been there, with all the drugs of Alexander,” wrote Cartier, “they could not have done so much in a year as did this tree in eight days.”[3]
The First Nations used many native plants and trees, including the seed pods of the wild rose, to prevent and cure scurvy.
The Native peoples of Canada have used many berries, bark, roots, needles, and grasses to prevent scurvy among their own people (and to cure it in the case of the newcomers). If left untreated, scurvy is a deadly disease caused by the lack of vitamin C in the diet. Over the years, the First Nations’ remedies have included white pine sweet inner bark and needles, hemlock bark, the inner bark of black spruce, cranberries, the pale red berries of the false Solomon’s seal of the West Coast, black-currants, gooseberries, the seed pods or hips of the wild rose, and scurvy grass, which grows in northern Canada from the Yukon to Newfoundland.[4]
In July 1606, Jean de Biencourt, Sieur de Poutrincourt, who was searching for a new home where he could establish his family in feudal splendour, arrived with fresh supplies and fifty additional men for the tiny colony. Along with Biencourt came Marc Lescarbot, a Parisian poet, playwright, and lawyer. It may have been Lescarbot who introduced the idea in one of his dramatic presentations that feasting and celebration would cure the difficulties that had plagued the colony and that everyone feared would return in the coming winter:
Come then, chefs, cooks, and boys — all you who make good cheer,
Scullions and pastry cooks, let soup and roast appear,
Ransack the kitchen shelves, fill every pot and pan
And draw his own good portion for every eater man!
I see the men are thirsty, SICUT TERRA, SINE AQUA
Bestir yourselves, be brisk. Are the ducks on the spit?
What fowl have lost their heads? The goose, who cares for it?
Hither have sailed to us a band of comrades rare:
Let potatoes and their hunger be matched with equal care.[5]
Champlain took Lescarbot’s suggestion in the hope that he could keep his men healthy, and L’Ordre de bon temps, or the Order of Good Cheer, was born. This morale booster became a well-organized evening meal, with a chief steward of the feast chosen for every day. The steward wore a gold chain around his neck and was responsible for all three meals on his appointed day. He had to hunt and fish in advance to augment the provisions of the ship and the fort, as well as instruct the cook in the preparation of the dishes.
The ship’s provisions probably included peas, beans, rice, prunes, raisins, dried cod, salted meat, oil, and butter. There were hogs and sheep at the habitation, as well as hens and pigeons, so we can assume there were eggs, as well. The First Nations near the fort were the hunter-gatherer Mi’kmaqs (also spe
lled Micmacs), who would have been trapping and hunting beaver, otter, moose, bear, and caribou; fishing for smelt, herring, sturgeon, and salmon; and bartering seal oil. Vines, wild onions, wild peas, walnuts (butternuts?), acorns, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, and maple sap were also available.[6]
Lescarbot gives us an account of some of the ingredients and the dishes that were prepared from them: “good dishes of meat as in the cook’s shops that be in La Rue aux Ours [a street in Paris specializing in food]; colice, a hearty broth made from a cock, white sausages made from the flesh and innards of cod with lard and spice, good pastries made of moose and turtle doves.”[7] Could that last dish have been an early Canadian version of the traditional tourtière so well-known and loved in Quebec (and other regions of Canada) today?
Great ceremony attended the evening meal, as the steward
did march with his napkin on his shoulder and his staff of office in his hand, with the collar of the order about his neck, which was worth above four crowns, and all of them of the order following of him, bearing every one a dish. The like was also at the bringing in of the fruit, but not with so great a train. And at night after grace was said, he resigned the collar of the order, with a cup of wine to his successor in that charge, and they drank one to another.[8]
Despite the ravages of scurvy, Port Royal survived and became not only the site of the first successful colony on the mainland, but also the site of Canada’s inaugural gourmands’ club. There were other firsts that were to have an effect on agriculture and food, for it was here at Port Royal that the first grain was grown and a sample sent back to Europe to confirm the richness of the soil. It was to this colony that Louis Hébert, a Paris apothecary, first came. He was known to have a green thumb, and in 1617 he returned to Stadacona to become known as “Canada’s first farmer.”[9] In reality, this assertion was incorrect, for many of the First Nations had been farmers for centuries. Their well-established trade routes up and down the continent had brought the seeds for many crops to Canada. These included maize (corn), beans, squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, potatoes, sunflowers, and numerous others. Their tools and techniques may have been primitive by the standards of the newcomers, but as we have seen, their fields had been supporting their families and communities for generations and provided important items to barter with other tribes and nations.
Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore Page 3
