Community Dialogue Tomorrow!

	Art at War - Community Dialogue Session October 17, 2011 UPDATE! Art at War will feature two presentations by local artists. Chris Hennebery, a war veteran and artist, will discuss a history of war art as well as a glimpse into his new series: Painting to Afghanistan. Lori Weidenhammer, who is curating the Firehall's photo exhibition opening October 20th entitled Peace at War: Service and Sacrifice, will speak about her research for the show and present some of the archival images of Vancouver she will be curating. This dialogue will look into the practice of documenting war through art and how it has evolved over the years. Seeing as how we… Read More... UPDATE! Art at War will feature two presentations by local artists. Chris Hennebery, a war veteran and artist, will discuss a history of war art as well as a glimpse into his new series: Painting to Afghanistan. Lori Weidenhammer, who is curating the Firehall's photo exhibition opening October 20th entitled Peace at War: Service and Sacrifice, will speak about her research for the show and present some of the archival images of Vancouver she will be curating. This dialogue will look into the practice of documenting war through art and how it has evolved over the years. Seeing as how we will be discussing art, rather than having this session be a straight dialogue, we have prepared readings of literature and poems written about and during war times that can then be discussed as well featuring images created about combat. DATES: October 17, 7pm at the Audain Gallery, SFU Woodward's 149 W. Hastings Street

Socks and Smokes

American Poster, artist unknown, 1918

Many people on the Home Front sent care packages to the men and women overseas. In Edith Adams Ninth Annual Cookbook she gives detailed instructions on what to pack and how to pack it. Some acceptable items include butter in a sealed container, sugar cubes, evaporated milk, chocolate milk powder, tinned meats and fish, dried vegetables and fruit, cheese, jams, jellies, pickles, maple syrup, honey, fruit cake, plum puddings, shortbread, powdered milk, fruit juice (concentrated), powdered eggs, and tinned nuts. Ms. Adams also recommends using popcorn as a packing material and stuffing empty spaces with little extras such as shoelaces, chocolate, gum, and "smokes." Of course, there's always got to be room for an extra pair of hand-knitted socks.

What happens when the men received their packages? Well, according to Harry Rankin, some of it was sold to civilians:

In London too, we'd visit Canada House and be given socks and balaklavas knitted by dear old ladies for the war effort. Some of those socks were so enormous that they'd go up over our knees. So we'd take them out and sell them to civilians who'd unravel them and knit them up into something useful. My family would send cigarettes, but since I never smoked, they got flogged too. All this went for a few drinks and a little extra grub.

Sometimes my mother would send a food parcel and I'd share some of it with my buddies just as they'd share theirs. But you didn't go handing it out to civilians like they show in the old war movies; food supplies may have been bad for civilians but they were just as bad in the army cookhouses.

--Rankin's Law: Reflections of a Radical by Harry Rankin, 1975. November House, Vancouver

Rankin says the food was so bad sometimes the soldiers would go on strike and refuse to get leave the bunkhouse. This conflict came to a head just before the men from the Seaforth Highlanders were about to fight the Battle of Ortona.

On the invasion practices, everything was laid on as if it were the real event--including the food. In our pockets we'd carry a couple of cheese or jam sandwiches to hold off starvation. Then, at night we'd arrive back at camp, soaking wet and chilled to the bone to be fed a scoop of applesauce, a piece of cheese, a couple of chunks of bread and a mug of tea. By this time the first division had been around long enough that we weren't going to take this kind of shit. So we went on strike. Lt. Colonel B.M Hoffmeister was commanding at the time and I'm sure he could see his whole career going down the drain with that strike. After all, this was mutiny among the troops selected to invade Sicily! That night he sent a truck to Glasgow for more rations. We ate a little better after that.

--Harry Rankin, Ibid.

More Digging into Victory Gardens

City of Vancouver Archives: BC Telephone Victory Garden CVA 586-1546

Yesterday I chatted with Michael Levenston at City Farmer. My neighbor Catherine had remembered meeting a Vancouver Victory Gardener with Michael and I was curious about the details. Michael said he might be able to find an article about the Victory Gardner and lo and behold he has hit the jackpot and you can read the piece on his blog. The "Last Victory Gardener" was Dr. Donald Flather and he had a Victory garden on the boulevard facing his house in Kerrisdale. My favorite part of the article, written by Kerry Banks for City Farmer in 1979, is when he asks if the Flathers have to buy any vegetables. The answer: "Yes, avocados. But not too often, we’re really not that fond of them.” Dr. Flather remembers that it was a common practice for people to grow potatoes on their front lawns and there was a time when he said there was a Victory Garden on almost every block in Vancouver. Truly amazing. Then there's also the story of his passion for painting. He sounds like a wonderful man. I wish I could have met Dr. Flather.

Another exciting discovery I made is that Ian Mosby, a Phd candidate at York University, (currently doing his post-doc at the U. of Guelph) just handed in his thesis called "Food Will Win the War: The Politics and Culture of Food and Nutrition During the Second World War" which includes interesting research on Victory Gardens. He gave me a sneak peek at one of the chapters and it's fascinating. I really hope he publishes it as a book.

So now, dear readers, I want you to do a bit of detective work. Can you figure out where that photo of the B.C. Telephone Victory Garden was taken? What is that building in the back ground? Is it city hall? If you follow this link to the digital collection from the City of Vancouver Archives you can see more photos of the gardens, so maybe you can find a few more clues. Happy detecting!

ETA: I wonder if the photo got flipped. Maybe it should be printed the other way around.

Edith Adams' Vitamins for Victory!

During WWII in Vancouver, certain foods and drinks were rationed including butter, sugar, meat, eggs, tea, coffee and alcohol. Earlier this month I was privileged to check out some of the lovely wartime cookbooks deep in the basement of the Museum of Vancouver. Curator Joan Seidl introduced me to the lovely Edith Adams, the Vancouver Sun's locally grown version of Betty Crocker. We discovered a recipe for War Fruit Cake which will appear in the exhibition, along with a reproduction of the cover of Vitamins for Victory!: Edith Adams' 8th Annual Prize Winner's Cookbook with choice recipes from the Vancouver Sun. The fruit cake has no eggs, and it uses apple sauce for moisture and baking soda as a leavening agent. I asked my mom if they ate a lot of fruit cake in those days. "Oh yes," she said. "At weddings and Christmas and I used to get one for my birthday because it was so close to Christmas." I think she would have preferred chocolate.

There's a story about Vancouver fruitcakes that I'm going to talk about later (which involves a giant gourd grown in the Okanagan called the zucca) but in the mean time mom says she used to remember her dad growing citron melons in Saskatchewan for making candied peel to go in fruit cakes. And if you don't think fruit cakes are such a big deal, Canada consumed 3.3 million pounds of glacé fruits in 1943. That's a lot of fruit cake!

There is a recipe on the web from a Vancouver Bed and Breakfast called Arbutus Garden House for a World War II Cake that they used to make for their customers. "Is that why they're no longer in business?" Joan Seidl quipped. Well, I don't know but I think there is a bit of a fruit cake revival going on now that we no longer dump chemicals on the dried fruit and we don't load them with sugar and lard. I see slices of fruit cake as decadent "power bars." Bring on the fruitcake season, Edith!

Two Views at the Surrey Museum

While I was at the City of Vancouver Archives today I noticed a striking poster for a show at the Surrey Museum which looks very interesting. It's an exhibition of photographs of WWII Japanese internment camps by Ansell Adams and Leonard Frank. They are also having a special community talk and tea on October 22.

Here's the info from their website:

Two Views

Experience two perspectives of Japanese Canadians and Japanese Americans during their internment in the 1940s. The reality of forced separation and uprooting of families is portrayed through striking black and white photographs by Ansell Adams and Leonard Frank. Adams highlighted the personal stories of those who were interned, while Frank documented the government process, creating a contrasting and thought-provoking exhibit. Presented by Japanese Canadian National Museum.
On display September 13-October 29

Japanese Internment in WWII Canada

Join Raymond Nakamura from the Japanese Canadian National Museum to learn about Japanese Canadian history, the Canadian internment of its Japanese citizens during WWII and his own family's experiences in this troubling period. Please pre-register
1 session $6 (16+yrs)
Saturday, October 22
1:00pm-2:00pm
4261335

Tea and Tour: Two Views Exhibit:

Join Museum staff for a guided tour of the Two Views exhibit to learn the stories behind the images, the history of the Japanese interment in Canada and the stories of Surrey’s pre-war Japanese population. Then chat about the photographs and this aspect of history over tea. Please pre-register

1 session $5 (16+yrs)
Saturday, October 22
2:30pm-3:30pm
4261353

Why Go to War? A Community Dialogue at the Firehall Arts Centre

You are invited to the first in a series of community dialogues this Sunday at the Firehall Arts Centre:

Come tour the historic Firehall building and join us for the first of our three-part series of Community Dialogue Sessions focusing on different aspects of war.

Featuring WWII veterans including Wes Lowe, Frank Wong, George Chow and author and Chinese Canadian Museum Curator Larry Wong, this weekend's talk will look at the motivations behind why individuals chose to enlist. Excerpts from the documentary film "Unwanted Soldiers" will be shown.

You are invited on a guided tour of the Firehall at 2 p.m.

Community Dialogue Session: Why Go To War? begins at 3pm

Created to compliment the Firehall's production on VIMY opening November 2, the following two dialogue sessions in the series will take place October 17 and 24 and cover the topics of the evolution of art at war and the different roles of women during war.

Invisible Women: WWII Aboriginal Servicewomen in Canada by Grace Poulin

Isn't it fantastic when you're digging for historical information and you've found someone has written a book based on the very topic you're after? Such was my luck when I discovered that Grace Poulin has written about Aboriginal women in Canada who served in WWII. I chatted with Grace on the phone today and she told me that she became interested in Canada's Aboriginal history after she took a course on the changing roles of Aboriginal women. The professor showed the class a photo of a woman in uniform and remarked "There's a thesis for someone...." Well, Grace decided she would research that photograph which lead her spending several months tracking down vets and traveling to interview them.

One of the women she interviewed was Mary Greyeyes, a woman from Saskatchewan who eventually married and settled in Vancouver. She was the first aboriginal woman to join the Canadian Women's Army Corps. After the war she became Mary Reid and eventually moved to Vancouver and lived on Commercial Drive for 36 years. Sadly, she died in March, 2011.

You can order the book directly from Grace Poulin and proceeds from the publication go towards the making of a documentary based on the book. I can't wait to read it!