Author Archives

Homemade mints for Christmas

Precision important with brown sugar fudge
Author’s aunt did not believe in ‘fudging’ when making this sweet delight; she also didn’t believe in scraping the pan
Brown sugar fudge makes a welcome gift for a birthday or for Christmas, sedately reposing in an attractive container. This recipe is presented exactly the way Aunt Mattie wrote it. You may think it’s a small thing to time the boiling for 7 1/2 minutes and have your dial at No. 6, but Aunt Mattie […] Read more
January a great time for making marmalade

Indigenous soldiers wore the uniform
More than 4,000 members of First Nations volunteered for the First World War and 3,000 in the Second World War
Aboriginal men and women have served Canada in all wars. In the War of 1812 before Canada was wholly independent of Great Britain, thousands of First Nations and Métis fighters fought alongside British troops and settler militia, defending Canadian territory against American invasion. Commander of the British forces, Major-General Isaac Brock, saw these warriors as […] Read more
Auto evolution: a prairie family joins the ride
The author remembers what it was like as her parents started down the unfamiliar road of car ownership in the middle of the last century
SASKATOON — Jim Adamson farmed in Alberta near Harold Hathaway’s place in the 1940s and they worked together for harvest. “Transportation in 1947-48 still involved horses and we had a particularly lively pair of grey Percherons, who delighted in periodically running away for no reason at all and in the process, usually completely demolished a […] Read more
Plenty of ways to cook rhubarb
Prairie measles outbreak prompted quarantine in 1937
Life was significantly disrupted when family members became sick and a 21-day quarantine period went into effect
The first words of Louise McLean’s diary for 1937 were: “Jan. 1 to 22: Quarantined for measles.” She and her parents and siblings spent the last part of their Christmas holidays in isolation because her younger brother and sister had contracted measles from friends at school. “Stanley is the worst — very thin. Varina seems […] Read more
Combine a game-changer for prairie farmers
The earliest combines were pulled with huge teams of 20 horses, but by 1948 the author’s father was using a tractor
A young farmer in Alberta, Harold Hathaway, had just written a letter to his parents, now living in Vancouver. He would rather pull nose hairs with a vise grip than write a letter, but he had managed to fill up two pages by regaling the latest changes in farming. The recently discovered letter, dated Oct. […] Read more
Sleep deprivation causes a variety of problems
Sleep is thought to be so critical to good health that it should be considered as important as nutrition and exercise
