Emmie Oddie lived a farm life much like those she wrote a column for, sharing her insights, expertise and household hints through 50 years of weekly columns for the Western Producer.
The I’d Like to Know columns connected her directly to farm women and provided them with practical information and recipes within their means.
“In my writing there was a great feeling of this is one of us, not someone sitting in the city in an office but someone on the farm, doing the work and the canning,” Oddie said.
Read Also
Starting a small business comes with legal considerations
This article sets out some of the legal considerations to start a business to sell home-grown product, such as vegetables, herbs, fruit or honey.
“That gave a thread of togetherness amongst us of something done by someone with much the same circumstances.”
Emmie Ducie was born in 1916 and grew up on a farm at Dundurn, Sask. She married Langford Oddie, an agrologist and farmer, and raised two children on a farm at Assiniboia, Sask., and later Tregarva, Sask.
Oddie felt her undergraduate degree in household science and a master’s degree in home economics gave her writing greater credibility and gave her more confidence in what she conveyed.
The Western Producer column, which she wrote from 1949-1995, offered help with day to day living and activities in the farm household.
It was an extension of work she had started during her years as a nutritionist for the Red Cross and inextension work and teaching home management classes at the University of Saskatchewan.
“It was a way in which I could use the things I had known and things established through my educational background and so it was quite satisfying,” Oddie said.
She often pored over hand-written letters from readers and wrote the column late at night after her children had gone to bed.
Oddie and her sister Rose Jardine, a former Western Producer editor and columnist, were strongly influenced by their feminist mother Emma Ducie, who participated in volunteer work, took an interest in politics and was never afraid to put pen to paper.
Ducie, born and educated as a teacher in England, led homemakers’ clubs, held meetings in her farm home, hosted social gatherings and managed a travelling library.
“Mother made speeches in the kitchen to us all at dinner,” Oddie said.
She took on duties with women’s institutes provincially and nationally, calling for a food policy that provided producers with fair returns and consumers with good, safe
food and that supported the preservation of agricultural land.
She served as president of the Saskatchewan Women’s Institutes and the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, led 4-H clubs, judged country fairs and served on boards such as the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Advisory Council for the Status of Women.
Oddie also compiled a cookbook, From Prairie Kitchens, and worked to provide educational information on nutrition, food preparation and home management to the under-privileged in the Regina region.
Her work has been rewarded with numerous accolades, including life memberships
in SWI, FWIC and the Saskatchewan Home Economics Association. She was given the Order of Canada in 1984.
These days, life has slowed to a quieter pace. A piano is a prominent feature in the Regina highrise where she lives, a constant reminder of her many years studying for the Royal Conservatory of Music, teaching for as little as 50 cents a lesson and playing for community functions.
“My association before was with rural women, but now I’m living in the city. Piano is one area where I can make a contribution when I’m called upon.”
