Just in case you were wondering, the DRA Winter Carnival is cancelled for 2021. Which saddens me. Terry and I have been hosting the outdoor Carnival activities for 30 or so years. The other day while walking Bailey, I thought about what I will miss: the look of excitement on kids’ faces as they head back to the skating pond and sliding hill; the sound of distant bells as the horse-drawn sleigh returns to pick up its next load of riders through the woods; the controlled chaos in the house as hordes of people warm up with a bowl of Terry’s soup and homemade butter rolls or a mug of hot chocolate; the joyful chatter of young children playing with the pink and white doll house we bring up from its basement hiding spot each February.
I also took a moment to contemplate what I really won’t miss: worrying about the weather. From the first official day of winter, if not before, I fret if we’ll have enough snow for the sliding hill and sleigh trails. And then, when we do get successive dumps of snow (as we always seem to), I agonize about keeping the pond clear for skating and Crokicurl. And in the background I keep my fingers and toes crossed that the fickle weather gods won’t send us rain. So it was comforting to read in Monday’s Ottawa Citizen that us ‘winter carnies’ have shared this state of disquietude for over 125 years. In 1895, for example, the opening ceremonies of Ottawa’s first winter carnival were washed out with “torrents of rain, sleet and hail.”
Can you hear me now?
As I mentioned last week, in-person worship at Dunvegan’s Kenyon Presbyterian Church and Kirk Hill’s St. Columa Church has been put on hold by the latest Covid-19 restrictions. However, Interim Moderator Rev. James Ferrier invites you to join him online. Every Sunday until this latest lockdown is lifted, a new worship service will be posted on YouTube. You’ll find the link on the Home page of kenyondunvegan.ca or on Facebook @kenyondunvegan. To be honest, I viewed the first service and found the audio quality to be marginal at best. I was relieved to find that when I contacted James Prevost, the church’s webmaster, I was not alone. Others have made similar comments, and the matter is being looked into.
Rationing on the farm
Last fall, Donald Clark dropped off a small collection that had once belonged to his aunt, Elizabeth Campbell. She and his uncle, Donald Rory Campbell, had owned the northwest quarter of Lot 16 on the 8th of Kenyon… a property that Donald and his siblings inherited in the 1990s. For some reason, Donald’s aunt had saved the couple’s wartime ration books and tucked them away in the little wood box.
I knew that, during World War II, the Canadian government had rationed imported foods like sugar, coffee and tea, as well as gasoline and rubber tires. These controls were introduced in 1942 to help ensure everyone got a fair share of items in short supply. Households had to apply to the Wartime Prices and Trade Board for a numbered War Ration Card and a booklet of ration coupons for each member of the family. From 1942 to 1945, six ration books were issued. Each one contained from seven to ten perforated sheets of sequentially numbered coupons. By the war’s end, over 11 million ration books had been distributed.
While I had always assumed that rationing in Canada was a time of deprivation, Ian Mosby from McMaster University, in an essay entitled Food on the Home Front during the Second World War, suggests that the legal food supply was “in excess of what most Canadians were eating during the Depression. In fact, per capita food consumption declined significantly after 1945 and it was not until the late 1950s that Canadians’ average food consumption levels would again reach their wartime highs.” Mosby goes on to say that, “for most civilians rationing was more of a nuisance than a hardship.” In his opinion, rationing was harder on retailers than on consumers. They were chronically short-staffed and had to physically handle and collate the ration coupons.
As the restrictions also included meat, flour, eggs and cheese, I wondered if the Wartime Prices and Trade Board directives had had even less of an impact on rural Canadians who lived on a farm or who had family connections to one. One local lad who grew up on the 4thof Lochiel during this time has only limited recollection of rationing. Harold MacMillan was eleven when Canada declared war. He remembers seeing the coupon books used, especially for sugar and gasoline. Beyond that, the system had little impact on his life. One wartime program, though, he does remember with great fondness is the “Farm Option” for teenage farm boys. Designed to replace farm workers lost to the war effort, it allowed young lads who had their parent’s permission to be excused from school from April 1st to October 1st each year so they could help out on the farm. Even though he had to make up for his missed schooling at war’s end, Harold thought the Farm Option was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He loved working on the farm with his dad. “And I missed all the year-end exams,” he declared with a chuckle.
Ken McEwen, who grew up on the 7th of Kenyon also remembers rationing during WW II, but was only seven when war broke out and knows little of the mechanics of it’s working. “But I do know it had little impact of farm folks,” Ken told me. “My mother boiled maple syrup into sugar, and poured it into muffin tins, or a small loaf pan, which were bartered for groceries.” He still recalls them stacked for sale on the counter of Roddy MacDonald’s
Store, which is now the Maxville LCBO. “As to butter, we skimmed cream off cow’s milk and shook it in a half gallon sealer,” Ken continued. When the butter separated from the whey, the buttermilk was drained off (and probably fed to the pigs) and a pinch of salt was added to the resultant butter. “We really didn’t feel the impact of rationing” Ken opined. What Ken remembers more clearly is how he and his friends contributed to the war effort by saving their pennies to buy ‘War Saving Stamps.’ They were 25 cents a piece,” Ken told me in an email, “which we placed in a small booklet for safe keeping.”
The one thing I found in Elizabeth Campbell’s collection that still puzzles me is her husband’s Transient Labour Ration Card. So far, I have been unable to uncover any information on how the rationing of “transient labour” worked. If you have any insights, please contact me.
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