Tasting History: 

This website is a project completed by Grade 12 CHY4U World History Since the 15th Century students at Don Mills Collegiate Institute. In our history classroom, we approached this project with a mix of academic research and experiential learning. The day of cooking with Pinchas Gutter was a collaboration with Mr Dan Kunanec and his Grade 11 and 12 TFJ Hospitality and Tourism class. Mr Kunanec's classes are deeply influenced by land based learning. This connection was invaluable in better helping us understand the reality of food in the past and the need for connection to food and the land today. We are also very grateful for the collaborative support of Jody Spiegel, Director at the Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.

Throughout the history course we worked hard to learn about people. We tried to learn not only about significant events in terms of politics, warfare, and technology but also about the significant experiences and daily practices of people in the past. We completed two collaborative group projects with this in mind throughout the course before doing this website, and all the associated preparation, as our culminating course project. One project focused on the life of Theodore Fontaine, who was a leader, an author, and an Indian Residential School survivor. The second focused on the history of food, specifically pickling, and ended with us making pickles of various types with Mr Kunanec’s class. The focus of the pickling task was local food and sustainability in the past and the present. This same concept came into our work in this learning as our food historiographies demonstrate the ways that recipes changed from place to place and time to time. In our cooking of these recipes, we used fruit and vegetables grown at our Don Mills Urban Farm by our Green Industries students. These two experiences helped prepare our group for this course culminating task. 

As we worked our way through the course, a topic that popped up from several students was the Holocaust. Informed by their desire to learn about people, the group was curious about what this approach might mean when applied to studying the Holocaust. They had all learned about the Holocaust at some point - but what would it look like if we focused more on learning about the people? What would happen if we learned about the lives of survivors outside of their experiences in the Holocaust? What they discovered was that in the full stories of Holocaust survivors who came to Canada they saw themselves and their families. They discovered echoes of past experiences in their own lives, across place, time, and culture. 

Over the course of several weeks, students worked to learn about the history of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish life in Europe in order to have more context for what Jewish life was like in Europe. This included linguistic and cultural practices, economic and political contributions, experiences of persecution, expulsion, and migration, and, of course, food. Students researched the history of the foods they wished to prepare. They connected them to the stories of survivors of the Holocaust through the Azrieli Foundation memoirs. And then, with a connection made through Jody Spiegel at the Azrieli Foundation, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter agreed to come and spend an afternoon with us, cooking and eating and reminiscing about his pre-Holocaust childhood and his experiences of continuity and change as he eventually made his way to Canada. 

     What you will find throughout this website is the work of a group of teenaged historians dedicated to learning about the past through the eyes, and stomachs, of regular people. You will find a group of young people finding meaning in their own stories of migration, food, and identity through the stories shared by a previous generation of Canadian immigrants. You will find thoughtful connection, deep reflection, and a sense of love for those who came before them.