Introduction
By Stacey Zembrzycki
March 25, 2020
I started preparing for COVID-19 about a month before the
Premier of Québec declared a public health emergency on March 14, 2020, effectively closing the schools in which my husband and I work, banning visits to hospitals, retirement homes, and long-term care facilities, and asking those who are either immune-compromised or over seventy-years-old to isolate themselves from the larger public. Teaching about the Black Death in my Western Civilization class and reading about what was happening in Wuhan gave me perspective, allowing my students and me to discuss our long and uneasy history with corona viruses, draw links between the similar geographical spread of past and present diseases, and outline what quarantines and our understandings of illness looked like before and after the advent of science. They laughed when I said this was coming to Canada: “Yeah right miss!” They were no longer laughing when we met for the last time and I told them to be safe, follow government directives, and ensure they had enough non-perishable food items in their homes to feed them for at least a week.
There were cautious warnings in the media to prepare for a possible quarantine before we got to this point, to refill prescriptions to avoid pharmacies later, and to stock up on non-perishable foods so that running errands would be about filling holes not whole cupboards when the time came. I come from a working-class family of Ukrainians and Poles who have lived through all the hard times that the twentieth century had to offer: the Great Depression and the Second World War as well as all the lay-offs, strikes, and recessions that crippled our northern mining community. We all have pantries and deep freezes, as my Baba calls them, and cellars stocked with homemade preserves in our basements. Although it wasn’t always this way, we are now among the privileged in our society.
The familial stories I grew up hearing and the food I prepared and ate with my family informed how I approached the present moment, but so too has the work I do as an oral and public historian. I have been fortunate to meet and listen to the life stories of hundreds of incredible people and I can honestly say there hasn’t been one meeting where food did not come up: how to grow it, pick it, find it, stretch it, prepare it, and eat it. It is these food memories that comfort us in bad times and remind us of home, family, and community. I have come to think that we are nothing without them, especially now as we struggle to understand our quickly changing world, build community through quarantine, and just plain move forward.
A few days ago, I wanted to recreate my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls and while I had enough flour I didn’t have any yeast on hand. I was sure I did though, and proceeded to rip apart my kitchen looking for those small, familiar orange packets. In the process, I started flipping through cookbooks and came across a newspaper write-up that featured my great aunt Barbara in 1977, rolling perogy dough while she shared the Ukrainian recipes she cooked for us, her family, and members of her parish, her extended family. It was nice to think about her in this moment, to remember her and to share my memories of her with my daughter who now wears the beautiful angora hats and patterned sweaters she made for me.
I wrote a Facebook post and shared my memories with friends and family and, to my surprise, it blew up! The thread contained new stories about my aunt as well as different versions of the same recipes, which got me thinking: how many oral and public historians, at any career stage, have a story and a memory to share during these COVID-19 times? I reached out to some of my colleagues and we’ve formed a feminist collective tasked with gathering food memories and recipes; you’ll meet Margo Shea and Cassandra Marsillo soon. If we can’t gather and share space, we might as well ground ourselves in well-told stories that provide perspective and enable us to cook good food.
So, I’m asking, will you:
Share a story or a memory in simple and accessible language;
A tried and tested favourite recipe, either your own or one you’ve been lucky enough to hear about in your research;
A picture of you with your prepared dish; or a picture of you with family and friends enjoying a meal together; or a historical picture from your research that brings your story to life for readers;
And, lastly, a one-sentence biography?
This is not meant to be an onerous task, but an accessible way of sharing stories about the past while also documenting this present moment. We’ve made this form of storytelling as simple as possible. There is an online form and when you’re done we’ll share your content on our blog. Think of it as one of those old school, wire-bound community cookbooks that’s now gone digital. There’s no better time to do what we do: tell stories!