This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on March 15, 1941.
A woman wrote a letter in a western paper recently, stating her case in regard to War Savings Certificates and War Work, and why she could not buy or help in either of these ways.
She has four children, she does all her own work and sewing, too. It takes close figuring to live within her husband’s salary, paying rent, insurance, dentist bills, and yet she feels she should be doing something to help her country in its dire need, and asks for advice. It is a good letter, written in sincerity.
I would like to reply to it. She is one of many. Any woman who is taking care of four children, making the most of her opportunities, is doing something for her country in its need. Well-nourished children, who hear good conversation, who go to bed happy, sleep soundly, are taught to respect other people’s rights, to be honest and kind and courageous, are an asset to our country. And any woman who is doing this work need not be ashamed if she is not able to lend money or knit sweaters.
I know something now about the significance of home life. I have lived long enough to see how it works out, and I know it is hard for a woman who is face-to-face with three meals a day and the washing and mending to get the long view on it.
Take the matter of food alone. A wise woman never stints on food with her family, for undernourishment leaves its mark no matter what is done to offset it, but let no one think that it is always the children of the poor who are undernourished. Lack of sleep, too much starches and candies, indigestible, irregular meals, bad temper, emotional disturbances, are as deadly as lack of calories. Children need not only food, but security, a feeling of safety and stability in their home, also a feeling of fellowship.
Now in the matter of food, women are in their own realm. Women learned by experiment that cooking improved certain kinds of food and, if the records are true, had some difficulty in getting their men to eat cooked meat in the cave-dwelling days. Now any woman can be a good cook if she wants to be.
The air is full of household and cooking hints. Cookbooks are given away with “two tops and five cents to cover the cost of mailing,” and good ones, too. I prefer the homegrown cookbooks for my own use. I have a battered old grey cookbook, 10 years old now, compiled by the women of Greenwood Church in Winnipeg, that has never once let me down. Its pages show traces of wear, but it is full of wisdom.
I say food is women’s realm, and that is why I am hoping to see women cooking for our armed forces. I believe they would do it more economically, and with better results. Never once have I heard a soldier say they do not get good food in the army, but they get too many heavy meals, too much meat and starch.
I think of how women would save money, too, and add variety to the menu by substituting salads and green vegetables and fruit for some of the heavier rations. Canada is a fruit-growing country, and now, with the outside market closed, our apples should be served every day to the troops. Apples are not food alone, they are refreshment.
I always feel resentful when I think of anyone being deprived of apples. We should have apple trees along the roads, as they have in France, for anyone who wishes to pick them. (Hundreds of these were cut down by the Germans in the last war as they retreated.)
When the war is over, and that might not be so far off, Great Britain and the United States will be left with a chaotic Europe on their hands, and the greatest factor in the restoration of peace and order will be food. Canada will have a great part in this if we begin now to plan and work for it. Let us have no fear of surpluses. Everything we grow will be needed.
Now there is a scarcity of garden seed in England, especially onion and leek seed. Here is something each of us can do. We can send seeds to our friends. Every farmer has more seed than he will use this spring. Every time I order from a seed catalogue I cannot hold back my hands from ordering more than I need. I believe every garden-lover does the same. And now let us be glad if we can help in this small way.
A friend of mine in Twickenham writes: “An onion is a legendary delicacy now. How we long for them to flavour stews and soups. Did you ever try to cook without onions?”
In Britain, they can spend only 23 cents per week per person on meat. What a fine substitute for meat is our good Canadian cheese, and it would do us good to resolve to send the cheese to England, which otherwise we would eat ourselves.
Mrs. Howe, wife of the Hon. C.D. Howe, said in an interview recently that women should not hold teas to raise money for war work. It was a waste of food, she said. They should give the money, and she is right, of course. But human nature being what it is, more money can be raised with teas than without.
People like to eat together; they enjoy the social aspect of it, and it is really a very good way of extracting money without pain. And it has another angle. You can rouse the indolent and careless and dull of heart by getting them to a tea, particularly a tea where someone speaks and puts the case before them. And every gathering should have a speaker, or a letter read. I think we grow too complacent sometimes over the courage of Britain, and say “British can take it,” as if that covers everything.
Britain has given the world a criterion of bravery, but let us never forget that human endurance has its limits. Nerves fray from sleeplessness and worry. There is not much we can do for them, but we can write and we can pray, and if we really pray, we will soon be doing something more.
I know people who send a parcel every week to their friends — tea, butter, bacon and cheese. In the air-raid shelters, I would like to think that the goodwill of Canada is supplying the tea and the sandwiches that go around in those tense moments when the air is crackling with gunfire and bombs. I believe any one of us would gladly forgo our Sunday dinner or sacrifice a new hat to do that.
Last week, I wrote about the project to send 250,000 cases of eggs, sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Hatcheries. I hope their idea matures. We must give until it hurts to keep our conscience clear.
Canada has always been a food-producing country with the result that our trouble has been markets — where could we sell our cattle, our wheat, our fish and our fruit?
With ruin, death and destruction raging in Europe, there is going to be a need for these things greater than we have ever known. But the starving people will have no way of paying. Their savings were stolen from them. But we in Canada know about “grub-stakes.” Many a man has grown rich by grub-staking a miner, who was willing to hunt for the precious ore if he had food and tools.
Over in Europe, broken, desolate, Hitler-cursed Europe, there are millions of people and millions of acres of land, but famine threatens them. The people are willing to work, work has always been their salvation, and the land is ready to produce.
After the war, we will have to grub-stake them without any thought of money. In the meantime, we hate to think of their suffering, but it will encourage them if they know that over here we are building new elevators to hold the grain, new refrigerator plants for the meat and butter, and when Hitler is defeated and the danger of Nazi thieving removed, the blockade will be lifted, and these things will be sent to them.
We hate war and destruction, but we had to engage in it. We have raised money to buy the instruments that kill people; sorrowfully and regretfully have we done this. How much more readily will we pay to feed people?
In the meantime, every person who has access to a piece of ground can grow something to increase Canada’s food supply. If we eat more vegetable, we will eat less meat and less grain — and these are exportable. Food, the food of today and tomorrow, might win the war.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
