Western Canadian Christmas: Feasts and Beasts, 1847-70

Hugh Dempsey's Christmas in the West (1982) shares dozens of first-hand accounts penned by seasoned prairie-dwellers and greenhorns alike. Its pages are full of the holy nights of  early missionaries, indigenous encounters with Santa Claus, and well-seasoned stories, legends, and lies surrounding the holiday. Many tales relate to Christmas feasts. As vegetarians were few in nineteenth-century Rupert's Land, proteins are heavily featured. If you are at all squeamish about the slaughter of animals, you may wish to leave this post and throw on Alvin and the Chipmunks...on the record player, not the grill.

Paul Kane was an artist whose paintings of the West have become some of the most important visual representations

Paul Kane's painting of Fort Edmonton...in the summertime.

of the prairies in the nineteenth century. This said, embellishment was not foreign to him, and even those in his own time suggested his work had more artistic value than documentary. He traveled across the future Canada in the 1840s, and left us both a painting of Fort Edmonton, and this account of an 1847 Christmas feast.

Paul Kane, Buffalo Bulls Fighting.

Perhaps it might be interesting to some dyspeptic idler, who painfully strolls through a city park, to coax an appetite to a sufficient intensity to enable him to pick an ortolan, if I were to describe to him the fare set before us, to appease appetites nourished by constant outdoor exercise in an atmosphere ranging at 40 to 50 below zero. At the head, before Mr. Harriett, was a large dish of boiled buffalo hump; at the foot smoked a boiled buffalo calf.

Start not gentle reader, the calf is very small, and is taken from the cow by the Caesarean operation long before it attains its full growth. This, boiled whole, is one of the most esteemed dishes amongst the epicures of the interior.  My pleasing duty was to help a dish of mouffle, or dried moose nose; the gentleman on my left distributed, with graceful impartiality, the white fish, delicately browned in buffalo marrow.  The worthy priest helped the buffalo tongue, whilst Mr. Rundell cut up the beavers' tails...Such was our jolly Christmas dinner at Edmonton; and long will it remain in my memory, although no pies, or puddings, or blanc mages, shed their fragrance over the scene.

Presumably bison C-sections were performed postmortem. I'll take the fish.

Another bison-related story comes from Donald Graham, who travelled West during the Red River Resistance of 1869-70. On his first Christmas on the plains in 1872, he recalled his excitement during his first bison hunt on Christmas Day.
  

Next day, I said to my companions: "Is it true that tomorrow is Christmas day?"

"Sure thing, it's the 25th of December. What you think of doing? Hanging up your socks? Don't bother. There ain't no Santa Claus around here -- no, nor turkey for dinner, neither."

"Well," says I, "I'm not looking for Santa Claus, but if I could only shoot a buffalo wouldn't a roast of that make a grand Christmas dinner?" "Sure would," said he, "but a greenhorn like you could never reach one. It takes the real Indians to do that."

There and then I made up my mind to get a buffalo or perish in the attempt.

Assiniboine riding...Arabians? By Paul Kane

Graham succeeded in his hunt for Christmas roast, bagging his first bison despite his Scottish origins. Another unappetizing pot bonus was added, somewhere near the Hand Hills, south of Fort Edmonton.

After bleeding him and walking round and round before I could make up my mind to leave him, I hurried to our camp to tell the others. They came back with me, and after skinning it, we cut off the hind quarter and the tongue. Into the remainder I placed half a bottle of strychnine for the benefit of the wolves, which always followed a buffalo herd.

Next morning I was up bright and early, and visited what was left of the buffalo.  There I found two dead wolves which we skinned, and Charlie cut out the back fat, a wide strip of which extended the full length of the back. As the strychnine never leaves the stomach, this fat is considered a great delicacy and was eaten with great relish.

Wolf backstrap, with strychnine marinade or not, is no longer considered a delicacy in the region.
 

Wounded Buffalo surrounded by wolves. George Caitlin.

Finally a tale from the quartermaster sergeant of the Red River

Men of the Red River Expedition in camp.

Expedition.  This mixed Canadian and British force was the last British-led expedition in North-America. It marched across the Canadian Shield to Red River, only to find that Louis Riel was not going to wait around to see if the transfer of power from his provisional government was going to be peaceful. The soldiers worked up an appetite, and as they are prone to do, complained about their food. Once they were at Red River, the quartermaster sergeant (QMS) finally pulled off a feast to remember for Christmas 1870.

The dinner bugle sounded. The sergeants trooped in. My, what a spread! What a noble display of viands. What an astonishing variety. What a plentitude of everything. Beef! Beef everywhere. Beef soup, beef stewed, beef broiled, beef roasted, beef curried, beef a la everything, beef ad infinitum, beef galore!

 The men gorged on the feast and praised the Q.M.S.

"Gentlemen, have I satisfied you at last?"

Grand Chorus: "You have."

"Is there one man here present who is not perfectly, absolutely satisfied?"

Grand Chorus: "No, not one," and cheers.

"The dinner has been a great, a noble success?"
Grand Chorus: "It has."

 "And you would all like to have it repeated tomorrow?"

Rousing cheers and grand chorus, "We would."

 The Q.M.S. turned to Sergeant Hank and said, "The best thing we can do, Hank, is to go down and get the rest of that old horse."

The sergeants looked blank for just two seconds. Then the situation dawned upon them. There were two doors to the dining room. In an instant both were crammed with anxious and escaping sergeants and civilians. They all had sudden and peremptory business outdoors. A man who passed that way about that time said it reminded him of the time he came across the ocean in an emigrant ship and struck the biggest storm that had blown for centuries.

Whether it is tofurkey or bison veal this Christmas, here is to hoping you spend it feasting with good company.  Merry Christmas and bon appetit...if you still can muster an appetite!

 

Canadian Postal Censorship: A Disgruntled Canadian Rant, Spring 1942

Canadian postal censorship reports of the Second World War are fascinating sources for soldierly vernacular.  There is no shortage of excerpts from browned-off soldiers grousing in their letters about the travails of military life. For all the complaints of tasteless food, freezing barracks, and pointless fatigues, those back at home would be forgiven for forgetting that the war was on!

While household-name military historians like C.P. Stacey, Terry Copp, or Jonathan Vance, have used postal censorship in the past, up-and-comer Robert Engen has recently published the most systematic look at these sources in his excellent work Strangers in Arms. Engen's book may become this generation's version of John English's The Canadian Army in the Normandy Campaign: A Study of Failure of High Command. Engen's provocative thesis challenges notions of primary group and regimental fealty as the key to combat motivation.  Where English challenged the competency of Canadian senior leadership and doctrine, Engen argues against the time-honored tradition that the bonds of the regimental family and the combat-hardened band of brothers kept men fighting in the line. Postal censors' reports are just one part of a whole range of interesting sources that Engen uses to create a sociological overview of the Canadian Army at war.

Engen largely uses the quantitative aspects of these reports and their summaries, but a whole ream of excerpts from letters also accompany Canadian Army Postal Censorship files.  Here is an example of a particularly long excerpt that officers felt deserved repeating for its vitriol. The letter was written in early 1942, as Canadians trained, and trained some more, waiting for their shot at combat.

I don't know what you are reading in the papers about England and the war etc but so help me they sure deserve to have the pants trimmed off them.  Nobody worries a damn bit about the real problem at hand, which is killing and defeating Germany, physically, spiritually and morally.  All they talk about is silly trivial stuff like 'saving waste paper' and 'we must back Russia to the utmost' with everything but men it seems.  The latest propaganda howl all over the bloody place is 'Remember Hong Kong'.  Have they forgotten about 13 other total defeats including the far Eastern stronghold, Singapore?  I was over at N.... for tea on Sunday, and they have a cousin in the Artillery, a Sarjeant.  He heard last week he may be going overseas somewhere, so has applied for a commission so that he can go to an O.C.T.U. and therby stay in England 6 months.  This from a middle class intelligent man? of 32!  And we came over here to protect bastards like that.

So much for press, propaganda, and shirkers.  Our correspondent continued with a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon (and anti-Semitic) diatribe against the black market.

WC'42 By M. Covarrubias.

After nearly 2 1/2 years at war they are trying to decide whether to pass the death sentence on those hundreds of people engaged solely in supplying the 'Black Market'. Black market, in case it is foreign, is food clothing and niceties supplied in any amount to those who can afford to pay the highest and is a criminal offence if caught in Russia, Germany, Japan and Italy, it's a firing squad, and no questions asked.  But in England the majority engaged in this illicit trade is our friend the JEW, and we, the almighty, the cricket-playing, home-loving Englishmen, cannot be accused of race discrimination.  Night clubs are always packed.  On Saturday or Sunday in London and suburbs it is next to impossible to get into a movie, those with the necessary money and connections are never without ample gasoline to run even the most expensive cars and when John Doe sees old Churchill grin and give the 'V' sign he just calmly thinks about the type of carrots he will be planting in the spring and says 'good ol' Winnie, he'll pull us through', completely ignoring the news in his own newspapers telling him the 'Empire' is unfortunately going to pieces, but it simply can't be helped, ol' boy, we just haven't got the planes.

Even raids across the Channel Coast didn't cheer our thoroughly skeptical correspondent.

The Raid On St. Nazaire, March 1942.
Order the board game today?

And then when the public begin to get a bit anxious they pull a 'huge' raid off on the French coast with about 50 men, its probably about one of the weakest spots on their tremendous frontier, but next morning great headlines of a 'daring victory'.  I heard some wag in a pub say: 'you know we really have given them a rough time on the French coast.'

At the end of it all, the war would result in nothing less than the complete destruction of Canadian sovereignty.

I have come to the conclusion the average Englishman's indifference and modesty is put on to the point of absurdity.  They make you sick, so high and mighty, instead of realising that when this war is finally over we shall have Russian and U.S.A. to thank our lucky stars that the British Empire still exists. I wonder who will have the job of rolling up the 49th Parallel Wire and dumping it in the Pacific Ocean?

It seems safe to say that not all Canadian soldiers had high morale in the first half of 1942!

Letter from "Notes on Mail examined during Period 2^ndto 17^thMarch, 1942," Field Censors (Home), FCH/CR 21. DND File 46-3-3/INT Vol 1, "Censorship Reports: Field Censors (Home) Sep-DEc 41 January – May 42.", 215C1.98(D332) Censorship Reports Vol. 1 Jan-May 42, RG24 Volume 10705, LAC.

George Back's Ravens, 20 April 1834

George Back, (1796-1878)

George Back accompanied John Franklin on his earliest excursions to the "Polar Sea", through the land now known as the Northwest Territories.  From 1833-35, he led his own excursion which sought to find the missing explorer John Ross.  Ross found himself.  He arrived back in England in 1833, but when Back discovered this the next year, he continued exploring to the north-east of Great Slave Lake, travelling the rapid-laden river (now named after him) to the sea at Chantrey Inlet. Before he could make this journey, however, he passed a hungry winter at the dwellings constructed for him at the far east end of Great Slave Lake.


That first winter at Fort Reliance was one of extreme hardship.  In late 1833, unseasonably warm weather had kept game out on the tundra, and the Denesoline and Yellowknives Dene in the region had great difficulty surviving.  Many weak and invalid First Nations wasted away at Fort Reliance, and the pemmican supply ran very low.

Back's Chimneys at Old Fort Reliance.

In his published narrative of the expedition, Back wrote of two ravens, whose company he enjoyed in the spring. Like the chimneys of Fort Reliance, which remain on the site today, his account is a lonely testimony to the suffering that winter at the gateway to the tundra.

"April 20^th [1834] – For the last fifteen days our habitation had been rendered more cheerful by the presence of two ravens, which having, by my express directions, been left unmolested, had become so tame as scarcely to move ten paces when any one passed them; they were the only living things that held communion with us, and it was a pleasure to see them gambol in their glossy plumage on the white snow.

A party of men had arrived over night, and amongst them an Iroquois, who, perceiving the birds together, and being ignorant of my wishes could not resist the temptation of a double shot, and so killed them both.  In any other situation such an event, would, perhaps have seemed too trifling to be noticed; but in our case, the ravens were the only link between us and the dreary solitude without, and their loss therefore was painfully felt.  Moreover, there seemed a sort of treachery in the act, for the poor birds had been taught to look upon us as friends: their petty thefts were licensed; and their sharp croaking was welcome, as breaking the monotony of silence.  When they were gone, I felt more lonely, and the moaning wind seemed as if complaining of the barbarity."

 

Ted Harrison, "Tungsten", Eliot Louis Gallery.

Watch the Bee Go Get The Hun - Patriotic Sheet Music

Sheet music is a fascinating avenue into historical culture, and the patriotic jingles of the First World War are no exception.  Songs such as "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag", or "A Long Way Tipperary", immediately bring that conflict to mind.  The Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University features a vast collection of digitized sheet music for research and enjoyment in  "The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection".  Clicking the World War I subject category yields 574 items, including popular soldiers' tunes such as "Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?", patriotic odes to President Wilson and General Pershing, and a number of titles featuring belligerent threats aimed at the German enemy.

One of these belligerent numbers is the oddly titled, "Watch the Bee Go Get the Hun" whose cover features the familiar mustachioed caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm, subject to on onslaught of American soldier-bees, guided by the lamp of lady liberty!  The song was penned by Walter Hawley, and published in New York in 1918.

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/catalog/levy:097.110

The lyrics of the song are as follows:

There's a beehive in America they call the U.S.A., And is far from 'over there'.
There's a hundred million busy bees a buzzing night and day, And they will soon be over there.
Uncle Sam is spending money so the bees can get the honey.
It's up to you to see them through the thickest of the fray.

Just watch the bee go get the Hun,
And bye and bye you'll see them run,
We're sending swarms and swarms of bees,
far across the deep blue seas,
To buzz around that big long distant gun.

So help the bee to get the Hun, Stamp U.S.A. on every one.,
And the Germans will be wiser when our Bees have stung the Kaiser,

Watch the bees go get the Hun.
Just Watch the Hun.

There are busy bees at Washington as busy as can be,
Preparing plans for 'over there'
And every bee throughout the land is watching anxiously
The bees who've landed over there.

The grand old Bell is ringing,
And our bees have started singing.
Their sting will win, good-bye Berlin,
it's all off Germany.

Just watch the bee go get the Hun,
And bye and bye you'll see them run,
We're sending swarms and swarms of bees far across the deep blue seas,
To buzz around that big long distant gun.

Our busy bees will get the Hun
With Kaiser Bill we'll have some fun,
To our bee-hive we will bring him so our little bees can sting him,

Watch the bees go get the hun.
Just Watch the hun.

It seems the bees here are variously ammunition, soldiers and civil servants.  It's a very busy metaphor! Why one would want to bring the Kaiser to the American bee-hive for a stinging when millions of bees are flying overseas is also a mystery.  Fortunately, Phonofile's youtube channel features a phonograph cylinder recording of "Watch the bee go get the Hun", so you can sing along at home.  All together now!

Soldiers Disturbing the Peace: Crime and Drunkeness in Nova Scotia, 1941-45

Military Districts in Atlantic CAN Hyperwar.

It is hard to deny the overarching narrative of the Second World War as the "good war".  In the reduced, synthesized, and simplified version of the conflict, Nazi villains are thwarted by the Anglo-American heroes in a clean story of right and wrong.  Individual experience, of course, rarely matched this crisp moral contrast, as lives are lived in the complex blur of intentions, identities, and circumstance.  In Military District No. 6 (Nova Scotia and P.E.I.) during the war there is plenty of evidence to support Kipling's thesis that, "single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints."

VE Day Riots, Halifax. Life as a human blog.

Halifax was clearly a disciplinary problem during the war, and the major efforts to keep the peace made by Military District (MD) No. 6 and Atlantic Command were in the capital city.  The most celebrated incident of military misdemeanour was the VE Day Riot of 7-8 May 1945, but there were plenty of  disturbances before the end of the war in Europe.  Almost a year earlier, on 3 June 1944, the Halifax Daily Star reported:

In some parts of Halifax the misconduct of service personnel has already become notorious. [...]

         So far as most citizens can see, the Provost Corps is more concerned with raising vegetables within the precincts of Citadel Hill than in patrolling the streets and apprehending offenders. [...]

            The plain fact of the matter is that discipline among military personnel in this community just isn't being maintained in the manner that citizens have a right to expect.

            Far too many instances of women being accosted, insulted and exposed to ridicule have taken place for authorities to admit of the least complacency.

The military and civilian police in Halifax simply couldn't keep up with massive influx of service personnel.  There was a lack of provost to police them, and a lack of accommodations to entertain them.

Smaller towns across Nova Scotia also had their problems with rowdy soldiers.  Places like Kentville, New Glasgow, Debert and Tormentine, towns on the railway line or near training bases, experienced troubles with late-night revelry getting out of hand.  Restaurants and hotels were ransacked and goods stolen.  Fights were a common occurrence.

That Canadian soldiers acted contrary to a sanctified memory which puts them on a pedestal is no surprise to the student of military history.  John Baynes in his 1967 classic Morale: A Study of Men and Courage notes that even first-class battalions could cause troubles in their local garrison town.  Baynes wrote in reference to British regiments before the First World War that, "The experienced officer knows almost by instinct whether the trouble is due to poor morale or high spirits.  Good soldiers must have a bit of devilment in them, and it is no good becoming alarmed at occasional outbursts of misbehaviour." (95)

In January 1943, the St. Peter's Anglican Church in Eastern Passage Nova Scotia was the site of soldierly debauchery.  The organist there discovered property damage, spilled beer, and vomit around the altar, "from which there was a odor [sic] of liquor".  (RG24 Vol. 2189) Other evidence left at the scene of the crime, as reported by an inspector on the case, borders on the absurd:

"INVESTIGATING THIS MATTER FURTHER THE WRITER again contacted Rev. E.A. KINGSBURY, at this time he informed the writer that there was still a package of hot dogs in the church which he though had been left there by the persons responsible for the desecration of the church.  Rev. KINGSBURY went to the church with the writer and handed these hot dogs over.  Further enquiries were then made at Murdock's Canteen and Miss FAULKNER recalled that these three men, whom she had identified on January 19th, had ordered some Hot Dogs done up so as they could take them out with them, also that one of the men had asked her to put a cigar in one of the buns instead of a sausage so that he could play a joke on someone.[...]

Three empty beer bottles, and the two hot dogs are contained on the attached [form] 246. and are held at this office pending further developments in this case."(Inspector TW Chard to the Deputy Attorney General, Province of Nova Scotia, "Re: Desecration of St. Peter's Anglican Church, Eastern Passage, N.S. Complaint of Rev. A.E. Kingsbury","Disturbances M.D. No. 6 - Canadian Active Service Forces", Folder HQ-54-27-63-7, Library and Archives Canada, RG24 Volume 2189, 22 February 1943.)

Aside from weenies and beer bottles, there was testimony that singled out the culprits, identifying one man as having returned to barracks wearing a priest's gown and ordering his fellow soldier to "get down and say his confession." One gunner was given twenty-one days detention with forfeited pay, and the other reverted to the rank of gunner permanently."Statement No. 2: Statement of Reg. No. B.600160 Gnr. Samuel MONTAGNA, R.C.A. Devils Battery, Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia", RG 24 Volume 2189,  19th January 1943.


Trouble around military pay-day was common, and there was no lack of business proprietors calling for guards to be stationed near their properties.  Having one's premises placed out of bounds was another possible remedy, but this action was clearly not favoured due to the loss of military business.

Alcohol was almost always involved in these disturbances.  Several early incidents surrounded bootlegging establishments, with soldiers getting drunk and causing trouble.  In Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia on 14 June 1940, Antonio DiVito's candy store, where bootleg liquor was refused to soldiers, became the site of a quarrel and some petty property damage.  Ethnicity was a factor in this case.  DiVito was an Italian naturalized in 1922 (or '23) and a woman had attempted to incite the crowd to destroy Italian businesses by suggesting that since she had a son in uniform that DiVito should be enlisted as well."Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry assembled at Sydney Mines, N.S. on the 16th June, 1940. by order of Lieut.-Col. W.H. Dobbie, D.S.O., R.C.A. Commanding Sydney Fortress. for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the circumstances surrounding a disturbance in Sydney Mines, N.S. on Friday, 14th June 1940 in which troops of the Sydney garrison are alleged to have taken part.", RG 24 Volume 2189, 16 June 1940.

Soldiers training in New Glasgow, 1940.
The Memory Project.

In New Glasgow in early February 1941, a number of soldiers on leave got into a huge brawl and burned the house of a bootlegger.  Race again was a major factor here, as the African-Canadian bootlegger worked and lived in a black neighbourhood.  Much racist vitriol was exposed in the court proceedings.  A Mr J.C. Dorrington, who sold beer from his house, had denied the soldiers drink as he was closing up his shop.  When they forced entry into his home, he and some friends beat them up.  Soldiers returned later with a  mob and drove Dorrington and his family out of his house, destroying it.

The prime culprits were members of the Essex Scottish regiment.  Judge-Advocate General R.J. Orde's comments on the incident suggest that racist attitudes by southern American personnel in the unit may have prompted the destruction of the house.  The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry were also involved in the incident, and it appears that there was also brawling between members of the two regiments that night in New Glasgow.  The court martial proceedings of this case are rich enough to be quoted at length in a future blog post. RJ. Orde, [likely to Adjutant-General] "The trouble in New Glasgow",  RG 24 Volume 2189, 11 February 1941.
 
What are we to glean from these cases of soldiers gone wild?  Jeff Keshen's work Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War, takes issue with the notion of the good war, and discovered a great deal of Canadian soldiers and civilians alike behaved in unpatriotic and even criminal ways.  The record of disturbances in Nova Scotia certainly confirms this.  Perhaps Keshen's categories, however, of saint, sinner, and soldier, are not mutually exclusive.  While the racist clash in New Glasgow, with its drunken vitriol and violence, are not the stuff of military heroism, is it not possible that some members of the Essex Scottish regiment or the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry acted bravely in battle in August 1942 when they stormed the beaches in the ill-fated Dieppe raid?  Were the saints of Dieppe past sinners at New Glasgow?

The Canadian Encylopeida
 on the Dieppe Raid

Our conception of military valour takes a snap-shot of a life and defines an individual by it.  It would be ridiculous to suggest that one of the men awarded the Victoria Cross at Dieppe, (a Lieutenant Colonel and a padre), were involved in these previous digressions, yet it is not unreasonable to believe men who behaved very poorly on that drunken night in Nova Scotia, later proved themselves as brave soldiers under fire.  Military crime scuffs the polished finish of military memory, betraying a tarnished halo adorning the statuesque good war.  To take time to consider transgressions of military discipline, however, is not to smear the name of the Canadian soldier in the Second World War, but to humanize him.