‘It used to be about the kids’: Nutrition Reform and the Montreal Protestant School Board

Abstract

The nutrition programs that developed in Montreal Protestant schools during the 1970s attest to a deepening awareness of child and adolescent welfare. The combination of grassroots activism and government support that brought about these initiatives took place in the context of post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, when Montrealers were grappling with the role that the newly activist state should play in social life. At the same time, school nutrition reform was part of a broader ongoing renegotiation of state responsibility. Both in Canada and the United States, governments were steadily assuming a mantle of responsibility for expanded liberal rights.