Maintaining Traditions: Food and Identity among Early Immigrants to Upper Canada

Eric D Tourigny

doi:10.1007/s41636-020-00237-5

Abstract

A critical examination of the relationships between food and identity is explored among early British and American Loyalist settlers in Upper Canada (southern Ontario) from the late 18th to the late 19th centuries. This research synthesizes zooarchaeological data from the region and interprets these alongside historical texts to address how meat was incorporated into early immigrant diets. Previous scholarship generally agreed that pork played a dominant role in Upper Canadian cuisine and that residents first settling in the area were particularly reliant on wild meat resources. Archaeological evidence suggests this was not the case. Results and discussions highlight the influence of British working-class traditions on Upper Canadian identities and the development of regional cuisines in southern Ontario. Parallels are drawn to anthropological and sociological studies of migrant foodways, encouraging archaeologists to consider the importance of maintaining food traditions when examining early immigrant assemblages.

Highlights

The foods people eat can be reflective of and used toward an active negotiation of identity
Over the past few decades, archaeological studies linking food and social diversity have become increasingly popular in North American historical archaeology (Landon 1987b; Scott 1996; Warner 1998; Franklin 2001; Milne and Crabtree 2001; Groover and Homes Hogue 2014; Dappert-Coonrod and Kuehn 2017)
Recalling the importance of food as central to the formation of individual and group identities, the results presented here speak to the importance of maintaining traditional foodways amongst immigrant populations in Upper Canada

Summary

Introduction

The foods people eat can be reflective of and used toward an active negotiation of identity Foodways research does not look at what people ate, but represents a critical examination of the ways people thought about and interacted with food: how and why they obtained it, distributed it, prepared it, preserved it, and consumed it (Anderson 1971:29) The usefulness of this concept as an interpretive framework lies in its all-encompassing definition as an interrelated network of decisions affecting the ways individuals eat. It helps archaeologists move beyond listing the foods people ate by recognizing that dietary components and food behaviors are influenced by a series of complex factors related to social diversity (ethnicity, gender, religious belief, socioeconomic status), contributing to an individual’s and/or group’s sense of identity (Landon 1996:3, 2002:247; Kuehn 2007:200; Twiss 2012:381)

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Results

Conclusion