Newman Western Canadian Cookbook Collection

The Newman Western Canadian Cookbook Collection is named for the family of Dr Lenore Newman, UFV's Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment.  Dr Newman was the driving force behind the establishment of the collection in the Fall of 2014.  Her research interests include food security; sustainable food systems/urban food systems; place, space, and urban nature; and urban spatial geography.   

Dr Newman writes that the community cookbook came into its own in the early twentieth
century as printing costs fell drastically, allowing groups to put together collections of local recipes as a fundraising tool. Thousands of such books were produced, and recipes that had developed locally were passed around the western world. The recipes preserved in these books describe a way of life that is quickly becoming as remote as the world of the Romans. In their pages these little books preserve the day to day existence of people now gone, and from the books of UFV’s new culinary collection we can study the lives of the people who settled Western Canada. In particular they capture voices that were not well represented in other ways at the time; cookbooks expose the lives of women, and the lives of minorities. Timely preservation of these books is now critical, as they are all too often discarded over time. Their preservation ensures future researchers will have access to a critical period in the development of Canada. We are a diverse nation, and have come to understand each other in part through the sharing of food.

It is our hope that researchers from the academic and professional realms will find a wealth of information within the pages of these cookbooks to inspire further inquiry and creativity.

Click HERE to listen to a discussion between Mark Forsythe and Mary-Anne MacDougall about the Newman Collection in January 2020.

Short on time? Just want to dive right in? Start here.

On September 24th, 2015, the UFV and broader community gathered together for a celebration of UFV Library's new Special Collection - the Newman Western Canadian Cookbook Collection.  We unveiled our new UFV Cookbook of favourite recipes, Good Food Tells a Story, as well as celebrating the MSA Museum's publication of Abbotsford: from Village to City.

Click here for images from that wonderful evening.

UFV library's fundraiser cookbook, Good Food Tells a Story is available for $10 (inc. tax). Just come into the library and ask for it at the service desk.
 

If you want to read a review: