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Food and drink: Long live St. Jean Baptiste Day

A time to fete all things du Québec

It was a very warm, very humid summer's night on the little streets near ByWard Market in Ottawa that I first rubbed shoulders with St. Jean Baptiste Day.

We'd checked into our room near midnight and, given the blast furnace conditions, decided to wander about. All of a sudden we stumbled onto this fantastic scene. Okay, I admit the lights were a tip-off, but we had no idea we'd find...

Street theatre with great, tall performers with wings all glittery on stilts, and bands blasting Québécois music along with the Krieg lights shooting silver into the night sky. The crowd was literally dancing in the street, fuelled by street food and plenty of beer.

And that was just the tail end of the local St. Jean Baptiste celebrations.

St. Jean Baptiste Day, celebrated June 24, is a huge deal for Québecers - it's their national holiday. However, it remains pretty much a mystery for most Anglophones, including myself. So here's a mini-intro to SJBD 101 and popular culture in Québec, besides poutine and tourtière.

To start, St. Jean Baptiste Day is an amalgamation of two ancient celebrations by the French rolled into one - summer solstice or midsummer and the feast day for St. John the Baptist, who became a major religious figure, baptizing Christ and ultimately becoming a martyr, his head served on a platter to King Herod's daughter, Salome, as per her request.

Settlers from France brought St. Jean Baptiste traditions to the banks of the St. Lawrence in the early 1600s. Celebrations stayed largely religious with maybe a bonfire or two until the early 1800s, when a local newspaper owner got people celebrating with nationalist fervor, a pointed message to the British.

Today, June 24 has morphed into more of a proud cultural celebration, so anywhere you find Québecers you're bound to see "their colours" - the blue and white of Québec's flag.

At Whistler, Dusty's is celebrating St. Jean Baptiste Day with a party that will probably last as long as the one in Ottawa. Before that, get out your blue and white for Thursday's Toonie Ride. It's sponsored by Creekbread and ...cole la Passerelle, Whistler's French immersion school, which has grown from eight students when it started in 1988 to 81 students next year.

For the past five years, staff at ...cole la Passerelle have volunteered for the Toonie Ride held closest to St. Jean Baptiste Day.

"It just so happens this year the Thursday is right on St. Jean Baptiste Day, so were going to show our colours," says Céline Forand, school secretary for ...cole la Passerelle and a big mountain biking fan.

She's also the one who got the school involved in the race as a way to raise its profile, have some fun and say thank you to the community for its support. You'll find her Thursday in her "typical Québec T-shirt" with the fleur de lys, and more.

"Instead of having arrows, we've always used the fleur de lys for an arrow for the signage. The marshals speak French on the trail and we'll have a French word here and there with the announcements at the end for the draw prizes," she says. "I go back and forth in French and in English and I acknowledge the French riders in the community, so that's basically showing our colours, doing a little more that day since it's St. Jean Baptiste."

Plus they'll be flying the special flag B.C.'s Francophone community developed, representing the sea, the mountains and the dogwood and, of course, the fleur de lys.

It's a little different from the way people showed their colours near Trois-Rivières, where Céline grew up. Then it was all parades with marching bands, the mayor and whichever politicians were in town, and the people cheering on the sidelines, waving their little blue and white flags. Fireworks and a few bonfires topped things off.

What with 10 kids to look after, Céline's mom, Louiselle, was a great cook, known for her baked beans, fruit ketchup (see her recipe below), meat pies, and traditional Christmas fruit cakes. But nobody served special dishes in Québec for the family dinner on June 24.

"It was late, more like 10 o'clock, so whatever teenagers do at that time by the campfire is what we had!" Céline says with a laugh.

As for daily fare growing up in the country, it was fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden - corn on the cob and tomato sandwiches in summer - with surpluses put up into preserves to last the winter. Fresh milk came from the farm next door, scooped into a jar before the truck came to take it to the city for pasteurization.

Anyone from Québec will also know the simple and delicious meat-and-potato meals, like shepherd's pie and other meat pies, along with things like cretons, a classic pork spread, and sugar pie made from sugar and cream, not exactly health food but oh so good.

Québecers are still big on fresh produce but now, with a more urban population, it's more likely to come from a farmers' market than a backyard garden.

You can enjoy a taste of Québec Céline grew up with if you make this recipe from her mom. Good with anything you might like ketchup on - eggs, meat pies, or try it with turkey instead of cranberry sauce.

 

Ketchup aux fruits

25 tomates rouges (bouilli, épluchée, égrainée et égouttée) (25 red tomatoes boiled, peeled, seeded and drained)

8 poires (8 pears)

8 pêches (8 peaches)

8 oignons jaunes (8 yellow onions)

8 pommes (8 apples)

1 piment vert (1 green pepper)

1 piment rouge (1 red pepper)

2 pieds de céleri entier sans les feuilles (2 whole celery bunches, without leaves)

3 cuil. à table de gros sel (3 tbsp. coarse salt)

4  tasses de sucre (4 cups of sugar)

2  cuil. à table d'épices mélangées à ketchup (2 tbsp. of ketchup spices)

1 pinte de vinaigre blanc (1 pint of white vinegar)

 

Directions:

1. Couper les fruits et légumes en cube moyens. (Dice the fruits and vegetables.)

2. Cuire tous les ingrédients ensemble pendant 3 ou 4 heures. Brasser souvent. (Cook all together for about 3-4 hours, stirring often.)

This recipe makes a lot, as it should for a large family like Louiselle's, so you might want to store the results in sterilized jars, as you would preserves. Or share it with friends, especially ones from Québéc.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who never visited a restaurant in Québéc she didn't like.