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Food and Drink

Labour Day of Love

In a world where skilled trades people fret about where the next generation of fallers and plumbers and will come from, where employees are "associates," where we've traded fossil-fuelled energy for labour, and where no one wants to be caught dead being a "worker" anymore, this one's for the secret, inner labourer in us all.

Hard work - hard labour - is part of Canada's DNA. Pioneers who cleared land, planted crops; fur traders and voyageurs who ventured inland; fishermen and lumberjacks - this country was built on many a strong, tired, back and still is.

In the early 1800s, writes Dorothy Duncan in her fascinating book, Feasting and Fasting, Canada's Heritage Celebrations , labourers commonly earned $12 to $17 a month, with men usually working 60 to 72 hours a week. If they were lucky, they had wives who put in as many hours or more cooking, cleaning, baking, putting up preserves, sewing and lord knows what else.

The first workers to fight for and win an eight-hour work day with no loss in wages were determined and politically savvy stonemasons and building tradesmen in Australia. That was in 1856 which, when you think about it, isn't that long ago given how the eight-hour workday is taken for granted today.

In Canada, labour societies began forming in the second half of the 19th century, as people moved away from farming and towards industrialization and jobs in cities and towns.

It's hard to imagine now, but trade unions were actually illegal in Canada until 1872. When they finally gained official recognition, it was cause for great celebration, marked with huge parades and picnics nationwide.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia , Canada tried for a while to celebrate labour on May Day, the first day of May, following the European tradition for acknowledging the contributions of labour.

We have the Trades and Labour Congress to thank for Labour Day. They petitioned the federal government long and hard for a national holiday, but it wasn't until 1894 that we got Labour Day - the first Monday in September.

I'm proud that Canada has had a long tradition of honouring labour and supporting the working class. And until the 2006 federal election, a mere 100 or so years after the inaugural Labour Day, we Canucks had held out against politics like the neoliberalism which swept through the US and Britain, favouring rich, upper classes over the labouring classes with obvious disastrous results (to wit, Thatcherism, Reaganism and, most pointedly, the misguided "neo-liberating" policies of Bill Clinton that were at the heart of the world's 2008 financial implosion).

Today, Canada is saddled with our own neoliberal federal government. Given that, and our all-round neglect and oversight of "labour," it's all the more important to celebrate Labour Day, where it came from and what it really means, besides one last hurrah for summer replete with the traditional barbecue or picnic.

So wherever you find yourself this Labour Day, raise your glass for a toast to you and me, and to all our great labouring friends and neighbours. To round things out, dig out your best "working class" recipe, and I know you've got one.

In Canada, the 1930s economic depression generated pretty practical meal concepts regarded as classic working class. Some have survived through to today, such as macaroni and cheese and bread pudding, even if they've been reinvented according to more exotic, more expensive contemporary tastes and budgets.

Other common working class fare of 1930s and even '40s wartime Canada is best relegated to nostalgia. I mean, who wants a lunch of bread fried in lard drippings, although my husband, who ate it as a kid, swears it's delicious.

Inexpensive, dishes made from ingredients at hand were the rule of the working class. And Duncan notes that the women who were in charge of households while the men laboured away seem to have been geniuses, finding eternally creative ways of using readily available, low-cost ingredients. The Depression-era motto, "Make it do, make it over, use it up," seems even more relevant today, what with growing concern about environmental impacts and the global recession.

Bread was a mainstay, from bread stuffing casseroles to "every conceivable form of baked and steamed bread, biscuits, dumplings and puddings." You could even see bread as a barometer of where the working class (though we are loathe to use that term) now sits economically and how it regards itself socially. Exotics like asiago cheese and olive bread are common, and people don't bat an eye at paying $6 or $7 a loaf, half a working man's monthly wages in the 1800s.

Below is a classic, basic, all-Canadian recipe for bread pudding my nan (grandmother) would make once a week, perfect for Labour Day and beyond.

By comparison, today's bread puddings, much like our lifestyles and waistlines, have expanded to the excessive, often using three or four times the sugar and served with a rum or whiskey sauce, whipping cream, and a liqueur to top it off.

In true Canadiana spirit, adapt this recipe to what you like and what you have at hand, whatever shape it takes.

 

Roxie's bread pudding

(Serves four)

In a medium-sized ovenproof bowl or casserole dish (about 2 litres), cube 4 cups of bread, or 1 cup of bread per person. Use stale bread or fresh. Throw in a handful of raisins. In a separate bowl, beat 2 eggs then stir in 1 tsp. of vanilla, 4 tbsp. of white sugar (about a tablespoon of sugar per cup of bread), and about 2 cups of milk, or enough to bring it to the top of bread cubes. Pour the mixture over the bread, pressing down the cubes if they float to the top. Sprinkle cinnamon on top or, if you like more, sprinkle cinnamon throughout the bread cubes and mix it in. Bake in a 350º oven for about half an hour. It's ready when the tops of the bread cubes are nicely browned. Serve in bowls with fresh cream. If you're too poor, just use milk!

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who considers this column a labour of love.