CHAPTER ONE

Passage to Upper Canada: Bring Your Own Biscuits

1815–20

John A. Macdonald was just four years old when he made his first “public” speech. While his parents were hosting visitors in the sitting room, the children were sent to the kitchen to occupy themselves, out of sight of the adults. John A. promptly climbed atop the kitchen table and began a performance for his captive audience of siblings and friends. In between his words and wild gesticulations with both his arms and his legs, he managed to propel himself off the table, landing on a chair and gashing his forehead badly enough that the resulting scar was still visible upon his death. Perhaps his early precociousness was the reason his mother, Helen Shaw Macdonald, was so fond of saying, “Mark my words, John will make more than the ordinary man.”¹

In June 1820, a year after John A.’s maiden speech, and two years after the 49th parallel had been named the border between British North America and the United States, Hugh and Helen Macdonald gathered their belongings and their four children, Margaret, John A., James, and Louisa, along with an orphaned cousin, Maria, and Hugh Macdonald’s elderly, frail mother and set sail for the New World. They were leaving Scotland aboard the Earl of Buckinghamshire, destined for the port of Quebec, and finally, their new home in Kingston, Upper Canada.

The Macdonalds travelled below deck, in steerage class, alongside the majority of the ship’s other 350 passengers. For forty-two days, the eight Macdonald family members endured no privacy except that provided by a lice-riddled blanket that they suspended around the 1.5-metre square area, stacked with bunk beds, that constituted their home during the Atlantic crossing. The only toilets on the ship were two privies. There was a dearth of food. The poorly ventilated steerage compartment was sour with the pungent smell of unwashed bodies, damp dirty clothes, a general lack of sanitation, sewage, sweat and vomit, and rotting food. Many of the passengers were desperately seasick. Others had dysentery and respiratory infections. There was no source of light or fresh air other than what filtered in through cracks. The only water for washing was sea water. Rats were rampant. Everything was damp and dirty, and at times the passengers sloshed through filthy water underfoot.

These early, over-crowded vessels were known as “coffin ships” because so many people died onboard. It was not until 1847 that modest sanitation regulations were put in place to increase the likelihood of safe passage on ocean-going vessels. Even so, steerage passengers were lucky if there was one privy to every one hundred passengers and adequate fresh water for drinking.

Food in steerage consisted primarily of watered-down oatmeal and molasses, hardtack, and dubious, unsavoury stews, often made with horse meat or the leftovers from the first- and second-class dining rooms. There was no dining room for the steerage class. Passengers lined up for their food, doled from huge kettles into their dinner pails. The bread was often mouldy and virtually inedible. It was not an unknown practice for captains to deliberately feed the steerage passengers food that would make them ill so that they would not demand their full rations. But Helen Macdonald, who was kind, capable, and resourceful, had the foresight to bring food supplies for her family, including bread (likely bannock), cheese, and biscuits. In this way, she was able to keep them somewhat healthy and provide at least a small measure of comfort during the six-week crossing.

 

Map of Upper and Lower Canada, 1798

 

By all accounts, John A. was a lively, happy child, fond of playing with his siblings, and when left to his own devices, he entertained himself with the solitary card game patience. Amongst the squalor of steerage class, it isn’t likely that he and his siblings would have had much opportunity for any kind of play. Their main enjoyment would have come from their brief periods above deck, where they were allowed to walk around in specific areas but not to mix with the first- and second-class passengers.

After forty-two harsh days at sea, the Earl of Buckinghamshire arrived in Quebec City, and its weary passengers disembarked. The second part of the Macdonalds’ journey was almost as hard as the first. They travelled up the St. Lawrence River aboard bateaux and Durham boats, which were open to the elements and sometimes under sail but more often poled, pushed, or pulled, and sometimes dragged by both men and oxen. At night, they hauled the boats ashore and slept alongside the river. They lacked any kind of adequate sanitation or shelter; they cooked their meals on open fires and slept as best they could amidst the mosquitos and wildlife — though they were likely too tired to care.

There are varying accounts of the duration of this second stage of the journey to Kingston, but one thing is certain: the Macdonald family were in transit for at least nine weeks from the day they left Scotland, a journey that would now take closer to nine hours and still elicit serious grumbling.

On August 13, 1820, the Macdonalds arrived at the two-storey home of Helen Macdonald’s stepsister, Anna Shaw, her husband, Colonel Donald Macpherson, and their eight children. Here, at the corner of Bay and Montreal streets in Kingston, Upper Canada, the travel weary Macdonalds were finally able to bathe, wash their clothes, rest, and enjoy some wholesome food before establishing themselves in their own quarters. They spent three months living in the Macpherson home before finding a suitable location for their new general store.

In this period, Kingston was rough and rude and had a reputation for debauchery. It was a town rife with drunkards and prostitutes. It was also one of the most important settlements in Upper Canada because of its strategic location at the intersection of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. It was larger than York, which later became Toronto. With a population of about 3,500, Kingston was home to Fort Henry, a naval shipyard, some handsome and substantial homes, some good schools, shops, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, a newspaper, and at least seventy-eight taverns.

Even the wealthiest homes in Upper and Lower Canada in the early 1800s were primitive. This was an age before indoor plumbing, public waterworks, sewers, and electricity. It was an era of candles, oil and kerosene lamps, chamber pots, outdoor privies, wood and coal fires, and in urban areas, carters who delivered water. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that cities in Upper and Lower Canada began building municipal waterworks for the supply of safe water. Electricity and lighting came later still.

 

THE IMMIGRANT KITCHEN AND DIET

Like much of Upper Canada, Kingston was populated by English and Scottish immigrants. They favoured the cuisine they already knew, which was a diet heavy on starch and stodge, as well as meat, fish, game, and well-cooked vegetables. In addition they enjoyed oatmeal, plenty of potatoes, bread, bannock, butter, cheese, and baked desserts, including steamed puddings, pastries, and of course, shortbread.

Food was a challenge for all, although those in town fared better than the settlers on the land where provisions were hard to come by and conditions were harsh. Preoccupation with sustenance was a necessity for survival and much of the population was involved in some way with the production and procurement of food. Eighty percent of settlers were farmers or independent fisherman — an industrious group who built their own houses, grew almost all their own food, and made nearly everything in their possession from vinegar, wine, and yeast to furniture, clothes, brooms, quilts, soap, and candles.

The Macdonalds were doubly fortunate in that, being shopkeepers, they had access to a wider variety of groceries and supplies than many of their neighbours. As well, the Macpherson relatives were well off and well connected in Kingston. With their new business and the right patrons, Helen Macdonald would have been able to continue to feed her family as well or better than she ever had.

A surprising list of commodities was available for those in town who could afford such luxuries. Readily available were flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, rice, pearl barley, sugar, gelatin powder, raisins, currants, citron, capers, salt, pepper, tea, coffee, olive oil, anchovy paste, lard, suet, butter, vinegar, beer, wine, maple syrup, molasses, and biscuits. Various spices including curry powder, cayenne pepper, cloves, parsley, sage, cinnamon, mace, mustard powder, and ginger were all in common usage. Casks of salt pork, salted beef, and bacon were regular provisions. Fish, meat, eggs, butter, and fresh fruit and vegetables were available according to the season. Though not common, lemons and oranges were highly prized and obtainable when ships arrived from overseas. Cocoa powder, primarily used for drinking chocolate, was developed in the early 1800s; solid chocolate for eating was not widely available until the late 1800s. Flour, which was sometimes in scarce supply, been one commodity that the Macdonalds had in plenty. This enabled the family to eat good breads, pastry, puddings, and biscuits.

Bannock, a traditional Scottish quick bread, was a mainstay of the diet of early explorers, fur traders, voyageurs, and settlers of North America. It was prized for its portability and durability — a perfect food for travelling. While it was widely believed that the Scottish introduced bannock to the indigenous people of North America, plenty of evidence exists that that this was not so and that grain was available to the aboriginal tribes for a similar style of bread. References to bannock also appear in the early journals of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which set up posts in northern Canada in the seventeenth century.

Early bannocks were small, heavy, flat, dry cakes made with oatmeal, barley, or cornmeal along with water and then cooked on a griddle over a fire with whatever grease or fat was available. Prior to the 1800s, bannock was unleavened, unlike bread, which was leavened with yeast. The only other early leavening agent in common use in North America was pearl ash, a purified version of potash made from lye. Pearl ash was replaced by sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda, by the 1840s. Baking powder, which is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid, was introduced shortly after and subsequent recipes for bannock are leavened, making bannock more like a contemporary scone.

In the 1800s, homes in Upper and Lower Canada had a fireplace for heating and cooking, and some had a small oven that was a hole in the wall with a door that was heated by the fireplace stones. Settlers baked bannock either on a griddle suspended over the fire, or in the bake oven, in a cast-iron pan. From 1830 on, as wood-fired cast iron stoves became available in Upper Canada, cooking and baking processes were slowly transformed.

The first cookbook produced in Canada was The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery: Being a Collection of Original and Selected Receipts, published in Kingston in 1831 by James Macfarlane. It was essentially an American cookbook that was given a Canadian cover. Cooking temperatures, accurate measures, and cooking times were left almost entirely to the imagination.

Like most early cookbooks, The Cook Not Mad made no reference to bannock because it was a basic recipe that everyone knew. Early cookbooks were considered a luxury item and often contained a diverse collection of recipes, household hints and advice, and tips for caring for the sick. Catharine Parr Traill, the English emigrant who wrote about her life as a settler in Canada, mentions bannock only once in all her writing and even this is with a disparaging remark: “Careful people, of course, who know this peculiarity, are on the watch, being aware of the ill consequences of heavy bread, or having no bread but bannocks in the house.”²

Nonetheless, bannock was essential for survival and has a long and important history in both Scottish and First Nations cultures. Undoubtedly Helen Macdonald would have brought bannock with her aboard the Earl of Buckinghamshire, as well as shortbread, another standby of the Scottish kitchen. The Scottish appetite for shortbread is well known, and while there are variations of shortbread in other cuisines, it was the Scottish who developed the biscuit to an art form. Shortbread dates back to the twelfth century and was said to have been a favourite of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87). Walkers Shortbread remains Scotland’s largest exporter of food, shipping its biscuits all the way around the globe.

Early recipes for shortbread use a formula of three-parts flour, two-parts butter, and one-part sugar. This traditional shortbread is adapted from the old Scottish recipe used today by Sir John’s Public House, in Kingston, Ontario. The pub occupies the original premises of Macdonald’s law practice, where he made his living from 1849 to 1860. In many countries, the homes and business sites of first leaders are made into museums and national historic landmarks. Perhaps it’s fitting that the business office of Canada’s Scottish-born first leader, Sir John, a legendary drinker, is now a pub.