A loophole in a cabinet bill to curb usury would still allow payday lenders to charge 365 percent interest, the Department of Finance confirms. One senator described the clause in the bill as inexplicable: “It’s a lousy situation.”
Attorney General David Lametti says he will review changes in federal law to allow postal inspectors to open suspicious letters. The Canada Post Corporation Act states inspectors may only open larger packages suspected of carrying contraband: “I am open to looking at that.”
New data confirm more small businesses have gone deeper in debt. Figures from a federal loan guarantee program show applications approved last year jumped 34 percent: “That is the price we have to pay.”
Blacklock’s pauses for the Victoria Day observance with warmest wishes to friends and subscribers. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor.
O Canada
en français.
It’s where the arm
prepares
to bear the cross.
A small cross,
I presume,
one that complies
with the new Quebec
Charter.
By Shai Ben-Shalom 
What did the 19th century smell like? What was it like to stroll ankle-deep in horse effluent and live by the 25-watt glow of an oily lamp on winter evenings?
Many Canadian historians and documentary filmmakers recall the facts and figures of the past without ever providing a true tactile sense of how our ancestors got by, with one exception. We can still gain a taste of what they ate.
Collecting Culinaria is a tribute to an extraordinary trove of historic cookbooks collected by Linda Distad, a University of Alberta librarian who died in 2012. Distad had a mania for heritage recipes. Her collection ran to more than 3,000 titles including the first English-language cookbook published in Canada, The Cook Not Mad, circa 1830. Consider the recipe for corn beef: “To one hundred pounds of beef. three ounces salt peter, five pints of salt, a small quantity of molasses will improve it, but good without.”
Editors Caroline Lieffers and Merril Distad write that “the social and economic history of food, cooking and dining habits, subjects once mainly the province of anthropologists and sociologists,” are only now are taking their rightful place as archival documents.
What was it like to dine in Canada circa 1913? Here’s a menu from the cookbook Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners: consommé, beef tongue, baked potatoes, creamed celery, plum pudding – a beefy, heavy, tasteless meal for people accustomed to hard physical labour. The tongue had to be simmered in hot water for two hours just to be edible.
Collecting Culinaria celebrates them all including the famed Fannie Farmer Cookbook, first published in 1915 and “credited with popularizing level measurements,” now in its 13th edition, and the Joy Of Cooking introduced in 1931: “With its chatty and familiar tone, the text would become a bestseller and remains popular today.”
“Books might reflect wartime exigency or 1950s abundance, and many titles were little more than quick money makers for enterprising publishers,” Culinaria notes. “Indeed, while at the beginning of the century many households may have owned only one or two cookbooks, families – now less likely to have servants – were also increasingly accumulating small culinary libraries.”
Recipes date from Roman times but Culinaria credits an English homemaker, Isabella Beeton, as author of the “culinary and household management touchstone” that started the whole ball rolling in 1859. Mrs. Beeton’s Book Of Household Management ran to 1,112 pages of recipes, cleaning tips and advice.
When she died in 1865 – she was only 28 – her widowed husband sold the rights to Ward & Lock Publishing and the rest is history. Variations are still in print. “Throughout its many iterations,” Culinaria writes, “the trademark ‘Mrs. Beeton’ has assumed an almost mythological status, representing both the practicality and excess of British cookery over the last hundred and fifty years.”
Collecting Culinaria is spectacularly illustrated with photos and artwork. It will make you want to hunt up an old recipe for corn beef or beef tongue, and get cooking.
By Holly Doan
Collecting Culinaria, by Caroline Lieffers & Merrill Distad; University of Alberta Press; ISBN 9781-55195-3243
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday dismissed Budget Office arithmetic showing climate change regulations will cost Canadians thousands a year. Guilbeault said the numbers were wrong but provided none of his own: “My office will be happy to provide you with a number of numbers with which we disagree.”
Major changes to the federal election map should be in place in 2024, Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault said yesterday. Boundary changes would remove seats in Toronto and northern Ontario and add seats in Alberta and British Columbia: ‘We will be ready to hold an election on the new map should one be called.’
Canadians are “upset and in a bad mood” over air travel, says Transport Minister Omar Alghabra. Testifying at the Senate transport committee, Alghabra said he recognized consumers are fed up with poor service: “People are tired, exhausted and losing faith.”
Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen yesterday said builders must construct more homes but outlined no new proposals to boost supply. Builders and analysts appealed for a cut in taxes and mandatory charges on new construction: “Governments need to stop adding costs to homes.”
A far-reaching clause in cabinet’s 430-page omnibus budget bill is shocking, says the Canadian Bankers Association. Cabinet seeks to charge GST on credit card issuers with retroactive audits back to 1990: “This is coming as a complete shock.”
China Central Television, voice of the Communist Party, must be removed from the CRTC’s approved list of programs for distribution in Canada, MPs said yesterday. It follows a 2022 federal ban on state-run Russia Today: “In mainstream society they have no idea what is happening in our Chinese community.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday threatened criminal sanctions against coal-burning provinces that fail to comply with climate change regulations. His remarks came a day after Saskatchewan’s Premier said the province will run its coal and gas-fired power plants so long as they’re useful: “Not complying with this regulation would be a violation of Canada’s Criminal Code.”
Legalization of marijuana has normalized cannabis use by 13-year olds, says a Department of Health report. Children considered it a natural relaxant from ordinary stresses like schoolwork or loneliness, said federal research: “Cannabis use poses a significant health risk during adolescence, in particular interfering with brain development.”
The Department of Health says it worries private employers who currently provide dental coverage for most Canadians nationwide will offload costs onto taxpayers as cabinet expands its national dentacare program. “It is something that we are concerned about,” the head of the department’s dental task force yesterday told the Senate social affairs committee: ‘Are there any mechanisms the government can use to prevent clawing back coverage by insurance companies?’
