Bread List!

The Batoche and St. Laurent areas were home to approximately 1,200 settlers. They grew many crops, including wheat. If you visit Batoche you can see the traditional Metis way of allotting farmland – much more equitable and sensitive to the land than the plots the Canadian land surveyors imposed on them.

I learned a lot about Batoche recently from a brief visit, and from Towards a Prairie Atonement by Trevor Harriet.

Grain was transported grain elevators like Val Marie and assessed and sold to the wheat pool.

Val Marie is an 1927 Historic Crib Style Grain Elevator, the Lighthouse of the Prairies

There were once hundreds of grain elevators across the Canadian prairies. They were landmarks and gave a sense of place to the locals.

The Exchange District illustrates Winnipeg’s key role as a centre of grain and wholesale trade, finance and manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century.

Conservation area that is home to R. Tait McKenzie & Dr. James Naismith Collection.

I used to play in the mill stream here as a child.

Mills turn grain into flour so you can turn it into bread!

Previously the Gooderham & Worts Distillery, now a commercial district. A very different sort of loaf, but historically lots of people were involved in brewing or distilling.

Lots of historic places actually bake bread as part of their programming!

As one of my colleagues said in a recent blog, which inspired this this:

If we take that word wilderness to mean “the unknown” we can make an argument about the use of bread as a comforting symbol of home and of culture against the great uncertainty we are collectively living through. (“The Stuff of Life: The Living Heritage of Bread in a Time of Change”, Kristin Catherwood)