Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 19

Forever Lunching

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In Ontario Institutes, women began by providing the pots of soup, and
that simple act soon gave way to political lobbying for public health campaigns
and health inspections in the schools. WI members overtly strategized that the
provision of hot lunches was a temporary means to press the elected officials into
assuming greater responsibility for these provisions through changed public policy.
The extended household duties gave way to a shift in the traditional gendered
definitions of work when these women stepped beyond their ‘‘female” responsibility
of food provision into the previously “male” realm of politics by allowing their
own names to stand for election.
“They say the women should get on the School Boards. How are we to
get there?” Mrs. W. Buchanan, a member from the Ravenna Women’s Institute in
Grey County, asked her audience at the Central Ontario WI Convention in 1915. ‘T
tell you, ladies, somebody has got to go first, and it takes a lot of nerve. I have
never been to a school board meeting yet, but, ladies, I intend to go.” With that
bold declaration, Buchanan urged her fellow members to do the same, saying, "T
hope a number of you will go to these school board meetings, because somebody
has got to take hold of the work. We have heard a great deal about the work we
have done, but we haven’t heard about the power behind the work. I think there
must be a great many trained women connected with the Institutes, or the work
that has been done could not have been accomplished. Providing a pot of soup
for the school was only the beginning. That communal food provision soon gave
way to more political activism.
Minute book entries of women’s organisations can speak volumes with
their simple statements about women and food. As historians interested in women’s
experiences, and especially the meanings which women constructed for themselves
around those experiences, we must be careful to look more closely at the records
that are left to us. For example, what exactly might it mean when a minute book
simply reports that “The members then enjoyed a lovely cup of tea”? Chances are
that there was more going on than Just a group of ladies “having a little tea party.”
Similarly, when the records show that “The members voted to bring a short course
instructor on cookery,” what are we to make of that? In many cases, it was more
than just a cooking class designed to “teach girls their god-given place.” For some
of the students it may in fact have represented a chance for continuing education
and an early step toward political awareness and participation. In the same way,
when a community event was scheduled the unspoken assumption was that 'Ihe
members of the Institute [were] to provide refreshments.” This was much more
than just a shared community expectation that “the ladies could be counted on to
provide.” It was often a chance for those women to make money. That money
meant those same women had an opportunity to determine the social organisation
of the community by controlling the use of the community hall. For some women.