Getting Back to Basics
Margaret Webb’s culinary journey
By Jeannine M. Pitas

We have become estranged from the food that we eat. As we scour produce aisles for our weekly ration of vegetables and sit down to sushi in upscale downtown restaurants, we rarely stop to think about the long distance our food has travelled before appearing on our plate. Meanwhile, in an age where farms have come to resemble industrial factories, the producers of our food have become as detached from their product as the consumers.

With amusing anecdotes, informed commentary on the state of contemporary agriculture and an intriguing array of recipes, University of Toronto alumna Margaret Webb’s Apples and Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms seeks to combat this detachment. Having grown up on a farm herself, Webb appreciates simplicity and taste—qualities that she finds absent in the fruits, vegetables and meats lining supermarket shelves. And so she sets off on a trans-Canadian voyage to explore one staple product from each province: Nova Scotia scallops, Ontario ice wine, Manitoba pork and British Columbia Ambrosia apples. In each destination she turns her attention to something she considers to be just as endangered as high-quality food: small farms and the dedicated, courageous individuals and families who maintain them.

Following Webb on her journey around Canada, we meet people like Jennifer and Doug Caines, who run a cod farm in Newfoundland and seek to reconcile pragmatic concerns with environmental consciousness. We listen to Keith Everts, an “organic cowboy” from Alberta who must fight the commonly-held stereotype that organics is “lazy farming”. And we smile with Frédéric Poulin, who is deeply in debt and overworked from running his Quebec dairy farm, yet still considers himself supremely lucky to be living his dream. Conversing with these farmers, Webb opens the door for discussion of many issues: the disappearance of locally produced food and livestock breeds, the poor treatment of animals on large factory farms, the challenge of reconciling quality with efficiency and the difficulties posed for small farmers by government regulation.

An honest portrayal of Canadian agriculture, Webb’s compassion for farmers does not give way to sentimentality. While it is obvious that Webb is on the side of small farms, humane treatment of animals and marketing locally produced foods, she also takes the other side of these debates into account. Idealism is important, but like any business people, farmers must deal with pragmatic concerns. And no issue is ever as simple as it seems.

Apples and Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms by Margaret Webb (Penguin Canada, 2009)