Six Saucepans to One: Domestic
Science vs. the Home
in British Columbia 1900-1930
BARBARA RILEY

" ... very many young women of the present day fail to
recognize homemaking as an art, and ... regard it only
in the light of drudgery of housework. This we believe
to be largely the result of a lack of scientific knowledge
on the subject, and for the remedy of which we look
largely to the study of the subject in a scientific manner
by our girls in the public schools. " 1

o wrote the Corresponding Secretary of the Local Council of
Women to the editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist in March 1903. That same
year the Victoria School Board accepted the Council's offer to equip a kitchen
in Central School for the teaching of domestic science. The board fulfilled its
side of the bargain by hiring a teacher, Winnifred McKeand. In September,
the Daily Colonist interviewed McKeand who explained that her course
would teach the theory and practice of household management along
scientific lines. Educational theory stressed the development of the whole
child by training the mind, eye, and hand; this theory, applied to household
management, taught the "household arts" through a combination of scientific
explanation and practical work. 2 In February, after the Daily Colonist visited
McKeand 's classroom it noted the emphasis placed on cleanliness, exactness,
and order as the students learned about the chemical properties of wheat and
made muffins. 3 Later in the school year, McKeand lectured on domestic
science to the Local Council of Women, explaining that as there was not
enough time in the home for teaching, the school had to train young girls in
woman's "noblest" occupation, that of homemaker. 4
Winnifred McKeand, graduate of the Boston School of Cookery and the
Montreal School of Cookery, had taught domestic science classes at two
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, 1984

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schools in Nova Scotia. Her approach to the teaching of domestic science
incorporated the most up-to-date social and educational theories supporting
its inclusion in the school curriculum:
a) the school had a duty to develop the child's habits
and character so as to produce a responsible and useful
citizen;
b) girls needed formal training, which the home was
not able to provide, to prepare them for their future
careers as homemakers, or, in some cases, servants;
c) education in the household arts would teach girls to
apply scientific principles to the management of the
home;
d) domestic science classes would provide a practical
education to train the hand and the heart as well as the
head.
These ideas fuelled the struggle to establish domestic science as an accredited
subject in the public school system of British Columbia, as in the rest of
English Canada. Behind the ideas
strong convictions about the role of
young girls and women in the home, the role of the home in society, and the
role of the educational system in strengthening both.
The period 1900-1930 encompasses two key points in the development of
domestic science in British Columbia. Although needlework had been
introduced as an optional subject for girls in Victoria schools in 1895, the first
formal classes in domestic science in British Columbia began with the hiring
of Winnifred McKeand in 1903. This was made possible through the initiative
of local women in persuading their school board to establish the subject.
Local initiative remained the essential factor in the spread of domestic science
classes over the next decades. 5 In 1926, the province appointed its first
Director of Home Economics. In this year, British Columbia had fifty-five
home economics teachers supervising 11,455 girls, or twenty-three percent of
all girls enrolled in primary and secondary schools across the province. 6 The
appointment of a full-time, professionally trained home economist as
director served notice that the province, or at least the department,
recognized the need to provide a standardized approach to domestic science in teacher training, in classroom theory and practice, and in the relationship
of domestic science to the school curriculum and to the provincial educational
system.
While the struggle to prepare British Columbia's girls to take their places
as homemakers was underway in classrooms across the province, these same
girls continued to be trained as girls had always been - at home, by their
mothers. This was confirmed through interviews with thirty-six women who
had spent most of their childhood in British Columbia and who had taken
domestic science in the province's elementary schools between 1910 and 1930.
The majority had been raised and had attended school in an urban locale,
usually Victoria or Vancouver; their backgrounds were Anglo-Saxon and
mostly middle-class. 7 The interviews shed light on established household
practice and the real conditions of domestic labour in British Columbia
homes during the first decades of the twentieth century.

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Frances' family came to Victoria from Ireland in 1911 when she was nine
years old. She could not remember a time when she was not helping her
mother with the housework required to keep a family with nine children. She
and her sisters washed the dishes, made the beds, scrubbed the linoleum floors
on their hands and knees, and peeled vegetables. When Frances was high
school age, she quit school to stay home. She became the full-time family
cook so that her mother could do the laundry, ironing, and cleaning. The
family could not afford to hire help. Kathleen was born in 1909. By the time
she was six years old she was washing dishes and setting the table; when she
was older she vacuumed, made beds, and cleaned windows. Hired help
assisted with cleaning, kitchen work, and other household chores. Her
mother preserved "quarts and quarts" offruit and vegetables from the garden,
salted green beans, and canned salmon and other fish. Lauretta, born in 1916,
was busy in the kitchen when she was six years old. As her mother was often
ill, she made most of the family's meals. Every Saturday she made five pies for
the week; every Monday morning she phoned in the grocery order for
delivery. She spent the summer putting up preserves. The laundry was done
commercially as the family had no hired help. 8
At home, as in the school system, although there was individual variation
from one household to the next, patterns are discernable. These patterns
reveal that the girls who grew up and learned how to keep house in British
Columbia during the nineteen- teens and 1920s were the generation of change.
They bridged the transition from older, traditional forms of learning watching and imitating their mothers - to the new, state-imposed structure of
the classroom. The content of learning was also different. In place of family
customs in diet, menus, and methods, the girls were introduced to new foods
and recipes whose selection was justified on scientific grounds and whose
preparation was taught according to standardized procedures. Finally, many
girls may have first been introduced to new consumer goods - the carriers of
new technologies - and new patterns of consumption through domestic
science classes. This transition in domestic work in British Columbia will be
considered by using the teaching of domestic science in primary schools as a
counterpoint to the work of women in the home during the period of 19001930. The study will focus primarily upon food preparation in examining the
tension between school and home with respect to theory, practice, and
material conditions.
The impetus for teaching domestic science to British Columbia's girls
had its beginnings in ideas about Canadian society and education which were
gaining acceptance and influential adherents in the first decades of the
tvventieth century. 9 One of these was the concept of the school as an agent for
forming children to be mature and productive adults, and thereby improving
Canadian society. The school had not only a role to play in shaping the young,
but also a responsibility to produce "practical men and women, who would
make themselves useful to society and their country. " 10 What came to be
called "technical education" in British Columbia developed in response to this
obligation. The Department of Education's Annual Report of 1919-1920
cited the recommendation of an earlier study that "the experiences of the
school should tend more directly towards the inculcation and conservation of

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a love of productive, constructive, and conserving labour". 11 In this respect,
for example, another Annual Report described Vancouver's high school
technical course, established during 1916-1917, as one which from either an
academic or vocational point of view prepared a boy or girl for life as a citizen
and a worker.1 2
Contemporary beliefs held that industrialization had seriously
dislocated Canadian society and that with the disintegration of traditional
institutions, such as the home, the school had to take an active role in shaping
those who would shape the social order. 13 An essential part of the moulding of
future citizens was to train them for their work which necessitated a broad
range of vocational courses. In its 1918-1919 Annual Report, the Department
of Education recognized that "a Dominion-wide system of industrial training
is necessary to the economic prosperity and supremacy of Canada". 14
Far from being excluded from these educational reforms, girls played a
central role in the new order - the most crucial one, according to the rhetoric
of the day- because of their unique responsibility for the home: "our first and
greatest social institution". 15 An impassioned article in the Vancouver Daily
Province argued for the teaching of domestic science because "the home
instinct which is endangered must be nurtured, the love for home must be
cultivated."16 Supporters of domestic science declared that by helping to
restore the home to its proper place of dignity and importance, domestic
science would not only make family life happier, but would also produce
greater cohesion and harmony in the Empire. 17
The Department of Education's Annual Reports included regular pleas
by the Organizer of Technical Education for the expansion of domestic
science classes in the province. A particularly eloquent appeal appeared in the
memorandum which the Educational Committee of the Local Council of
Women in Victoria presented to the Putnam-Weir survey of British
Columbia's schools:
We believe that the home is the natural and rightful
domain of women, and therefore that home
economics, the science of the home, is pre-eminently
the proper and logical study for womankind; we
believe that as women are largely the spenders of
money, national thrift would dictate that they be
taught to spend wisely; that as the keepers of the health
of the nation we believe they should be taught the
principles of hygiene and dietetics; we believe that in
the different branches of this subject there is ample
scope for the varying abilities of the most brilliant
minds of the sex; we believe that much undesirable and
unnecessary competition between the sexes will be
avoided, and many other social problems solved when
the dignity of homemaking is adequately recognized
and home economics given its rightful place in a
national and international scheme of education.
Finally, let us never forget that upon the physical
stamina, the mental and moral fibre of the mother-tobe, depends the character of the life, yea, the very life
of tomorrow.is

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163

The training of future servants had been part of the initial impetus to
establish home economics on the part of the National Council ofWomenand
was one of the anticipated results from domestic science classes:
The recognition of the scientific importance of this
subject will do much to raise the status of the hitherto
"looked down upon" domestic help and make it
worthwhile for our efficient and educated girls to take
up housework as a sphere of employment that does not
carry with it the stigma of degradation. In thus raising
domestic work to the dignity of a scientific study we
not only educate the housekeepers and homemakers of
the future, but provide a stimulus to the production of
a class of helpers sadly needed in British Columbia. 19
This objective was acknowledged in Putnam and Weir's report in 1925:
Home economics for girls is not on the school
programme merely or mainly to train them to be
housemaids or cooks or seamstresses or laundresses,
but because while doing these things, in some degree, it
also gives the girl a sane attitude toward life by
requiring her to solve life problems and deal with real
projects. 20
Occasional references to the existence of servants appeared in the
department's approved programs of studies under such sub-sections as "Paid
help in the home", "When no servant [is] possible", "Dinner served without a
maid, dinner with a maid. "21 Over time, concern for occupational training
through domestic science courses focused on work opportunities outside the
home. In its recommendations on home economics to Putnam and Weir, the
Provincial Parent-Teacher Association requested the establishment of
technical and vocational schools for girls throughout the province since many
girls who did not attend high school had "abilities along purely vocational
lines, such as cookery, home decoration, commercial art, dressmaking, etc.,
for which there is at present little or no training". 22 Employment based on
domestic science training also opened up "many interesting and lucrative
careers" for women as dietitians in hospitals and sanitariums, as managers of
cafeterias, tea rooms, hotel dining rooms, and university halls, in nutrition
clinics, laboratories and factories, and as financial counsellors in banks. 23
The major thrust of the argument for domestic science, however, focused
on the future role of girls as homemakers. In order to undertake the weighty
duties of homemakers to their families and to the nation, it was essential that
girls were properly trained in all aspects of domestic responsibility. Such
training had traditionally been given in the home, but now the home was no
longer capable of fulfilling this obligation and so society, in the form of the
school, had to come to the support of the home. 24 Of all the arguments for and
against the establishment of domestic science in British Columbia schools, the
issue of home training probably provoked the most heat. Opponents of
domestic science charged that the school denigrated the mother's role in
educating the daughter and undermined her authority at home. The corollary
of this was that domestic science classes were an unnecessary expense.
Supporters of domestic science responded that mothers had no time to teach

164 Six Saucepans

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Girls of the home economics course, King Edward High School, Vancouver, c.1918. The
environment of the laboratory is evident in the arrangement of work tables in a rectangular
pattern, the otganiz.ation of individual work stations (each with its own utensils and cooking
apparatus), and white uniforms and caps worn by the students.

II.

Foods laboratory, Templeton Junior High School, Vancouver, c.1927. A comparison of this
photo with the above, taken nine years earlier, illustrates how ideas about the need for "home
practice" affected the classroom. These students work in a space organized to resemble a
home kitchen and furnished with a cupboard, stove, table, sink, utensils, and dishes
necessary to prepare food for a family.

RILEY

165

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Margaret Clements in her kitchen,
Kamloops, c.1919. The interviews conducted for this project indicate that a
wood and coal stove was the standard
cooking appliance in middl~lass,
urban kitchens in British Columbia
throughout the period under study.

South Vancouver schoolgirls cooking
display, probably prior to 1920. The
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at home, that because of school girls had no time to be taught at home, that
girls entered marriage from working careers rather than from their mothers'
homes and hence had no preparation beyond what the school could provide,
and that trained teachers could explain the theory of domestic science as well
as demonstrate the practice; further, some mothers did not have good home
practice, were impatient, and did not know how to teach. 25 A darker side of
the need for domestic science is revealed in references to the "inexcusable
ignorance of housewives", "untrained and unorganized women", and the
"thriftlessness of the poor". 26 The needs were clear. Whatever her home
environment, the British Columbia girl should have
systematic and well-directed instruction and practice
in those activities - cooking, sewing, washing clothes,
ironing, mending, darning, sweeping, making beds,
scrubbing, simple nursing,judging and testing textiles,
marketing, budgeting - which are fundamental to
home-making and therefore fundamental in building
up and preserving a healthy nation. 2 7
The educational method whereby these goals would be achieved was
based on the application of scientific principles to the management of the
home. Scientific management gained prominence in North America in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and from its initial application
to industry and corporations it soon spread to social institutions such as
the school and the home. The scientific approach predicated that all processes
could be broken down to their component parts and measured as to
efficiency, and that the knowledge gained could be used to promote more
efficient productivity. In a 1916 address, educator Alice Ravenhill defined
efficiency as the effort to accomplish certain definite ends without loss of
substance or motion. She went on to demonstrate the principle with respect to
the prolificness of unfit families and the limitation, slow growth and final
elimination of alert, intellectual and generally valuable families. "In the
discouragement of the one and the encouragement of the other she saw the
best inductive conclusion of the logic of efficiency. ''2 8 This somewhat ruthless
example was in keeping with the public policy of the day which sought to
solve social problems through the reorganization of society along more
efficient lines. 29 Ravenhjll later identified the sciences which had a bearing on
the daily routine of home life as biology (diet and cooking), chemistry
(cleaning products and processes), physics (light, heating, ventilation, fuel),
bacteriology (preservation of food and resistance to germs), physiology
(clothing, sleep, exercise), as well as psychology, child study, hygiene and
sanitation, sociology, education, music and decorative art. 30
"Scientific" and "efficient" were the watchwords in the domestic science
classroom. The Department of Education reported in 1915-16 that while
teachers used various methods to teach the subject, they all practised those
which were "more or less scientific in character and discarded those of a
purely empirical nature". Even with the later emphasis on practical methods,
teachers still paid "due attention to the theoretical and scientific side of the
subject. "31
In 1913, the Department of Education issued its first domestic science

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text, the Girls' Home Manual, as a three-year course outline in the subject.
After acknowledging its debt to the recent scientific status of homemaking,
the Manual stated its objective:
On investigation, it was found that only a small
percentage of housekeepers possess any library
bearing on their work with the exception of an
occasional cook-book and manufacturers' sample
cook-books.
This Manual was prepared in the hope that girls, not
only at school, but in after life also, may find it helpful
in making them more efficient in the noble art of
"home-making".
The Manual advised that the kitchen should be the first room furnished
"since the health of the inmates of a home depends upon the efficiency of the
work done there", and emphasized the necessity of proper kitchen tools, the
lack of which affected the housewife's strength and the efficiency of the work.
In the thirty-four chapters devoted to "Cookery", the Manual discussed the
source, composition, nutrient value, digestibility, preservation, storage, and
cooking of foods, invalid cookery, how to set and clear a table and serve the
meal, proper table etiquette (the knife should never be put into the mouth),
how to wash up after the meal and dispose of garbage, a list of "first-class"
kitchen equipment, house plans and furniture, and directions for making a
co - i:~e,cy uniform. Throughout, the directions stress quality, simplicity, and
cc ;,,venience, 32
'Nhat did the scientific approach mean in the classroom? Thirteen-yearold Olive Dean, a student at Sir Walter Moberly school in Vancouver, wrote
down the aims of the household science course in her notebook for September
1922:
! . to make household management an interesting
lifework
2. to make each day's duties an instructive lesson
3. to make of housekeeping a modern science
4. to develop business methods
5. to preserve health and prevent disease
6. to reach the highest development possible
7. to raise the ideal.
According to the notebook, Olive learned personal cleanliness in
handling food, the importance of a clean, screened, and ventilated kitchen,
the need to have pure water for drinking and soft water for laundering, how to
wash dishes and saucepans and clean the woodwork, sink, and stove, the
principles of combustion, foods and their digestion, how to keep milk and
meat properly, how to sort and prepare the laundry, and how to boil, wash,
starch, dry, dampen, iron, and fold clothes. The notebook had recipes for
cocoa, oatmeal porridge, stewed beef, and suet dumplings. Directions for
measuring ingredients reminded her to be accurate in order to ·ensure
success: 33 At Vancouver's Lord Nelson School in 1917, Lois Kinley carried
out experiments which demonstrated the properties of yeast and gluten and
the effects of boiling, lukewarm, and cold water and of the combining of

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Six Saucepans

different flours and grains. She drew a diagram of a cross-section of a grain of
wheat and took down recipes for brown bread, gingerbread, plain cake, and
baking powder biscuits. Each lesson on a particular food or process was
followed by appropriate recipes. A lengthy section on preserving described
both canning and drying methods and concluded with a canning chart for
various fruits and vegetables.34
·
Reporters and other visitors to domestic science classrooms commented
on the attention to order, cleanliness, and good equipment found there. One
noted that the instructor gave her pupils
a thorough training in systematic methods, the work
of her classes being performed with almost military
promptness and precision, each dish in each girl's
cupboard being in its exact place, and even the knives,
forks and spoons being ranged like a row of little
soldiers. 35
The Daily Colonist praised the emphasis on cleanliness (noting white
pinafores and caps on the girls and white paint on shelves and cupboards)
which guaranteed that "the virtues of fresh air, pure water and sunlight and
the dangers of unswept floors and uncleaned sinks will be understood." The
girls were taught to make exact calculations in measurements, to work
quickly and deftly, and to recognize that "housekeeping is a business that
requires not only skill and resourcefulness, but ability and knowledge". To
this end they learned practical lessons in chemistry, biology, personal
hygiene, geography, and market values. Their equipment was the best and
thus a "lesson in true economy". 36 The domestic science classroom at Nelson
was a model of up-to-date equipment with aluminum cooking utensils,
stationary washtubs, drying rooms, electric irons, a large, built-in
refrigerator, and twenty-four electrical discs on which all the individual
cooking was done. Nelson was only "the third school on the continent of
North America equipped with electrical utensils". 37
Inherent in the scientific approach to domestic science was
standardization. There was a correct way to dress oneself and wash one's
hands to prepare food, can peaches, make apple sauce, roast a chicken, bake a
cake, and select and purchase food for the family; there was proper equipment
to use and a proper way of keeping it clean and in good working order; and
there were proven methods for combatting the germs and diseases which
lurked in improperly stored food and unsanitary, unplanned kitchens.
Teachers were responsible for enforcing appropriate standards. According to
the Organizer of Technical Education,
care should ... be taken to develop habits in domesticscience centres which are above reproach, and no girls
should be found cooking without aprons and caps nor
sewing without thimbles.38
Olive Dean's notes were accurate; domestic science did indeed aim to "raise
the ideal" of housekeeping by making it a modern science based on business
methods.
Whatever the appeal of the scientific approach for educators and social
reformers, however, it did not immediately win the hearts and minds of

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British Columbia parents and taxpayers, at least not in its application to the
teaching of domestic science in the public schools of the province. There was
of course much public and private grumbling about the teaching of domestic
science itself. Some of the arguments have been referred to above.
Throughout the period under study, proponents waged a continuing public
relations campaign on behalf of domestic science in order to maintain the
classes established and to promote the spread of the new subject across the
province. 39 This struggle is echoed in the Department of Education's Annual
Reports where the customary optimism was tempered by the
acknowledgement that public acceptance of the new · subject was not
wholehearted. Separating out criticism of the method (scientific} from
criticism of the subject (domestic science} is difficult since the two were often
not separate in the minds of opponents. Nevertheless, in the Department's
response to public indifference or hostility to domestic science, one can read
the problems created by what may have been a too narrow application of the
scientific method and model of efficiency.
Teachers and school administrators employed various strategies in
fighting for domestic science: improvement of educational methods, service
to the community, and the demonstration that domestic science had practical
value. The first strategy, improving the teaching of the subject, dealt with
two different perspectives on the position of domestic science in the school
curriculum: that of educational theory and that of provincial fact. A full
discussion of the new educational theory behind the introduction of domestic
science (and other related subjects such as manual training) is beyond the
scope and purpose of this paper. In brief, the original intent was to use these
subjects as a means of developing an integrated education which trained the
child's hands, heart, and head. 40 This aim was never realized. The important
point for the present discussion, however, is that school administrators
believed that the solution to the better teaching and the greater public
acceptance of domestic science lay in its closer ties to the traditional subjects
on the curriculum. They were convinced of the need to train teachers who
could "correlate the theoretical lessons of the class-room with those practical
lessons given in the domestic-science centres," and that the best results were
found with the "closest co-ordination between the hand-work [domestic
science, manual training, etc.] and the class-room studies" .41 The Department
stated that
the complete success of the work depends in a great
measure on the way the contents of these courses,
which are inseparable from home-life, are linked up
with kindred class-room studies.
The educational authorities have always maintained
that manual-training and domestic-science centres
must be an integral part of the school system, and that
the activities in the workshops and cookery centres
must emphasize the book lessons of the class-rooms,
making them more realistic and thus firmly fixing
them in the minds of the pupils. 42
The acceptance of the theory meant confronting the reality of domestic
science's position in the province's school system. Teachers did not prepare

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the three-year course outiine necessary to ensure a "pedagogically sound"
series of lessons; they did not check their students' notebooks; their courses of
study were "frequently scrappy and poorly graded"; lack of recipe books
meant class time taken in copying from the board; school principals did not
ensure the correlation of domestic science and other subjects. 43 The most
damning criticism is implicit in some of the recommendations by Putnam and
Weir: that certain classes of municipalities be required to teach home
economics, that regular reports on student progress be made to parents, that
home economics be a high school entrance course equal with other subjects,
and that the Normal School provide adequate training in home economics for
student teachers. 44 Given the implied deficiencies, it is hardly surprising that
many members of the public did not take the subject seriously.
The declared objective of domestic science was to enable girls to be
competent and knowledgeable homemakers. It is ironic, then, that much of
the criticism seemed to be directed against the subject precisely because it was
not
As early as I 91
the school inspector for Vancouver
reported that "a constant effort is being made to make the work in this
department [home economics] as practical and intimately related to the home
conditions as school equipment and teaching of large classes will permit."
Later reports commented that there was still a tendency to teach too much
theory during the first year. Administrators urged that "great care must be
taken not to let the domestic science lessons evolve into talks. 'Learn by doing'
should be the motto". 45 One of the most effective responses to criticism
evidently lay in "home practice", an approach which recognized the value of
linking school lessons to the actual work of the home. This approach took a
number of forms. Students learned to cook in family quantities rather than
the individual quantities originally taught; change was gradual, however,
because family quantities required new and larger equipment (with the
concomitant need to increase costs) and a "market for the products"
(presumably to offset charges of waste and extravagance). Students were also
encouraged to practice at home what they had learned in class and in some
cases were graded by their mothers. In 1927 the department published
Recipes for Home Economics Classes to be sold to pupils for 25 cents.
Recipes were adapted with an eye to economy and were reliable for use in
feeding a family of six. Jessie McLenaghen, the first Director of Home
Economics for British Columbia, hoped that
this book will not only save time in the class-room for
more valuable work, but that it will also be a means of
stimulating greater effort in home practise. By its very
entrance into the home it should help to secure the
interest and co-operation of the parents - something
absolutely vital to the success of any home-economics
pro gramme. 46
The foregoing has described the ideas which lay behind domestic science
in the British Columbia school system and some of the practices which
developed from the ideas, the problems which both ideas and practices
encountered in achieving their objectives, and the ways in which the school
system responded to these problems at the classroom level. The reactions,

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171

sympathetic or otherwise, of various individuals and groups in the province
have also been touched upon to suggest the impact which domestic science
had at various points in British Columbia society. The picture is incomplete,
however, without evidence of the impact which the teaching of domestic
science had on its intended target: the girl in the classroom. Analyzing the
effect of the classroom experience can indicate how domestic science
measured up to its educational and social goals and the nature and extent of
its influence on the new generation. More importantly for the purposes of this
paper, domestic science can serve as a mechanism to help analyze change and
continuity in women's work, as revealed by the students who, as the
province's future homemakers, had been the subject of so much concern. The
comparison between home routine and school instruction illustrates a period
of transition in British Columbia kitchens, combining elements of continuity
and change as mothers and daughters moved closer to the role of consumers.
Almost all the women interviewed learned to cook and to perform other
housekeeping duties at home, usually beginning well before they were old
enough to attend domestic science classes at school. In most cases this was a
gradual and informal process. The child started by peeling vegetables, setting
the table, and washing or drying dishes, then learned more complex skills so
that by age twelve or thirteen some could prepare a complete dinner. The
learning process combined observation and practice; the girl watched her
mother, then tried the same tasks herself, often with her mother's active
encouragement and direct instruction. Only in a very few families did the
daughter not learn to cook at home. This was usually because the mother
either disliked cooking herself or disliked teaching her children. In the
majority of families not only was cooking directly encouraged but the child's
participation in this and in other domestic chores was expected, tacitly or by
direct order. 47 In certain cases, the daughter could have very heavy
responsibilities in the home, especially when the mother was ill or when the
family could not afford to hire help. There was little discussion between
mother and daughter about any larger objectives for the household
apprenticeship. Interviewees recalled that no direct connection was openly
made between their childhood responsibilities and their future as wives and
mothers; the connection and the future were simply assumed.
Interestingly, in almost one-third of the families, the mother did work in
addition to her normal family responsibilities: ten took in boarders or
relatives; four helped in their husbands' businesses; others sewed piece-work
for a tailor, sold milk, eggs or bread, or worked as a salaried clerk or
housekeeper; three eventually helped to raise grandchildren when their
widowed or divorced daughters went out to work. A similar proportion of the
daughters worked for pay full-time or part-time during their adult lives. Of
these, two worked in their husbands' businesses; three were divorced and one
widowed; one's husband was disabled; three never married; and four worked
for other reasons. Some also took in relatives at various times. Domestic
science courses offered no advice on how to deal with the circumstances of
women who undertook additional responsibilities such as working for pay.
For that matter, neither did the students' mothers. Neither school nor home
consciously recognized the reality of the lives of many women during the

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decades under study.
One of the main objectives of domestic science advocates was to raise the
level of housekeeping practice in the province by training homemakers to be
more knowledgeable and scientific. Nutrition was an important part of the
curriculum; students were taught what foods were best and why, and how to
prepare them and why. Were British Columbia households in desperate need
of dietary guidance? Most interviewees characterized their mother's cooking
as good, plain food, with more heavy dishes than contemporary Canadians
are accustomed to and a greater monotony of diet. Breakfast was usually
porridge, sometimes corn flakes, toast, milk, or tea, occasionally stewed fruit,
seldom juice; eggs and bacon were more likely to be a Sunday treat. The noon
meal, if lunch, was often eggs or soup and sandwiches; dinner (noon or night)
usually meant meat, potatoes, vegetable, and desert - either pudding or pie.
Many were able to describe the progression of the Sunday roast through
various reincarnations right down to shepherd's pie on Thursday night, with
the week finishing on macaroni and cheese. On the other hand, most families
had a great variety of fruit and vegetables available, thanks to the climate. Of
thirty-six families, twenty-seven had a vegetable garden and sixteen had fruit
trees or fruit bushes. Virtually all put up preserves: bottled fruit,jams,jellies,
relishes, pickles, salmon, salted fish and vegetables. 48 Salads which were
infrequent items on the family menu disappeared completely in the winter.
Some mothers' nutritional concerns were unusual. One considered
cucumbers and bananas indigestible; others maintained that eating crusts
produced curly hair, carrots were good for the eyes and fish for the brain, and
that the white lining of oranges brought on epilepsy. On the other hand, this
folk wisdom was not out of step with prevailing medical opinion. After the
father of one interviewee became sick in the great influenza epidemic of 1918,
the attending doctor told his wife not to let the children eat bananas.
Domestic science classes did increase some pupils' knowledge of nutrition:
the value of vegetable water, food values, proteins, carbohydrates, and the
best way to prepare foods. The classes also introduced students to new foods
and new ways of preparing food. This was not always a positive experience.
One interviewee remembered suffering indigestion from a Waldorf salad
which never was made at home because the family could not afford to buy
celery or nuts. Neither could she understand what all the white sauce was for.
She has never used it before or since. One girl, though she had cooked at
home, learned to cook in many different ways in class and another learned to
cook well using the class recipes. One of the other students found her domestic
science textbook so useful that she gave it to her daughter to use when the
latter married.
However, it was method, not content, which demonstrated the most
significant differences between school and home. Data from the interviews
indicate that many of the mothers cooked "out of their own heads". This
approach had been passed from one generation to the other. The most usual
cookbook consisted of hand-written recipes collected from or exchanged with
family and friends; over a third of the mothers had such a collection. A distant
second place was shared by Mrs. Beeton and a Five Roses Flourcookbook. 49
Even those women who had cookbooks, however, seldom used them. What

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did it mean to cook "out of one's head"? First, there was no standardization:
ingredients and amounts varied from one time to the next, as probably did the
result - at least until the process became almost automatic. Measurements
were not precise as individual judgement determined the relative proportions
used. As a result, the cook could give full rein to her creative talents or to her
ability to make do; on the other hand, the success o~the final product could
not be guaranteed. Also, the recipe could only really be learned from another
person by observation and by repeated attempts to achieve the desired
result.so Further, the "pool" of recipes available was restricted to what people
knew through experience.
Many girls were first introduced to measuring cups and spoons in their
domestic science classes. One learned that a wooden spoon was the correct
utensil to use in mixing ingredients. She also learned there was a right and
wrong way to make cocoa although her family had been making it at home for
some years without knowing that. Girls were taught to sew and wear a proper
"uniform" in the kitchen, consisting of white cap and full apron with a potholder and a towel hanging on the left-hand side of the apron. They also
copied out many recipes which teachers encouraged them to try at home; in
a few cases the students were marked on their home cooking. Standardized
methods, recipes and practices were taught to the younger generation with
some success as these girls eventually used the recipes and measuring cups and
spoons in their own homes. Was there an impact on the older generation as
well? The evidence suggests a very limited one. Two mothers and one
grandmother learned some of the new recipes; another girl's mother who
bought measuring cups and spoons declared that she had better results by
cooking with uniform amounts. Most mothers did not change their
established methods of food preparation. Yet this did not mean that they
opposed domestic science lessons for their daughters. Most seemed to have
approved of the classes and many encouraged their daughters to try recipes at
home - not surprising since these same mothers had been teaching their
daughters to cook for some years.
A few interviewees, and their mothers, considered the classes a waste of
time and money, impractical and unnecessary:
It's very hard to change the habits of a lifetime. And
the things that I would learn in school - what had that
got to do with our way oflife? .. .If they had, say, taken
a bunch of leftovers and mixed something out of that,
why that would have been more to the point. 5 1
Complaints focused on the introduction of strange recipes or unusual foods,
the expense of supplying the food, the use of numerous and unnecessary
utensils, or the belief that girls could learn everything necessary in their own
homes. The recipes and methods used in class did seem to require the use of a
greater amount of equipment than was usual at home. Mothers complained
about the number of pots and bowls dirtied. Even the students who enjoyed
domestic science admitted that they really learned to cook at home, not
school, and complained about the finicky "dibs and dabs" of food which they
were allowed to prepare in class. One woman recalled using half an egg to
make custard, another a recipe calling for half a strip of bacon.

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One of the justifications for teaching domestic science in the school was
that girls entered marriage from a working career, not from a mother's home,
and therefore had no preparation for scientific homemaking. The interviews
suggest that this was true for many of those who went into middle-class
occupations such as teaching and nursing; most boarded with families, lived
in resident-type accomodation, or rented with others and hired a housekeeper
who cooked. A very few young women shared an apartment with a friend or
relative or stayed at home until they married. However, even though
housekeeping experience was not part of the lives of many women who
worked prior to marriage, it was clear that most had served an apprenticeship
for complex household tasks as young girls.
One of the criticisms directed towards the teaching of domestic sdence
was that it encouraged extravagance in equipping the classroom itself and in
making girls dissatisfied with the equipment in their homes. Putnam and Weir
acknowledged these complaints but considered them to be exaggerated:
There is a type of man, even among good citizens in
rural communities, who will spend any amount of
money for modern labour-saving devices about the
farm and in the barn and stables, but who begrudges
his wife and daughters anything except the most
primitive necessities for kitchen or laundry. It is
notorious that all over Canada - there are of course
thousands of exceptions - women, in farm houses,
have less labour-saving machinery than their
husbands who work in the fields. And it might not be a
really serious matter if sometimes school instruction in
home economics created in a girl a discontent with the
primitive furnishings of her mother's kitchen. Real
economy has reference to the wise use of money and
not to saving it for the mere sake of saving. 52
The evidence suggests that classrooms were usually very well equipped.
Departmental directions in 1912 for domestic science centres reflected the
desire to teach efficiency:
The building itself and the equipment of a Domestic
Science Centre should be of such a nature that from it
lessons may be learned as to the best way to furnish
and arrange a home kitchen. The newest and most upto-date inventions should be installed. 53
The Nelson domestic science centre boasted twenty-four individual
electrical disc stoves, a large built-in refrigerator, aluminum cooking
utensils, steel range, drying rooms, and electric irons. A plan for furnishing
domestic science centres in Burnaby included the following: table tops of
thoroughly seasoned spruce, land 1/8 inches thick, electric stove (described
as three-heat, six-inch disc stoves), a six-hole, Canadian-made range
connected to a 30-gallon hot water boiler, a sink with enamel drainboard and
splasher, and aluminumware equipment. The department's Supervisor of
Technical Education noted that the aluminumware was more expensive than
the equivalent enamelware and the three-heat six-inch stove more expensive
than the single-heat four-inch model, but than in both cases the more

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expensive choice would give better satisfaction and wear. 54
Certainly some of the equipment used in domestic science classes would
have been new to the students. In most classes the teacher demonstrated on a
wood and coal range while the students used gas rings or electrical discs.
Many of the girls would have been familiar with the gas rings as these were
often used in homes to supplement the wood and coal range; however,
electrical stoves were an unusual feature. Aluminumware and enamel
drainbo:ords were not standard equipment in kitchens at the time. One of the
ini:crv~t''F.'ees recalled that her mother had purchased the first set of aluminum
•Nare sold in Victoria. Manufactured by Wear-Ever, it consisted of
tri2.ngular pieces which formed a circle when stored together and induded a
fry pan, steamer, large pot, and detachable handle. A woman who had studied
home economics at the University of Alberta during the mid-l920s recalled
that the aluminum fry pan was aH the rage. 55 Several interviewees had wooden
drainboards that had to be vigorously scrubbed to be kept clean. flatirons,
not electric irons, were the standard in most homes at this time.
There is some evidence that in spite of its endorsation of up-to-date
equipment, the Department of Education was sensitive to charges of
extravagance. It is also apparent that the new, improved equipment was not
always reliable. In approving the electrical contract for wiring in the
Armstrong domestic science centre, the Supervisor of Technical Education
commented that the cost of installing electrical stoves was such that the
department might have to eliminate them in the future: "the oil stove is just as
sati [actory and less than half the cost. "56 In advising the Prince Rupert
Sc\1001 Board on establishing a domestic science centre, the Supervisor stated
that the substitution of oil for electric stoves would lower costs and that oil
stoves were being used successfully in various parts of the province. 57
Economical methods of equipping home economics classrooms were
described in an inspector's report listing the materials which could be used by
manual training teachers and students to make supply cupboards and fireless
cookers. 58 The domestic science teacher from Coal Creek reported that she
had encouraged her students to make their cookery uniform (apron, cap,
sleeves) from flour sacks. 59
One tantalizing question raised in connection with classroom furnishings
is the influence of commercial suppliers upon home economics teachers and
students. Manufacturers were alert to the promotional potential offered by
the establishment of domestic science centres. For example, the Singer
Sewing Company supplied a complimentary sewing machine to the summer
school for home economics teachers and also sent someone to demonstrate
the attachmentsW The Mc Clary Manufacturing Company complained to the
Supervisor of Technical Education that American-made "Monarch" and
"Majestic" ranges had been specified for domestic science centres under
construction in the Okanagan. 61 The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company,
based in California and with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, sent a
representative to call on the Supervisor of Technical Education in Victoria,
invited him to visit the Vancouver showroom to see the samples on display,
and forewarded a brochure and price list of its products. The Supervisor was
offered a twenty percent reduction, less five percent for cash within thirty

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days, on the Standard Bake Oven "El Bako". The company had already
installed cooking equipment in schools in Windsor and Collingwood,
Ontario, and at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. 62 Suppliers
offered discounts on equipment, as for example, on a minimum order of forty
electrical disc stoves from Canadian Westinghouse and on the purchase of a
"Perfection" oil stove specifically from the Imperial Oil Company in
Vancouver. 63 Others donated items or supplies, as did Ridgeway's Tea of
Vancouver whose donation was apparently to be accompanied by
promotional material. 64 Some indication of commercial interest appeared in
the pages of School Days, a monthly magazine published in Vancouver for
pupils in grades five, six, seven and eight during the period 1919-1927. The
heaviest advertisers among firms selling products related to home economics
were BC Electric, Squirrel Peanut Butter, Fraser Valley Dairies, Empress
Jams, and Pacific Milk. 65 In her 1928-29 report, the recently appointed
Director of Home Economics for British Columbia approved cooperation
with commercial firms:
This year has seen a greater attempt on the part of the
teachers to utilize the facilities available in the local
stores. In February, David Spencer's Limited,
Vancouver, made provision for a competition in
homefurnishing which did much to broaden the ideas
of the public as to the general conception of the scope
of home economics. The prize for the most practical
and most artistically furnished bedroom for a highschool girl was divided between Kitsilano High
School, Vancouver, and North Vancouver High
School. Fashion parades for the purpose of
acquainting the girls with the prevailing styles for
spring were provided by the Hudson's Bay Company.
Commercial concerns, when approached, have been
most willing to co-operate. 66
Although it is difficult to gauge the impact on young students of new goods
and new technologies, and their manufacturers and their promoters, the
domestic science classroom did provide an initial introduction to some
household products.
Home economics classes in elementary school introduced thousands of
British Columbia girls to exact measurements, white sauce, electric stoves,
and the importance of food nutrients. Some students found the classes
helpful; some considered them a waste of time; most decided that they had
learned more practical food preparation methods at home. Yet as adults all
used the standardized methods, the authoritative cookbooks, and the new
technological devices first introduced in the classroom. All eventually
cooked, with no hired help, in standardized kitchens equipped with built-in
cupboards, stoves, new fuels, and electric refrigerators. Domestic science
instruction was not the only factor in this transformation, nor could it have
been the most important. During 1900-1930, the period under study, seventyfive percent or more of the province's school girls did not attend home
economics classes. These were also the years when an alliance of advertisers,
manufacturers and mass circulation media were establishing the mechanisms
necessary to induce women to consume. 67 The future homemakers who did

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attend domestic science classes, however, caught a glimpse of new ways of
working in the kitchen, defined and reinforced by the principles of scientific
management and women's unique responsibility to nurture the individual and
the nation.

The kitchen is the centre of the house. At meal
times the centre of interest shifts to the diningroom. When the work of the day is over, mother
and father and children and friends sit down to
enjoy the evening by the open fire in the livingroom, or sit down on the porch in summertime
to enjoy the evening air and the colours of the
sunset and the pleasant view. The centre of
interest is where the people are. But the kitchen is
mother's workshop and factory and laboratory.
There she keeps most of her tools and does most
of her work, and while she is there, that is the
centre of the house. (Helen MacMurchy, "How
to Make Our Canadian Home", no. 3 in The
Little Blue Books Home Series [Ottawa:
Department of Health, 1922].)

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Footnotes
The research for this paper was sponsored by the National Museum of Man with the
collaborations of the British Columbia Provincial Museum and the Provincial
Archives of British Columbia. My thanks to Daniel T. Gallacher and James Wardrop
of the Modern History Division, BCPM, Allen Specht of the Sound and Moving
Image Archives, P ABC, Barbara Latham of Camosun College, and particularly to the
student researchers Marian Brown, Lesley Duthie, Star Rosenthal, Kathy Chopik,
and Lynn Bueckert, Christine Godfrey, Kathryn Thomson, and Catherine Hagen. I
am especially indebted to the British Columbia women who shared their recollections
with us.
1. C. Spofford, Corresponding Secretary, Local Council of Women, Victoria,
Letter to the editor, Victoria Daily Colonist, 18 March 1903.
2. Daily Colonist, 6 September 1903.
3. Daily Colonist, 2 February 1904.
4. Vancouver Province, 7 April 1904.
5. Correspondingly, local dissatisfaction could also undermine domestic science at
the local level. British Columbia,Annual Report of the Public Schools of the Province
of British Columbia (hereafter Annual Report), 1916-17, p. A40; Annual Report,
1918-19: A31.
6. Annual Report, 1925-26.
7. The interviewees, born between 1897 and 1916, were located by the "snowball"
method. The interviews have been deposited with the Provincial Archives of British
Columbia as numbers 4088.1 - 4088.42.
8. Provincial Archives of British Columbia (hereafter PABC), nos. 4088.29,
4088.42, 4088.11.
9. See Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the
Twentieth Century Consensus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976) for an
analysis of the new social and educational ideas, their proponents, and their influence.
IO. Annual Report, 1900-01: 251.
l 1. Annual Report, 1919-1920: C48, quoting from the Report of the Royal
Commission on the Technical Education and Industrial Training (Ottawa: King's
Printer, 1913-14).
12. Annual Report, 1917-18: D68.
13. Vancouver Daily Province, 6 March 1915; Timothy A. Dunn, "The Rise of Mass
Public Schooling in British Columbia, 1900-1929,"in J. Donald Wilson and David C.
Jones, eds., Schooling and Society in Twentieth-Century British Columbia(Calgary:
Detselig Enterprises, 1980).
14. Annual Report, 1918-19: A78.
15. Annual Report, 1917-18: V43.
16. 6 March 1915.
17. Daily Colonist, 20 January 1926. Racist appeals based on Anglo-Saxon
supremacy sometimes figured in the rhetoric supporting the teaching of domestic
science. See, for example, "Domestic Science Should Not Be Considered a Frill,"
Daily Colonist, 3 August 1924.
18. J.H. Putnam and G.M. Weir, Survey of the School System (Victoria: Province
of British Columbia, 1925): 339.
19. Political Equality League, The Champion (October 1912): 5-6. See also "The
Labour Question and Women's Work and its Relation to Home Life" in National
Council of Women of Canada, comp. Women Workers of Canada (Ottawa, 1898):

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254-62, reproduced in Ramsay Cook and Wendy Mitchinson, eds., The Proper
Sphere: Woman's Place in Canadian Society (Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1976); Daily Province, 19 April 1907; a reference to the solution of the "Chinese
problem" with respect to domestic labour, Daily Colonist, 9 June 1898.
20. See section on home economics in Annual Report, 1925-26, p.R58.
21. Annual Report, 1916-17: A73; Department of Education, Courses of Study for
the Public, High and Normal Schools of British Columbia, 1921, pp.52,55;
Department of Education, Programme of Studies for the High and Technical Schools
of British Columbia, 1928-29: 59; Department of Education, New Programme of
Studies for the High and Technical Schools of British Columbia, 1930: 98.
22. "Resolution arising from the findings of a special committee on home
economics, appointed by the executive of the provincial Parent-Teacher Federation,"
printed in Putnam and Weir, Survey: 540.
23. Victoria Daily Times, 20 October 1926; Daily Province, 6 October 1926.
24. Daily Times, 26 March 1927; Vancouver Morning Star, 30 September 1926. See
also Robert M. Stamp, "Teaching Girls their God Given Place in Life", Atlantis 2, no.
2 (Spring 1977): 18-34.
25. Interview 4088.5; Putnam and Weir, Survey, chapter 6; Daily Times, 24 March
1924; The Agricultural Journal 3, no.8 (October 1918): 201; Vancouver Province, 7
April 1904; The Islander 1, no.6 (August 1920), p.15; Daily Times, 26 March 1927.
26. Daily Province, 21 October 1926; Morning Star, 30 September 1926; Helen
Cameron Parker, "Technical Schools for Women," The Canadian Magazine 1 (1893):
634-7, reproduced in Cook and Mitchinson, The Proper Sphere.
27. Putnam and Weir, Survey: 91.
28. Vancouver World, 12 January 1916.
29. See Dunn, "Rise of Mass Public Schooling" for the impact of this approach on
British Columbia's school system.
30. Daily Province, 21 October 1926. References to the scientific care of children and
the role of domestic science in improving child welfare were noted in the 1920s
(Annual Report, 1923-24: T75; Vancouver Sun, 5 and 6 October 1926; Morning Star,
7 October 1926).
31. Annual Report, 1915-16: A81; Annual Report, 1923-24: T75.
32. Annie B. Juniper, Girls' Home Manual of Cookery, Home Management, Home
Nursing and Laundry (Victoria: King's Printer, 1913).
33. Olive Dean, "Domestic Science Notebook", Modern History Division, British
Columbia Provincial Museum (BCPM).
34. Lois Kinley, "Domestic Science Notebook", Modern History Division, BCPM.
35. AM. Ross, "The Romance of Vancouver's Schools", B.C. Magazine 7, no.6
(June 11): 450. Insistence on proper methods extended to all domestic science
subjects. The Annual Report for 1924-25 noted that "good habits in sewing are also a
necessity; perpetual vigilance is required on the part of the teacher against the child's
tendency to work without a thimble, to hold the work the wrong way, and to dream
over it" (p.M55).
36. 26 January 1912.
37. Nelson Daily News, 8 June 1912. Shortly after this account the Nelson school
board had to deal with criticism of the extravagant cost of the equipment (Daily News,
21 June 1912). I am grateful to Patricia Roy for bringing these references to my
attention.
38. Annual Report, 1918-19, p.A79.

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11:11'

1,',,1

39. See, for example, references to Educational exhibits featuring class work and the
activity of domestic science teachers in the war effort. (Annual Reports, 1905-06,
p.Al8; 1911-12, p.A48; 1917-18, p.D66.)
40. See Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society for a thorough
examination of the "new education".
41. Annual Reports, 1915-16: A81; 1918-19: A78.
42. Annual Reports, 1920-21: F47.
43. Annual Reports, 1917-18: D66; 1918-19: A78-A79; 1926-27: M64.
44. Putnam and Weir, Survey: 534.
45. Annual Reports, 1911-1912: A48; 1918-19: A79; 1924-25: M55.
46. Annual Reports, 1923-24: T75; 1924-25: M55; 1926-27: M63-64; PABC, nos.
4088.38, 4088.40; British Columbia, Department of Education, Recipes for Home
Economics Classes. Home Economics Circular No.I (Victoria: King's Printer, 1927).
47. This was true for both boys and girls. However, while girls were often expected to
participate in the same chores as their brothers, for example, filling the woodbox or
cutting grass, the reverse was seldom the case.
48. Other foods were produced at home: twenty-one mothers made their own bread,
fifteen families kept laying hens, and five kept a cow.
49. Commercial cookbooks, published by brand name companies such as
Fleischmann's, Blue Ribbon, and Crisco, were the most common.
50. One woman described the impossibility of making her mother's recipes because
the verbal instructions started with "a jugful of sour cream" (PABC, no. 4088.23).
51. PABC, no. 4088.6.
52. Putnam and Weir, Survey: 339. By contrast, some interviewees stressed that it
was their fathers who insisted on acquiring the latest household equipment, and in
their own households, their husbands (PABC, nos. 4088.25, 4088.26, 4088.31).
53. British Columbia, Department of Education, Manual of School Law and School
Regulations, 1912, p.77.
54. Nelson Daily News, 8 June 1912; Vancouver Sun, 13 June 1912; PABC, GR457,
DS III, 1915, correspondence between G.H. Deane and Mrs. M. Andison, Secretary
of Burnaby School Board, 8 July 1915, 23 July 1915, 5 August 1915. In Armstrong the
enamel drainboards were included in the original tender to furnish the domestic
science centre, though these would have cost more than wooden drainboards.
(GR457, DSII, 1915, Supervisor of Technical Education to MacPhail-Smith
Hardware Company, Armstrong, B.C., 9 August 1915.)
55. PABC, nos. 4088.16, 4088.12.
56. GR457, MT III, 1915, Deane to J.M. Wright, Armstrong School Board, 14
August 1915. Deane's enthusiasm for electrical stoves may also have been dampened
by continuing problems with the Canadian Westinghouse stoves installed in the
Mission, Bridgeport, Ladner and Chilliwack domestic science centres. See GR457,
correspondence from 31 March 1915 (micro B2031) to 28 December 1915 (GR457, DS
I, 1915).
57. GR457, DS I, 1916, Deane to W.D. Vance, Prince Rupert, 7 March 1916.
58. Micro B2032, 1916-1919, Mr. Kyle, Inspector's Reports.
59. GR457, Box I, file 10, Winnifred May Townsend to John Kyle,25 May[l916].
60. GR457, Miscellaneous 1915, Supervisor of Technical Education to Singer
Sewing Company, 9 August 1915.
61. GR457, DS III 1915, McClary Manufacturing Company to the Supervisor of
Technical Education, 21 June 1915.

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62. GR457, Box 2, File 3, letter and printed material from Hotpoint Electric Heating
Company to George Deane, 2 August 1915.
63. GR457, DS III, 1915, Deane to Andison, 23 July 1915; DS I, 1916, John Kyle,
Organizer of Technical Education to W.A. McKenzie, Penticton School Board, 27
July 1916.
64. GR457, micro B2032, John Lillico, Ridgway's Tea, to John Kyle, Organizer of
Technical Education, 5 October 1916.
65. School Days, 1919-1927. The magazine's Advisory Committee consisted of
Vancouver's Municipal Inspector and the principals of several Vancouver schools.
66. Annual Report, 1928-29: 253. In 1919 the first year high school Household
Science course included visits to market, grocery, and meat stores, dairies and
manufacturies. (British Columbia, Department of Education, Courses of Study for
the Public, High, and Normal Schools of B. C., 1919: 47.) Provincial government
departments also recognized the opportunity presented by home economics classes.
Brochures and recipe booklets extolling the virtues of British Columbia fruit and
potatoes were distributed to teachers and students as a result of cooperation between
the Provincial Horticulturist and the Organizer of Technical Education, who also
invited the donation of crates of fruit which home economics classes could preserve for
the Horticulturist to use in exhibitions. (GR457, DS I, 1915, R.M. Winslow to John
Kyle, 20 October 1915, 23 October 1915; Bessie N. Allan to John Kyle, 12 December
1915; Elizabeth Berry to John Kyle, 14 December 1915).
67. Elaine Fisher, "Images of Angels and Whores:
Wedding Women to
Consumerism", paper presented at the Canadian Research Institute for the
Advancement of Women, Annual Conference, Vancouver, November 1983.