UFV’s Abbotsford campus library played host to the launch of Lenore Newman’s new book, Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food.
Newman is a professor at UFV, but she has done research that has taken her to the far corners of the globe. “I’m a nomad by nature,” said Newman.
The choice of venue was no coincidence, as Newman helped create the library’s Newman Western Cookbook Collection, tours of which can be arranged through librarian Mary-Anne MacDougall. Newman has also written two other books and several scholarly journal and newspaper articles, worked on mapping the Fraser Valley’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), and is the Canada research chair in food security and the environment at UFV.
Lost Feast is primarily about the extinction of plants and animals that were once used as food sources by humans, such as silphium, a herb much loved by the Romans, and the aurochs, wild ancestor of domesticated cattle. The poster child for the book is the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon was once a very common bird in North America. Flocks of them darkened the sky, and up to 40 per cent of all birds in North America were passenger pigeons, according to Newman. Tragically, so many of them were hunted for food that the species was driven to extinction. The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in captivity in 1914. Martha is an example of an endling, the term for the last living member of a species. Newman lamented the fact that we need such a word as endling.
Newman read some excerpts from her book. The subject of the chapter she read was an expedition to the Yukon to experience the environmental conditions of the last ice age, when now extinct megafauna, like cave lions and giant ground sloths, roamed America.
“The North is a living shadow of the Pleistocene,” said Newman. The extinction of these species correlates very closely with humanity’s first arrival in those areas, too closely to be coincidence.
She regaled her listeners with experiences of the wild that remains in the Yukon, such as a herd of majestic wood buffalo crossing the road, and how she longed to run her fingers through the thick fur around their shoulders. She also sampled local delicacies such as fireweed jelly on sourdough bread. For the uninitiated, fireweed is a pink wildflower common in the Yukon Territory and northern British Columbia that can be made into a jelly that has a very sweet, honey-like flavour.
Despite the grim themes of Lost Feast, the book has many lighthearted moments, and Newman did not intend for it to be a depressing read. “I have the personality of a golden retriever who listens to too much Leonard Cohen,” said Newman.
During the question-and-answer period, the topic of the Pacific salmon fishery and what its chances of survival were came up. Many residents of B.C. fear an equivalent of the cod fishery collapse in Atlantic Canada that occurred in the 1990s. The cod was just as important for Newfoundland as salmon is for B.C. Newman has been to Newfoundland, and while she reports that the people there are very friendly, there remains a deep sense of loss in the community from which they have never truly recovered. Newman expressed hope for the salmon fishery as long as ocean temperature rise can be kept below three degrees; however, the underlying feelings of Newman and her audience did not seem so optimistic deep down, despite the brave face she put on.
Even so, Newman has hope for the future. “We have all the technology we need to solve this problem,” said Newman, who feels that what is most needed right now is political will.
The event concluded with the serving of hors d’oeuvres prepared by the culinary program students from Chilliwack campus. The refreshments, while delicious, were nevertheless haunted by the knowledge that our descendants might never taste such foods as these and were a reminder of what we stand to lose if we fail to take care of the species that nourish us.
Image: Aleister Gwynne/ The Cascade
