beverleysmith-cnjyv

Healthy snacks we ate as little kids, under age 5, were biscuits, bits of cheese, slices of carrot or celery, fresh fruit pieces. But kids gravitate to sugar and by the time rationing had ended it was very much more available.  Little kids like cookies. We had the luxury of homemade cookies – oatmeal, chocolate, often fresh from the oven after school.  
 We had a  five year old neighbor who would come over to our house in the 1950s and announce to my mother ‘I need a cookie’.

 My parents did not immerse us in sugar but ‘for special’ we did have some sugary snacks. We had Oreos, Cracker Jacks. No we dd not have Smarties or Wagon Wheels or Crispers or Fruit roll ups, all of which came in the 1990s. Nor did we have lunchables or the blizzard from Dairy Queen. But we felt pretty good about what we had.

Hot Tamales were invented in 1950 and Pez in 1952 but we were only toddlers then and did not enjoy them till later.  Bounty chocolate bars came along in 1951 but we were only two then. We waited.  Candy necklaces, malted milk balls, Bazooka bubble gum complete with comic strip inserts were popular for kids who were growing up in the 50s, but my cohort was too young for some of those products for several years.

By 1960 we were eleven though and Sweet Tarts, Starsbust, fruit chews and candy cigarettes were the rage. My sister and I found it hilarious to pretend to smoke chocolate cigarettes. There was a way to do it to shock others but actually nobody was fooled– and then we’d unwrap the paper from the chocolate tube eat the chocolate. Contrary to parental fears that kids who did this would want to smoke, my sister and I never did. For us it was just candy.

My mother liked Almond Roca and Cherry Blossom (chocolate wrapped cherries). My dad like chocolate dipped maraschino cherries and my sister loved sponge toffee. These had been invented much earlier but were  only around in my house when we were teens.

In the 1960s new foods were being invented too. Hawaiian Pizza became popular first in Chatham Ontario. Ketchup potato chips appeared in Vancouver.  Peameal bacon got known in the US as Canadian bacon.  Ontario produced butter tarts and of course the split pea soup common in Quebec was becoming available in the west too, in cans. Nanaimo bars were an amazing dessert from Nanaimo BC and maple syrup was available from Quebec and Ontario.

Scottish immigrants had come to town and my mother was a descendant of one from the Maritimes. She loved shortbread and spaetzle noodles and often made johnny cake.  German newcomers introduced us to heavy sausages and sauerkraut and the meat markets offered things we dared to try.  We also loved the home-made sausages we got from friends on farms.

This was a time of creativity with what little you had. My mother knew a dozen things to do with hamburger and as many to do with wieners. She’d slit weiners and put cheese in them and broil, or wind bacon around them.  We had chili with beef, stew with beef chunks, and sloppy Joes, hamburger in meat sauce on a bun.  She knew a lot of things a person could do with bologna too and we even tried it broiled in the oven so stiff the slices became like frisbees. They were lovely with catsup.   We did have a lot of tinned meat, Spam type of food from the war era and there were clever ways to bake it too and even put it in casseroles. One of my favorite items was chipped beef, which was sold in frozen packs of very thin slices. It was marvelous and so tender. We drove all the way across the city to the north to a corner grocery store for it. I kind of thought my dad was just trying to ensure that grocer could stay in business.

People who had travelled spoke of Montreal’s smoked meat, and the bagels they got there. There was ag great bakery in Edmonton that had special cookies and we’d go along way to get those. The Ukrainian community spread the joy of cabbage rolls and perogies.
Chinese food became popular early in Calgary, likely because of earliest immigrants and Calgary had a Chinatown area very early.  Many of us in the 50s and 60s did get the pleasure of eating Chinese food at restaurants there – Linda Mae’s, Peking Dragon.  In my family when I was a preteen we often got take out from a Chinese food restaurant. Our favorites were sweet and sour chicken, spareribs, fried rice, chow mein. We got the order down pat, even to a formula I still remember making on the phone – 8, 9 and fried rice.

My sister and I found it hilarious to pretend to smoke chocolate cigarettes. There was a way to do it to shock others but actually nobody was fooled long – and then we’d unwrap the paper from the chocolate tube, discard it and eat the chocolate. Contrary to parental fears that kids who did this would want to smoke, my sister and I never did. Others maybe did but for us it was just candy.

In the 1960s  there were pop tarts and potato chips, sometimes dipped in onion soup mix. We enjoyed sour candy,  bugle chips, Starburst. Tic Tacs were new in the 1960s.

My mother liked Almond Roca and Cherry Blossom (chocolate wrapped cherries). My dad like chocolate dipped maraschino cherries and my sister loved sponge toffee. These had been invented much earlier but were only around in my house when we were teens.

1951 – Clorets

1954 – Love Hearts

1956 – Certs

1957 – Kit Kat

1958 – Caramac

1958 – Goldfish crackers

1959 – Starburst candy

1960 – Trident gum, Cadbury buttons

1962 – After Eights, SweeTarts

1963 – Cadbury Crème Egg

1964 – Pop tarts, Bugles

1966 – Doritos

1967 – Pizza rolls, Revels, Twix

1968 – Pringles, Caramilk

1969 – Tic tac