Culinary Activist
Anita Stewart, M.A (Gastronomy), P.Ag (Hon)
- Advisor to His Excellency Jean-Daniel Lafond;
- Ambassador/Messenger: OMAFRA Pick Ontario Freshness Campaign
- Active Member of The Society of American Travel Writers (SATW);
- Jury Member~ The World Food Media Awards, Tasting Australia, Adelaide, S.A.;
- Founder and Past Board Chair of Cuisine Canada;
- Fellow of The Ontario Hostelry Institute
- Jury Member: Gold Medal Plates, 2006-2007;
- Culinary Columnist, CBC Fresh Air, Radio One
She is the first Canadian to earn a Master of Arts in Gastronomy from The University of Adelaide in South Australia & Le Cordon Bleu(Paris). She is the first culinary journalist to be given a lifetime membership as a Professional Agrologist by the Ontario Institute of Agrologists for her “outstanding contribution to Ontario agriculture.” As a culinary adventurer she has been holding up a mirror to Canada and its people for over 2 decades since the publication of her first book in 1984. Her skills in recipe development have enabled her to publish 13 books. She is currently working on her 14th - Delicious: Anita Stewart's Canada ~ The Food, The Recipes, The Stories. This pan-Canadian odyssey traces the history of our major ingredients while peeking into dozens of multi-ethnic home kitchens.She was awarded The Toronto Star's Golden Whisk Award for one of the Top Ten recipes of 2006.
A personal note from the culinary trenches of the past year:
"2006 was absolutely stellar! And it looks as though 2007 will easily be its match. My finds? Bay of Fundy sustainable caviar and Finnish cooking on an island in B.C.'s north coast; Gâteau Basque in Elora filled with butter-sautéed Niagara plums; gingery Japanese gyoza in Campbell River and perfect Colville Bay oysters from P.E.I. dabbed with tomatillo salsa at Cava, the upscale tapas bar in Toronto. Found out to my delight and satisfaction that inns like Sooke Harbour House in B.C., L'eau à la Bouche in the Laurentians and The Inn at Bay Fortune on P.E.I. are all still way out there --beyond the leading edge, creating both micro-economies and small scale culinary regions while populating other restaurants and inns with their culinary alumni.
Most importantly,last August Canadians again clearly demonstrated just how deeply they care about one another and the food life of Canada! No matter where we lived, we went out of our way to tell our stories as we harvested and grilled good local foods to celebrate and support our farmers, our fishers and our peace-keepers!" (Anita Stewart,January ~ 2007)
Part of Her Story:
Springing from rural roots, Anita Stewart has been over the side of icebreakers into work boats in the North Pacific to visit every manned light-station on that coast to meet their keepers. She's traveled by dog sled and snowmobile to Cree hunt camps in Northern Quebec. She's blasted out to Hibernia, the most easterly bastion of Canadian cuisine on the continent. She's scuba dived for sea cucumbers and urchin in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and bucktail fly- fished for salmon in Discovery Passage. She defined the term "Canadian culinary tourism" while it was still an oxymoron and she continues to push to make it an important scholarly discipline.
In those early nationalistic journeys she cultivated a network of friends which in 1994 was translated into Cuisine Canada, the first and still only, pan-Canadian culinary alliance of food professionals. Currently she is Chair of the Board of Cuisine Canada. Her writing spans country inns and farm markets, hotels and, naturally, our phenomenal agricultural heritage. Her speaking engagements, lectures and broadcasts on CBC Radio One tell similar stories.
She has consulted for The University of Guelph, most recently in developing the all-Canadian menu for THINK BIG:Standards of Conduct in Canadian Public Life.
Working with both Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage, she has brought real Canadian cuisine to both the national and international stage at events such as the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto and the Worlds Fair in Hannover, Germany in 2000. She is on the senior team of consultants which wrote a Culinary Tourism Strategy for the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation and was the “Sage on the Stage” at the Culinary Tourism Symposium held in Toronto March 6/7/8, 2005, the first Culinary Tourism Symposium ever planned and expedited by Canadians.
The Canadian Tourism Commission's US Media Team convinced her that it'd be a cool idea to collaborate with them in 2006 to create the menu for CELSIUS! A Canadian Lounge, in Bryant Park, deep in the heart of New York City's Financial District. In April, 2007 she was the keynote speaker, sponsored by Ontario Tourism, at the CTC's Media Marketplace, the annual event in the U.S. that promotes Canadian tourism to the top travel communicators in America.
On July 7, 2003, started a nation-wide backyard/lakeside/main street Canadian beef barbecue. Billed as Canada Day 2! The World’s Longest Barbecue, it was conceived in support of Canadian agriculture and specifically the beleaguered beef industry. An invitation was issued and on Saturday, August 2, 2003 at 6 p.m. in whatever time zone they were in, thousands of Canadians participated, some from as far a field as Baffin Island, Japan, Australia and the U.K. The grassroots of Canada, wherever they were, played – they also spoke! It was an overwhelming success! In every region, real Canadians barbecued real Canadian cuisine.
In 2004 and in 2005, she issued a similar challenge only this time Canadians were encouraged to toss all sorts of Canadian ingredients onto their grills. Across the land nearly 900 parties were registered. Thousands participated. Theirs was a menu of stories. The 2006 Edition was a smashing success!
