Bannock Beans and Black Tea: Memories of a Prince Edward Island Childhood in the Great Depression

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

A lifetime of bitterness and resentment poison this slim collection of
memories of a childhood in Prince Edward Island during the 1930s.

The spokesperson—the author’s father—grew up in extreme poverty.
The basics of life, such as food, clothing, shoes, and adequate heat in
the home, were missing. He left school after Grade 2 because he did not
have shoes to wear or enough to eat. When he was able to obtain work in
a fish processing plant, he had to wear his grandmother’s Victorian
high-button boots to work.

The book is a litany of constantly scrambling for food or to earn a few
cents by gathering wild berries, fishing, or doing odd jobs. He blames
his father for the family’s destitute state and expresses his
resentment toward the village priest, from whom he had to beg a dollar
to save the family from starvation.

The book is an eye-opener in that few readers today realize the depth
of poverty that existed in Canada at the time. But it is too narrow in
scope to be either local history or even a family history. While not a
social history, either, it makes some very strong comments on life in
Eastern Canada during the Great Depression.