By Jaime Bayers
What was life like for women in rural Nova Scotia during the 1940s? Over the weekend of July 15-16, Memory Lane Heritage Village put on a Women’s Heritage Celebrating showcasing life on the shore in the 1940s, including two settings of Sunday afternoon tea complete with Memory Lane’s famous butter tarts.
Volunteers put on a series of workshops on different home food preserving techniques, including jamming, pickling, souring and drying. Local preserving specialists Hardyware Preserves made batches of Maritime Blueberry Marmalade and Christmas Jam, and participants got to take home seven jars of jam and the recipes. For sauerkraut lovers, Alison Froese used Heritage Village’s own traditional wooden cabbage shredders and other tools to pound the kraut and brine it. And Chef Kim MacPherson of Food Intuition demonstrated how to use traditional souring techniques in contemporary cooking.
Members of the Atlantic Canadian Military History Association held their annual encampment at Heritage Village over the same weekend and joined in the Women’s Heritage Celebration. The Association mounted a “Women in Wartime” display in the Clam Harbour Schoolhouse on the roles of women during the Second World War on the home front and overseas.
Between the free samples of jam, a church service, and the tea, there was plenty for people to do. As one happy visitor told me, ““As my first time being here, and getting to see it on a special occasion, I really enjoyed myself. I liked seeing how women were involved back then, and seeing old uniforms were really cool. It was really great how interactive it was for kids, getting to do the laundry with the washboard, and getting rides in old cars. The fried dough was really great!”
