An in-depth study of European immigrants to Canada during the Cold War, Gatekeepers explores the interactions among these immigrants and the “gatekeepers”–mostly middle-class individuals and institutions whose definitions of citizenship significantly shaped the immigrant experience. Iacovetta’s deft discussion examines how dominant bourgeois gender and Cold War ideologies of the day shaped attitudes towards new Canadians. She shows how the newcomers themselves were significant actors who influenced Canadian culture and society, even as their own behaviour was being modified. Generously illustrated, Gatekeepers explores a side of Cold War history that has been left largely untapped. It offers a long overdue Canadian perspective on one of the defining eras of the last century.

Buon Appetito Toronto! is the story of how Italian-Canadian food culture has evolved in the city and how its influence has helped define our perceptions of what constitutes a good meal. From the convivial social dynamics of the Italian table, to the quest for the perfect coffee, to the introduction of food products and artisanal wine from Europe, Italian-Canadians have led the way in educating Torontonians about the pleasures of the table. Through interviews with 28 of the city's most important chefs, restaurateurs importers and manufacturers, Buon Appetito Toronto! gathers together the people that set the standard for culinary creativity and changed the culture of a great city.

Here is one of the most unique and fascinating food histories in the world, exploring the diverse culinary history of Canada. Winner of the 2007 Canadian Culinary Book Award for Canadian Food Culture In Canadians at Table we learn about lessons of survival from the First Nations, the foods that fuelled fur traders, and the adaptability of early settlers to their new environment. As communities developed and transportation improved, waves of newcomers arrived, bringing memories of foods, beverages, and traditions they had known, which were almost impossible to implement in their new homeland. They discovered instead how to use native plants for many of their needs. Community events and institutions developed to serve religious, social, and economic needs from agricultural and temperance societies to Womens Institutes, from markets and fairs to community meals and celebrations.

While the statistics for obesity have been alarming in the twenty-first century, concern about fatness has a history. In Fighting Fat, Wendy Mitchinson discusses the history of obesity and fatness from 1920 to 1980 in Canada. Through the context of body, medicine, weight measurement, food studies, fat studies, and the identity of those who were fat, Mitchinson examines the attitudes and practices of medical practitioners, nutritionists, educators, and those who see themselves as fat. Fighting Fat analyzes a number of sources to expose our culture’s obsession with body image. Mitchinson looks at medical journals, both their articles and the advertisements for drugs for obesity, as well as magazine articles and advertisements, including popular "before and after" weight loss stories. Promotional advertisements reveal how the media encourages negative attitudes towards body fat. The book also includes over 30 interviews with Canadians who defined themselves as fat, highlighting the emotional toll caused by the stigmatizing of fatness.

Spanning two hundred years of history from the nineteenth century to the 1990s, Sisters or Strangers? explores the complex lives of immigrant, ethnic, and racialized women in Canada. The volume deals with a cross-section of peoples - including Japanese, Chinese, Black, Aboriginal, Irish, Finnish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Mennonite, Armenian, and South Asian Hindu women - and diverse groups of women, including white settlers, refugees, domestic servants, consumer activists, nurses, wives, and mothers. The central themes of Sisters or Strangers? include discourses of race in the context of nation-building, encounters with the state and public institutions, symbolic and media representations of women, familial relations, domestic violence and racism, and analyses of history and memory. In different ways, the authors question whether the historical experience of women in Canada represents a 'sisterhood' of challenge and opportunity, or if the racial, class, or marginalized identity of the immigrant and minority women made them in fact 'strangers' in a country where privilege and opportunity fall according to criteria of exclusion. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, this collaborative work reminds us that victimization and agency are never mutually exclusive, and encourages us to reflect critically on the categories of race, gender, and the nation.

How we as Canadians procure, produce, cook, consume, and think about food creates our cuisine, and our nation of immigrant traditions has produced a distinctive and evolving repertoire that is neither hodgepodge nor smorgasbord. Contributors, who come from the diverse worlds of universities, museums, the media, and gastronomy, look at Canada's distinctive foodways from the shared perspective of the current moment. Individual chapters explore food items and choices, from those made by Canada's First Nations and early settlers to those made today. Other contributions describe the ways in which foods enjoyed by early Canadians have found their way back onto Canadian tables in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Authors emphasize the expressive potential of food practices and food texts; cookbooks are more than books to be read and used in the kitchen, they are also documents that convey valuable social and historical information.