Smells of Ethnicity

I just finished reading an article for class on the development of a multi-cultural culinary culture in Canada from the beginning of the Cold War. It was interesting to see how this one historian wrote about the diversity of food in Canada. Her thoughts were that though we take for granted today that there are so many different foods which we can choose from, once upon a time before 1945 Canada was a fairly plain culinary landscape. With the movement of people out of Europe and then from Asia to Canada, and the subsequent settlement of these peoples all across the nation, those who were attempting to teach the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) woman how to run her home were suddenly shocked to find that there were so many different varietys of women that one solution would not work for all. So as the development of society marched on ethnic recipies were soon featured in the social propaghanda, I use the word propaghanda in the loosest sense. Chatelaine would be the literature of choice and though there had been many issues in the past there started to be issues with recipies from all over the world. I find this trend of including ethnic foods in modern literature excellent. What an interesting way of finding out about your fellow Canadian, learning what the people down the hall are cooking for dinner. Though it may not always smell good, its interesting. I live in quite a diverse building, and at times there are smells which I find good, and there are times when the smell is offensive. Grouped together these smells are the smells of Ethnicity. In fact there have been times when I will make a comment about how the Ethnicity is thick. I do not mean for this to be racist or anything of that sort, I do wonder if it is puzzling to those who may have just moved here from a different country to see the chubby white dude down the hall cooking rice one day, and then pasta the next, and then having tuna melts, which I think are one of the most canadian dishes ever since what kind of person mixes Cheese with Fish. Anyways I think that I as a proud WASP can learn a great deal from all of the smells and odors emminating from the floors here. To all my friends on Onsite I am sure the smells you are experiencing are much more pungent and interesting then the ones I smell in the elevator.