A can of Potted Meat is examined on Tuesday by Maureen Power, curator of history at The Rooms, an archive, art gallery and museum in St. John’s. Ms. Power recently appealed to people to donate cans to an exhibit that includes other iconic foods.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Potted Meat.
If you are a mainlander, chances are that you just raised your eyebrows and have a few questions, including what, exactly, Potted Meat happens to be. But if you are a Newfoundlander, the mention of Potted Meat ignites instant nostalgia: It is a reminder of what childhood tasted like.
"For me, it brings me back to my Nan's house," said Jody Williams, a chef and manager of the Bridges to Hope Food Aid Centre in St. John's. "I grew up eating all kinds of that crazy stuff."
Families in Newfoundland have been eating the meat spread, which has a wet, paste-like consistency, for decades. In some households, Potted Meat was spread on homemade white bread, while in others it was scooped right out of the tin onto Purity-brand crackers. For church luncheons, Potted Meat, which is made by Maple Leaf Foods Inc., was often mixed with mayonnaise, relish and chopped green onions to form a sandwich filling along the lines of tuna salad. Kids were known to scavenge the empty tins, fill them with water and freeze them for use as makeshift hockey pucks.
But the days when Potted Meat was plentiful – available, even – are done. Locals recently began to notice the absence of the Maple Leaf product, which was sold in three-ounce tins that did not clarify exactly what kind of meat they contained, on store shelves. Rumours of the product's demise began to unfurl on social media.
Panic followed as word spread of a local distributor who confirmed that Potted Meat had, indeed, been discontinued.
"I don't think anybody believes this to be the fanciest food. But it is certainly something that is part of a nostalgic, traditional diet," said Dale Jarvis, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer for the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.
"At the community and family level, food is incredibly important. It's what people are familiar with growing up that they develop a reverence for," he said. "And people get very, very passionate when they feel their favourite foods are at risk."
Annemarie Dijkhuis, a spokeswoman for Maple Leaf, said the company has not produced Potted Meat since April, 2016. But she said two other Newfoundland staples made by the company are safe. "Big Stick Bologna and Vienna Sausages are not going anywhere! They are iconic products and we will continue to offer them," she said.
Fresh in the minds of Newfoundlanders is what Mr. Jarvis calls the "pickle fiasco" of 2016. That spring, a consumer firestorm engulfed the island when Smucker Foods of Canada discontinued Zest and Habitant-brand mustard pickles that were a popular household staple. People penned poetry devoted to the pickles, wrote mournful songs and even gave the preserves their own Twitter hashtag, #mustardpickles. Others hoarded as many jars of the pickles they could get their hands on; some resellers priced them as high as $25.
Now, mourners have turned their attention to Potted Meat.
"When the last can is gone, I'm going to be very, very disappointed," Wade Greely said. The St. John's resident said it was something he would eat "when I wanted that flavour of being a kid. It's one of those family-growing-up things. It makes you feel good when you have it."
In an effort to memorialize Potted Meat's place in Newfoundland's history, Maureen Power, curator of history at The Rooms – an archive, art gallery and museum in St. John's – issued an appeal earlier this week to consumers willing to donate a can to an exhibit that includes other provincial, iconic foods.
On Tuesday, several donors emerged, including one who was willing to drive more than four hours to drop off his can of meat. Once it is emptied, the can will be displayed alongside packages of vintage Red Rose tea and Fussell's Cream, another Newfoundland delicacy (Mr. Williams's Nan used to serve it on top of canned fruit cocktail for dessert, he said.).
Ms. Power said that documenting Newfoundland's long history of reliance on preserved foods is important to provincial culture.
"Our economics have always been on the swing, so you needed to make your money last as long as you possibly could. Buying preserved food was one way of doing that," she said, adding: "Then it became our culture. It's how our parents fed us."
In Mr. Williams's hometown of Grand Falls, products such as Potted Meat helped families get by in hard times. "We had to eat it because we were poor," he said. "That'd be our supper. Two cans of Potted Meat, pickles and a loaf of bread. It was just the norm."