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One of only 3000 Syrian immigrants to Canada, his name anglicized to George Jacob Salloum, he found that working for his cousin was not ideal, and he briefly became a peddler. When his family arrived three years later, George’s wife, Shams, arrived with Syrian dietary staples – lentils and chickpeas – in her luggage.
The couple acquired a homestead near Val Marie, close to the US border. Drawing on their family’s agrarian traditions, they built an adobe house and planted a large garden. George and Shams had a large family over the years, and the children worked hard on the farm, picking rocks, gardening, seeding, harvesting. But the Dirty Thirties arrived instead of bumper crops.
In efforts to assimilate, and because she thought her immigrant fare not good enough for non-Syrian palates, Shams did not cook Arab food for the threshing crews when they came to the farm to harvest. Instead she offered fried chicken with simply prepared garden vegetables, and lunches of bologna sandwiches, which young Habeeb loved. But one year, a man on the crew brought her three jack rabbits, and she marinated, stuffed, and roasted them with Syrian ingredients. The threshers were thrilled.
Those healthful “foreign” foods that helped the family survive the drought years became important in the province’s food culture, as much-loved food, and agriculturally and economically. Lentils and chickpeas – lentils in particular – became commercial crops in Saskatchewan several decades later. In 2020, Canadian-grown lentils (95 percent of which are grown in Saskatchewan) generated over $2 billion in export sales. Crop specialists at Sask Agriculture see the Salloum family’s plantings in the ‘30s and ‘40s as forerunners, but there are no official government records providing a link.
His book combines a scholar’s diligent research with the memoir of an immigrant family. The result is a marriage of personal, cultural, culinary, geopolitical and economic history served up with traditional Arab recipes. The book was recognized by the Saskatchewan Library Association as their 2022 selection for the annual “One Book One Province” – the book chosen for provincial residents to read for literary and cultural bonding. In this chaotic year of war, refugees, pandemic, and escalating food prices, a little bonding is a timely idea. First we eat some lentils, then we talk about an end to all the rest.
“His region had been occupied by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, then by the French, and it seemed to him that Canada was a long way from this strife.”
DEE HOBSBAWN-SMITH
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