Culinary Activist

Anita Stewart, M.A (Gastronomy), P.Ag (Hon)

• Culinary Awards Advisor to His Excellency Jean-Daniel Lafond;
• Recipient of 2009 Gold Cuisine Canada ~ University of Guelph Food Culture Award;
• Inducted in June 2009 as an Honourary Lifetime Member of the Canadian Culinary Federation of Chefs and Cooks;
• Recipient of The Ontario Hostelry Institute's 2009 Gold Medal (Educator);
• Chosen as the 2009 Guelph Woman of Distinction ( Business, Labour,The Professions and Entrepreneurs ) ;
• Winner of the 2008 Cuisine Canada Edna Award for lifetime achievement;
• Jury Member~ The World Food Media Awards, Tasting Australia, Adelaide, S.A.;
• Creator & CEO of FOOD DAY CANADA / The World's Longest Barbecue
• Founder and Chair of Cuisine Canada;
• Jury Member: Gold Medal Plates;
• Culinary Columnist, CBC Fresh Air, Radio One

Anita is the first Canadian to earn a Master of Arts in Gastronomy from The University of Adelaide in South Australia & Le Cordon Bleu(Paris). She is the first culinary journalist to be given a lifetime membership as a Professional Agrologist by the Ontario Institute of Agrologists for her “outstanding contribution to Ontario agriculture.” As a culinary adventurer she has been holding up a mirror to Canada and its people for over 2 decades since the publication of her first book in 1984. Her 14th, the most recent, Anita Stewart's CANADA ~ The Food, The Recipes, The Stories is a pan-Canadian odyssey tracing the history of our major ingredients while peeking into dozens of multi-ethnic home kitchens and hit the Globe and Mail's Best Seller List. Two of the recipes in that book were awarded The Toronto Star's Golden Whisk Award in both 2008 and again in 2009 for being among the top ten in their respective years.  She has led countless culinary tours for curious journalists from Canada and abroad, including her most recent in October 2009 which was the first time mainland Chinese food/wine journalists have visited Canada.   

 

Part of Her Story:

Springing from rural roots, Anita Stewart has been over the side of icebreakers into work boats in the North Pacific to visit every manned light-station on that coast to meet their keepers. She's traveled by dog sled and snowmobile to Cree hunt camps in Northern Quebec. She's blasted out to Hibernia, the most easterly bastion of Canadian cuisine on the continent. She's scuba dived for sea cucumbers and urchin in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and bucktail fly- fished for salmon in Discovery Passage. She defined the term "Canadian culinary tourism" while it was still an oxymoron and she continues to push to make it an important scholarly discipline.

In those early nationalistic journeys she cultivated a network of friends which in 1994 was translated into Cuisine Canada, the first and still only, pan-Canadian culinary alliance of food professionals. Currently she is Chair of the Board of Cuisine Canada. Her writing spans country inns and farm markets, hotels and, naturally, our phenomenal agricultural heritage. Her speaking engagements, lectures and broadcasts on CBC Radio One tell similar stories.

She has consulted for The University of Guelph, most recently in developing the all-Canadian menu for THINK BIG:Standards of Conduct in Canadian Public Life.

Working with both Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage, she has brought real Canadian cuisine to both the national and international stage at events such as the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto and the Worlds Fair in Hannover, Germany in 2000. She is on the senior team of consultants which wrote a Culinary Tourism Strategy for the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation and was the “Sage on the Stage” at the Culinary Tourism Symposium held in Toronto March 6/7/8, 2005, the first Culinary Tourism Symposium ever planned and expedited by Canadians.

The Canadian Tourism Commission's US Media Team convinced her that it'd be a cool idea to collaborate with them in 2006 to create the menu for CELSIUS! A Canadian Lounge, in Bryant Park, deep in the heart of New York City's Financial District. In April, 2007 she was the keynote speaker, sponsored by Ontario Tourism, at the CTC's Media Marketplace, the annual event in the U.S. that promotes Canadian tourism to the top travel communicators in America.

On July 7, 2003, started a nation-wide backyard/lakeside/main street Canadian beef barbecue. Billed as Canada Day 2! The World’s Longest Barbecue, it was conceived in support of Canadian agriculture and specifically the beleaguered beef industry. An invitation was issued and on Saturday, August 2, 2003 at 6 p.m. in whatever time zone they were in, thousands of Canadians participated, some from as far a field as Baffin Island, Japan, Australia and the U.K. The grassroots of Canada, wherever they were, played – they also spoke! It was an overwhelming success! In every region, real Canadians barbecued real Canadian cuisine.

In 2004 and in 2005, she issued a similar challenge only this time Canadians were encouraged to toss all sorts of Canadian ingredients onto their grills. Across the land nearly 900 parties were registered. Thousands participated. Theirs was a menu of stories.