Hall of Fame Award (Posthumous) | 2015

Helen Wattie was born in Bracebridge, Ontario, and spent her career teaching home economics. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Wattie was an educator and school principal in St. Catharines and Kirkland Lake, Ontario, and also taught at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in the early 1950s, where she helped to develop their home economics curriculum. Besides publishing a new edition of Nellie Lyle Pattinson’s Canadian Cook Book (1923) with Elinor Donaldson Whyte in 1953, Wattie was best known for writing Home Management and Nutrition, published in 1968. Used as a grade 12 home economics textbook, Wattie’s book situated the role of the modern consumer in both local and global contexts. Along with exploring the history and meaning of food, it contains many practical discussions such as contemporary concerns about food insecurity and possible solutions, consumer economics, household management techniques relating to food preparation, and how to budget one’s money, time, and energy.