Cookbooks, because of the cooking styles, ingredients, and equipment suggested within them, can provide information to readers about the historical time period the book was written in. The cookbook Favourite Recipes and Housekeeping Tips and Tricks was written by the Ladies Auxiliary, The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 322. The cookbook was written in the early 1950s and was designed to provide recipes and housekeeping suggestions to the local community, specifically its women. The simplicity of the recipe style and the call for basic ingredients for entertainment-worthy dishes reveals the focus of the lives of Canadian women in this small community postwar era.

The years between 1945 and 1960 in Canada saw soldiers return home from their active duty in the Second World War. Once the war was finished, the jobs that women were engaged in during the war were no longer necessary, and “women were expected to relinquish their working roles to the men who were returning from war.” It was anticipated that women would accept the primary tasks in the roles of wife and mother as serious work. Careers outside the home were made to seem subtly abnormal; homemaking was magnified so that it appeared to demand a woman’s entire attention. Homemaking, including daily meal preparation, ingredient decisions, and meal choice were portrayed as all-important role defining tasks for wives of working men. The early post-war years saw about ninety percent of Canadian women enter into a legal marriage, and divorce and separation were extremely rare. The 1950s emphasized the importance of the nuclear family and associated traditional gender roles: man, as father and breadwinner, and woman as mother and home-maker.

The post-war years in Canada were marked by high employment opportunities, which created a lifestyle of comfortable homes and new products in the country. There was an increase in the production of oil, gas, and hydroelectric power creating central heating for new homes.  Since couples were in a state of post-war bliss, the 1950s saw couples getting married at much younger ages. First and second babies came earlier in marriages and families grew quickly. Couples needed more room in their homes and the idea of moving to the suburbs to provide children with more room to play outside became favourable. Suburban houses were the place where women were the specialists. Females in the household were expected and urged to bring uniqueness to their homes through careful attention to decoration and design. Home decorating and homemaking became an important phenomenon for Canadian women at this time. With comfortable houses being built and the newest appliances available, this provided Canadian women the opportunity to cook for their families and entertain their friends.

Living away from the hub of a “working world,” suburban neighbourhoods required cohesion. Institutions like churches, school groups, or women’s auxiliaries allowed for women to find a place to pull their efforts together and engage them beyond their individual homes. Women soon found these institutions as places where they could take their home economics skills to another level. Parent-teacher associations, or home and school groups, were the most effective in mobilizing and empowering women to move from homemakers to fund-raisers and executive officers. Moreover, the auxiliaries and Sunday schools benefitted from the work of the women’s collaboratives and allowed them to expand and thrive. Women essentially began to realize that any skills they had from running an excellent home, like, food budgeting, entertaining, ingenious decorating, or perhaps sewing or cleaning methods could be applied in a community setting. Legions and women’s auxiliaries were the community halls and recreation centres of the post-war era. “As a national veteran’s organization, the Legion represented history and tradition of Canadians and any activities taking place in legion halls was meant to stir up national pride.” The services that the legions provided were not just for service veterans, and their families, but for local communities, youth, and sports. Through these outreach efforts, the Legion became “ingrained in the social life of every community where a branch was located.”

The 1950s was a decade where strict gender roles emerged, and Canadian women’s lives primarily focused on providing the necessities of daily life to their husbands and children. Women also contributed their time and advocacy to the communities that they were a part of by weaving their domestic skills into intricate patterns of community building.