Enjoy your Oysters--Really? By Andre Philpot
/I don’t know about you, but having an Oyster Supper one thousand miles from the ocean seems a little too risky for me. And a lot riskier in the 1800’s and yet, it was a big deal throughout Upper Canada then.
Oyster suppers were a common treat offers by the Oddfellows Lodges to celebrate this, that, the other, or anything. I suppose it helped explain their name. It was also common for families to enjoy oyster stuffing inside their Christmas Turkey, and oyster liquor basting on the outside.
The Tavistock Historical Society newsletter, Yesterday, reported that in 1903, the losers of the annual sparrow hunt were bound to treat the winners to an Oyster Feast. That year the losers bagged 298 birds to the winners 332.
Why they were slaughtering sparrows was not explained. So I looked it up. Sparrows seem very nice and they would give little joy on a plate. Well, the reason seems to be that there were just too damned many of them. They had been brought on purpose from Europe to eat mosquitoes and all sorts of bugs and beetles who chomped on farmers’ grain. Turns out that they dine on the caterpillars and then the farmers’ grain. And they breed like aerial rabbits.
Anyway let’s get back to the point--Oysters. Marmora had an Oyster Saloon!
Here is the invitation that our Councillors got in January 1887. Saloon owner and taxpayer R. Tomlinson invited them over to finish off a bunch.
Give them a try, Councillors, and see if you like them, and more importantly whether they like you. They had been scraped off the bottom of an ocean, put with thousands of their buddies in a wooden barrel and jostled and bounced half way across the country and here they were-yours free.
What could possibly go wrong?
