Description
Their name is synonymous with royalty and their stores were landmarks in virtually every Canadian city, but as the Eaton empire rose and fell in the last century with the company's patriarchs, there was one woman equally deserving of credit. Flora McCrae Eaton was a visionary, a philanthropist, a socialite, a businesswoman, a world traveler, and a mother of six, but she also ushered in a shopping and dining aesthetic that revolutionized the retail and restaurant experience for generations of Canadians. Lady Eaton oversaw the architecture, staffing, and menus for more than a dozen grand dining rooms few have forgotten despite their eventual demise: the flagship Georgian Room (Toronto), the Round Room (Toronto?now the Carlu), Le Neuf (Montreal), the Grill Room (Winnipeg), and the Marine Room (Vancouver). For more casual fare Eaton's offered soda and ice cream counters, snack bars, hostess shops, cafeterias, and bakery counters. Lady Eaton's direction of the restaurants "created" a Canadian cuisine — chicken pot pie, cheese dreams, Waldorf salad, honey drop cookies, gingerbread, butterscotch pie, and Queen Elizabeth cake. Thirty recipes make this trip down memory lane as savory as it is nostalgic. Put on your gloves and hat and relive an era of elegance all but vanished. Lunch anyone?
About the authors
Carol Anderson has pursued a diverse career as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and dance writer. Her writing includes numerous articles on Canadian dance, the biography Judy Jarvice Dance Artist: A Portrait (1993), a look at Canadian dance near the millennium entitled Chasing the Tale of Contemporary Dance (1999), and This Passion: For the Love of Dance (1998), an anthology of original Canadian dance writing that she compiled and edited. Her most recent book is Unfold: A Portrait of Peggy Baker (Dance Collection Danse Press/Presse 2008). Anderson is a former artistic director of Toronto's Dancemakers, of which she was a founding member. She has danced for over twenty years and continues to teach, choreograph, and perform selectively. Born in New York City, Joysanne Sidimus studied under George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet, subsequently joining the choreographer's New York City Ballet. She later performed as a Soloist with London's Festival Ballet and as a Principal Dancer with Pennsylvania Ballet and The National Ballet of Canada.
Joysanne Sidimus is the founder of the Dancer Transition Resource Centre as well as the founding Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Artists' Health Centre Foundation, which created the Artists' Health Centre, a comprehensive health care facility for artists at Toronto Western Hospital, and the Project Director of the Senior Artists' Research Project, examining the difficulties faced by Canada's senior artists. In 2003, she was awarded the Governor General's Meritorious Service Medal. In 2006, Ms. Sidimus received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
