How victory gardens crop up during times of crisis
CBC
Amid high grocery prices and U.S. tariff threats, Bill Belsey is fighting back with seeds and soil in his small "victory garden."
"When Trump announced … what at least I interpreted as sort of economic warfare against Canada, it took me back to my parents' generation," Belsey told CBC Radio's Cost of Living from his home in Cochrane, Alta.
His father served in the Second World War, and his mother, like many Canadians left behind, contributed to the war effort by starting a victory garden.
"There was a sort of communal kind of feeling like, yes, we're in this together. And so they started planting, even though they weren't really farmers or gardeners," said Belsey.
"And I got thinking about that a little bit and it dawned on me that, look, I can't change world events, but there are things I could do, and this is one of those."
Victory gardens, promoted as a way to ease food shortages during the world wars, always crop up again in times of crisis, according to Debi Goodwin, author of A Victory Garden for Trying Times.
For some, they're now emerging as a tool to fight against U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and threats to Canada's sovereignty.
"People have started them whenever they've seen something that scares them," said Goodwin.
The roots of the victory garden can be traced back to the First World War, when Britain encouraged citizens to turn their flower gardens into vegetable gardens in an effort to stave off food shortages.
But it was in the U.S. that "victory gardens really took off," Goodwin said.
American businessman Charles Lathrop Pack was key in promoting victory gardens, pushing the importance of self-sustainability of food supplies in the country and helping ship food to its allies.
After the war, the gardens largely disappeared until the Second World War led to their revival. At the time, an estimated 200,000 victory gardens were growing in Canada, according to Goodwin.
Governments gave people seeds, tools and instructions on how to yield plentiful crops.
"Food was seen as a way of fighting against your enemy," Goodwin said.
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