Food Biographies: Jenelle Regnier-Davies

At 21, when I lived and worked in Banff, I was making $7.50 an hour in a 5 Diamond restaurant. Yet, I had to squirrel away food in my workstation to make sure I could survive service without fainting.

Mustafa Koc’s Note: Jenelle Regnier-Davies worked as a cook and community worker and eventually decided it was time to return to university. She started with a certificate in food security at TMU, followed by a BA in Environmental Studies at York, an MA in Waterloo and a PhD in Environmental Applied Science and Management at TMU. She is currently working as an SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph.

A. The questions in this section will focus on how you describe yourself, your accomplishments, key influences, experiences or people that shaped your values, your politics and your commitment to food/social justice.

1. How would you answer the question of who you are?

I’m a forever student, mother, sister, daughter, partner, scholar, researcher, gardener, teacher, cook, party planner, and sometimes, an excellent costume designer.

2. Where were you born? Please tell me about your family background, childhood, youth and education?

I was born in Winnipeg, and when I was a young child, my family moved to a small rural community outside the city after my parents got divorced. My mother remarried, and I grew up in Beausejour, an agricultural community not far from the city. My family was quite poor when I was growing up, so we did what we could to be self-sufficient. We did not have a lot of money, but we had goats, chickens, ducks and a lot of land to grow food. As a kid, I did not go to summer camp as my kids do—I weeded the garden, and it never ended.

Both of my grandparents were farmers. My maternal grandparents had a large poultry farm, and my grandfather was an executive of the egg marketing board; they also ran a market garden. My paternal grandparents were largely homesteaders—not big farmers, but grew enough to feed themselves and a few crops to secure a livelihood. My earliest memories with all my grandparents were related to food. I learned how to grow, harvest, cook and pluck feathers from a dead bird at a young age.

My mother worked many nights as a short-order cook at a local greasy spoon when I was a teenager. At that point, she hadn’t finished high school yet, and we often struggled to make ends meet. When I was about 14 or 15, I started cooking family meals for my dad and my little sister in her absence. I really enjoyed exploring recipes and making food from scratch. At 15, I also got my first job as a dishwasher at my friend’s parents’ restaurant. I quickly moved from the dish pit to the line and started as a breakfast cook. The restaurant was called Vickie’s Snack Bar, and this is where my culinary career began.

(Vickies Snack Bar, Beausejour, MB)

At 17, I applied to culinary school at Red River College. When I was accepted, I moved to Winnipeg and worked as a cook. I graduated in 2002, got my Red Seal in Cooking and moved to Banff, then Toronto, to explore fine dining, culinary competition and making it in the big city.

In Toronto, I became a member of Culinary Team Canada. I got the chance to compete in the Culinary Olympics in 2004, which brought me to Erfurt, Germany. After the competition, I decided to travel and learn more about the world. I moved to London for 2 years and cooked at the Tate Britain art museum. I got the chance to visit other European countries: Turkey, Austria, Germany, and Spain.

3. Who were the key influences that shaped your social and political views during your childhood, schooling, and professional life?

My rural upbringing was sheltered. I did not learn much about politics, history or culture in school and did not fully understand the inequities and tensions that I had witnessed in Manitoba, especially among immigrant, settler and Indigenous communities. When I lived in England, I also worked for Amnesty International. It was then that I learned a great deal about human rights and the injustices deeply embedded in Canada’s history. Growing up, our elementary curriculum still hadn’t openly taught about colonization or residential schools. We were taught about pilgrims, Thanksgiving and harmony. Moving away from Canada taught me a lot about my own country. These years in my 20s were formative and really shaped my perspectives and political values. I also became good friends with activists and learned more about social justice issues.

Returning to Canada in 2008, I went through a series of revolutions in my perspective on food. The food of my childhood began to feel like a distant memory. Working in kitchens, I began to feel devalued. It tasted less fresh. It was less exciting. Culinary competition exposed me to immense amounts of purposeful waste. Large-scale production in catering reduced the romance of cooking for me. I was ready to learn something new.

The slow food movement and critical food politics began to enter my periphery. I read Pollan, Nestle, Guthman, and (late) Bourdain, and started to expose myself to more local activities in Toronto, where there seemed to be some real progressive things happening. It was an exciting time. I took a foundational course in Food Security and an Urban Agriculture course in TMU’s Food Security program, then I went back to school full-time. I completed an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies at York and cooked on the weekends for a small catering business called Chez Vous Dining. We mostly ran a market stand at Brickworks and catered weddings and private events in mini mansions in Rosedale or North York. I juggled cooking and my academics until around 2012, when I hung up my apron for good.

(Cooking at a food festival at the Brickworks)

After that (2012), I started working more in the community sector. I somehow got a gig in immigrant settlement services and am working with newcomers in community gardens and kitchens. It was an education in real, purposeful work. Cooking had a new meaning and created space for intercultural connection. I learned a lot working in this space, and it continues to influence my perspective. My experience working with youth, seniors, and families—developing community kitchen programs and urban agriculture projects taught me a lot about the nuances of food security and insecurity. During this time, I also completed an MA with Steffanie Scott at Waterloo and got the chance to do research in China. It was also a very exciting and formative time.

(Gardening with youth in Scarborough)

(Teaching community cooking classes)

5. How do you see your role and accomplishments and/or failures towards a just food system so far?

I will answer this question when I retire.

6. How would you describe your personal relationship with food? Do you see yourself as a careful eater, a good cook, or a gourmet?

I would say I am in a perpetual identity crisis in terms of my relationship to food. My relationship to food has evolved. Growing up, I was picky but also hungry because our home was food insecure. As a young adult learning about the environmental, social and cultural dimensions of food, I often felt a lot of guilt because I never felt I could quite align my diet with my values, the way I wanted to. More recently, with having kids, and specifically a child that suffers from a lot of sensory issues with food (undiagnosed, but I would say ARFID adjacent), I had to calm some of my own severe anxieties around his diet and accept that yes, highly processed foods are going to be in the house, and no, it does not make me a bad mother or a bad steward for food system change. As I can critique the pharmaceutical industry without vilifying immunizations, I can also critique the food industry without vilifying food. I’ve come a long way with this and have engaged more deeply with anti-fat bias literature to accept that we have an imperfect food system, but not put the guilt or negative perceptions of food on my children. I recommend the book “Fat Talk” by Virginia Sole-Smith to any parent also struggling with this.

But to better answer the question, I have evolved over time from being a picky eater to a gourmand, then shiftıng to trying to be a more careful eater... to now just trying to be a good cook. I always tell my kids that my goal in life is for them to one day say that they “missed their mother’s cooking.” I find this goal hard to realize, given that they only want to eat Annie’s Mac n Cheese.

7. Have you ever experienced food insecurity personally?

Yes. Throughout my childhood, I felt hungry a lot, and looking at my report cards. I did very poorly in school. I was distracted and unfocused. I did not like conventional learning much until I became an adult, and when I did finally find myself sitting in a university classroom at 26, I felt incredibly proud to be there. As a young adult working in kitchens, I was also very poor. I took to tasting my food as I was cooking to ensure I had something to eat. I often could not afford the food that I was cooking for other people. At 21, when I lived and worked in Banff, I was making $7.50 an hour in a 5 Diamond restaurant. The set menu started at $500.00/seat, and they would do 2-3 seatings a night. Yet, I had to squirrel away food in my workstation to make sure I could survive service without fainting.

B. Now, I’d like your opinion on the modern food system, the problems it faces, and the possible solutions you see. I also like to know whether you see a relationship between problems in the food system and other social problems.

8. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the modern food system?

I am from the very cold province of Manitoba, which has an incredibly short growing season and produces little fruit. I tasted my first mango at 20 years old, when tropical fruit was more regularly imported. As problematic as the industrial food system is, it does mean that many Canadians can eat frozen, canned, packaged, and fresh food year-round, when eating local and fresh is not possible. But the food system is incredibly exploitative. I have experienced this exploitation firsthand and witnessed it in practice. There are many issues with the food system, as well as many benefits. In my teaching, I try not to forget the positive assets that the food system brings—but it does not centralize human or environmental wellbeing. It centralized money and profit, and that is where the issues lie.

2. What are the top food systems problems requiring urgent attention in the coming decades?

My area of study has not been super related to climate change, but I do have a lot of climate anxiety. I worry about the world my kids are growing up in. I see the unpredictable weather already having a significant impact on Canada’s production. In 2023, I visited my home in Manitoba during the summer and witnessed a severe drought that I had never seen growing up. Dead crops and grasshoppers are covering the houses. I saw farmers hire security guards to make sure their harvests weren’t stolen in the night.

3. What would be some key solutions to address these problems?

I feel that any solutions to these problems may be 10-15 years too late.