Winner, Silver - Culinary Narratives, Taste Canada Awards 2023
Part love story, part survival story, part meditation on family
dysfunction, this offbeat memoir chronicles the unpredictable life of a
young wife and mother on Gabriola Island.
In 1989,
twenty-three-year-old Margot Fedoruk left Winnipeg and her volatile
Slavic-Jewish family for the wilds of BC to work as a tree planter and
to contemplate her mother’s untimely death from cancer. There, she met
Rick Corless, a burly, red-headed sea urchin diver, and soon found
herself pregnant and cooking vegetarian meals for meat-eating divers on
Rick’s boat, The Buckaroo, as they travelled along the rugged northern BC coastline.
Eventually,
the unlikely couple settled on Gabriola Island to raise two girls, dig
for clams, keep chickens, clean houses, and make soap to sell at the
local market. As she washed windows with stunning ocean views, Margot
also wiped away lonely tears, determined not to repeat the same mistakes
as she had witnessed during her parents’ marriage made in hell. Through
dark humour, vivid descriptions, and quirky characters, Margot’s
reflections on marriage, motherhood, isolation, food, and family paint
an unforgettable portrait of a modern-day fishwife left behind to keep
the home fires burning. True to its title, Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives
is a memoir infused with recipes, from the hearty Eastern European fare
of Margot’s childhood to more adventurous coastal BC cuisine.
