Food Day Canada: How to Eat Local — And Why it Matters

Food Day Canada is a coast-to-coast grassroots movement spearheaded by perhaps the most culinarily inclined family in the entire country. 

It began with Anita Stewart, a beloved and tireless champion of Canadian food and agriculture, as a way to support Canadian farmers and celebrate the country’s diverse ingredients, unique cuisines, and storied agri-food history. 

Anita’s sons Jeff, Mark, and Paul Stewart—all trained chefs and Canadian food advocates themselves—continue to grow and sustain their mother’s vision of an annual Canadian culinary celebration as Board Members of Food Day Canada. We connected with Jeff to learn more about the vision of Food Day Canada, what's in store for this year’s event, and how organizations like CFIN can help nurture a diverse, delicious, innovative, and sustainable Canadian food landscape. 

You can watch Jeff answer our questions on YODL or read the transcribed interview that follows (edited for clarity). Be sure to also explore Food Day Canada’s list of local restaurants, events and markets to help you dine and celebrate Canadian for this year’s event, happening next Saturday, August 3. 

For those who may not be familiar, how would you describe the essence and purpose of Food Day Canada?  

Food Day Canada is a national celebration that we have every year on the Saturday of the August Long Weekend. We want to encourage everybody to shop, cook, and dine Canadian, to look at the local ingredients that are around us and really appreciate the bounty that we have here in the North.  

Food Day Canada started in 2003. There was a crisis happening in an agriculture in Canada and about four $4-billion worth of agricultural exports were wiped out of our GDP. At that point in time, 21 years ago, Mom had an interesting platform that was already connecting chefs and restaurants and growers and farmers from across Canada. That is when she started to help the agricultural community. We had one part of our community that was in trouble, and we had another part of the community that could help. So, mom was that conduit that brought everybody together encouraged everybody to celebrate local food.  

Eventually it evolved from what was originally the “World's Longest Barbecue” in 2003—Mom's way of bringing together farmers and ag and chefs and restaurants—into this national event that is now known as Food Day Canada. 

Tell us more about your plans for Food Day Canada 2024 — what can people expect from this year’s event? 

For 2024, we've got some super exciting stuff happening. There's our launch event in Elora, Ontario, where we're bringing in 20 local restaurants, great farmers, great food, and awesome entertainment. Michael Smith is flying in. We're going to do some oysters on the bridge in Elora as well. We're expecting thousands and thousands of people to come out to open Food Day Canada.  

That's the Tuesday, then on the Saturday, August 3, we're going to have our celebration across Canada. Different restaurants, different chefs, amazing home cooks, all really appreciating the bounty of what we have here in the North. We encourage everyone to shop, cook, and dine Canadian, and that is the day in particular that we hallmark that across Canada.  

Tell us about Food Day Canada 365.  

What we found with Food Day Canada is that if it's a great idea one day a year, it's a great idea all year long. Every day, we would love to have people shop, cook, and dine locally; supporting our communities, supporting the environment, supporting sustainability, supporting food security and food sovereignty. That’s all important not just for one day, but for every day, so we want every day to be Food Day in Canada. 

Your mother, Anita Stewart, was a renowned figure in Canadian culinary history. One of her mantras was “Canada IS food, and the world is richer for it.” How do you strive to embody this belief through Food Day Canada?  

Food Day Canada is really about looking at the ingredients we have here in the North—the farmers, chefs, restaurants, and our food system as a whole. Canada has some fantastic ingredients, some wonderful culinary experiences, and they're very unique to the North. For us, we want to continue Mom's legacy, and continue that mantra of hers. We're a nation of foodies: Canadians love getting together for great food and love getting together for a great kitchen party. it's sort of the fabric of who we are, as Mom would always say: Canada is food, and the world is richer for it. 

You and your brothers all have such diverse food backgrounds. How do your respective experiences come together when you’re planning Food Day Canada? 

I've got three brothers and three of us are chefs. We do some amazing stuff, because we're in different regions of Canada and the food in Canada varies from region to region. But it's really this idea of a national shared table that gets exciting—where we try to give everybody a voice no matter where they are.  

On Food Day Canada itself, I just love watching social media and how things start to get going. As the sun comes up in the morning you start to see different people sharing and posting reels about what they're doing. On the east coast of Canada, you get to see what's happening in Newfoundland and Fogo Island and out to PEI. And then as the day proceeds, you get more stuff happening in Quebec, then Toronto and Southern Ontario. It's sort of like a montage as the day rolls through, where within 24 hours you get this really cool perspective of all the things that are happening in kitchens across Canada and all the things that are happening with chefs, restaurants, home cooks, and farmers around the country. 

Looking ahead, what are your hopes and aspirations for the future of Food Day Canada? What do you hope the Canadian food landscape looks like in 2034? 

It's already expanded more than Mom ever imagined. And we would love to see that expansion continue. We would love to see everybody celebrating Food Day Canada—no matter where you are, every year, every day is a great time to be shopping and cooking local.  

Ten years from now, I hope the Canadian food landscape would have continued to evolve. We're going to see more really interesting ingredients, amazing agriculture, amazing food, and great opportunities for chefs and restaurants to continue to evolve based on the changing nature of our Canadian food. 

How can organizations like CFIN collaborate with Food Day Canada to further promote food innovation and sustainability across Canada? 

We would encourage everybody, including organizations like the Canadian Food Innovation Network, to bring people together around a shared table, whether that means going out to restaurants where chefs are paying really close attention to using Canadian ingredients, or whether that means encouraging all of your followers or members to for at least on one day, if not every day, pay close attention to where your food is coming from. 

If you can go to a farm gate, if you can go to a local farmers market, that’s great. Or when you're grocery shopping, make sure you pay attention to the label and—where you can—buy local ingredients. Plan your menus around the season. Don't cook with what you want, cook with what you have. 

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CFIN is proud to share Food Day Canada’s commitment to Canadian food. We strive to empower every food and beverage business to reach their full potential, and contribute to a more resilient, creative, secure, and sustainable food system for all Canadians. 

Take the pledge to support Canadian food and farming, and let us know in the comments how you will be celebrating Food Day Canada this year!