Rizwaan Abbas and Donica Belisle. Violence of Sugar: Girmit and Canadian Business in Colonial Fiji.

This research investigates Girmit and Canadian business in Navua, Fiji. It looks at the dates 1890 to 1922 and also considers ongoing legacies. Currently we are authoring a book about this topic.

A preliminary article from this research is Donica Belisle, “VIOLENCE AND PROFIT: Canada’s Debts to the Girmitiyas of Fiji,” published in a special issue of British Columbia History about Indo-Fijian history, edited by Rizwaan Abbas (Summer 2024, pp. 22-26).

Donica Belisle and Daylene Sliz. Sugar in English Canadian Home Economics Cookbooks.

This research shows how English Canadian home economics instructors taught pupils about sugar. It covers the dates 1898 to 1977 and looks at home economics texts published in Victoria, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Saint John, and Halifax. Of central concern is uncovering the place of sugar within settler Canadian cuisine.

Century of Sugar: Sugar in Canadian Home Economics Cookbooks.

This research continues investigations of sugar and Canadian home economics. Viewing English and French language cookbooks as documents of colonization, it determines the role of sugar in English and French Canadian pedagogy. It also takes the study of sugar and home economics forward into the 1980s and 1990s.

Is Cane Sugar ‘Canadian’? The Disavowal of Global Lives and Lands in Canadian Sugar Marketing. Global Food History. 15 November 2023.

This article emerged from preliminary inquiries into Rogers’ sugar marketing. It looks at Rogers Sugar’s advertising and suggests that global producers of sugar have been omitted from this publicity, even while Canadian producers have been highlighted. In this way Rogers Sugar has mystified the relations of sugar production and, in effect, erased the presence of people situated internationally within the sugar industry.