A sample kitchen stove scanned from the Eatons 1930-31 catalogue
Cooking was done on a wood stove. According to Vi Stansfield, one popular brand name for wood stoves at the time was McClarys, but there were other brands too. As mentioned, the wood stoves came with a reservoir that would be filled with snow or water to maintain a constant supply of warm soft water for washing and bathing. A pail of hard water was used for drinking and cooking. Charlie Rankin remembers coming home in the late afternoon and if the stove had been out for the day, any liquids in the kitchen were frozen solid.
The kitchen was kept warm by the same wood stove. The remaining rooms in the house were heated by one or more wood stoves that were vented by pipes that went through the rooms to the upper floor. These stoves were oval shaped and had a flat bottom and top and were often called a Quebec heater. (Roger Lillie, The Lillie Legacy, page 11). When the fire was first started, it was stoked to so that the stove became red hot and then the drafts were closed so that the fire burned more slowly. Helen (Austin) Van Patter remembers staying up late at night stoking the fire. Trudy Hotson remembers a popular song of the era had the lyrics Keep the home fires burning.
Fuel for the wood heater was poplar or jack pine cut into blocks of about 16 inches in length. (Roger Lillie, The Lillie Legacy, page 11). Wood brought into the house from the outdoor wood box would sit in a box until the ice and snow was melted. It was the responsibility of many teenagers to keep the wood box filled as large amounts of wood were used as fuel for heating and cooking. Many people have mentioned that under no circumstances would one resign themselves from this responsibility. It was an unwritten rule that the wood box would be kept filled. It was not a topic of discussion.
As the homes had no insulation at the time, there were great temperature differences even within a room. (It is of interest to note that Leila-May Ferguson has written an account of growing up in Osaquan during the 1930s. She wrote that homes in Osaquan were insulated with wood shavings.) Charlie Rankin remembers waking up out of bed and almost wrapping himself around the stove pipe to warm himself. When one awoke on a cold winter morning one would often see the roofing nails covered with frost. That was the result of the moist breath from inside the house mixing with the frigid air outside (Roger Lillie, The Lillie Legacy, page 12). Children and adolescents did not have the luxury of their own room. Rather there were often two or three children that shared a bed, and during the wintertime it was a warm comfort to be the person in the middle of the bed.
Root cellars and ice boxes were used to extend the shelf life of perishable food items like meat and vegetables. In the unheated basements of many homes was a large sand box where root vegetables like carrots were kept. There was also an ice house built on flat ground or in a barn. During the winter large blocks of ice were cut from the lakes and stored in the ice house and used as refrigeration during the summer months. The ice blocks were insulated with sawdust that was placed around and on top of the ice. The ice house was used to store meat.