A Saskatchewanian once recounted to me how, as a young woman, she made a date for dinner with an Ontarian she had her eye on. She arrived at the restaurant promptly at midday, and he, equally punctual, arrived... 6 hours later.
This linguistic contretemps highlights an intriguing phenomenon: what we call our midday and evening meals. Many Canadians, on first encountering someone from another province referring to lunch as dinner, make sweeping generalizations of the type “In Ontario we all say lunch and in the Maritimes they all say dinner”, but it is not really a regional distinction. If the object of Saskatchewanian desire had been from rural Ontario, he probably would have turned up at the restaurant at noon too.
By far the majority of Canadians call
their midday meal “lunch”. Their evening meal is “dinner” or
“supper”, which words can be used interchangeably. I myself might
say, “I have to make dinner” and then announce its arrival on the
table half an hour later with a cheery “Supper's ready!”
However,
we do make some distinctions. For instance, we usually call it only
“dinner” when we go out to a restaurant, are feeling formal, or
invite people over. The only circumstances in which we would use
“dinner” for an earlier meal is for very large meals eaten in the
middle of the afternoon like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.
Meanwhile, some say, “supper” is a
lighter evening meal. Try telling that to someone who has just
consumed one of those epitomes of epicurism, the community “lobster
supper” of the Maritimes and “fall supper” or “fowl supper”
of the West, which prove that no matter what we call the meal, we are
united in our belief that the object is to stuff ourselves with as
much food as possible.
Speaking of that pre-eminent Prairie poultry
pigout, people sometimes ask me which is “correct”: fall or fowl?
Both are correct, and both are appropriate, since these events happen
in the autumn and turkey is usually the pièce de résistance.
For some, especially older Canadians or
those from rural areas, the midday meal is always “dinner” and
the evening meal always “supper”. But then, just to confuse
matters further, “lunch” may mean a late evening snack, or indeed
afternoon refreshments. I have fond memories of my great-aunts in
southwestern Manitoba offering a “lunch” (at what I would call
teatime), said “lunch” turning out to be an enormous repast
featuring the best farmwife's home baking and preserving.
There is even a uniquely Canadian idiom
involving dinner: “done like dinner”, meaning “completely
defeated or over with”. Oddly, the Australians have a similar, but
not identical, expression, “done like a dinner”, which to them
means “outwitted”.
As for those Ontarian and
Saskatchewanian lovebirds, well, in spite of the rocky start to their
romance, they've been together for many years, but they keep their
“mixed marriage” on an even keel only by agreeing to use “supper”
for meals at home and “dinner” for meals out. A typically
Canadian compromise, thankfully; what a shame it would have been for
their relationship to be done like ... lunch?
What do you call your midday, evening, and festive meals? Let me know in the comments (along with some info about where you are from, age, urban/rural, whatever you think pertinent)!
What do you call your midday, evening, and festive meals? Let me know in the comments (along with some info about where you are from, age, urban/rural, whatever you think pertinent)!
