A four-foot wide pan for bannock made its debut at the 15th annual Community Spring Feast, held in Red Deer on June 3, 2023. (rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

"You live here, I live here..."

Four-foot wide bannock pan at Community Feast speaks to sharing among community

Jun 8, 2023 | 7:00 PM

Red Deer’s Theresa ‘Corky’ Larsen Jonasson has visited the mostly Ojibwe-Cree fly-in community of St. Theresa Point First Nation in Manitoba several times since 2006; and if nothing else, there’s been one constant at their ceremonies and feasts: a four-foot wide pan for making bannock.

Larsen Jonasson thought quite highly of that innovation, and wanted to make it happen for Red Deer.

So she did, commissioning one alongside her fellow Red Feather Women members. It made its inaugural batch of bannock on June 3 at the 15th annual Community Spring Feast, held at Fort Normandeau.

READ MORE: Community Spring Feast to welcome all June 3 in Red Deer

“At St. Theresa’s spring and winter celebrations, there was always one big bannock and one big pot of tea, and everyone in the community would come by, break off a chunk and have a cup. It was all shared, and it was fun and fed a lot of people. Lots of good visiting happens over tea and bannock in the Indigenous and Métis ways of knowing. Now we can use our pan at the spring feast, on Canada Day, on National Indigenous Peoples Day, or any other time,” she says.

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“I had called at some point to talk to a few people at St. Theresa, first to say that I liked their big bannock pan, but also to tell them I wanted to do it here. I even said I’d go one inch smaller so they could still say theirs was Canada’s largest, but they said, ‘No no, go ahead.'”

Tasked with actually crafting what Larsen Jonasson calls an “engineering marvel” was Lyle Keewatin Richards, who lives in Red Deer and is known for his leadership with the Remembering the Children Society.

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(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

“I’m an old welder, but when they told me they wanted a four-foot pan, I asked if they were kidding. They weren’t so I said I’d see what I could do. I went down to McLevin Industries where they have a laser cutter, they made me a four-foot circle and a band which I ended up tacking on. The trick to welding properly is doing it so that the piece doesn’t warp. This pan is one-quarter inch plate and 160 pounds,” says Richards.

“There are four feet on the bottom so it doesn’t get scraped up on the bed of a truck during transport, and the four handles are designed to fit 2x4s through them for carrying.”

Richards has become the local Indigenous community’s go-to tradesman, he says, be it for scrapers, frying pans or hides, among other things.

“They tell me what they need and I see if I can build it. Everybody serves their community in whatever way they can. As far as my contributions, this is it, and I find it really fulfilling.”

Interestingly, bannock isn’t an Indigenous invention, which seems to be most people’s belief, Larsen Jonasson points out.

Although bannock has many variations, she notes its roots are in Scotland.

When settlers and colonization occurred, she explains, Indigenous people began adapting certain foods. In times of starvation, she says, bannock was a simple go-to because rations provided by settlers always included flour.

According to The Canadian Encyclopedia₁, bannock is also a reminder that the adapting was not an option because Indigenous people were forced off their traditional territories to places where they could no longer hunt.

It now goes by many names depending on which First Nation you’re visiting, but every community has its “primo” bannock-maker, says Larsen Jonasson.

“We’re still figuring out the right temperature with our pan, but it was fun, and tasted and smelled so good,” she says. “The pan is like the feast itself; it’s about community and taking care of it, as well as building relationships. You live here, I live here, let’s share these things and talk.”