Poutine festival's French fried humour

I've also seen a chip stand called "Lord of the Fries" near Guelph. The band The Tragically Hip was formed in Kingston, Ontario.

Poutine Festival, Cornwall, Ontario

Poutine is a relatively new snack food. It's difficult to track its origin, since the word in French can mean different things. Chip stands and wagons have been ubiquitous in Quebec, as have cheese curds but when and where they were put together with gravy is not certain.  Poutine probably derives from 'pudding', and can mean something that's thrown together, a mess, or trouble. Poutine Acadienne or Poutine râpée is a potato dumpling (or just grated potatoes on a plate with the filling), and in the St. Maurice valley region of central Quebec there is a pastry flour dumpling with the same name. The curds. fries and gravy form seemed to have developed in the 50s in either Warwick, Princeville or Drummondville, Quebec. It didn't come to Montreal until 1983 and I first saw it in Lancaster, Ontario, near the provincial border, in 1985, and I tracked its westward march. By 1990 it was in Toronto and on the menu at fast food chains like McDonalds. In the 80s it was an object of ridicule in Montreal, particularly in the humour magazine CROC, and if I mentioned poutine in western Quebec, people would ask me if I meant Poutine Acadienne, because they found the cheese curds, fries and gravy variety disgusting. When I lived in Lowertown, Quebec City there was a snack bar near me that had a sign that claimed they were the first in Quebec City to serve it, but said the owner had gotten the idea from New Brunswick. As I recall, 'hot chicken' (called that in French) sauce, which is made by the St-Hubert restaurant chain, was the usual gravy.

Cheese, chips and gravy is popular in the north of England and the Isle of Man - one source says that they've been doing it since the 1920s  . A lot of Canadians were stationed in the UK during the war, waiting for a German invasion that never came, so who knows, maybe someone in Warwick, Quebec wanted to recreate what he had experienced in England. The big difference is that poutine is done with white Cheddar cheese - sometimes called simply 'fromage Canadien' - curds.

It is pronounced 'poo-tin' in English like in French, at least as far west as Brockville, Ontario, where they will correct you if you say it  'poo-teen', but a lot of people in Toronto say it 'poo-teen'.  I don't know where the isogloss, the line that separates the two pronunciations,  is. Ryan Gosling grew up in Cornwall so he says 'poo-tin', and he fronts the 't' sound so much it becomes an affricate consonant .⟨t͡s⟩, which is common in Canadian French -   His parents are from London, Ontario of partial French-Canadian background, but he doesn't speak much French.

Poutine is also the spelling of Vladimir Putin's name in French. When I saw him called "Le Roi Poutine" (King Putin) on the cover of a French magazine, I thought they were talking about a new fast food chain!

 

Poutine...