Cree patient revealed hospital food reminded him of residential school, so the MUHC started baking bannock

It was late September, 2021, when Dr. Marie-Josée Brouillette says she first consulted with a patient who would go on to be the driving force for a new menu item at the McGill University Health Centre.

George Matches, 69, was a Cree man from Chisasibi who was in hospital for cancer surgery but he was refusing to eat — making his surgical team concerned for his recovery.

"We would ask, well, what would you like to eat? And he wouldn't answer that question. The conversation was not going anywhere," said Brouillette.

It was only when Matches was about to be discharged that he opened up to Megan Kouri, one of the medical students on Brouillette's rotation.

"He told Megan, 'do you want to know why I'm not eating?... The food here reminds me of the food in residential school,'" recalled Brouillette.

"Our jaws dropped.… We didn't know that our food could be so triggering for some First Nations patients. So here we are pressuring him to eat, to eat a food that he doesn't like and that reminds him of a trauma. [That] was not on our radar at all."

Brouillette says she thanked Matches for sharing and promised him the hospital would make a change. Within a year, the MUHC announced it was offering bannock, a traditional flat quick bread, to Inuit and First Nations patients at the hospital.

Food carries meaning

Treena Wasonti:io Delormier, the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Food Sovereignty at McGill University, says this new menu item is a step in the right direction.

Delormier, who is Kanien'kehá:ka from Kahnawake, notes that First Nations and Inuit can experience "offensive" treatment in hospitals.

"I think it's hopeful that things are changing and that cultural safety is something that we see evidence of in health-care settings," said Delormier.

Having worked as a clinical dietitian in Indigenous communities, she says she met people who, like Matches, refused to eat food they associated with residential schools.

"I experienced somebody telling me that they don't eat oatmeal or porridge because that's what they ate every day in residential school and they would never eat it again in their life," said Delormier, whose father attended residential schools when he was a teenager.

"Imagine not having your food, not being able to eat enough food, being severely lonely, being kept in an abusive environment and you don't even have the comfort of food. (It's) probably the root of a lot of difficult issues for people who survive residential school and their relationships with food… We need to be aware that food is not just nutrients, that food carries meanings."

The link between Indigenous peoples and food is "sacred," says Alex McComber, an assistant professor of family medicine at McGill who is also involved with the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project.

"When you're coming from an Indigenous perspective especially, you know it's part of our ceremony, our culture, our ways," said McComber, who is Kanien'kehá:ka.

"When we have to go to stressful situations such as a hospital stay, to be able to have food that … makes us feel good, that reminds us of home, that shows that the institution is thinking about me and is considerate of me, those are the kind of things that I think go a long way."

Finding the right recipe

Not long after Matches shared his perspective on the hospital food, food services got involved.

Maryse Fournier, an employee of Sodexo and the manager of food services at the Glen site, enlisted the help of a masters student and First Nations and Inuit patients to help taste-test the recipes they gathered from the internet and through contacts of MUHC Indigenous interpreters.

"They liked all the recipes that we tested, so that was really fun. Really good to know that we hadn't messed up seriously," said Fournier.

"But they really said that the recipe that we chose was the closest to what their mother would prepare when they were young, so they were really, really happy that we could achieve this result. It really was the comfort food that they were looking for."

The ingredients in the winning recipe include flour, water, baking soda and oil, says Fournier.

"That's it. So we just mix everything together and then, just like pizza, we let it rise. And then we put it in a pan. So the bannock it's a flatbread, right, it's not a big bread. So we spread it in a pan, we let it rise a little bit again, and then we cook it in the oven."

'Positive reaction' from patient's family

Dinah Matches, one of George Matches's four daughters, says her father, who was an employee of the Cree school board for 35 years, was a wonderful husband and father.

"My dad was everything to me. He would do anything to give me (something) as a kid," she said.

Her mother died of a stroke in 2013 and her father was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2018. He was treated for the cancer until October of 2021 when he opted to stay home with his family. He died in January at the age of 69.

"He really missed eating traditional food while he was in Montreal, like bear, goose, caribou or fish," Matches's daughter said. "He really loved fish."

Eating traditional food was important to him, especially after being forced to attend St. Philip's residential school in Fort George, Que.

"He was always forced to eat even the food he didn't like. If he didn't listen or eat he would get hit by a ruler. He remembers that he would eat pea soup almost every day. He didn't really like pea soup," said Dinah. 

It's part of what made hearing about this new menu item at the MUHC so special, said Dinah, "it really touched me."

Brouillette told the Matches family that George made a difference for a lot of people by sharing the information with hospital staff.

"It's thanks to your dad, who was kind enough and trusting enough to let us know what was happening."