Hall of Fame
Helen Gagen Magee
by Helen Hatton
A well written biography of Helen Gagen would quickly and easily become a best-seller. Many of us know Helen as the back bone of the late and lamented food pages in the Globe and Mail, but this fascinating woman’s professional history also includes consumer service, advertising and public relations, product testing, recipe development, food photography and food for television commercials, directing theatre cooking schools, radio and television appearances, national recipe contests, and educational programs for schools.
And somewhere in between all this, Helen met and socialized with celebrities, including George Burns, Gracie Allen and John F. Kennedy.
Helen says, “When I joined the work force back in 1931, Canadian food writing as we now know it was - if not in its infancy – certainly in its early childhood.”
To quote Helen, “By the calendar, it has been 58 years since I first put pencil to paper in the cause of food. With time out for two other job, it’s more like 52 years that my working days (and nights) have in some way been involved with writing about food.”
After graduation from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in Home Economics and a dietetic internship in New York City, Helen worked that summer at Muskoka Inn, and considered permanent employment. She was dissatisfied with the available jobs, so signed up for a teaching course at the Ontario College of Education. Halfway through the year, she answered an advertisement asking rather vaguely for “someone interested in food and recipes.” Helen was given a part-time job with Katherine Caldwell Bayley who was in the process of expanding her food writing career. Bayley and her husband, a former food broker, operated what Helen calls a “nine-ring circus” in the Home Service Bureau at 48 Roselawn Avenue in Toronto. Mrs. Bayley was a marvellous teacher and a stickler for accuracy. “I’d rather publish a chemical formula that would blow up, than a recipe that doesn’t work”, she once warned Helen.
At the Bayleys', the basic ongoing projects included the monthly food pages for the Canadian Home Journal, later absorbed by Chatelaine, a 12 to 14 page monthly supplement mailed to some 4,000 Journal readers; acting as the food department for the Toronto Mail and Empire (subsequently the Globe and Mail) which included editorial half-pages five days a week, and a full page Friday; also a daily half-hour “Cooking School of the Air” over radio station CFRB; and staffing and supervision of food booths for the Canadian National Exhibition and smaller fall fairs.
As Anna Lee Scott, the corporate food personality for Maple Leaf Milling said, Helen and the Bayleys were responsible for all Home Economics activities of the company. Included were recipe development, product testing, production of cookbooks and cooking lesson series, and copy for Maple Leaf Mills consumer products’ packages.
One of the Bayleys’ big projects in the ‘30s was a month-long Jewel Shortening recipe contest for Swift Canada. This was running concurrently with all the other activities, and involved hiring an additional 15 Home Economists and staff to get through the mountains of recipes. In the contest, prizes were awarded daily in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. After sorting and discarding “impossible” recipes, Helen tasted every recipe that seemed to hold promise, and later commented that she was not surprised to find she had developed “dietary jaundice”.
The ongoing, everyday work included production, testing and writing of recipes and related copy for General Foods, Neilson’s, Borden’s, Ingersoll Cheese, Moffat and Frigidaire. It was under Mrs. Bayley’s tutelage for these accounts that Helen felt that she began to be a journalist.
Reams of food copy for the Mail and Empire were required, and Helen and a secretary, Soozie, became responsible for supplying material quickly. Helen says that “guiltless of typing”, she would dictate to Soozie’s machine. Soozie would combine monitoring with her typing, stopping to ask “Pinch the salt?” or “When does the milk go in?” Copy would go down to the paper in batches, says Helen, and when the pile ran low, Mr. Bayley would appear at their office door to announce “Bessie (the Women’s Editor) is hungry!”, and Helen says that she and Soozie would go into their act and grind out another thick stack of food copy for the paper.
Helen was also involved in food photography for the Bayleys’ clients. One memory included the first venture into colour – a wedding table. The pictures were taken at Rapid Grip and Batten. The setup and photos took from 10am to 4pm to arrange and shoot with the four primary colours taken out separately. Helen says that the minute the camera clicked for the last time, Mr. Bayley, with only an impression on the ground glass of what had been snapped, got on a train for Rochester where Kodak processed the films.
Once Helen was in the process of developing recipes for a Maple Leaf cake flour package. Summer holiday time arrived at the Bayleys, yet Helen was still not satisfied with the recipes chosen. By using her own day one hot July day, she opened the kitchens, and by herself, did 17 tests on cakes for the package. While Helen swears that was not typical at the Home Service Bureau, it sounds typical of Helen! For all this, Helen received $90 a month!
A period in an advertising agency during the forties and early fifties might not seem like a time for food writing, but for Helen, a brief spell at Spitzer and Mills, and a longer one at Baker Advertising, meant mostly writing about foods and a little about utilities.
At Baker Advertising, Helen worked on the General Food account – a fraction of what it is today, but still included the Jell-O family, Swan’s Down cake flour, Calumet baking powder and the Baker’s chocolate group. Helen was also involved with Carnation evaporated milk, Frigidaire and Tea Council accounts, and planned menus for a popular beer brewer.
Helen stated that few agencies at the time hired Home Economists, and when they did, the job involved not only Home Service consulting, but in the case of Baker Advertising, food photography, as well as writing print and radio advertising, copy policies and publicity.
While she was in advertising, Helen began writing for Canadian Home Journal under the alias of Joan Phillips. There were articles on such things as “How Sugar Becomes Fat”, “Vitamin A and Healthy Eyes”, “The Bride Plans Healthful Meals”, and an article on weight control with accompanying menus and calorie guide. Remember, this was in the 1940’s, not the 1980’s!
And somewhere, she found time to write and produce a cookbook for the war effort, "Eat To Work To Win”.
A few highlights of this period (the 40’s and 50’s) Helen says, included a proliferation of convenience products such as lemon and chocolate pie fillings, early cake mixes and frozen food. Instant rice appeared, and Helen says merchandisers in Canada didn’t know whether to fit it into a main course or dessert context!
There was a post-war beginning of interest in ethnic food and, in spite of the proliferation and popularity of these “new” foods on Canadian tables, a bid to promote quiche to readers of Carnation evaporated milk ads fell flat on its face!
Jellied desserts and salads became increasingly popular as food extenders during the war, and specialty recipes followed. Sweets continued to be a standard part of both home and restaurant menus.
The highlight of Helen’s career was the nine years on the Telegram. She wrote five columns a week plus a big Wednesday food section. There were also “food event” stories and interviews with celebrities. Helen says it is fortunate that the newspaper writers’ guild never heard of the overtime she put in. Selecting or devising and testing recipes, writing and checking all copy, doing interviews and taking care of consumer questions took considerably more than a basic week’s time, as every food writer knows!
Helen can remember only one major blooper. Somehow a recipe slipped by which called for 3Ž4 cup salt, instead of 3Ž4 teaspoon. “I’ve always said that I had no ambition for wealth or fame, but only to be able to manage my affairs well enough to stay out of jail. If anybody had tried that recipe and died of a heart attack, I might have been there still” she says. In spite of this schedule at the Telegram, Helen was able to write a complete wedding etiquette book in three and a half weeks!
Somehow, in this frenetic life, she found time to marry Ralph Magee, fellow reporter on the Telegram. Enlightenment had not quite arrived in the newsroom, and staffers were not encouraged to be married to one another. However, they managed to keep the marriage a secret for more than six months.
After the Telegram collapsed in 1971, Helen joined the PR firm of Investor Relations, and worked on the Weight Watchers account, including editing of Adelaide Daniels’ “Weight Watching Cookery”. She then became consumer advisor for Miracle Food Mart Supermarkets in Ontario.
Helen pointed out that food trends at this time included an increased interest in unusual main courses (particularly ethnic ones), less regular menu inclusion of desserts with an overall reduction in sweet foods, and more use of a widening variety of fruit, vegetables, seafood and salads.
In 1976, at the request of the advertising department of the Globe and Mail, Helen started the “Shopping Basket”. She wrote and produced articles until the section was discontinued in December of 1987.
There’s still more. An anecdote/cookbook entitled “99 Years of Food Writing, Or Did It Just Seem That Way” is being considered. I know I’ll be the first in line to buy a copy.
What a remarkable person is our Helen Gagen! Helen, to you we offer our sincere congratulations on being the first member of the Ontario HEIB Hall of Fame!