There was a time, not so long ago, when the world seemed not so known as we know it now, with all its grim, clean certainties. I could say there was a time when magic was afoot, but to a child growing up in the 1950s in an isolated pulp and paper town on the north shore of Lake Superior, there was no such thing as magic. In a house without television or books or magazines to tell a child that there are wonders, I woke every morning to the world as the world must be—though that world would sometimes cast a sidelong glance.

I loved my mother’s cooking, probably because I had nothing to compare it to. For a time, our groceries came from Port Arthur, a city some 250 miles away. Pasta (we didn’t call it that) came in a can, as did my mom’s few attempts at something exotic, like asparagus or peas. There was always meat, except on Fridays. Most vegetables were of the kind that stored well. In the fall, when she put up green tomato chow and other preserves, the kitchen came alive with the smells of vinegar and spices. I loved pumpkin preserves best of all—little gold nuggets floating in a sugar syrup redolent of cloves.

I see now that one thing I loved about my mother’s cooking was its predictability, though the rituals it inspired were anything but. Food, perhaps because it was scarce and unvarying, always seemed to tremble with the potential for good or ill. Even in her old age, she could not add cucumber to a salad without first neutralizing its “poison” in a way she had learned from her mother: you cut about an inch off the end, rubbed that piece vigorously against the other cut edge until a milky liquid—the poison—appeared, then you threw out the small, now noxious piece to render the rest of the cucumber safe to eat. My mother had grown up poor in New Brunswick, at a time when a visit to the doctor cost money. So tonics, too, came from the pantry—a particularly vile concoction could be created by boiling various foodstuffs with a handful of rusty nails. “It will make you strong,” she’d say as we choked it down.

As a boy, I was plagued by warts. My fingers were covered with them, to the extent that it was difficult to make a fist. My grandmother advised tying pieces of thread to my fingers. That didn’t work. I was taken to the doctor—I believe he used acid to burn them off. But they always came back.

My mother called me into the kitchen one summer afternoon. I was 10 years old, an obedient, dreamy child who spent whole days roaming the bush with other boys. She took a raw pork chop out of the fridge and cut off a small piece of fat. “We’re going outside,” she said. We went out into the backyard, with its small patch of grass, with its garden that produced only potatoes and carrots with any success. “Gerry,” she said, “rub the fat on your warts. When you’re finished, bury it, but don’t tell me where. When the fat rots, your warts will be gone.” Within a few weeks, my warts had vanished. I was happy, not surprised.