Indigenous business owner expanding restaurant to YVR

An Indigenous and woman-owned restaurant is fundraising, hoping to open a spot YVR after successfully expanding into charity work, providing meals to shelters. Crystal Laderas reports.

By Crystal Laderas

Posted September 28, 2022 6:37 pm.

Last Updated September 28, 2022 6:52 pm.

Salt, baking powder and flour.

Ida Baker is masterfully massaging these simple ingredients together at Salmon n’ Bannock’s kitchen, with a technique she’s been using for 53 years.

“Nobody makes bannock like me here because I do old ways,” Baker says. “You have to perfect it. Everybody knows this recipe but it’s the way you handle the dough. My mom would say ‘don’t make bread when you’re angry.’”

It’s dishes like this, passed down through generations, that the small bistro on West Broadway hopes will take off when a second location opens in Vancouver International Airport (YVR.)

Owner and recently-retired flight attendant, Inez Cook, launched a fundraiser campaign earlier this year to open Salmon n’ Bannock On The Fly at YVR and provide meals to shelters on the Downtown Eastside.

“We can raise money, I can help pay for training these employees and once we get YVR open, we can take it and pay it forward and send out meals to shelters again,” Cook said in an interview with CityNews.

The restaurant started making meals for shelters during the pandemic through a national initiative that helped Indigenous businesses stay afloat when COVID-19 restrictions forced them to close.

“We’ve heard some really amazing feedback,” Cook says. “People that have maybe lost their [way] or have had maybe a difficult set of cards given to them for their life, and having some flavours, bringing them right back to good memories. Food is healing, food is medicine.”

Donating to the campaign is a tangible way to take action on reconciliation, Cook points out. As a baby, the Nuxalk Nation member was taken from her family during the Sixties Scoop. From 1951 to 1984 an estimated 20,000 or more First Nations, Metis and Inuit babies and children were taken from their families by child welfare staff. They were put up for adoption or placed in foster care, away from their culture and traditions.

“I’ve lived all over the world and I’ve got a pretty bangin’ pallet, and one of my dreams was to take people on a journey through food,” says Cook, who travelled the world during her 33-year career with Air Canada. “I’m learning about my own culture, my own heritage, and taking this journey about my Indigenous heritage. And it’s really changed my life.”

Cook hopes to open Salmon n’ Bannock On The Fly this fall, before what’s expected to be the busiest travel season in years.

“[At] International departures, most of the guests have three hours before their flight; it’s the perfect audience. They can sit down, have a nice glass of wine, a nice decent meal before their flight,” Cook explains.

For now, staff are busy baking in the kitchen and are slammed with orders as Canada prepares to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Orders for bannock are backed up until mid-October.

“We’re grateful for that, but we’re here 11 other months, and for active reconciliation and ‘reconciliACTION,’ it’s important to understand that and not tokenize us two days out of the year, September 30th and June 21st. To understand what reconciliation and ‘reconciliACTION’ actually means, and how you can make a difference.”