[imagesource:wonder]

Pizza has been part of our lives for so long that it’s hard to imagine a time when the round shape of happiness wasn’t around. A video has now resurfaced that shows a cooking segment filmed in 1957 for a Canadian TV pilot in which a young lady tells viewers all about a “popular Italian dish” known as “pizza pie.”

The young lady in the video is Kathy Brady, who has now found fame, at the age of ninety-four, for introducing Canada to one of the world’s favourite dishes.

Brady learned about the re-emergence of the video through her daughter-in-law Debbie Butt, who spotted the black-and-white footage on her social media stream.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s my mother-in-law,'” she recalled.

Butt shared it on social media and began receiving questions about Brady and the story behind the video. “It was super fun,” she says. “Grandma comes over every Sunday night for dinner, so I couldn’t wait to tell her.”

In the clip, the young Kathy proclaims “Pizza pie is becoming very popular, especially in the States, There are some restaurants that even specialize in it. These are called pizzerias. Saturday night as you drive down, you can see cars lined up for miles waiting for their pizza.”

Brady qualified as a dietitian in 1954 and one of her teachers recommended her for a TV pilot with CBC. She however claims that she came up with the idea for making pizza.

“Pizza was just sort of coming to the fore when I was going to university,” she says. “People were talking about it and planning to make it at home because it wasn’t available in a store or restaurant.” As a result, I simply thought it was extremely unique and would make an intriguing topic.”

Her 1957 pizza recipe was made with a base of “a biscuit or a yeast dough,” which was topped with tangy tomato sauce, oregano, and “nippy cheese,” which Brady describes as “a strong cheddar.”

Brady went on to have a 30-year career as a nutritionist, largely in hospitals and through her own private practice after her brief TV appearance. Watch the segment below.

Pizza was of course around way before the Canadians discovered it, but over the years there have been many pizza pioneers like Kathy. Our local pioneers Butler’s Pizza is still carrying on the story of deliciousness that folks like Kathy have been promoting since 1954.

Here to another generation of pizza pie.

[source:cbc]