Talk:May West

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Food and Drink task list:

To edit this page, select here

Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink:

Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Agaricus bisporus (i.e. mushroom), Beef, Bread, Curry, Drink, Food, Ham and eggs, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yogurt
Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Beer, French cuisine, Sugar
Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Apple, Burger King, Fish
Participate in project-related deletion discussions.
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review WP:Trivia and WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, select here.
Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested images of food
Consider joining this project's Assessment task force. List any project ideas in this section

Note: These lists are transcluded from the project's tasks pages.

Brands

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Brands, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of brands on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BrandsWikipedia:WikiProject BrandsTemplate:WikiProject BrandsBrands articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Canada: Quebec Low‑importance

	Canada portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Canada on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CanadaWikipedia:WikiProject CanadaTemplate:WikiProject CanadaCanada-related articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Quebec.

This article is written in Canadian English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, centre, travelled, realize, analyze) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Untitled

I added several informations about this cake that come from the family of René Brousseau, the inventor of the May West (called Mae West at the time). While I am still looking to find other sources to corroborate these information, I would like for the information to be left on the page. Mr. Brousseau is still alive today, but he is in fact quite sick and may not be long for this world. Out of respect for the man, and in recognition of his contribution to the Junk Food heritage of Quebec, I request that the info be kept until I can find other sources (and possibly more information).Archiesteel 01:48, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- All right, it seems the media did pick up on René Brousseau's death, and so I was able to add sources. Archiesteel 23:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unresolved inconsistencies

There are problems with the dating found in the cited sources (Vachon web site, Brousseau obituary).

First about the date of invention. René Brousseau's version says he invented the Mae West during the Second World War. A plausible date would be 1942, but not 1932 (as quoted by Vachon). A WW2-era date seems more likely from a cultural point of view: the influence of the Mae West life-preserver, and the lesser likelihood of such a product being introduced at the nadir of the Great Depression.
Second problem is about the change in spelling. There exist newspaper advertisements from the 1970s with photographs of the Stuart box with the May West spelling.

A further difficulty stems from the corporate history. Vaillancourt was purchased by Vachon in 1972. Stuart was purchased by Weston at some point, then sold by Weston to Vachon in 1979. It seems plausible that Montreal-based Stuart may have made the cakes under license in the Montreal area, while Quebec-based Vaillancourt distributed them around Quebec City. In any case Vachon would have been involved with them prior to the Stuart acquisition.

Since Wikipedia is not a place for original research, and moreover the research is incomplete, we are left with an unsatisfactory story awaiting further work. — Justinbb (talk) 05:37, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New information

Advertisements for the radio program Nazaire et Barnabé published in the newspaper L'avenir du Nord in August 1939 (available at banq.qc.ca) make reference to the May West by Stuart. So it was already around in the 1930s after all. Was the Stuart version the same as the Vaillancourt version, or are these two separate snacks that later became confused or merged? — Justinbb (talk) 03:37, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

May West cake package.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]