The first cook outside my own family that I can remember was Julia Child.

Which still seems like a slightly strange sentence.

I was a kid whose priorities consisted mostly of street hockey, hockey cards and figuring out how long I could avoid going to bed. My heroes wore skates, not aprons.

Yet somehow, I would come inside, flop onto the couch and happily watch a six foot two woman explain how to make boeuf bourguignon.

Growing up in Ottawa, America arrived through WNPE and WNPI in Watertown, New York. Those PBS stations were my window into the United States. PBS felt less like television and more like a very well funded public library that had somehow acquired cameras.

Julia Child. This Old House. Sesame Street, which played a real role in helping me learn English. The Electric Company. The Victory Garden. And the occasional documentary about JFK, which somehow sparked my next obsession.

Looking back, it was quite an education.

I don’t remember exactly what drew me to Julia.

Maybe it was because she looked like an actual person.

She wasn’t polished. She wasn’t trying to sell me a lifestyle. Nobody had arranged the perfect kitchen counter before filming started. She had that unforgettable voice, laughed at herself, occasionally dropped things and somehow managed to sound brilliant without making everyone else feel like they didn’t belong.

Long before authenticity became something people talked about in food, Julia simply lived it.

She made mistakes.

She left them in.

Julia just picked up whatever she dropped and kept cooking.

Imagine that.

The funny thing is that Julia never felt completely unfamiliar to me.

Looking back, I think I understand why.

I had already grown up around many of the same ideas.

My earliest food memories belong to my mother.

She cooked for everyone. Family. Friends. Neighbours. Anyone who happened to walk through our front door around dinnertime. There was always room for one more at the table.

The kitchen was the centre of our home, and my mother was the gravitational force that kept everyone orbiting around it.

We are French Canadian, and a lot of what came out of that kitchen carried a certain quiet confidence. Nothing theatrical. Nothing designed to impress anyone. Just food made for people you cared about.

My mother never had formal culinary training. She didn’t go to cooking school or spend years learning techniques from chefs.

What she had was confidence.

She was willing to try things. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn’t. That was part of the fun.

She trusted her instincts. She knew what tasted good. More importantly, she knew what would make people happy.

The food was never really the point.

The point was the people around the table.

Food was love.

Food was togetherness.

Looking back, I think that is why Julia felt so familiar.

She wasn’t distant. She was a louder, more televised version of the kind of cooking I had grown up around.

She wasn’t performing.

She was teaching.

She was showing people that good food did not have to be intimidating. It just had to bring people together.

Even if some recipes required enough butter to make a modern nutritionist quietly leave the room.

Julia showed people that cooking was not about perfection. It was about curiosity, trying things and learning as you went.

That message stayed with me.

Over the years, my shelves have filled with Julia’s books, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The Way to Cook to Baking with Julia and My Life in France.

I recently added another book to the collection: Julia Child’s Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space.

And I have to admit, I have a kitchen dream.

One day, I would love to create my own version of Julia’s kitchen.

Not because it is trendy.

Quite the opposite.

I have never understood the appeal of kitchens that look like nobody has ever cooked in them. I understand why people love them. They are beautiful. They are clean. They photograph beautifully.

They just aren’t for me.

I like a kitchen where everything is ready.

Pots where you need them. Tools within reach. Ingredients nearby. A space that looks like something is about to happen.

That is something Julia showed beautifully.

A kitchen is not a showroom.

It is a workshop.

It is where things happen.

It is probably one of the reasons Boston became my favourite American city.

To me, Julia is as much a part of Boston as Fenway Park or the Freedom Trail.

Every visit includes a stop at 103 Irving Street in Cambridge, where she lived from 1961 until 2001.

The famous kitchen is gone.

The television lights are gone.

I know perfectly well it is just a house.

I also know I slow down every time I walk past it.

Call it sentimental.

I’ve been called worse.

From there, I usually make the short walk to Savenor’s on Kirkland Street, the butcher where Julia shopped. Outside the front door, her initials, “JC,” are still signed into the concrete, a small reminder that Julia once walked through that same entrance.

I like to imagine her still stopping by, asking questions, discovering ingredients and planning her next meal. It feels like exactly the kind of place where Julia’s curiosity and love of cooking would still fit perfectly.

Years later, Julie & Julia brought Julia back into my life in a way I wasn’t expecting.

Then HBO’s Julia reminded me all over again why I loved her.

Her books do the same thing.

Every time I open one, I can hear that voice again.

The recipes matter, but the person behind them is what keeps bringing me back.

She has been gone for more than twenty years.

And yet she still feels strangely present.

I sometimes think about how funny it is that a woman from California who became famous for teaching French cooking on American television could have such an impact on a kid growing up in Ottawa.

I wonder what she would think of that.

If Julia were around today, I have this fantasy that I would spend an afternoon walking through a market with her.

I would introduce her to new ingredients, new foods and new ways of doing things. I would love to watch her curiosity take over and hear what she thought of everything from unfamiliar ingredients to something as wonderfully ordinary as the air fryer.

I suspect she would have been fascinated.

Looking at everything Julia shared with the world, one thing stands out: she remained endlessly curious.

She never stopped learning.

Maybe that is why she still has such an impact, even on someone who discovered her through PBS as a kid decades ago.

Today would have been Julia Child’s 114th birthday.

Happy birthday, Julia.

Thank you for proving that cooking does not need to be intimidating, mistakes are part of the process, butter is rarely the wrong answer and the best meals are the ones shared with people you love.

It is still a little strange that someone I never met could have such an influence on my life.

But I am very glad she did.

You still feel like home.