A timely and relevant collection of stories about groundbreaking Canadian women, present and past. Canadian women have long been trailblazers, often battling incredible odds and discrimination in the process. Here are biographies of more than one hundred of these remarkable women, from the famous to the lesser known. There are activists and architects, engineers and explorers, poets and politicians and so many more. Each category pairs a historical groundbreaker with a present-day woman making her mark in that same field. Together, these women tell the story of Canada. And together, they offer a vision of what’s possible. A unique look at Canadian history sure to inspire all children to blaze trails of their own.
Canadian Women in Print, 1750—1918 is the first historical examination of women’s engagement with multiple aspects of print over some two hundred years, from the settlers who wrote diaries and letters to the New Women who argued for ballots and equal rights. Considering women’s published writing as an intervention in the public sphere of national and material print culture, this book uses approaches from book history to address the working and living conditions of women who wrote in many genres and for many reasons. This study situates English Canadian authors within an extensive framework that includes francophone writers as well as women’s work as compositors, bookbinders, and interveners in public access to print. Literary authorship is shown to be one point on a spectrum that ranges from missionary writing, temperance advocacy, and educational texts to journalism and travel accounts by New Woman adventurers. Familiar figures such as Susanna Moodie, L.M. Montgomery, Nellie McClung, Pauline Johnson, and Sara Jeannette Duncan are contextualized by writers whose names are less well known (such as Madge Macbeth and Agnes Laut) and by many others whose writings and biographies have vanished into the recesses of history. Readers will learn of the surprising range of writing and publishing performed by early Canadian women under various ideological, biographical, and cultural motivations and circumstances. Some expressed reluctance while others eagerly sought literary careers. Together they did much more to shape Canada’s cultural history than has heretofore been recognized.
Where are the women in Canada’s international history? Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds answers this question in a comprehensive volume that explores the role of women in Canadian international affairs. Foreign policy historians have traditionally focused on powerful men. Though hidden, forgotten, or ignored, this book shows that women have also shaped Canada’s relations with the world over the past century – whether as activists, missionaries, aid workers, diplomats or diplomatic spouses. Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds examines the lives and careers of professional women working abroad as doctors, nurses, or economic development advisors; women fighting for change as anti-war, anti-nuclear, or Indigenous rights activists; and women engaged in traditional diplomacy. This wide-ranging collection reveals the vital contribution of women to the search for global order that has been a hallmark of Canada’s international history.
In this edited collection, Leslie Nichols weaves together the contributions of accomplished and diverse scholars to offer an expansive and critical analysis of women’s work in Canada. Students will use an intersectional approach to explore issues of gender, class, race, immigrant status, disability, sexual orientation, Indigeneity, age, and ethnicity in relation to employment. Drawing from case studies and extensive research, the text’s eighteen chapters consider Canadian industries across a broad spectrum, including political, academic, sport, sex trade, retail, and entrepreneurial work. Working Women in Canada is a relevant and in-depth look into the past, present, and future of women’s responsibilities and professions in Canada. Undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies, labour studies, and sociology courses will benefit from this thorough and intersectional approach to the study of women’s labour.
This collection of essays explores how women from a variety of religious and cultural communities have contributed to the richly textured, pluralistic society of Canada. Focusing on women’s religiosity, it examines the ways in which they have carried and conserved, and brought forward and transformed their cultures—old and new—in modern Canada. Each essay explores the ways in which the religiosities of women serve as locations for both the assertion and the refashioning of individual and communal identity in transcultural contexts. Three shared assumptions guide these essays: religion plays a dynamic role in the shaping and reshaping of social cultures; women are active participants in their transmission and their transformation; and a focus on women's activities within their religious traditions—often informal and unofficial—provides new perspectives on the intersection of religion, gender, and transnationalism. Since the first European migrations, Canada has been shaped by immigrant communities as they negotiated the tension between preserving their religious and cultural traditions and embracing the new opportunities in their adopted homeland. Viewing those interactions through the lens of women’s religiosity, the essays in this collection model an innovative approach and provide new perspectives for students and researchers of Canadian Studies, Religious Studies, and Women’s Studies.
"Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes and theoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women's history over the past thirty years. Approaching her subject matter from an array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender, class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the lived experience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In so doing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debate among feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of women's history in Canada."--Pub. desc.
This book charts the significant changes in contemporary Canada's literary profile since the mid-1990s, within a context of the new national rhetoric of multiculturalism. By looking closely at a representative range of fictions in English by women from a variety of ethnocultural backgrounds, Howells examines the complexities embedded within Canadian identity. What does 'Refiguring Identities' mean for these writers, given their individual agendas and the multiple affiliation of any woman's identity construction? All these writers are engaged in rewriting history across generation, and Howells argues that woman's fiction negotiates new possibilities for cultural change, introducing more heterogeneous narratives of identity in multi-cultural Canada.
Canadian women have worked, individually and collectively, at home and abroad, as creators of historical memory. This engaging collection of essays seeks to create an awareness of the contributions made by women to history and the historical profession from 1870 to 1970 in English Canada. Creating Historical Memory explores the wide range of careers that women have forged for themselves as writers and preservers of history within, outside, and on the margins of the academy. The authors suggest some of the institutional and intellectual locations from which English Canadian women have worked as historians and attempt to problematize in different ways and to varying degrees, the relationship between women and historical practice. The authors raise many interesting questions about how gender influences historical consciousness and whether looking at the past through women’s eyes alters the view. Women engaged in history in a wide variety of ways -- as authors of fiction, popular history, juvenilia, and drama -- as well as more academic research and publishing. They worked as individuals, as both professional writers and academics, and within formal and informal communities of women such as religious groups or local clubs. The essays also talk about the barriers that existed for women who wanted to be recognized as historians and teachers of history and point out how gender differences have coloured perceptions of what constitutes history and who should write that history. This anthology shows how, instead of being intimidated or defeated by their marginalization, women developed new and interesting ideas about what constituted history. The final essay in the volume assesses the impact the burgeoning of feminist history in the 1970s had on the academy and examines the connection between feminist activism and women’s history. This original and lively book highlights the pioneering efforts of women in developing alternate paths to historical expression. It makes an important contribution both to Canadian historical studies and to women’s and gender history in the West and will appeal to scholars interested in Canadian history, women’s studies, literature, and historiography.
