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.
Interviews with 150 Canadian women role models that discuss their lives and achievements, as well as how feminism has changed in their lifetimes and their visions for Canada.
Where are the women in Canada’s international history? Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds gathers scholars to explore the role of women in twentieth-century Canadian international affairs. They examine the lives and careers of professionals employed abroad as doctors, nurses, or economic development advisors; those fighting for change as anti-war, anti-nuclear, or Indigenous rights activists; and women working as diplomatic spouses or as diplomats themselves. This lively, 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.
As the body of First World War literature continues to grow, women’s experiences of this period remain largely obscure.This innovative collection addresses the invisibility of women in this literature, particularly with regard to Canadian and Newfoundland history. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary spectrum of recent work – studies on mobilizing women, paid and volunteer employment at home and overseas, grief, childhood, family life, and literary representations ?– this book brings Canadian and Newfoundland women and girls into the history of the First World War and marks their place in the narrative of national transformation.
Presents a collection of more than 350 biographical sketches of Canadian women, spanning three centuries. Each entry is contained on a single page, and presents a portrait of the woman. Many entries show a reproduction of the woman's handwritten signature. Woman are presented alphabetically by their married name, often including the woman's date of birth and marriage, as well as a description of her husband and his accomplishments, their children, and her membership in societies and organizations. Overall, the sketches celebrate women's primary roles as dutiful wife and mother and active community member. The majority of women Morgan features are white, upper-middle class, and married, those who prioritized traditional (i.e., heteronormative) family life. He also writes warmly, however, of women who were unmarried and forged successful careers in the arts - a fairly forward-thinking approach for the time. There is no question that Types of Canadian Women is a product of its time. Nonetheless, it provides a rare glimpse into the lives of women in Canada, recording many important milestones and achievements that otherwise may have been lost. For contemporary readers, the publication is exciting to peruse for its many familiar names: philanthropists Lillian Massey, of the Massey manufacturers of agricultural equipment, and Grace Redpath, of Redpath Sugar fame; war heroine Laura Secord; and author Catharine Parr Traill.18 True, Morgan draws attention to the men in women's lives. At the same time, however, he conveys respect for married women's contributions to family life and single women's career achievements alike, suggesting that value can be found in either path. His attitude was a progressive one for anyone - male or female - writing at the turn of the twentieth century.Book was published as the first of two volumes, but a second volume was never issued. Adapted from an essay by Tali Voron from the webpage, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Press Collection
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.
French-Canadian explorers, traders, and soldiers feature prominently in this country's storytelling, but little has been written about their female counterparts. In Along a River, award-winning historian Jan Noel shines a light on the lives of remarkable French-Canadian women — immigrant brides, nuns, tradeswomen, farmers, governors' wives, and even smugglers — during the period between the settlement of the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Victorian era. Along a River builds the case that inside the cabins that stretched for miles along the shoreline, most early French-Canadian women retained old fashioned forms of economic production and customary rights over land ownership. Noel demonstrates how this continued even as the world changed around them by comparing their lives to those of their contemporaries in France, England, and New England.Exploring how the daughters and granddaughters of the filles du roi adapted to their terrain, turned their hands to trade, and even acquired surprising influence at the French court, Along a River is an innovative and engagingly written history.
