Wives And Mothers Schoolmistresses And Scullery Maids

Errington explores evidence of a distinctive women's culture and shows that the work women did constituted a common experience shared by Upper Canadian women. Most of them not only experienced the uncertainties of marriage and the potential dangers of childbirth but also took part in making sure that the needs of their families were met. How women actually fulfilled their numerous responsibilities differed, however. Age, location, marital status, class, and society's changing expectations of women all had a direct impact on what was expected of them, what they did, and how they did it. Considering "women's work" within the social and historical context, Errington shows that the complexity of colonial society cannot be understood unless the roles and work of women in Upper Canada are taken into account.

Arguing that the role of Upper Canadian women in the overall economy of the early colonial period has been greatly undervalued by contemporary historians. Jane Errington illustrates how the work they did, particularly as wives and mothers, played a significant role in the development of the colony.

Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women’s Rights in Canada explores the ways in which several of Canada’s women journalists, broadcasters, and other media workers reached well beyond the glory of their personal bylines to advocate for the most controversial women’s rights of their eras. To do so, some of them adopted conventional feminine identities, while others refused to conform altogether, openly and defiantly challenging the gender expectations of their day. The book consists of a series of case studies of the women in question as they grappled with the concerns close to their hearts: higher education for women, healthy dress reforms, the vote, equal opportunities at work, abortion, lesbianism, and Aboriginal women’s rights. Their media reflected their respective eras: intellectual magazines, daily and weekly newspapers, radio, feminist public relations, alternative women’s periodicals, and documentary film made for television. Barbara Freeman takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining biography, history, and communication studies to demonstrate how their use of different media both enabled and limited these women in their ability to be daring advocates for gender equality. She shows how a number of these women were linked through the generations by their memberships in activist women’s organizations.

In The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada, Anthony Di Mascio analyzes debates about education in the burgeoning print culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In it, he finds that a widespread movement for popular schooling in Upper Canada began in earnest from the time of the colony's first Loyalist settlers. Reviving the voices of Upper Canada's earliest school advocates, Di Mascio reveals the lively public discussion about the need for a common system of schooling for all the colony's children. Despite different and often contentious opinions on the means and ends of schooling, there was widespread agreement about its need by the 1830s, when the debate was no longer about whether a popular system of schooling was desirable, but about what kinds of schools would be established. The making of educational legislation in Upper Canada was a process in which many inhabitants, both inside and outside of government, participated. The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada is the first full survey of schooling in Canada to focus on the pre-1840 period and how it framed policy debates that continue to the present day.

This monumental study of two generations of women who married either before or after the Patriote rebellions of 1837-38 explores the meaning of the transition from wife to widowhood in early nineteenth-century Montreal. Bettina Bradbury weaves together the individual biographies of twenty women, against the backdrop of collective genealogies of over 500, to offer new insights into the law, politics, demography, religion, and domestic life of the time. She shows how women from all walks of life interacted with and shaped Montreal's culture, customs, and institutions, even as they laboured under the shifting conditions of patriarchy. Wife to Widow provides a rare window into the significance of marriage and widowhood.

Van Die, a sympathetic and perceptive observer and a gifted and deft interpreter, describes the lives of the Colbys of Carrollcroft - members of Canada's emerging economic elite who were active in the local community, public life, and politics - drawing attention to the links connecting domestic religion and private life, business concerns, and social change in one family's life over three generations.

This unique and timely collection brings together 24 of the very best and most controversial readings on the history of crime, deviance and criminal justice in Canada. Divided into five sections, the first part of Crime and Deviance examines developing issues in crime and punishment while the second part introduces key aspects of a 'working criminal justice system'. Policing ethnicity is the focus of section three, which includes articles on the relocation phenomenon and the Africville study as well as Ontario Aboriginal women confronting the criminal justice system, 1920-1960. Similarly, regulating gender and sexuality, section four, examines moral reform in English Canada, 1885-1925; and anti-homosexual campaigns in the Canadian Civil Service in the mid-20th century. The final section profiles the moral regulation of behaviour. Articles in this section include non-medical opiate use and control policies in Canada, 1870-1970; as well as moral fervour and the evolution of Canada's prostitution laws, 1867-1917. Power relations is a very strong unifying theme that is, relations of gender, social class, ethnicity and age. regulation of sexuality, we can trace these relations of power and how they link to the definition of crime in society. Canada's top criminologists and social critics are included in this special collection. This impressive list includes Russell Smandych, Rick Linden, Constance Backhouse, Helen Boritch, John Hagan, Carolyn Strange, Tina Loo, Joan Sangster, Mariana Valverde, Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Gary Kinsman and Robert Menzies.

For close to two hundred years, families and individuals across Ontario have travelled down country roads and gathered to enjoy seasonal agricultural fairs. Though some features of township and county fairs have endured for generations, these community events have also undergone significant transformations since 1850, especially in terms of women’s participation. Cultivating Community tells the story of how women’s involvement became critical to agricultural fairs’ growth and prosperity. By examining women’s diverse roles as agricultural society members, fair exhibitors, performers, volunteers, and fairgoers, Jodey Nurse shows that women used fairs’ manifold nature to present different versions of rural womanhood. Although traditional domestic skills and handicrafts, such as baking, needlework, and flower arrangement, remained the domain of women throughout this period, women steadily enlarged their sphere of influence on the fairgrounds. By the mid-twentieth century they had staked out a place in venues previously closed to them, including the livestock show ring, the athletic field, and the boardroom. Through a wealth of fascinating stories and colourful detail, Cultivating Communities adds a new dimension to the social and cultural history of rural women, placing their activities at the centre of the agricultural fair.