Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History

Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History is a collection of essays that introduces readers to the rich, diverse, and intellectually lively field of Canadian women's history. First published in 1986 and now entering its successful sixth edition, Rethinking Canada includes articles spanning from the 1600s to present day that reflect a revised understanding of Canadian women's history along racial, religious, national, and ethnic lines. Of the 24 essays, 18 are new, emphasizing increased coverage of indigenous, immigrant, and racialized experiences; work and labour; sexuality and the body; religion and spirituality; politics; and shifts in regional analysis. The scope of topics remains broad: from women and war in early indigenous society to women and the fur trade in New France, from war-time nurses in World War I to lesbian bar culture in the 1950s and 1960s and modern-day transnational motherhood, this wide-ranging reader acts as a core text for courses in Canadian women's history. Each essay is introduced by the editors, who place it in its wider historical and scholarly context. For the first time, Rethinking Canada now includes primary source documents such as photos, newspaper clippings, and historical excerpts to accompany each article. These pieces allow readers to engage in historical interpretation and provide visual snapshots into the past. Recent scholarship and fresh editorial commentaries combine to create an invaluable introduction not only to Canadian women's history, but also to the study of Canadian history itself.

Table of Contents:
DEDICATION ; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ; PERMISSIONS ; INTRODUCTION ; 1. 'They Are the Life of the Nation': Women and War in Traditional Nadouek Society ; KATHRYN MAGEE ; 2. 'Nagging Wife' Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France ; JAN NOEL (UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO) ; 3. Gender, Family, and Mutual Assistance in New France: Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in Eighteenth-Century Quebec ; JOSETTE BRUN (UNIVERSITE LAVAL) ; 4. The 'Old Hag' Revisits St Brigid: Irish Newfoundland Women and Spirituality on the Southern Avalon ; WILLEEN KEOUGH (SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY) ; 5. Acts of Resistance: Black Men and Women Engage Slavery in Upper Canada, 1793-1803 ; AFUA COOPER (SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY) ; 6. Bonds of Friendship, Kinship, and Community: Gender, Homelessness, and Mutual Aid in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal ; MARY ANNE POUTANEN (MCGILL UNIVERSITY) ; 7. The Women's Lodge: Constructing Gender on the Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest Plateau ; MARY C. WRIGHT ; 8. Women at the Hustings: Gender, Citizenship, and the Montreal By-Elections of 1832 ; BETTINA BRADBURY (YORK UNIVERSITY) ; 9. Sewing for a Living: The Commodification of Metis Women's Artistic Production ; SHERRY FARELL RACETTE (UNIVERSITY OF REGINA) ; 10. 'A Fragment of Heaven on Earth'? Religion, Gender, and Family in Turn-of-the-Century Canadian Church Periodicals ; LYNNE MARKS (UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA) ; 11. Exclusion through Inclusion: Female Asian Migration in the Making of Canada as a White Settler Nation ; ENAKSHI DUA (YORK UNIVERSITY) ; 12. Divided by the Ballot Box: The Montreal Council of Women and the 1917 Election ; TARAH BROOKFIELD (SIR WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY) ; 13. Sexual Assault and Disability: Saskatchewan, 1942 ; CONSTANCE BACKHOUSE (UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA) ; 14. Front Lines and Frontiers: War and Legitimate Work for Nurses, 1939-1945 ; CYNTHIA TOMAN (UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA) ; 15. Passing Time, Moving Memories: Interpreting Wartime Narratives of Japanese Canadian Women ; PAMELA SUGIMAN (RYERSON UNIVERSITY) ; 16. Balancing Equality for the Post-War Woman: Demobilizing Canada's Women Workers after World War II ; JENNIFER A. STEPHEN (YORK UNIVERSITY) ; 17. Recipes for Democracy? Gender, Family, and Making Female Citizens in Cold War Canada ; FRANCA IACOVETTA (UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO) ; 18. Rethinking Class in Lesbian Bar Culture: Living 'The Gay Life' in Toronto, 1955-1965 ; ELISE CHENIER (SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY) ; 19. Women's Liberation and the [Quebec] 'Nation', 1969-1975 ; SEAN MILLS (MCGILL UNIVERSITY) ; 20. Spectacular Striptease: Performing the Sexual and Racial Other in Vancouver, BC, 1945-1975 ; BECKI L. ROSS (UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA) AND KIM GREENWELL (UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA) ; 21. Women's Class Strategies as Activism in Native Community Building in Toronto, 1950-1975 ; HEATHER HOWARD ; 22. The Evolution of the Birth Control Handbook: From Student Peer-Education Manual to Feminist Self-Empowerment, 1968-1975 ; CHRISTABELLE SETHNA (UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA) ; 23. Whose Social Reproduction? Transnational Motherhood and Challenges to Feminist Political Economy ; SEDEF ARAT-KOC (RYERSON UNIVERSITY) ; 24. Gender, Sovereignty, and the Discourse of Rights in Native Women's Activism ; JOANNE BARKER ; CONTRIBUTORS ; INDEX

About the Author :
Tamara Myers is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. In addition to teaching women's history at UBC, she is actively researching in French-Canadian women's history and childhood history. Selected publications include Caught: Montreal's Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945 (2006), and Negotiating Identities in 19th- and 20th-Century Montreal (edited with Bettina Bradbury, 2005).