“Making Maple Sugar, Lower Canada ca. 1837” Phillip John Bainbridge, LAC 2834638
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Note from Andrea: I’m super excited to bring you a special guest post this week, written by Ronald Rudin, on his fantastic initiative, the Lost Stories Project! Enjoy!
All photos provided courtesy of their respected owners. Please do not reproduce.
Ronald Rudin is a Professor of History at Concordia University. Author of seven books and producer of seven documentary films, he carries out research that touches upon Canadian cultural and environmental history, with a particular focus on Atlantic Canada and its Acadian population. He is most recently the author of the prize-winning: Kouchibouguac: Removal, Resistance and Remembrance at a Canadian National Park (University of Toronto Press, 2016), and its connected website Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park.
Since 2012, I have been the director of the Lost Stories Project, which collects little-known stories about the Canadian past, transforms them into pieces of public art on appropriate sites, and documents the process through short films that are available from the project’s bilingual website. I have long had an interest in the tools that are used to tell stories about the past — monuments, sculptures, murals, and the like –and I have pursued this interest through both publications (Remembering and Forgetting in Acadie,) and documentary films (Life After Ile Ste-Croix). I often find myself wondering about the choices behind such markers, particularly what story should be told and how best to tell it? These may seem like trivial concerns, but if last summer’s Monument Wars and the American debate over Confederate monuments is anything to go by, the choices made have long term repercussions. What’s more, they often tell us more about the people who built them than the history itself.
Dorothy Stotesbury and Harry Thomson, winners of the Easter Egg and Spoon Race, stand together for a portrait. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. 1957-1958. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
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Young woman reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. N.D. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
Can you believe that it is already Unwritten Histories’ second anniversary? I can’t. I remember the days when this was a wee little baby blog that only my friends read. 🙂 So of course, Stephanie and I wanted to do something special for the occasion. But saying nice things about this blog is pretty boring. So instead, we are going to use this opportunity to highlight the work of women-identified, who are either graduate students or recent graduates, who are making history. We are obviously fans of men-identified scholars and the work that they do. However, we recognize that women continue to be underrepresented in senior academic ranks and leadership positions, face widespread gender bias in student evaluations, and perform a disproportionate amount of service work and emotional labour. We also recognize that there is incontrovertible evidence of bias against female scholars and the fields of women/gender/feminist history in Canada.
While Unwritten Histories can’t solve these problems, but what we can do is to highlight the amazing work being done by by these scholars. The scholars we have listed below have all made substantial contributions to the field of Canadian history. The list is organized alphabetically. Each profile contains a short biography and a list of selected publications. The name of each scholar is also linked to their Twitter accounts, in the event that you would like to keep up with their work.
A couple of quick caveats. First, the term “woman-idenfied” basically refers to all scholars who identify as female. The use of this term is deliberate, so as to include both cis-gendered and trans women. Second, we limited this list explicitly to graduate students or recent grads who are engaged in the field of history specifically. Finally, we would like to point out that this is a partial list at best. Since, we can only include so many people in one blog post, we had to limit our list to ten. But hopefully we can do a part two!
So without further ado, here are the profiles:
Young woman wearing an orange coat smells maple sap in a bucket hanging off a maple tree. Shilly Shally Lodge, Gatineau Park. April 1963. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Library and Archives Canada, No. R12438
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Welcome back to our monthly series, “Upcoming Publications in Canadian History,” where I’ve compiled information on all the upcoming releases for the following month in the field of Canadian history from every Canadian academic press, all in one place. This includes releases in both English and French. To see the releases from last month, click here.
***Please note that the cover images and book blurbs are used with permission from the publishers.***
N.B. This list only includes new releases, not rereleases in different formats.
Note from Andrea: I’m super busy this week, plotting for Unwritten Histories’ two year anniversary (next week!). So today we have a special guest post from Kesia Kvill about the history of Jell-O, and her experience recreating a vintage Jell-O recipe. The results are hilarious and vaguely terrifying! Enjoy!
Kesia Kvill is a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph. Her dissertation focusses on food control in Canada during the First World War and the relationship between government and women. She received her MA from the University of Calgary where she wrote about public dining and Western Canadian identity. Kesia’s research interests include food, cultural, rural, gender, domestic, and public history. She also maintains a personal food history research blog, Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox.
Over the past year I have been spending some of my time listening to old radio comedy programs. Television sitcoms have always been one of my favourite ways to relax and disconnect from my day-to-day life and old radio comedies have offered me a way to wind down and relax my brain with the added benefit of being more portable as I get ready for bed. Listening to these programs has made me very aware of how many jokes rely on a culture and context that is tied to the time of their creation. While some jokes are timeless and some can regain their humour with a bit of context, other jokes that rely on racial or gender-stereo types will (thankfully) never be funny again. Besides enjoying the simple and formulaic nature of the comedies, I have also enjoyed how the largely food product sponsored commercials of these old programs offer further insight into our cultural history. While I love listening to a variety of old radio comedies, I’ve found a particular fondness for the JELL-O sponsored programs of the Jack Benny Show and the radio predecessor to Lucille Ball’s I Love Lucy television show, My Favorite Husband. It was while I was listening to these programs that I heard the following ad:
Here’s a letter from Alberta, Canada written by a young wife who asks me not to mention her name but gives me full permission to read this experience of hers: ‘My husband came home the other day with a gelatin dessert not manufactured by the JELL-O Company. Being a dutiful wife, I mumbled something about having just purchased three packages of JELL-O and let the matter drop. But I knew that this was my opportunity to prove that I know food values and quality in purchasing. So I made the gelatin dessert my husband brought home and I also made JELL-O. JELL-O gave me a more richly flavoured, firmer dessert that set in half the time. And now friend, husband is thoroughly convinced that I know my business.’ Well, we’re grateful to you young lady for sending us that letter. It bears out what I’ve so often said, ‘That JELL-O’s fine, fresh fruit flavour is tops in taste. No other gelatin dessert can equal the famous extra rich fruit flavour of genuine JELL-O. But remember, there is only one JELL-O! So always be sure to ask for it by name. Look for the big red letters on the box! They spell JELL-O!’ [1]
Today, JELL-O is most associated with the Baby Boom era, particularly with its focus on convenience foods, and a bizarre obsession with gelatin “salads.” Of course, if you’ve spent any time on social media in the recent past, you’ve likely come across the latest generation of DIY projects, often in the form of a 60-second montage on Instagram, which often feature JELL-O in a starring role (particularly if you are making galaxy gummy bears!). But the history of JELL-O, and its relationship with domesticity, is much older.
Depicts young male and female. Female in green, possibly traditional costume. Horse in background. Inscription “Mavourneen (my darling) on St. Patrick’s Day it is no time to turn away”. Date unknown. Raphael Tuck and Sons “St Patrick” Series of Postcards. No 194. Printed in Saxony. Toronto Reference Library.Arts Department. Public Domain.
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Neptune Inn at the Foot of Mountain Street, Looking up Toward Parliament House. 1830. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1970-188-324 W.H. Coverdale Collection of Canadiana
Copyright: Expired.
Special thanks to Stephanie Pettigrew for her awesome research on the PRDH for this blog post!
If you know anything about women’s history, you’ve likely come across Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous quote: “well-behaved women seldom make history.” My husband even gave me a bumper sticker with the quote (that hangs on my bulletin board, because we don’t have a car). Most people, including myself, believe that this is a call on women to “mis-behave” in order “make history,” to break boundaries and fight for women’s rights. But this is not actually correct. Rather, the quote calls on historians and the public to remember those women who were well-behaved, and, subsequently, did not make history: homemakers, domestic servants, factory workers, etc…
Obviously I agree with this statement. If you read the roundup, or happen to follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that following the publication of an article about public knowledge about women’s history in Canada, I went on a mini-rant about the devaluation of women’s history in Canada and the focus on elite white women. Ordinary women are often ignored, and seldom named, despite the fact that they represent the vast majority of the female population.
However, I do have one big problem with this dichotomy — it leaves out women were not “well-behaved,” but didn’t make history: Black, Indigenous, and Women of Colour, women with disabilities, LGTBQ+ women, and women living in poverty. While it is easy, and in fact more comfortable, to ignore or erase these individuals and their lived experiences from the historical record, especially if they engaged in behaviours that we find less sympathetic, like the sex trade, crime, or violence. However, their histories are just as important when it comes to understanding the history of this place we currently call Canada as any other women or person. As historians, it is our responsibility to ensure that the histories that we teach are truly representative of the diversity of our past. This includes both women who triumphed, women who endured, and women who transgressed.
So, inspired by my Twitter rant, as well as Kathryn Magee Labelle’s fantastic blog post, Forgotten Figures: Early Canadian Biographies and Course Content,” I’ve decided to start what I hope will become a new series, where I share the stories of ordinary women, well-behaved or not, that I’ve encountered over the years. As a social historian, my favourite part about doing and reading history has always been the little stories that populate the archives and our publications. I just love reading these vignettes, and I know that a lot of other people do as well. And yet these stories are, by and large, unknown to the public. My goal here is three-fold: 1) share the stories of ordinary women who are traditionally left out of historical narratives 2) provide case studies that professors or teachers can incorporate into their course content, and 3) promote the work of Canadian historians of women and gender.
For our first story, I thought that it would be fitting to share one with you that has stayed with me for many years. I can’t remember when I first read Mary Anne Poutanen’s work, but her article, “Bonds of Friendship, Kinship, and Community: Gender, Homelessness, and Mutual Aid in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal” has always been one of my favourites.[1] The fact that it is a social history of women in Montreal has nothing to do with that. 😛 I’ve always been touched and impressed by the care and compassion with which she has written about her historical subjects, and how she emphasizes their humanity even in the face of terrible circumstances. I think that this is why the story of Magdeleine McDonald has stayed with me for long. I only hope that I can do Mary Anne’s work justice in sharing her story with you:
Woman using machinery to bind a book, Industrial School for the Deaf. 1961. Chris Lund. Library and Archives Canada 4301545. Copyright: Expired
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