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Kinnear (history, U. of Manitoba) analyzes women's work in Manitoba from 1870 to 1970 and shows it was, in every domain, undervalued. She describes how early pioneers, East European immigrants, and professional women lived, and provides insight into what they thought of the work world, often in their own words. Canadian card order number: C98-900861-4Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Focusing on children’s work on family farms in western Canada, an “absolutely fascinating . . . marvellously fresh account of the lives of prairie pioneers.” —The Calgary Herald The phrase “child labour” carries negative undertones in today’s society. However, only a century ago on the Canadian Prairies, youngsters laboured alongside their parents, working the land, cleaning stovepipes, and chopping wood. By shouldering their share of the chores, these children learned the domestic and manual labour skills needed for life on a Prairie family farm. Sandra Rollings-Magnusson uses historic research, photographs, and personal anecdotes to describe the kinds of work performed by children and how each task fit into the family economy. This book is a vital contribution to western Canadian history as well as family and gender studies.
Kinnear presents five case studies of professional women in Manitoba: university teachers, physicians, lawyers, nurses, and schoolteachers. Although the unrelenting efforts of nineteenth-century feminists won women access to higher education and the professions, the author reveals that most women, whether in male- or female-dominated professions, were forced to accept subordinate positions. They responded with acquiescence, indifference, resentment, or resistance. Kinnear considers the reasons for and the cost of these various strategies. In addition to quantitative data culled from census and other records, Kinnear has collected testimony from more than two hundred professional women, a rich mine of information. A significant contribution to the growing literature on women and the professions, In Subordination helps explain why professional women continue to fight for equality today.
Dirk Hoerder shows us that it is not shining railroad tracks or statesmen in Ottawa that make up the story of Canada but rather individual stories of life and labour - Caribbean women who care for children born in Canada, lonely prairie homesteaders, miners in Alberta and British Columbia, women labouring in factories, Chinese and Japanese immigrants carving out new lives in the face of hostility. Hoerder examines these individual experiences in Creating Societies, the first systematic overview of the total Canadian immigrant experience. Using letters, travel accounts, diaries, memoirs, and reminiscences, he brings the immigrant's experiences to life. Their writings, often recorded for grandchildren, neighbours, and sometimes a larger public, show how immigrant lives were entwined with the emerging Canadian society. Hoerder presents an important new picture of the emerging Canadian identity, dispelling the Canadian myth of a dichotomy between national unity and ethnic diversity and emphasizing the long-standing interaction between the members of a different ethnic groups.
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