Framing Our Past: Canadian Women's History in the Twentieth Century

While short essays by feminist historians like Veronica Strong-Boag give Framing Our Past a quick glance feminist credibility, this encyclopedic book is no source of feminist inspiration. What to say about a book that gives more ink to Zoe Laurier, wife of Wilf, who admittedly "left no diaries or memoirs and almost no correspondence," so that "it is impossible to know what she thought about her life and times," while Conservative leader Kim Campbell is mentioned only in passing as first female Canadian prime minister in 1993. Historian Barbara Freeman has a chapter on Ontario female journalists of the early 20th century. But what a wussy bunch: Ontario's Kit Coleman refused to endorse suffrage. Meanwhile, the Manitoba sisterhood of journalists that included the Beynon sisters, Nellie McClung and others whose efforts led to Manitoba becoming the first province to extend suffrage to female British subjects in 1916 are-how to put this-absent. One solution would have been to have called the book, Ontario Women's History in the Twentieth Century. Except that its geocentric lens isn't its only shortcoming. This book actually manages to diminish some of its subjects. Ottawa's famous female mayor, Charlotte Whitton, who had a life partner, Margaret Grier, is described as someone who "never married or bore children." The writer then goes on to state-as fact-that Whitton and her partner did not have a sexual relationship because they both held religious views. Come to think of it, unimaginative pretty much sums up this book.