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The Writing of Women into Canadian Educational History in English Canada and Francophone Quebec, 1970 to 1995
Abstract
The 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women of Canada represents the first official federal document to examine the situation of women in Canadian education through a feminist lens. It paid close attention to education, claiming that “whenever women are denied access to education, they cannot be said to have equality.” Feminist historians participated in this transformative movement in response to an increasing demand to make women visible; the new social history, which developed novel methodologies in its quest to recover the past from the bottom up, assisted them in their efforts to develop the field of women’s history across Canada. Our article examines the importance of feminist associations, publishing houses, journals, and awards in supporting the development of scholarship on women and education. We follow that overview with comments about the earliest scholars working in this field, concentrating first on those in English Canada and then moving to the history of the field in French Canada.RésuméLe Rapport de la Commission royale d’enquête sur la situation de la femme au Canada de 1970 constitue le premier document fédéral officiel à étudier la situation des femmes dans l’éducation canadienne dans une perspective féministe. Il a accordé une attention particulière à l’éducation, affirmant que lorsqu’« on refuse à une femme la possibilité de faire les mêmes études que l’homme, on ne peut dire qu’elle bénéficie de l’égalité ». Les historiennes et historiens, en majorité des chercheuses féministes, ont participé à ce mouvement de transformation en réponse à la demande croissante pour rendre les femmes visibles. Ayant contribué à développer de nouvelles méthodologies cherchant à reconstituer le passé à partir d’une approche « du bas vers le haut », la nouvelle histoire sociale leur a permis de développer le champ de l’histoire des femmes à travers le Canada. Notre article examine l’importance des associations féministes, des maisons d’édition, des revues et des prix comme soutien au développement de la recherche sur les femmes et l’éducation. Dans un second temps, nous examinons les figures pionnières de la recherche dans ce domaine, en nous concentrant d’abord sur les personnalités importantes du Canada anglais, avant de poursuivre avec l’histoire de ce champ de recherche au Canada français.
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In the mid-nineteenth century, the New England Company (NEC), an Anglican missionary society, focused many of its efforts on hiring Indigenous teachers for its schools at Grand River and Tyendinaga, two Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) communities in southern Ontario. The NEC believed that it was useful to hire Indigenous teachers due to their ability to speak to the students in one of the local Indigenous languages as well as in English. Many Haudenosaunee leaders and families also believed that a Western education would benefit their children and therefore supported the construction of churches and schools. Kanyen'kehá:ka (Mohawk) women born into this cultural environment worked to build careers for themselves as on-reserve educators. Some struggled to secure meaningful employment due to their gender, while others found work but faced numerous challenges in performing their jobs. This paper reveals that Kanyen'kehá:ka women persisted as teachers despite gender and material barriers, creating models for participation in colonial education for Haudenosaunee youth in the nineteenth century. RÉSUMÉ Au milieu du XIXe siècle, la New England Company (NEC), une société missionnaire anglicane, a consacré beaucoup d’efforts afin d’embaucher des enseignants autochtones pour ses écoles de Grand River et de Tyendinaga, deux communautés Haudenosaunee du sud de l’Ontario. La NEC croyait qu’il était utile d’embaucher des enseignants autochtones en raison de leur capacité à parler aux élèves dans l’une des langues autochtones locales, aussi bien qu’en anglais. Plusieurs dirigeants et familles Haudenosaunee soutenaient également la construction d’églises et d’écoles, parce qu’ils croyaient qu’une éducation occidentale profiterait à leurs enfants. Les femmes Kanyen'kehá:ka (Mohawk) nées dans cet environnement culturel ont travaillé à se bâtir des carrières comme éducatrices sur les réserves. À cause de leur genre, certaines ont dû lutter afin d’obtenir un travail significatif, alors que d’autres ayant trouvé un emploi ont dû a ronter de nombreux dé s dans l’accomplissement de leur travail. Cet article révèle que malgré les difficultés matérielles et la barrière du genre, les femmes Kanyen'kehá:ka ont persistées dans le domaine de l’enseignement, créant ainsi des modèles de participation à l’éducation coloniale pour la jeunesse Haudenosaunee au XIXe siècle.
Our knowledge of the unease generated by the presence of women in universities, exhibited by the use of terms like "bluestocking" or "feminist" to denigrate academic women, raises at least two questions about the early history of women who worked in Canadian universities. The first concerns such women's own image of themselves as academic workers; the second concerns the actual history of the movement of women into academic jobs. This paper begins an examination of the early employment of women at the University of Toronto. Outlining the structures of that employment over three periods ending in the 1940s, it also explores in a preliminary way how women's university work was perceived and experienced. Arguing that university employment remains gendered to this day, the paper calls not only for more research into its history, but also for a more politically conscious approach to the academic workplace, for greater equality for the female employees of universities, and for efforts to make universities less divisive and hierarchical workplaces altogether.
Moving Beyond Borders is the first book-length history of Black health care workers in Canada, delving into the experiences of thirty-five postwar-era nurses who were born in Canada or who immigrated from the Caribbean either through Britain or directly to Canada. Karen Flynn examines the shaping of these women's stories from their childhoods through to their roles as professionals and community activists. Flynn interweaves oral histories with archival sources to show how these women's lives were shaped by their experiences of migration, professional training, and family life. Theoretical analyses from postcolonial, gender, and diasporic Black Studies serve to highlight the multiple subjectivities operating within these women's lives. By presenting a collective biography of identity formation, Moving Beyond Borders reveals the extraordinary complexity of Black women's history.
In Quebec, as elsewhere in Canada, the depression of the 1930s highlighted the inadequacies of existing welfare arrangements and ultimately compelled a shift towards greater state intervention and rationalization of philanthropy. Historians have so far devoted little attention to the situation of children and the evolution of child welfare services during this crucial period. This paper seeks to examine the effects of the depression on the origins, the nature and the impact of aid policies in a particular urban school system. The analysis centres on the Montreal Catholic School Commis- sion (MCSC), the largest of Quebec's local public school boards, during the period 1929 to 1940. In 1930, the Commission s primary and secondary schools boasted an enrolment of nearly one hundred thousand students. These mainly French-speaking children of working-class origin were particularly hard hit by the economic crisis.
The author argues that the severe physical want experienced by schoolchildren in the depression years constituted a formidable obstacle to regular school attendance and to learning. Faced with this situation, MCSC officials were obliged to abandon a conception enshrining education, health and welfare as separate categories. The economic crisis thus compelled the commission to assume an enlarged, systematized and diversified role in student welfare. School authorities rationalized and expanded the long-standing policy of free schooling for indigents and, in 1934, created a social service agency to provide free milk and clothing to needy children. To this end, they allied a continuing reliance on private charity with the adoption of modern social work practices. However, lacking sufficient funding, MCSC assistance programmes proved hopelessly unequal to the enormous student need. The MCSC s depression-era ini- tiatives were, despite their inadequacies, developments of long-term significance, providing the springboard for social work's entry into the school system.
L'AVÈNEMENT DE L'INSTRUCTION obligatoire au Québec en 1943 s'inscrit dans un tissu de relations complexes, d'alliances, et de luttes très longues. Contrairement à ce que laisse croire l'histoire officielle, le mouvement ouvrier et le mouvement paysan ont joué un rôle actif dans cette longue "querelle." Quoique prenant part dans cette lutte, ces mouvements ont aussi été très divisés. Alors que le Congrès des métiers et du travail du Canada (CMTC) appuie la fréquentation scolaire obligatoire, la Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada (CTCC), et l'Union Catholique des cultivateurs (UCC) s'y opposent durement. L'influence que l'Église Catholique exerce sur la CTCC et l'UCC explique en partie le refus catégorique de ces deux organisations, mais sans plus. La composition des membres de chacune, les secteurs d'implantation de celles-ci, le type d'agriculture dominant au Québec et les coûts liés à l'éducation ont joué un rôle déterminant dans les positions des organisations étudiées. /// THE IMPLEMENTATION OF compulsory education in Quebec in 1943 occurred in a web of complex relationships, at the end of lengthy struggles and alliances. Contrary to the official historical accounts, the labour movement and the agrarian movement played an active role in this long "quarrel." Even if they participated in the struggle, these movements were also very divided. Whereas the Trades and Labour Council of Canada (TLC) supported compulsory education, the Catholic unions (Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada [UCC]) strongly opposed it. The influence of the Catholic church over the CTCC and the UCC partly explains the position of these two organizations but no more. The membership of each of these groups, their constituencies, the dominant type of agriculture in Quebec, and the cost of education played a determining role in the positions adopted by each of the organizations.
Using an extensive array of primary sources, including local WCTU minute books and correspondence, Cook describes the origins, structures, strategies, and achievements of the Ontario WCTU in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She discusses the importance of its positions on such issues as Social Purity, women's franchise, the appropriate role of single women, working women's rights, the treatment of female offenders, and the effect of the WCTU's youth work. Cook traces the empowerment of women in the WCTU to the union's evangelical roots, arguing that the views of the Ontario WCTU were grounded in a vision of society that based the development of a moral society on the family unit and its moral centre, the mother.
Stories handed down about the author's two Salish great grandmothers illustrate two different styles of child-adult interaction (authoritarian versus egalitarian) and their effects on the learning process. These child-rearing/teaching styles are compared to monitorial and humanistic methods of classroom management. Implications for Native education are discussed. (SV)
Extensive interviews with three Canada Natives who attended boarding schools focus on school experiences, confusion and poor self-image resulting from acculturation, effects on relationships with parents and family, and effects on their own child-rearing practices, particularly concerning language use and traditional cultural practices. Contains 72 references. (SV)
Canadian Women: A History
- Gail Brandt
- Naomi Cuthbert
- Paula Black
- Magda Bourne
- Fahrni
Brandt, Gail Cuthbert, Naomi Black, Paula Bourne, and Magda Fahrni. Canadian Women:
A History, 3rd edition. Toronto: Nelson, 2011.
Une historienne face à l'histoire des femmes. Montreal: Les éditions du remue-ménage
- Micheline Dumont
Dumont, Micheline. Découvrir la mémoire des femmes. Une historienne face à l'histoire des
femmes. Montreal: Les éditions du remue-ménage, 2001.
Maîtresses d'écoles, maîtresses de maison
- Nadia Fahmy-Eid
- Micheline Dumont
Fahmy-Eid, Nadia and Micheline Dumont. Maîtresses d'écoles, maîtresses de maison. Femmes,
famille et éducation dans l'histoire du Québec. Montreal: Les éditions du Boréal Express,
1983.
Raising Clio's Consciousness: Women's History and Archives in Canada
- See Veronica Strong-Boag
See Veronica Strong-Boag, "Raising Clio's Consciousness: Women's History and
Archives in Canada," Archivaria 6 (Summer 1978): 70-71.
Writing Canadian Women's History: An Historiographical Analysis
- Elaine Silverman
Elaine Silverman, "Writing Canadian Women's History: An Historiographical Analysis,"
Canadian Historical Review 63, no. 4 (1982): 513-33.
The Feminization of Teaching in British North America and Canada
- Alison Prentice
Alison Prentice, "The Feminization of Teaching in British North America and Canada,
1845-1875," Histoire sociale/Social History 8 (May 1975): 5-20.
Helping the Poorer Sisters: The Women of the Jost Mission
- Christina Simmons
Christina Simmons, "Helping the Poorer Sisters: The Women of the Jost Mission,
Halifax, 1905-1945," Acadiensis 14, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): 3-27.
Gender and Space: Constructing the Public School Teaching Staff in Nanaimo
- Helen Brown
Helen Brown, "Gender and Space: Constructing the Public School Teaching Staff in
Nanaimo, 1891-1914," BC Studies 105-106 (Spring/Summer 1995): 59-79.
Sexism and Higher Education
- Margaret Gillet
Margaret Gillet, "Sexism and Higher Education," Atlantis 1, no. 1 (Fall 1975): 68-81;
And Things Were Going Wrong at Home
- Jennifer Stoddart
- Veronica Strong-Boag
Jennifer Stoddart and Veronica Strong-Boag, "... And Things Were Going Wrong at
Home," Atlantis 1, no. 1 (Fall 1975): 38-44.
Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1
- Phillip Mccann
Phillip McCann, "Class, Gender and Religion in
Newfoundland Education, 1836-1901," Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire
de l'éducation 1, no. 2 (1989): 179-200.
Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1
- Alison Prentice
Alison Prentice, "Scholarly Passion: Two Persons Who Caught it," Historical Studies in
Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 7-27;
Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1
- Bruce Curtis
Bruce
Curtis, "'Illicit' Sexuality and Public Education in Ontario, 1840-1907," Historical
Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 73-94;
The Pensionnat Assomption: Religious Nationalism in a Franco-Albertan Boarding School for Girls
- Marjorie Theobald
Marjorie Theobald, "Discourse of Danger: Gender and the History of Elementary
Schooling in Australia, 1850-1880," Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire
de l'éducation 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 29-52; and Anne Gagnon, "The Pensionnat
Assomption: Religious Nationalism in a Franco-Albertan Boarding School for Girls,
1926-1960," Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 1, no. 1
(Spring 1989): 95-117.
The Evolution of the Sexual Division of Labour in Teaching: A Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec Case Study
- Marta Danylewycz
- Beth Light
- Alison Prentice
Marta Danylewycz, Beth Light, and Alison Prentice, "The Evolution of the Sexual
Division of Labour in Teaching: A Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec Case
Study," Histoire sociale/Social History 16, no. 31 (May 1983): 81-109.
Teaching Girls Their God Given Place in Life": The Introduction of Home Economics in the Schools
- Robert See
- Stamp
See, for example, Robert Stamp, "'Teaching Girls Their God Given Place in Life": The
Introduction of Home Economics in the Schools," Atlantis 2, no. 2 (Spring 1977):18-34;
L'enseignement ménager et les 'home economics' au Québec et en Ontario au début du 20e siècle: une analyse comparée
- Marta Danylewycz
- Nadia Fahmy-Eid
- Nicole Thivierge
Marta Danylewycz, Nadia
Fahmy-Eid, and Nicole Thivierge, "L'enseignement ménager et les 'home economics' au
Québec et en Ontario au début du 20e siècle: une analyse comparée," in An Imperfect
Past: Education and Society in Canadian History, ed. Wilson, 67-119. Examples of the
continuing interest in the history of female teachers in Quebec include Ruby Heap,
"Les femmes laïques au service de l'enseignement public catholique à Montréal: les
écoles des 'dames et demoiselles'''Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la femme 7, no.
3 (1986): 55-60;
Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie: Faculty Women Before 1950
- Judith Fingard
Judith Fingard, "Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie: Faculty Women Before 1950,"
Dalhousie Review 64, no. 4 (1985): 687-703.
- Ruby Heap
- Alison Prentice
Ruby Heap and Alison Prentice, Gender and Education in Ontario: An Historical Reader
(Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 1998).
Découvrir la mémoire des femmes: Une historienne face à l'histoire des femmes (Montreal: Les éditions du remue-ménage, 2001), 41; and Andrée Lévesque
- See Micheline Dumont
See Micheline Dumont, Découvrir la mémoire des femmes: Une historienne face à l'histoire
des femmes (Montreal: Les éditions du remue-ménage, 2001), 41; and Andrée Lévesque,
"Réflexions sur l'histoire des femmes dans l'histoire du Québec," Revue d'histoire de
l'Amérique française 51, no. 2 (1997), 272.
Eid also encouraged francophone research in this area by joining the editorial board of Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation. One of GREF's members
- Fahmy Dumont
Dumont and Fahmy-Eid also encouraged francophone research in this area by joining
the editorial board of Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation. One
of GREF's members, University of Ottawa professor Ruby Heap, also sat as the journal's
first francophone co-editor.
Les couventines won the CHEA's Founders' Prize for the best collective work published in the history of education in Canada. See also Marie-Paule Malouin's study of the interplay between gender and class in Montreal schools run by nuns, Ma soeur, à quelle école allez-vous?
- Micheline Dumont
- Nadia Fahmy-Eid
- Johanne De
- Lucia Daigle
- Ruby Ferretti
- Claudette Heap
- Marie-Paule Lasserre
- Malouin
Micheline Dumont et Nadia Fahmy-Eid, avec la collaboration de Johanne Daigle, Lucia
Ferretti, Ruby Heap, Claudette Lasserre, Marie-Paule Malouin, et Danielle Nepveu, Les
couventines. L'éducation des filles au Québec dans les congrégations religieuses enseignantes,
1840-1960 (Montreal: Les éditions du Boréal, 1986). Les couventines won the CHEA's
Founders' Prize for the best collective work published in the history of education in
Canada. See also Marie-Paule Malouin's study of the interplay between gender and class
in Montreal schools run by nuns, Ma soeur, à quelle école allez-vous? Deux écoles de filles à
la fin du XIXe siècle (Montreal: Fides, 1985).
The article included a list of the publications produced by GREF between 1981 and 1991. See "Liste des productions issues du Groupe de recherche en histoire de l'éducation des filles au Québec
- Micheline Dumont
- Nadia Fahmy-Eid
Micheline Dumont and Nadia Fahmy-Eid, "L'histoire de l'éducation des filles au
Québec: La pointe de l'iceberg," Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de
l'éducation 3, no. 2 (1991): 224-232. The article included a list of the publications
produced by GREF between 1981 and 1991. See "Liste des productions issues du
Groupe de recherche en histoire de l'éducation des filles au Québec (1981-1991)":
233-36.
Rebuilding the House of Canadian Feminism: NAC and the Racial Politics of Participation," in Opening Doors Wider: Women's Political Engagement in Canada
- Mary-Jo See
- Nadeau
See, for example, Mary-Jo Nadeau, "Rebuilding the House of Canadian Feminism:
NAC and the Racial Politics of Participation," in Opening Doors Wider: Women's Political
Engagement in Canada, ed. Sylvia Bashevkin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2009).