Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada (Canadian Social History Series)

Within these various approaches to the study of men, whether middle class, working class, or homosexual, ethnicity and race require substantially more attention. Such research would highlight further diversity in how masculinity was defined, but would also facilitate our knowledge of how racial privilege enhanced the gendered status of some men over others. This point is cogently argued by Gail Bederman, who writes: 'As middle class men actively worked to reinforce male power, their race became a factor which was crucial to their gender. In ways which have been well understood, whiteness was a palpable fact and a manly ideal for these men.' 23 Like studies that focus on femininity, analyses of masculinity challenge researchers to interrogate the multiple identities of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and race, as well as those such as age, religion, and nation, that might well coalesce or compete in any specific historical moment. These debates around rethinking masculinity, power, identity, and social categories have been instrumental in shaping the field of gender history, as the essays presented in this volume reveal. But the essays here also reflect the fact that as historians have used new theoretical and methodological approaches to construct research projects and interpret evidence, their engagement with conceptual debates rarely falls neatly on one side of an issue or another. For instance, in this collection the essays are roughly equally distributed among those that focus on femininity, on masculinity, and on the relations between the two. Eric Setliff in Chapter 9 and Cecilia Morgan in Chapter 1 pay almost exclusive attention to language, while John Lutz in McPherson, Morgan, Forestel! / INTRODUCTION 7 Chapter 4 and Nancy Forestell in Chapter 8 are interested in the material conditions from which social categories flow. In Chapter 7 Margaret Little emphasizes the fragmented nature of power within rural communities, compared to Mary Anne Poutanen's documentation in Chapter 2 of the growing power of the state. Some contributions explore competing versions of femininity or masculinity, others chart the consolidation of dominant gender roles and identities. All the chapters reflect the larger goal of gender history to locate femininities and masculinities in their specific historical contexts. This volume explores specific gendered dimensions of nineteenthand twentieth-century Canadian history. While we make no claims to be completely representative, we have been able to include essays that cover a range of geographic, chronological, and thematic areas. This collection brings together researchers from various academic interests, many from women's history, but others from Native history, gay history, and working-class history. The contributions here focus on the history of politics, religion, urban space, sexuality, the welfare state, the labour movement, First Nations people, and race and ethnicity in Canada. While roughly half the authors consider some element of Ontario history-a fact that reflects, in part, the concentration of doctoral programs and access to archival sources in central Canada-other contributors locate their studies in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Manitoba, and British Columbia, while rural and northern locales, as well as urban ones, are examined. Initially conceived while many of the authors were beginning their research careers, this collection unites scholars who now have established publication records in the field of gender history with others who are in the process of doing so. The authors share a collective commitment to the intellectual and political contribution critical, feminist scholarship offers Canadian society. Gendered Pasts begins with the early 1800s, a period of tremendous economic and social change. In the first decades of the nineteenth century British colonial rule was firmly established, even as local agitation for responsible government challenged that rule. New immigrants from Great Britain and the United States participated in the expansion of the staples economies and fostered the growth of towns and cities that provided services and were home to rudimentary manufacturing centres. Historians of women have begun the process of documenting the gendered dimensions of life in British North America. They have shown how the assertion of British legal traditions served to disenfranchise female property holders and to limit women's chances of inheritance. 24 British authorities made it clear that however much ' When Bad Men Conspire, Good Men Contents 5 Acknowledgements 7 Contributors 9 Introduction: conceptualizing Canada's gendered pasts 11 1 'When bad men conspire, good men must unite!': gender and political discourses in upper Canada, 1820s-1830s 22 2 The homeless, the whore, the drunkard, and the disorderly: contours of female vagrancy in the Montreal courts, 1810-1842 39 3 No double standard?: leisure, sex, and sin in upper Canadian church discipline records, 1800-1860 58 4 'It was only a matter of passion': masculinity and sexual danger 75 5 Gender and work in Lekwammen families, 1843-1970 90 6 'To take an orphan': gender and family roles following the 1917 Halifax explosion 116 7 'A fit and proper person': the moral regulation of single mothers in Ontario, 1920-1940 133 8 The miner's wife: working-class femininity in a masculine context, 1920-1950 149 9 Sex fiends or swish kids?: gay men in hush free press, 1946-1956 168 10 The case of the kissing nurse': femininity, sexuality, and Canadian nursing, 1900-1970 189 11 Defending Honour, demanding respect: manly discourse and gendered practice in two construction strikes, Toronto, 1960-1961 209 Notes 233

It is commonplace today to suggest that gender is socially constructed, that the roles women and men fulfill in their daily lives have been created and defined for them by society and social institutions. But how have men and women negotiated and navigated the gender roles that have been thrust upon them? With Gendered Pasts, Kathryn McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell have collected eleven engaging essays that seek to answer this question in a wide-ranging exploration of specific gendered dimensions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian history.

The contributors cover all manner of topics related to gender and history across Canada, including: female vagrancy; gambling, drinking, and sex; the role of the miner's wife; the portrayal of gay men; and the sharply defined role of nurses. Unusual in its breadth, Gendered Pasts is essential to the understanding of the various threads and themes in Canadian gender history.

Previously published by Oxford University Press.

One of the most studied episodes in Canadian history is the Upper Canadian Rebellion of 1837.