Great Dames

This book elucidates the lives and achievements of several Canadian women from different walks of life.

Great Dames is a collection of biographical sketches, memoirs, and essays about twentieth-century Canadian women from all walks of life. While attempting to capture the meaning of the ordinary lives of extraordinary women, it also explores the possibility of challenging, even subverting, the traditional view of life writing as an endeavour to summarize and fix in time, the public careers of public men. The fifteen essays represent a variety of alternative approaches to feminist biography, including chronological narrative, thematic exploration, multiple biography, conversations between biographer and subject, interviews, diaries, and even fictional accounts.

In selecting their subjects, from Mennonite refugee women to an Ojibwa ethnologist, the contributors were asked to consider women who would be unlikely candidates for longer biographies; in the course of their research, however, it became clear that the lives of at least two of the chosen subjects warranted book-length examination. The selection also attempts to address perceived gaps in regional, class, racial, and disciplinary representation in life writing.

Together, the essays reveal that the content, form, and perspective of biography are now bound only by the creativity, research energy, and taste of the biographer.

Contents 7 Introduction 11 Just the Facts? 31 ‘Write Down Everything Just as You Know It’: A Portrait of Ibolya Szalai Grossman 31 Victims of the Times, Heroes of Their Lives: Five Mennonite Refugee Women 45 Driving towards Death 65 Creating Facts 85 Dear Ruth: This Is the Story of Maggie Wilson, Ojibwa Ethnologist 85 Casting Light on Women in the Shadow of the Law: Toronto at the Turn of the Century 107 Struggle to Create 131 From Bovarysme to Automatisme (and Beyond): Thérèse Renaud and the Refus global Women 131 The Wrong Time and the Wrong Place: Gwethalyn Graham, 1913–1965 155 ‘Traditional’ Lives 177 Settling the Score with Myths of Settlement: Two Women Who Roughed It and Wrote It 177 Anna of Intola: A Finnish-Canadian Woman with Sisu 194 Soaring to New Heights: Changes in the Life Course of Mabel McIntosh 216 Breaking into ‘Men’s Professions’ 237 Marion Milliard: ‘Raring to Go All the Time7 237 ‘By Title and by Virtue’: Lady Frederick and Dr Henrietta Ball Banting 255 Elizabeth Allin: Physicist 274 Giving Voice 301 ‘Out of a Cardboard Box beside Our Bed like a Baby’: The Founders of Sister Vision Press 301 Evelyn Garbary: ‘For Those of Us Whose Bones Are Stage Props’ 317 Contributors 333 Illustration Credits 337 Index 339 "Great Dames is a collection of biographical sketches, memoirs, and essays about twentieth-century Canadian women from all walks of life. While attempting to capture the meaning of the ordinary lives of extraordinary women, it also explores the possibility of challenging, even subverting, the traditional view of life writing as an endeavour to 'summarize and fix in time the public careers of public men.' The fifteen essays represent a variety of alternative approaches to feminist biography, including chronology narrative, thematic exploration, multiple biography, conversations between biographer and subject, interviews, diaries, and even fictional accounts." "In selecting their subjects, from Mennonite refugee women to an Ojibwa ethnologist, the contributors were asked to consider women who would be unlikely candidates for longer biographies; in the course of their research, however, it became clear that the lives of at least two of the chosen subjects warranted book-length examination. The selection also attempts to address perceived gaps in regional, class, racial, and disciplinary representation in life writing."--Résumé de l'éditeur "Great Dames is a collection of biographical sketches, memoirs, and essays about twentieth-century Canadian women from all walks of life. While attempting to capture the meaning of the ordinary lives of extraordinary women, it also explores the possibility of challenging, even subverting, the traditional view of life writing as an endeavour to 'summarize and fix in time the public careers of public men.' The fifteen essays represent a variety of alternative approaches to feminist biography, including chronology narrative, thematic exploration, multiple biography, conversations between biographer and subject, interviews, diaries, and even fictional accounts." "In selecting their subjects, from Mennonite refugee women to an Ojibwa ethnologist, the contributors were asked to consider women who would be unlikely candidates for longer biographies; in the course of their research, however, it became clear that the lives of at least two of the chosen subjects warranted book-length examination. The selection also attempts to address perceived gaps in regional, class, racial, and disciplinary representation in life writing."--Jacket