“A Sweet Canadian Girl”: English-Canadian Actresses’ Transatlantic and Transnational Careers through the Lenses of Canadian Magazines, 1890s–1940s

Abstract

From the late nineteenth century until at least the end of the 1920s, English-Canadian periodicals such as Saturday Night, Mayfair, and The Canadian Magazine were keen to cover “the stage” and those Canadians who appeared on it, both in Canada and abroad. Figures such as Margaret Anglin, Julia Arthur, Viola Allen, May Irwin, Bea Lillie, and Margaret Bannerman were featured in these publications, their work heralded as evidence of the country’s talent in the performing arts. These women also were depicted as evidence of Canadians’ ability to move across and around national borders, proof that the country was linked to transnational and transatlantic circuits of performance and, in particular, cultural knowledge. Yet, cosmopolitan subjects though they might be, these actresses were, nevertheless, always “Toronto girls” (or Hamilton or Ottawa), women whose considerable charms and appeal were grounded in their country of origin. This article explores the ways in which these upper-middle-class periodicals helped shape the actresses’ images, as they reported their movements on- and offstage, in Canada, the US, Britain, and (in some cases) Australia. It also considers the ways in which these actresses, in turn, might have lent more glamor, sophistication, and cosmopolitanism to the periodicals themselves.