Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario

Abstract

Cultivating Community is a fascinating exploration of an understudied area of Canadian history. Nurse masterfully utilizes a plethora of archival and private materials in order to tell the century-long story of women's participation in local agricultural fairs in southern Ontario. This book offers an engaging interplay of macro and micro history, telling a broader history of women's movements and nationalism in Canada, while also offering colorful snapshots of many individual women's stories. The example of a woman cheating in the honey jarring competition by dyeing kerosene to look like the purest honey represents the type of colorful anecdote that brings this history to life. Nurse's work inspires the reader to look into their own local and familial past, for the ways in which women have made their mark through baking, handicrafts, and other pursuits.On the surface the idea of studying baked goods and produce might seem daunting. But Nurse creatively uses sources such as newspaper clippings and competition records to reconstruct women's participation in Ontario's agricultural fairs. Nurse writes lush descriptions of the fairs' events—from judging criteria to contestant presentation to the packaging and staging of organic materials—so that the reader can imagine themselves as participants, judges, and audience members. These narratives also provide detailed information about the social context within which this history takes place. For example, women were initially prohibited from participating in riding shows, but it became increasingly more common for women to demonstrate their horsemanship as they pushed more and more into the “public sphere.” The importance of rural reform, and women as the centers of rural family life, are repeated themes throughout the book. Nurse demonstrates how reformers utilized fairs to teach women about new homemaking technologies and encourage these women to compete for prizes and prestige for their prowess in fields that were seen as “women's expertise.” Winning competitions in these areas demonstrated how much of a “good” woman, wife, mother, and community member you were.In Cultivating Community Nurse goes beyond the typical written archival sources on which historians tend to rely. Many beautiful photographs of fairgoers, competitors, and handicrafts alike grace the pages of this book and enrich the reader's understanding of the fairs' material culture. These images display, for instance, the intricacies of a hand-darned sock and handmade lace and quilts, demonstrating evidence of skills with which the modern reader likely is unfamiliar. A quilt made with poorly cut fabric and messy stitching compared to one that was meticulously sewn with even stitching is very obvious when looking at comparison photos. In her analysis, Nurse brings a real appreciation of these skills and the work that these women produced, reminding the reader of the many ways that women's cooking, gardening, and handicraft skills benefited their families and households. Before fabric was easily commercially available, homespun fabric was valued in these fairs, but only a few short years later, with the availability of cheap fabric in stores, this skill ceased to be exhibited. These stories exemplify how women adapted their household skills to the changing technology and economic needs of the time.In the book's introduction, Nurse acknowledges the limitations of her analysis, and she reminds the reader throughout that this is just the start of a conversation on women and agricultural fairs. She has little space to devote to deep racial analysis or the intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity in this book. These rural people were all individuals with unique and nuanced life experiences, some of which are unexplored in this study. Nurse encourages others to take up this mantle and further explore agricultural fairs as microcosms of Canadian society that can teach us about changing values and mores of rural communities.