Small-Town Ontario Research Articles

A comparison of three rural emergency homeless shelters: exploring the experiences and lessons learned in small town Ontario

ABSTRACT Introduction: Per capita rates of homelessness are higher in many rural communities than Canada’s largest cities, yet little attention has focused on strategies to address rural homelessness. This study compared experiences and lessons learned from three models of homeless shelters in a small town in rural Ontario: a church, motel, and warming center. Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 17 individuals who stayed in or administered any of three emergency shelters that ran between 2019 and 2022. Results: Participants described challenges resulting from insufficient structure, policies, partnerships, funding, and training that led the church and motel shelters to be unsustainable. The warming center had more sustainable funding but lacked supports and had short operating hours. Several aspects of participants’ experiences were unique to the rural context, including the lack of infrastructure, precarity of services, and feelings of being surveilled and pushed out of their community. Informal supports and a sense of connection to their hometown meant most had no intention of leaving. Conclusion: The strengths of each model and lessons learned offer opportunities to improve and adapt emergency shelters to the rural context.

Craft breweries as hermit crabs: Adaptive reuse and the revaluation of place

ABSTRACT This paper explores the relationship between craft breweries and adaptive reuse processes in small town Ontario, Canada. Drawing together semi-structured interviews, site analysis, and secondary newspaper and planning sources, this paper illustrates that, despite a diversity of structures and locations, there is a consistency in interior design and aesthetics across small town breweries. The visual symbolism and spatial references, included as part of the internal décor, produce a new story of place within the buildings. We argue that these repurposed sites should be valued regardless of age, location, or building type: their interior adaptation signals a revaluation and revival that spills over beyond the shell.

A fruitless exercise? The political struggle to compel corporations to justify factory closures in Canada

ABSTRACT This paper examines the political history of the failed struggle to require companies to justify their plant closing decisions in Canada’s industrial heartland of Ontario. Demands for the public review of plant closing decisions began, locally, in the auto town of Windsor in the 1950s and 1960s and reached Toronto with the closure of Dunlop Tire in 1970. Another wave of closures struck in 1980, this time reaching deep into rural and small-town Ontario as well as larger industrial towns and cities, generalizing concern. The resulting Select Committee on Plant Shutdowns and Employee Adjustment, created by the Ontario legislature, took it upon itself to conduct the kind of public review of recent closures that was long demanded. Due to the strength of the political opposition to any interference with management rights, it was essential that proponents could point to precedents in Western Europe. Trade unionists also grounded their argument in favour of government regulation in the moral economy idea that long-service workers accrued a proprietary right to their jobs.

Analysis of Settlement Experiences of Syrian Families in the Canadian Context

This presentation will provide an overview of the movement of Syrian Refugees into Rural and Small-Town Ontario. It will identify specific challenges that refugees face and it will identify some of the positives and negatives associated with community sponsorship. The profile of Syrian refugees shows that they will face barriers to resettlement and integration in host communities. Literature suggests that refugees experience a difficult time entering the labor market upon arrival to Canada (Government of Canada, 2016; Lamba, 2003; Yu, Oulette & Warmington, 2007). In addition, most Syrian women also lack the proper education in their first language and also lack work experience. Changes in immigration policy have reduced government funds to settlement supports, and this negatively affects refugee settlement (Bauder & Shields, 2015). Objectives: What are the impacts of Syrian family size, age of children, and gender relations on the outcomes of Syrian refugee families. What are the key factors that determine the capacity of a community to attract and retain refugees, what service supports need to be in place for all members of refugee families.

Christ Would Break Your Tongue

“Christ Would Break Your Tongue” is part of my on-going exploration of growing up as a United Church minister’s daughter in small-town Ontario. In the title poem, I inquire into the interstices of gender, voice, and authority. In “Dominion” I grapple with how the Christian underpinnings of Western culture place humans above other creatures and lifeforms to the detriment of all living beings. In “Billy Stewart’s Geography” I begin to explore the church’s role in political oppression, colonialism, and residential schools, building on my poetic interests in family dynamics and place (Stewart, 2003; 2012). I use poetic inquiry (Butler-Kisber, Guiney Yallop, Stewart, & Wiebe, 2017; Faulkner, 2009; Galvin & Prendergast, 2016; Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009; Thomas, Cole, & Stewart, 2012) as a research method to reflect on and through language, letting the poems be the plumb-line of the research process. Poetry’s use of the associative, the particular, and the unconscious allow me to explore terrain which may have been previously un-worded. This is needed to write through shame and grief. I believe with Orr (2002) that “the more of our own stories that we can tell, the richer and more complex our selves become. The richer a use we make of our past experience, the more open we are to present experience” (p. 102). This openness is crucial in the search for word and action. Educator Maxine Greene (1977) calls us to be open or “awake.” How can poets be awake to this complex social/political moment and use their craft to speak? Poetry works with stories and lyric which are once personal, ideological and often shaped by religion. As a white settler Canadian, I strive to uncover the complicity of my religious and Northern Irish background in hierarchical and oppressive relations. My hope is to provoke.

Picnics and Politics: Expanding Ontario's Public Sphere during the Late Victorian Era

The 1870s brought a marked increase in the number of large-scale political picnics taking place in rural and small-town Ontario. Generally held between elections, their purpose was to solidify party allegiance by exposing the broader public to party leaders, by presenting and defending party policies, and by creating through ritual the sense of membership in a powerful organization. The extent to which the picnics were effective in winning elections is impossible to judge, but this article argues that they strengthened deliberative democracy by expanding the period during which political issues were brought directly to the attention of the public. Furthermore, because the picnics and the processions that preceded them were broad-based community events, women and others not yet eligible to vote were incorporated—at least for the day—within the discursive community that constituted the political public sphere.

From Rupert’s Land to Canada West: Hudson’s Bay Company Families and Representations of Indigeneity in Small-Town Ontario, 1840–1980

By the mid-nineteenth century, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) officers were retiring in greater numbers with their Indigenous families outside Rupert’s Land. Much work has been done to uncover the experiences of fur trade families who remained at HBC trading posts or settled in what became the American and Canadian Wests, but there has been little research on those families who left for Britain or colonial Canada. In Canada West, the racial and gendered terrains of their new home communities were complex ones for Indigenous women and their children to navigate. They played roles in both the reification and subversion of racial and gendered imperial hierarchies, and thus came to occupy unexpected and even contradictory positions in family and local historical narratives.

Religious Decline in Small-Town Rural Ontario Churches: Effects on Levels of Social Capital and Subsequent Innovative Responses

The qualitative data in this article highlights the dynamics of religious change and decline in small town rural churches, reflecting larger trends throughout North America and Europe. 1 It questions the consequences of religious decline, particularly regarding reduced levels of volunteerism 2 and community social capital. 3 This article posits that the decline in institutionalized religion has already had negative effects within small-town rural Ontario communities, specifically the loss of leadership to sustain numerous enterprises that traditionally serve members beyond the church alongside decreased support in various volunteer sectors that also provide a range of services, activities, and programs to the larger community. Following an analysis of the challenges facing churches in a cluster of small rural communities within the Haliburton Highlands, the paper details responses developed by local churches and ministers to continue to meet community needs and maintain their strong presence and high levels of social capital in these non-religious locales.

Apparition by G. Gallant

Gallant, Gail. Apparition. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2013. Print.This Young Adult mystery-ghost story tells the story of seventeen year-old clairvoyant, Amelia MacKenzie. Amelia has seen ghosts since she was a little girl, and after her mother passed away from cancer, Amelia saw her mother’s ghost too. Until recently, Amelia thought she was imagining these visions, but that all changes when her best friend and crush Matthew dies.Amelia lives near the small city of Owen Sound, Ontario, with her grandmother Joyce, and her two brothers Ethan and Jack. Amelia struggled with depression after her mother’s death, but her friendship with Matthew helped her through the hardest time of her life, and leads to burgeoning romantic feelings. After Amelia gathers the strength to express her feelings to him, Matthew is flustered. The next time she meets him, however, Matthew is acting strangely, and while giving Amelia a ride home, begins to talk about a mysterious girl. Amelia finds out the next day that Matthew apparently killed himself in a nearby barn. Although devastated, Amelia feels something is off about Matthew’s death.At Matthew’s funeral, Amelia meets a local journalist named Morris Dyson. Morris investigates paranormal occurrences, as he believes ghosts travel along specific geographic routes, and sometimes become stuck or cause trouble. Morris also believes Amelia can see ghosts, just like he knew her mother could. Morris suspects Matthew’s death is linked to similar deaths that happened in the same barn - all young men who committed suicide after heart-break surrounding a mysterious woman named Dot. Morris theorizes a ghost is in the barn and causing all these problems.With the help of Morris’ handsome and charming son, Kip, Amelia and Morris begin to unravel the mystery of the barn, the ghosts who still haunt it (including Matthew), and the impact for those who come into contact with the barn. At the same time, Amelia learns to come to terms with her gift, her grief, and to explore her own identity.Gail Gallant conveys the stark beauty of the Canadian landscape throughout her novel, and captures the unique and realistic culture of small town Ontario. The setting will strike home with many Canadian youth. Even with its supernatural elements, Gallant’s characters are interesting and realistic, especially for a young adult novel. Amelia makes a notable heroine not because of her clairvoyance, but from how she learns to understand her own feelings as an ordinary teenager. Amelia cares deeply for her brothers, and her stern, no-nonsense grandmother, but can at times find them aggravating. She also navigates realistic issues, such as family, friendship, and integrity in relationships. Gallant presents these themes with sophistication and empathy.Apparition tackles mature issues including depression, grief, death, romance, the afterlife, and murder. Young readers may find some content scary, although the novel is more suspenseful than frightening. The book stands complete on its own, but has a sequel, Absolution.Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Colette LeungColette Leung is a graduate student at the University of Alberta, working in the fields of Library and Information science and Humanities Computing who loves reading, cats, and tea. Her research interests focus around how digital tools can be used to explore fields such as literature, language, and history in new and innovative ways.

‘Young Rovers’ and ‘Dazzling Lady Meteors:’ Gender and Bicycle Club Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Small-Town Ontario

During the bicycle “craze” of the 1890s and early 1900s, men and women across Western Europe and North America embraced this novel form of recreation and modern mode of transportation. Undoubtedly, the invention of the “safety” bicycle in 1885 aided women’s enjoyment of the machine, yet in many respects cycling remained an androcentric mode of recreation. This is most evident when examining the paternal structure of bicycle clubs. In the existing literature on cycling, however, little attention is paid to gender dynamics within clubs, especially in the context of smaller towns and rural areas. Using the towns of Tillsonburg and Ingersoll in southwestern Ontario’s Oxford County as a case study, this article examines how cycling clubs in these communities were sites of both change and resistance to the prevailing gender norms of the time. Once membership was opened to women, club activities became more heterosocial and less focused on cultivating virulent masculinity, but women were never fully accepted as full-fledged members.

Marian and the Major: Marian Engel’s ‘Elizabeth and the Golden City’ (review)

Reviewed by: Marian and the Major: Marian Engel’s ‘Elizabeth and the Golden City’ Laurie Kruk (bio) Christl Verduyn, editor. Marian and the Major: Marian Engel’s ‘Elizabeth and the Golden City’. McGill-Queen’s University Press. xii, 308. $85.00 Christl Verduyn has devoted her career to the work of Marian Engel. According to Verduyn, ‘Engel wrote especially for the women of her generation . . . Split in their aspirations for artistic expression and representation, separated (out) as mothers and daughters, women in Marian Engel’s world of fiction struggle to fuse, refuse, and defuse the oppositional forces that shape female experience’ (Lifelines: Marian Engel’s Writings). Marian and the Major may be said to fuse life and art: it is a reconstruction of Engel’s final work-in-progress, with biographical/historical contexts provided by Verduyn. Her extensive archival research and her in-depth knowledge of her author make this an intimate reading experience as well as a solid scholarly accomplishment. The book is in two parts: ‘the chicken’ (‘an unpublished [and unfinished] novel’) and ‘the egg’ (‘the background to, and origins of, this novel’). Part I introduces us to a fascinating episode in colonial Canadian history: the emigration to Ontario from Wales of Major William Kingdom Rains, accompanied by two sisters, Elizabeth and Frances Doubleday, who begin as wards and end as wives. Verduyn’s narrative provides the ‘sheer reading pleasure’ of making Canadian history personal, as Engel wished. Verduyn documents the circumstances that brought Rains, a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, to Lake Simcoe, then St. Joseph Island, where he literally founded a polygamous dynasty. A photo spread gives us visual confirmation of people and places. Rains, an energetic imperialist, attracted Engel’s antagonism and curiosity – he provides a model for Colonel Cary in Bear (1976) – yet the dichotomized sisters especially inspired Engel’s creative reflection: she herself was separated from her twin sister by adoption. However, Engel did not reconstruct the late Victorian history of this unconventional family in Upper Canada. In Part II, ‘Elizabeth and the Golden City,’ Engel projects this odd triangle into the twentieth century, superimposing it onto some aspects of her own personal journey from small-town Ontario girlhood, to student life at McGill in the 1950s, then her [End Page 732] Toronto writing life in the 1960s and 1970s. It is Elizabeth, the intellectual sister, who becomes the vehicle for Engel’s witty and wry observations on her life and times, rather than stay-at-home Frances. And it is in the elastic use of Elizabeth’s first-person voice that Engel’s social satire is sharpest. This voice comes to life, paradoxically, with the death of the mother, as ‘Elizabeth and the Golden City’ begins with Elizabeth, now a single mother reflecting on herself as a bookish daughter: When my mother died, I was reading Jane Eyre. That would be a good line for the beginning of a novel . . . Unfortunately, it is not fiction: it is the first line of my adult life, the end, as they say, of the beginning, and the beginning of the end; at once a commencement and an obstacle, a rock I cannot climb, a stream too wide for me to ford. This passage characterizes Elizabeth as both self-consciously literary and emotionally orphaned. When Elizabeth and Frances’s irresponsible father abandons his teenage daughters, it is not surprising that both find in the charismatic Major Arthur Silliker a father figure as well as husband. Yet the more independent-minded Elizabeth ultimately rejects that father-husband, as she will her own (younger) second husband, writer Joe deLesseps. Engel’s manuscript offers a variety of pungent glimpses of Canadian culture in the making, including the rise of home-grown publishing houses, but the greatest strength of Engel’s writing is Elizabeth’s voice, especially as she matures and becomes more opinionated, angry, individualistic. The manuscript ends with another fusion of life and art: Elizabeth’s final interior monologue while facing death. In it, syntactical breakdown reflects both author’s and character’s fading powers while engaging the reader’s sympathy: ‘[I] was wracked I had been racked on the racks, they had cracked me open like a...

The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915 – 1919 (review)

Reviewed by: The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915 – 1919 David Campbell (bio) R.B. Fleming, editor. The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915 – 1919. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. xxxvi, 384. $38.95 It has been ninety years since the guns of the First World War fell silent. But fascination with this conflict continues unabated. Now that there are virtually no veterans left to speak of wartime events, their written impressions remain among our most direct links with the past. Among the published collections of letters by veterans, it is rare to find one that presents the correspondence of two brothers, as does The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost. Born in Orillia, Ontario, the Frost brothers would rise to prominence after the war in Ontario’s provincial Conservative party, with Leslie serving as premier from 1949 to 1961. This collection gives readers more than a glimpse into the activities and personalities of the two brothers. It offers insights into the life and workings of the Frost family, their community, and, by extension, small-town Ontario during the First World War. Through the letters, one follows the brothers’ progress from their training days in Canada and England to the battlefields of France and Belgium, where each of them was posted as a reinforcement officer to a unit of the Canadian Corps: Leslie to the 20th Battalion of infantry; and Cecil to the 6th Canadian Machine Gun Company. Both men were wounded in action during 1918, and their correspondence during their respective periods of convalescence doubtless did much to calm anxious family members at home. Both Leslie and Cecil display a clear sense of optimism in their letters, most of which are addressed to their parents. Yet they are surprisingly frank in their occasional criticism of politicians, the effectiveness of other officers, and the organization of Canadian troops in England. Regarding the horrors of war, the brothers are consistently reticent, preferring not to dwell on such matters. The degree to which they had begun [End Page 341] seriously to question their pre-war concepts of ‘heroism, courage, and honour’ must be largely inferred. R.B. Fleming has done an admirable job of editing the brothers’ correspondence. He preserves the text of the original letters with minimal editorial corrections, and he provides an extensive introduction that places the brothers and the content of their letters in a broader historical, political, and social context. Dr Thomas H.B. Symons, who knew and worked with Leslie Frost, offers additional personal perspective in a foreword to the book. Also included is a memorandum from Leslie Frost himself, written in 1972, which comments on the collection of letters. The depth of research underlying this book is clearly evident in Fleming’s copious endnotes and bibliography, which highlight his explorations in national, provincial, and local archives. However, a few technical inaccuracies creep into the work. For instance, there is a reference to Cecil’s membership in the ‘2nd Canadian Motor-Machine Gun Brigade, 3rd Company of the 2nd Canadian Division’ during 1918. This should read, ‘No. 3 Company, 2nd Battalion, Canadian Machine Gun Corps.’ Such minor slips are rare and do not detract from the overall value of the introductory material and the commentary found throughout the endnotes. The inclusion of clear maps and numerous evocative photographs bring the text of the introduction and the letters themselves to life. There are images not commonly presented before, including a desolate vista of battle in progress at Hill 70 in 1917, a French cruiser at anchor in Halifax Harbour, and the triumphal march of colonial troops in London in 1919 – a scene that depicts Cecil Frost himself in the front rank of the marching column. Social and political historians will be interested in what this book can reveal about middle-class attitudes before and during the war, as well as the probable impact of their war experiences on the brothers’ future political careers. Those concerned with Canada’s military heritage will value the brothers’ candid observations on life in training and at the front. The final statement in Fleming’s introduction echoes Leslie Frost’s hope that the sacrifices of the war generation will...

Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives by Robert Thacker

B o o k R e v i e w s Alice M unro: W riting Her Lives. By Robert Thacker. Toronto: Douglas Gibson/McClelland and Stewart, 2005. 603 pages, Can$39.99. Reviewed by D oug Werden West Texas A&M University, Canyon Robert Thacker’s biography of Alice Munro is the manifestation of a passion for Munro’s stories that captivated Thacker for more than thirty years. In read­ ing the book, it becomes difficult to determine what is most impressive: the fact that Thacker undertook the challenge of producing the biography of a living author or that he wrote such a thoroughly researched and beautiful account of her life as to give us what will surely become the authoritative literary biog­ raphy of Munro. As exemplified in the best biographies, Thacker’s gracious prose moves between archival sources and interviews so well that you are left appreciating the depth of research as well as the craft. Because Munro’s daughter, Sheila Munro, has explored the personal side of her mother in the memoir Lives ofMothers and Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Anne Langton. INTERIOR OF JO H N 'S HOUSE [LOOKING SOUTH], 1837. Graphite on cream wove paper. 18cm x 23.5 cm. Archives of Ontario. b o o k R e v ie w s 4 3 7 Munro (2001), Thacker focuses on Munro’s writing and publishing life, relying on the author’s archived papers, her correspondence, and local newspapers. In particular, he includes important information about the writers who encour­ aged her, agents who guided her, and editors who shaped her books. Although he read early drafts of many stories to prepare the biography, Thacker does not burden the reader with details of revision but summarizes key author/editor interchanges in order to illuminate the ways these conversations impacted Munro’s work. Given that his focus is on her professional life, Thacker resists the temptation to research or speculate about her private decisions. He briefly mentions Munro’s marital problems and fights at home but does not examine them closely. When he discusses her divorce in 1973, he does so in order to explain her motivation for moving from Victoria, British Columbia, to south­ ern Ontario, focusing on her relationship to place rather than to her husband. As many know, Munro spent twenty-three years (1949-1973) living in Vancouver and Victoria, where she published her first two books as well as many of her short stories. Thacker suggests place matters deeply to Munro and informs much of her prose. She says of her short fiction, “When I first started writing, setting meant more to me than people. This was really what I was writ­ ing about. ... I was just overwhelmed by a place” (158). Thacker’s attention to geography reveals her effort to consciously construct fictional places, resulting in settings that rival William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County in their depth and complexity and bring rural and small-town Ontario to life. Munro is often quoted as saying that in her fiction “there is always a start­ ing point in reality” (529). However, Thacker avoids heavy-handed biographi­ cal interpretations, preferring to suggest possibilities and explore potential influences. He does not offer authoritative readings as much as provide scholars with new contexts for rereading Munro’s stories. The biography celebrates the intersection of Munro’s life and writings without making tired claims of reading her life through her fiction or reading her fiction through her life. While Thacker’s biography is intended for scholars exploring the nuances of her work, it is so well written that the non-scholar can easily gain insight into Munro’s work. A t a time when the short story gamers less and less of the public’s attention, Thacker’s work reminds us of the importance of the genre in defining who we are and how we live and the contribition Munro has made to both sides of the border and beyond. ...

Teacher-Initiated, Student-Centered Global Education in a K to 8 School

Despite a growing recognition that established notions of democracy, nationhood, citizenship, and ethnicity are giving way to emerging notions of democratic, multicultural, global citizenship, there are few curricular guidelines to achieve this expectation. This is especially the case at the elementary level where there isn’t even a consensus that such an approach is appropriate. Faced with this lack of consensus and the resulting lack of curricular leadership and driven by the need to respond to the needs and interests of their students, elementary teachers, influenced by the particularities of their local circumstances, follow their instincts and rely on each other with respect to how to teach what is variously called global education, global citizenship education, or education from a global perspective. Elementary teachers are reshaping the practice of what is referred to in this paper as global (citizenship) education at the classroom level. While such innovations can frequently lead to creative results, they can also result in highly idiosyncratic interpretations of what constitutes the most effective approach to teaching from a global perspective or what constitutes global citizenship. This paper is a case study of the efforts of the staff of one small-town Ontario elementary school to infuse a global perspective throughout the grades from K to 8 and across the curriculum.

Levelling the playing field? Exploring the implications of managed competition for voluntary sector providers of long-term care in small town Ontario

This paper considers how long-term care restructuring, under the rubric of managed competition, has increased pressure on voluntary sector providers of long-term care to elderly populations in small, rural places. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key-informants from non-profit organizations, we present a case study set in rural Ontario to develop a situated understanding of the impact of restructuring on voluntary sector providers of long-term care. We contend that managed competition (underway in Ontario since 1995) has constrained providers, eroded service choices, and reduced access to long-term care in rural areas leaving rural populations more disadvantaged than ever before when it comes to public service provisioning.

For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838-1895 (review)

Reviewed by: For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838–1895 Russell Field (bio) Nancy B. Bouchier. For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838–1895 McGill-Queen’s University Press. x, 214. $39.95 In the last twenty years, the historiography of sport in Canada has been dominated by Alan Metcalfe's work on nineteenth-century organized sport and Bruce Kidd's examination of sport and physical activity in the interwar years. Nancy Bouchier's For the Love ofthe Game is an excellent extension of the former and an important chronological precursor to the latter. In [End Page 452] exploring the ideological realities of amateurism in small-town nineteenth-century Ontario, Bouchier examines male athletes in three sports - cricket, baseball, and lacrosse - played during civic holiday celebrations in two local settings (Woodstock and Ingersoll) between 1838 and 1895. Through the 'amateur code' and its associated values, social reformers sought to address the perceived problems of feminization, crime, and delinquency among male youth. Associated as it was with respectable English society, cricket both lacked broad participant appeal and offered little opportunity for social reformers. By the mid-1860s baseball was the most popular summer sport in Ontario. But as civic boosterism became an increasingly important component of local sport, the effectiveness of amateur ideology was undermined. Baseball's turn to a commercial spectacle in the 1870s effectively ended Woodstock's and Ingersoll's ability to compete with larger centres such as London, Guelph, and Toronto. The booming popularity of lacrosse between 1870 and 1890 owes much to its value to civic boosters and social reformers. In both Ingersoll and Woodstock, 'lacrosse arrived in town as the first wave of local baseball mania floundered ... That lacrosse had none of the stigma associated with cricket helped its appeal to urban boosters and sport reformers alike.' Lacrosse and other holiday sporting events were organized by the local amateur athletic associations (AAAs), formed in Woodstock in 1884 and in Ingersoll five years later. These associations connected the towns to the reform currents that swept across Canada in the late nineteenth century. In sport, this agenda was championed by the Montreal AAA, founded in 1881. The predominantly white, Protestant middle-class men who ran these clubs 'believed that they could lead local male youth to develop respectable values that would help them along life's journey and that the success of local lacrosse teams would be the town's success as well.' The reality of the amateur code was that it was as exclusionary as it was prescriptive and offered social uplift to only a segment of society. However, the 'town sanctioning of amateur sport clubs for the running of local civic holiday events is an important key to how the amateur movement diffused throughout urban Canada.' The AAA planning of civic holiday celebrations had unintended consequences. While 'local amateur athletics were intended to keep holiday events locally focused, AAA-run holiday games in Ingersoll and Woodstock relegated local people to the spectator stands and created a tremendous gap between townspeople and amateur athletes.' As a distinctly male realm celebrating codified sports, amateurism precluded women's participation while many traditional events (e.g., slippery pigs, greased poles) were eliminated from the program. Despite the AAAs' influence, Bouchier claims that 'one can see reform ideas falling quite short of the mark.' As sporting events became commercial ventures, a number of 'oppositional' practices [End Page 453] crept in - including rowdiness (both on the field and off), drinking, betting, and game-fixing. Bouchier addresses issues of class, gender, and community formation. However - from a gender perspective, for example - she goes no further than to suggest that organized sport was male and that female participation was limited to the 'private sphere' (e.g., preparing food for cricket banquets). While true, it is an insight that has been made elsewhere. Indeed, this book is in many ways a fleshed-out version of Bouchier's important 1994 contribution. Her demographic portrait of AAA executives and their ideological motivations, as well as the lived negotiation between hegemonic ideal and local practice, are all components of this earlier article. Despite this...

Tete a tete, heart to heart mother–daughter relationships on and off the pages of the Elizabeth stories

Two women. One text. The Canadian writer Isabel Huggan encounters her Dutch reader and critic Conny Steenman-Marcusse and reacts to what the reader finds in her text. The text under discussion is primarily Getting out of Garten, the final story of Huggan's The Elizabeth Stories (1984). This collection of stories is a Bildungsroman in which Elizabeth Kessler's difficulties of growing up in small-town Ontario, Canada in the 1950s are narrated. The mother–daughter relationship is investigated ON the pages of this text, but gradually the reader and writer explore the mother–daughter relationship OFF the pages, as their initial TETE A TETE (head to head and intellectual) connection through fax and email transforms itself into a HEART TO HEART (emotional) relationship between themselves, the text, their memories and their immediate experiences with their daughters.

Lynne Marks. <italic>Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario</italic>. (Studies in Gender and History Series.) Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 1996. Pp. xi, 330. Cloth $55.00, paper $19.95

Lynne Marks. <italic>Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario</italic>. (Studies in Gender and History Series.) Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 1996. Pp. xi, 330. Cloth $55.00, paper $19.95

Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late- Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario

Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late- Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario

Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario. By Lynne Marks and No Dancin' in Anson: An American Story of Race and Social Change. By Ricardo C. Ainslie

Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario. By Lynne Marks and No Dancin' in Anson: An American Story of Race and Social Change. By Ricardo C. Ainslie