Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women's History

by Sarah Carter (Editor), Lesley Erickson (Editor), Patricia Roome (Editor)

The traditional mythology of the West is dominated by male images: the fur trader, the Mountie, the missionary, the miner, the cowboy, the politician, the Chief. This collection aims to re-examine the West through women’s eyes. It draws together contributions from researchers, scholars, and academic and community activists, and seeks to create dialogue across geographic, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries. Ranging from scholarly essays to poetry, these pieces offer the reader a sample of some of today’s most innovative approaches to western Canadian women’s history; several of the themes that run throughout the volume have only recently been critically addressed. By rewriting the West from the perspective of women, the contributors complicate traditional narratives of the region’s past by contesting historical generalizations, thus transcending the myths and “frontier” legacies that emerged out of imperial and masculine priorities and perspectives.

Genres: Nonfiction

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years, I have read many western Canadian historical records from a variety of sources including all sorts of letters and other written material gathered from traders, missionaries, and Mounties. Like most such accounts worldwide, women are rarely mentioned. Moreover, those women who are noted tend to fit very narrow stereotypes, usually in the roles of nurturer and wife. Perhaps it is this lack of research to the contrary that makes people assume that women really didn't have much influence, apart from raising children and managing the household (not small contributions either), on creating the west that now exists.

Unsettled Pasts seeks to reveal a small portion of the contribution of women in this early history from names that I had heard of such as Sara Riel (Louis Riel's sister) and Henrietta Muir Edwards (one of Alberta's Famous Five) to those women who were previously only known by those individuals who loved and respected them. I found both the behind the story details of the well known women and the important contributions of those lesser know individuals (particularly that of the female missionary and the nurse) astonishing and thought provoking.

Although this book could be easily used as a university text, I didn't find the work dry or boring in the least. I felt that I learned something new in each of the articles, something that was equally interesting to my family and friends when I recounted what I had just read. Not only do I feel like I have a greater understanding of the variety of different roles of women in these times but I have even more respect for how they paved the way for me and my contemporaries.