"Sundays Always Make Me Think of
Home": Time & Place in Canadian
Women's History
MARGARET CONRAD

A

enthusiasm for women's history gained momentum in the
1970s, scholars moved beyond the discussion of suffrage and labour force
exploitation to describe the features of women's culture as it changed over
time. The products of this research-studies of women's domestic labour,
child-rearing practices, friendship networks, lifespan choices 1--have
revolutionized not only the way that we see the roles of women in the past but
also how we assess the past generally. The study of women's culture is based
on the assumption that "women have distinct experiences and values and that
these must be studied as unique contributions to culture. ''2 It assumes, as
Eliane Silverman has recently argued, that women have historically lived dual
lives: "one in the male culture where they are controlled by tradition, fear,
loyalty and love; the other in a parallel society of women where their actions
could range from intimacy to power. "3 Viewed from this perspective, tracing
the contours of women's culture becomes central to writing women's history.
Of course, women's culture is not a monolith. There are many women's
cultures that must be studied if we are to understand the complexity of
women's lives. Indeed, a major goal of those working in the field of women's
history is to make it impossible for historians ever again to resort to oversimplifications which hide or trivialize women's past experience; in short, to
make it impossible to write history without accounting for the active role of
half the human race. 4
The linking of gender with what Mary O'Brien has termed those other
"commatized" categories of research--class, ethnicity, region--has already
given birth to major achievements in the field of Canadian women's history. 5
Pioneering studies such as Women at Work: Ontario, 1850-1930, 6 L'histoire
des femmes au Quebec depuis quatre ~iecles7 and In Her Own Right: Selected
Essays on" Women's History in British·. Columbia 8 focus fruitfully on "limited"
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, 1984

2 Time and Place

Canadian identities. The work on Western Canada by Jennifer Brown, Sylvia
Van Kirk, Susan Jackel, Eliane Silverman and Meg Luxton has
demonstrated the unique contribution made by women to a resource frontier
too-long described exclusively in masculine terms.9 The possibilities of gender
and region are not yet fully exhausted. Little, for example, has been published
on the women of Atlantic Canada and the North; ethnic minorities such as
Oriental women in British Columbia or Anglo-Quebecois women tend to
have fallen through the cracks of larger general categories; class and culture in
the context of Canadian women beg further consideration.to
An elaboration of the varieties of ·women's culture is more than an
academic exercise for professional historians or an amusement for idle
amateurs. It is an act of political awakening. As long as we continue to define
our past only in terms of American or European research or even in terms of
developments in other regions of Canada, we remain alienated from our own
historical reality. I am continually reminded as I speak on local history in
Nova Scotia how grateful women are to learn about theirforemothers. More
than at any time in our history, we need to make sense of our past and feel in
touch with local traditions which have all-too-often been neglected in our
pursuit ofthe "larger"forces explaining women's experiences. I would further
argue that because women's lives have been dominated historically by the
domestic and community context, it is doubly important that we analyze
women's culture as it reproduces and modifies itself in specific places and
specific times.
The pursuit of women's culture will transform not only how we study
women historically but also how we "do" history generally. Demographic
studies will expand to include analyses of women's unique experiences such as
the changing ages of menstruation and menopause; economic and
technological history will incorporate women's domestic production in its
romp from fish, fur and wheat to railways and industry; political and legal
history will account for the differential treatment of women in politics and
law. Virtually every historical topic is evaluated differently when seen
through the eyes of women. It is frequently noted, for example, that Nova
Scotia was, in 1848, the first colony in the British Empire to win responsible
government. It is almost never recorded that only three years later the male
victors in this political struggle deliberately disenfranchised women.ti In any
political history of Nova Scotia written from a woman's perspective, the fact
that 50% of the population was robbed of its citizenship by a public act of
parliament would constitute a significant historical event.
Similarly, our immigrant experience takes on a different complexion
when seen from the point of view of its female contingent. That much-studied
group, the Loyalists, for instance, included not only soldiers, men of principle
and fortune seekers but also women and children. As described by diarist
Sarah Frost, women experienced special difficulties associated with
emigration:
Our women with their children all came on board
today, and there is great confusion in the cabin. We
bear it pretty well through the day, but as it grows
toward night, one child cries in one place and one in
another, whilst we are getting them to bed. I think

CONRAD

3

sometimes I shall be crazy. There are so many of them
if they were still as common there would be a great
noise amongst them. I stay on deck tonight until nigh
eleven o'clock, and now I think I will go down and
retire for the night if I can find a place to sleep. 12
This passage takes on added meaning when we realize that Sarah is eight
months pregnant. This condition may have influenced her reaction upon
arrival in Saint John harbour on 29 June 1783: "This morning it looks very
pleasant on the shore. I am just going ashore with my children to see how I like
it. Later--it is now afternoon and I have been ashore. It is, I think, the
roughest land I ever saw." Since many Loyalist women left their homes
because of political decisions made by their husbands, they may well have
been less than enthusiastic about their enforced exile. Any balanced account
of the Loyalist experience must consider how these women reproduced their
culture in the British North American environment and how their values and
attitudes influenced the society which they helped to build.13
In taking up the issue of women's culture we are addressing fundamental
questi9ns of sources and methodology. We are shifting the focus of analysis
from the world of men to that of women. If public and published documents
are few and macro studies difficult, then we must investigate personal and
private sources with greater seriousness. If women's participation in politics is
peripheral and labour force activity is muffled then we turn to local and
family histories where women have figured prominently both as participants
and as chroniclers. When approaching history from a woman's angle of vision
the question becomes not "Why did women not protest their deliberate
disenfranchisement in the era of responsible government," but "What
characterized the lives of middle class British North American women in the
nineteenth century?" Not "Why are women marginalized in the early trade
union movement?" but "What are the essential features of working class
women's lives?" Not "Why have women been relegated to the private sphere in
industrial societies?" but "How has women's sphere been transformed by the
emergence of industrial society?" The answers to questions such as these will
allow us to transcend the less ambitious queries and lay the foundation for a
genuine human history.
My own research interests, which are presently being conducted in
cooperation with Toni Laidlaw and Donna Smyth, focus on the women of
Atlantic Canada. 14 Published and public documents on women in these four
seaboard provinces are rare. Fortunately, other evidence of women's activity
is abundant: handwritten memoirs, diaries, family letters, scrapbooks,
genealogies, local histories, minutes of meetings, recipes, samplers, poems,
quill baskets, 1.5 quilts and rugs comprise the material legacy which these
women have bequeathed to us and with which we must come to terms.
Handwritten memoirs, diaries, personal letters, scrapbooks,
genealogies, local histories and minutes of meetings-the very texture of these
documents testifies to the role of women in recording events, keeping in touch
and selecting information to be passed on to succeeding generations. The
subjectivity of memoirs, diaries and auto biographical letters appealed to us as
did the volume of information they offered on women's daily lives and life

4

Time and Place

span choices. As we eventually realized, the sheer bulk of these chronicles was
itself significant. Outmigration has been a constant feature of Atlantic
Canada's history. 16 The diaries and letters chronicling this diaspora were not
only a means whereby women kept in touch with extended kinship networks
but were also a way of making sense of their highly mobile and surprisingly
literate lives.
While the majority of the chroniclers in Atlantic Canada were native
born Canadians and came from rural villages and small towns, it is obvious
that they shared aspects of common North Atlantic culture. Since most of
these women were descendants of British and American immigrants, this
came as no surprise. What did surprise us was the extent to which women of
various class and ethnic groups felt compelled to preserve their life stories.
Many left behind diaries or memoirs; others, autobiographical letters, often
written to the same person, describing in meticulous detail the rhythms of
daily life. Such documents are extremely valuable tools for learning how the
larger historical forces intersect with women's daily realities--how "census
time" intersects with "women's time." They help us to understand what it
means to be a mother of 4.6 children and have a life expectancy of 58.4 years
or to be a sixteen year old teacher in a one-room school house on a salary of
$200 a year. Learning to read these often tantalizingly elusive sources makes
them no longer the boring and insignificant documents that archivists and
bibliographers have led us to believe. Instead, they enable us to construct life
stories that reveal much about the women who are conspicuously absent from
our public records. The life stories of Maritime women raise many fascinating
questions about women's culture but I want to focus on time and place in
women's history.
Recent scholarship has given us a whole new vocabulary for discussing
changes in time and place as they relate to women. "Industrial time." "family
time," "social maps," "genealogical space" are concepts which help us to
describe various components of women's culture. 17 Though Canadian women
have not been like the Matapuguio of Peru for whom time and place are so
intertwined that they have the same word for both concepts, 18 we can
understand how they interact when we consider the ideal place of women in
pre-industrial society: childhood and adolescence in a father's home;
marriage and motherhood in a husband's home; widowhood in a son's home.
In each stage of life, women were confined by domestic space identified with
the male head of household. Major turning points in a woman's life were
defined by the change in home ownership and often, though not always, by a
change in domicile.
The roles of daughter, wife/ mother and widow reflect "family time"
which is punctuated by such events as marriage and death of a parent or
husband. These in turn were constrained by specific events in "women's time",
most notably menstruation, motherhood and menopause. Such deeply
entrenched roles were neither easily cast aside nor wholly useless in adapting
to new environments. Tamara Hareven has brought to our attention the
extent to which particular concepts of family time, nurtured in rural preindustrial settings,were adapted a nd idealized in urban industrial ones; how
the well-worn rhythms of the household became consoling rituals in the paid

CONRAD

5

workplace; and how women's concept of family and community were
creatively reproduced over time in vastly different circumstances. 19 While this
cultural continuity may have suited patriarchal husbands and was easily
exploited by greedy capitalists, it also reflected the desperate attempt of
women to emerge from the trauma of social change with something familiar
still intact.
Though much research still needs to be done on women's culture in
colonial British North America, we know that the time and place of women in
rural pre-industrial societies were often regulated on a weekly and seasonal
basis. Consider for instance, these passages from the phonetically written
diary of twenty year old Phoebe Collins of Halifax County, who was writing
in 1815:
15 August 1815
The dairy as ushal takes up most of my morning
on Fridays and after finishing there I picked a basket
of black currents for Miss Beamish--in the afternoon I
sowed a little while and then went out and raked hay. I
wrote a note to my friend Harriet this
evening .... Mama is know tying up her radishes and
turnips for market tomorrow morning. As that don't
belong to my part of the work I have left her to her self.
16 Sept. 1815
It is Saturday this morning and as usual cleaning
house--after that was over I went to spinning and spun
a large ball ... .l took a run before night and got a few
blackberries ... .I have been sitting by the kitchen fire
knitting this evening, I am preparing for winter.
6 October 1815
This morning I was very busy in my dairy
churning and making butter; Harriet was helping me
churn; the remainder of the day we sit up stares
reading and knitting. Patience and Perseverence is the
tital of the book we are perusing. I think it a very good
thing. The weather has bin rather dul to day which
prevented us from taking a walk. I have left them all
seated around the table at their domestic
employments, sum sowing and others knitting, and
Pappa at the head reading .... 20
Or this passage describing an annual housecleaning, written by seventynine year old Mary Smith of Cape Breton on June 22, 1891:
A verry dry high easterly wind. The first tub Butter full
22 lbs. The little mare very sick. The boys hear helping
doctor her. Flora washed her weeks washing. I washed
breakfast dishes then cleared the kitchen cupboard
and washed all the things that was in it and after that
the men moved it out of the clothes room into the
kitchen. I washed dinner dishes and then had a rest and
Sarah moved everything out of the dining room took
up the carpet and swept and dusted and I washed the
windows. The two girls washed up the floor and Sarah
got tea ready and after tea she churned. Flora picked

6

Time and Place

the geese and then put them d own in the calf pasture;
the children and G.P. finished picking stone a little
while after dinner and then the men fixed the fence to
keep the geese in. Sarah cleaned up the milk house all
ready to wash the shelf and the floor and Flora and the
girls finished it up. 21
The ideal of women's place had been brought to the eastern colonies of
British North America by British and American settlers and was well
entrenched by the time Phoebe Collins was reading Patience and
Perseverance. As with most ideals, the prescribed role of women was based on
a domestic reality that had long included elements of specialization and
routine as well as responsibilities assigned by age and gender. Phoebe Collins
and Mary Smith lived in a domestic world of creative production and busy
social intercourse. Though fathers sat at the head of the table, daughters and
wives had their own practical timetable of social and productive activity.
The pattern of these activities changed slowly during the nineteenth
century. We do not know when the spinning and weaving which occupied so
much of Phoebe's time finally gave way to the consumption of factory-made
cloth, though we have diarists in parts of Nova Scotia making cloth at home
as late as the 1890s. On the other hand, canning of fruit and vegetables is not
mentioned as a domestic chore until the first decade of the twentieth century,
when glass bottles became readily available at reasonable prices. The tasks of
housecleaning, cooking, sewing and making butter persisted throughout the
nineteenth · century among our rural diarists and most housewives, like
Phoebe Collins' mother, sold a surplus of home production to local markets.
One of our diarists, forty five year old Rebecca Ells of Port Williams, Nova
Scotia, notes proudly that in the year 1901 she churned 1363 ¼ pounds of
butter. 22 She a lso raised hens and pigs for market and, in the absence of her
husband who disappeared to the Klondike for twelve years, helped her son
run a mixed commercial farm . Time for Rebecca Ells was money, and place
was a close-knit community:
Tues. 29 Jan. 1901
And it has been a busy day for me. I cleaned mince
meat this morning and cooked it, make cake etc. Just
hurried all morning--Father came in to dinner. Then
this afternoon I went to Kentville with my butter and
eggs, did several errands and home again. It was
beautiful sleighing. After tea Lee and I went to the
Port and he got a suit of clothes all through from head
to foot. Then we went up to Mary's. Found her in bed
but she soon got up and we staid near an hour.
With the support of a dutiful son and a protective father, Rebecca Ells could
get along without a husband, though she clearly found his absence an
embarrassment. Other women pulled their husbands out of debt by their
exertions. Mary Bradley early in the nineteenth century found a lucrative
market for her cloth.
Accordingly, I set up my loom, and notified my
neighbours, and I soon had plenty of work. I exerted
myself to the utmost of my power. I took my pay in

CONRAD

7

such trade as was suitable for our family's use, which
made the payment easy to my customers. I soon got
into the way of helping ourselves greatly. 23
Later, she ran a grocery store and kept boarders to supplement the family
wage.
For many women, Sundays represented a welcome rest from domestic
schedules. Mary Michener of Hantsport described her Sunday activity of 13
May 1849 this way:
This is the Sabbath day .... We have been to meeting
this morning. Rev. Vaughan preached sacrement
followed; it is always a solemn season to me. In the
afternoon we went up to see about a Sunday
School.. .. After talking the matter over it was arranged
for a S. School to be held each Sabbath at nine o'clock.
After we were dismissed we went up to Father's and
took tea .... When we came home, Sam and Mary were
at Mr. Michener's; they called here awhile and then
went home. 24
Sunday for a devout Baptist like Mary Michener offered an opportunity for
spiritual and intellectual nourishment as well as social intercourse with
friends and relatives. The idealization of Sunday is a regular refrain in many
of our nineteenth-century diaries.
As industrialization encroached on domestic production, women's place
gradually expanded beyond the domestic sphere to include the paid labour
force but ideally only for a specific period of time--between the age ofleaving
school and marriage--and in specific occupations designated feminine.
Despite its limitations, the paid labour force offered women an alternative to
marriage and, for a few, prolonging 'adolescent' work patterns was preferable
to the 'double poverty' of wedded dependence. 25
Paid labour had its own rhythms but women invariably brought
domestic rituals to the workplace. Ella Liscomb, a secretary in the Bank of
Montreal in Sydney, reported on 16 April 1935:
Great housecleaning going on in the office. Drawers
ransacked with great shaking of head on the part of
Davidson [manager]. Things will be more satisfactory
when it is finished, however. All the boys were
assisting in the campaign--Eric not so good. I heard
him ask Floyd which side of the cabinet was the
woman's. 26
Worked virtually as a "slave"--a term she herself used--during her six-day
work week, Ella found Sundays less inspiring than women who remembered
them as one day of rest in their domestic routines: "Always blue on Sundays,"
Ella wrote. "I don't know why it is, unless I just naturally slump after a busy
week." Women in the paid labour force invariably reckoned time by the hands
of the clock even if the work hours reflected domestic rather than industrial
rhythms. "Enough excitement for one day," Ella concluded. "In the bank
from 9:00 this morning until 11 :30 tonight with an hour off at 6:30 when I
went to Aunt Clara's and had shrimps, salad and cake."Women who worked
in the home, in contrast, rarely mentioned a specific time of the day.

8

Time and Place

Women in the domestic sphere continued to reckon time by family and
community anniversaries well into the twentieth century. "Just 50 years ago
today since Father and Mother were married in the house where Levi Clark
lives now," Rebecca Ells recorded in her diary on 12 March 1901. On 2 May
190 I she noted:
Just eight years ago this morning our darling Willie
closed his precious blue eyes forever--Oh how I miss
him yet--That dear sweet face--but God knows best
and I am sure he is better off--But O I miss him all the
time--Churned 12¼ pounds.
Ella Liscombe remembered the boss's birthday because it was the same day as
her own. He did not return the courtesy. Industrial time and family time, for
him, belonged to strictly separate spheres.
In pre-industrial agrarian societies women were the primary a gents of
family a nd community welfare. As the factory system began to transform
production and formal education altered child-rearing practices women
continued to drop out of school to help a sick mother or widowed father, and
quit paid labour to care for aged parents or to marry. Family time thus
determined length of schooling, work-force participation, age of marriage
and the resources of widows until the welfare state--which women did much
to build--began to take over aspects of family welfare. Hannah Richardson,
working in a Lynn shoe factory in 1872, found her yearly routine regulated by
the work stoppages at the P.P. Sherry Shoe Company and her summer
holiday in Yarmouth. Her brief foray into the lucrative paid labour force was
terminated when she returned to Nova Scotia to marry in 1873. Similarly,
forty year old Lucie Borden, a secretary in the offices of Perry Mason Co. in
Boston, was forced to abandon her career to take care of her aged parents in
Kingsport, Nova Scotia, even thought a married brother lived nearby.27
Generally speaking, our early office and factory workers are curiously
silent on matters relating to their paid labour. Instead, their diaries describe
the social activities related to their work day and details of shopping, visiting,
washing and sewing which dominated evenings and weekends. "This is one of
Mark Twain's days on board ship," Lucie Borden noted on 14 April 1905.
" 'Got up, dressed, ate and went to bed' with the slight variation of 8 hours
work for Perry Mason Company." Whether such an entry reflects women's
alienation in the workplace, a preoccupation with women's sphere, or both, is
difficult to say, but the end result is that the diaries of single working women
are surprisingly similar in content to those of their homebound counterparts.
A day in the life of factory worker Hannah Richardson in 1872 was described
in this typical diary entry:
17 January 1872
Cold and snowy. To the shop. May in a while in the
morning. Jennie Smith in in the afternoon. I ran over
to the boys room a while after tea, came back went to
work on Than's shirt. Nehemiah McCs wife died this
morning 9 o'clock.
What Hannah did in the shop all day other than receive two friendly visits is
never revealed. 2 8

CONRAD

9

Women in the paid labour force, then, often carried domestic traditions
such as housecleaning, the celebration of anniversaries and personal
friendships into the workplace. One wonders how industrial society would
have evolved had women claimed a larger voice in its organization.
Obviously, they would have eliminated some of the frustrations from their
work. "A very disgruntled day, rather unhappy morning, "Ella noted on 3
January 1935.
Felt discouraged and peeved. Some little thing that
Basil said upset me for the entire day. It's the little
things that take the toll. I really seem to be getting
nowhere at the Bank of Montreal though, and if I try
to do my work well and speedily nobody seems to
notice. Pride! Pride! Why should I worry whether
work is done to my own satisfaction. But that's just the
trouble. I really have no fondness at heart for my work
and it has become merely a matter of routine day after
day.
Of course, as Ella herself noted on 28 February after receiving a paltry raise of
$25 .00 a year, "they seem to expect the women to work harder than the men."
But instead of acting upon the contradictions of her absurd working
conditions she "Became very brave and proceeded to have my desk moved". A
retreat into domestic routine offered defiance of the inequitable business
world in which she found herself.
Those women who followed the traditional course of marriage and
motherhood often found their domestic base disrupted as men moved in
search of a family wage. Significantly, no married women in our diary
samples ever worked outside the home. When confronted with an alien
environment they found comfort in performing domestic rituals. Annie
Butler resorted to this alternative to despair when as a bride she accompanied
her sea captain husband on a voyage from Yarmouth to South America in
1871 :
8 April 1871
I dreamed of Nellie last night helping her put her
house to rights.
18th. April
John has gone ashore and I am into housecleaning
strong. I have got one of the men helping me. We have
got everything cleaned out of our room and I have got
Tom whitewashing and got things so he can go right
ahead with the cleaning, so all I shall do now is look on
and see he does it well.. ..I presume everybody at home
is beginning to prepare for housecleaning, how I long
to be at home once more.29
Women's work rhythms continued on board ship much, I suspect, to the
dismay of the conscripted mate who was set to whitewashing to please the
captain's wife. Each day seemed to have significance for the homesick Annie
who noted on 5th May: "This is the first Friday in May. I long to spend a
Friday at home." Similarly, Mary MacDonald of Gore, Hants County, who
with her new husband moved to California in 1873, found significance in days
of the week: "Sunday always makes me think of home more than any other
day," she noted "Sunday was always a pleasant day at home; how I would like

10

Time and Place

to be there now. " 30 Singing hymns on Sunday with fellow migrants helped to
wake memories of time and place:
Sunday 7 September ( 1873)
Sandy Gordon came in the evning and we had a sing.
0, it reminds me so much of home when I hear our
good old tunes sung again that we used to sing away in
the dear old home with brothers and sisters.
Even the seasonal rhythm became more meaningful in the harsh glare of the
California sun. When visiting a photographic exhibition, Mary noted:
There was among every variety of other thing some
very handsome engravings--one I thought perfection;
it was a picture of a New England farmhouse and
grounds just after a light skiff of snow had fallen.
A New England landscape in winter was the next best thing to a picture of
home.
Migration also made women more dependent upon their husbands, a
situation conducive to feelings of helplessness and homesickness. "I feel
saddened today on account of my evil disposition last night. To think l could
so far lose control of myself and get so angry at my dear husband ... .I wonder if
Rie ever got that angry at Rob," Annie Butler confided to her diary on 6
August 1871. Mary MacDonald finally resorted to poetry to express her
loneliness on 10 September 1873:
Farewell my childhood's home and friends
I bid you all adieu
Twas hard to leave my native land
But harder still to part with you
This land seems very strange to me
So different from my own
And I feel so like a stranger here
So far away from home ....
I am not sorry that I came
For him I'd go this world around
For husband is the dearest soul
That ere on earth was found
The folks are very good and kind
And the sun is shining bright today
But O I feel so lonely now
Whenever he's away
It must be that I love him so
I feel so different then
When he's away my sunshine's gone
Until he comes home again.
At its worst, empty domestic routines revolved around a husband or father's
time. Here I am reminded of Emily Carr's description of her middle class
household of the late nineteenth century:
The routine of our childhood home ran with
mechanical precision ....
Every evening at quarter to six Mother would say,
"Children, is every gate properly shut and fastened?
Are no toys littering the garden, no dolls sitting on
humans' chairs? Wash your faces, then, and put on
clean pinafores; your father will soon be home ....

CONRAD

11

After Father had fussed over Isabella and eaten a
good dinner, he went upstairs to see Mother who was
far more often in bed ill than up .... He sat beside her
bed for half an hour in almost complete silence, then
he went downstairs to read his paper till bedtime. 31
Of course, domesticity in pre-industrial society did not always conform to the
ideal any more than it did for young Emily Carr. And like Emily Carr, women
in Atlantic Canada found their own ways to survive personal tragedy and
pursue intellectual growth. Religious enthusiasm, literary pursuits, female
support networks and kinship ties offered assistance when the domestic ideal
failed.
Mary Bradley's early nineteenth century prescription for psychological
survival in a childless unhappy first marriage was particularly appropriate to
her domestic setting:
I contracted a habit of awakening and rising early at
the hour of five in the morning, both summer and
winter. My place of private devotions was an
underground dairy room--which in the winter was
used for a cellar for vegetables; protected from the
frost by an outhouse over it, with a door to go
downstairs--and this was my place of devotion in
winter.. .. and when the door was shut down after me,
all timidity and fear was dispelled, and my soul would
be so happy, and enjoyed so much of the presence of
God, that I sometimes felt as if the place was full of
happy spirits who met with me .
.. . With my heart full of love and truly alive to God, l
returned from this Bethel to resume my domestic
duties with great delight.
Community churches also offered women scope for teaching, social reform
and female friendships. Later in the century, Maritime women would use
religious conviction to justify the most audacious claims to education and
career. "Next to Truro, Bobbili is now the dearest place on earth to me,"
Mathilda Churchill wrote from her mission station in India where she spent
nearly fifty years of her life as a teacher and administrator. " ... .it is Home in
India and home wherever it may be is a loved spot to a woman" she declared
somewhat ingenuously. 32
Others, like Phoebe Collins, retreated into "novils" and day dreaming.
Ori 24 October 1815 Phoebe noted:
I don't think I shall git the rhumatism in my fingers for
want of exercise, for I have bin in my spinning room all
day; now one intrudes on my solitude, my mind has
free scope for thinking--if it were not for hope and
anticipation, time indeed would pass heavily on.
Margaret Michener, recently widowed, found solace in female friendships,
English literature and the natural beauty of the seaboard village of Hantsport
in 1850.
I have come tonight to my lonely habitation. It is not
the same as it has been all summer, for hope has
departed. I was looking forward to winter when
Simeon would be home. I took a walk down to the

12 Time and Place

Halfway River bridge and sat on the fence by the
marsh to watch the flowing tide. I sat there till it came
all around me as the tides are high--and ebbed again. I
read while there Pope's "Messiah" which Simeon had
learned and wrote it off for me before we were married.
_I sounds so like him, I almost think I hear him repeat
it. I seem to envy Maria the hope she has of Curry
coming home, but why should I? Let me give up and
wish others all good success. Maria is here now; my
friends are all very kind . I wrote to Rebecca Elder
today. I find some consolation in scribbling ....
Female friendships are a well documented feature of women's culture.
Less studied because they are so obvious are the strong bonds of sibling
sisterhood that sustained women in earlier times. Older sisters in large
families virtually raised younger children and sisters close in age shared
intimacies that were denied even to husbands. "Dear sister Rie's birthday,"
the seaborne Annie Butler noted on 15 February 1871: "How I would like to
be near her. I wo nder what she is doing. Frying donuts maybe. Wouldn't I like
to have one or t wo dozen to eat.. .. " On 13 May she pined: " I have got better of
my dreary feelings but the desire to see my precious sister is just as strong but I
am going to try to be cheerful and patient until l do."
"Sister Lizzie and I had our farewell last night," Mathilda Faulkner
Churchill re ported before departing for the mission fields in 1873:
Hours we spent together, far into the night, talking
over old childhood da ys at Stewiacke, the girlhood
days here in T ruro, her sickness and the long weary
period of pain and retirement, my teaching and
mission work, my wedding-day and the new life now
stretching out for me ahead. She was very brave. We
did not weep. It was rather a retrospect to record our
joys and our mercies, the seal of mutual love.
Letters and even diary exchanges between sisters testify to the special support
that siblings provided in good times and bad. Of all the features of women's
culture revealed in our sources this the most fleeting as modern family
patterns take their toll on natural sisterhood .
Though the domestic ideal in the twentieth century had lost much of its
glamour both in the home and in the workplace, women still struggled to keep
their domestic networks. Ella Liscombe, who lived with her widowed mother
and unmarried sister, found home ownership burdensome not only because
of taxes but because the bank manager might conclude that she did not need a
raise if she owned her own home. "It would be cheaper to board somewhere,"
she recorded in her diary on 20 January 1935, "but it is not like having your
own home and we are still comfortable and warm."3 3
Even more remarkable is the determination of Mary MacQuarrie,
mother of twelve, to maintain the bonds among three generations of women,
after the death of her husband.
We were left, the younger girls and I, fairly
comfortable. However, when the war was over the
three girls were married; thus leaving my old mother

CONRAD

13

and me to face the world. The prospect was not very
bright in Glace Bay and I had nobody belonging to me
there; I sold all my property and bought a home in
Sydney, because I had to make a home for my mother
while she lived. When she died four years ago I rented
my house, sold all my things and started out to visit my
scattered family. I sometimes wish I had kept up my
old home, but if I were by myself I wouldn't be able to
stand the loneliness after always having a full house,
and it would be more than I could bear to have to sit at
a lonely table and not have people coming in at night.
So here I am, at the age of 74, going about from place
to place. At present I'm here with Katie in Halifax. I
have been with Ethel in Baltimore, three winters and
one summer; and with Flora in Buffalo and Syracuse;
and with Alice in Montreal. I hope to be for awhile
with Flora in Sydney where she is going to live for the
next five years. 34
Mary MacQuarrie felt that her place was with her family but her children
were scattered all over North America. Moreover, sons no longer took
precedence in caring for widowed mothers; only daughters figured in Mary
MacQuarrie's wanderings. Clearly, genealogical maps had contracted while
family space had expanded far beyond household and community. Despite
these challenges, women's support networks continued to re-create
themselves and take on new forms. I cannot help wondering, when I think of
Helen Maria Grant, Cecilia Spofford and Evlyn Farris, all active workers in
the suffrage cause in British Columbia, whether their club activity
compensated, in part, for the extended family and friendship networks that
they left behind in Nova Scotia. 35
The women in our diaries clearly experienced time and place differently
than many of us do today. Very few spoke of place in political or even larger
geographical terms. Place for most women was represented by home, kin and
community, spaces in which women's role was clearly defined and highly
valued. Similarly, time was reckoned through the prism of the family and
even the time and place of work were assigned according to the gender role
expectations of daughters, mothers and widows. As has been noted
elsewhere, 'timely' action in the nineteenth century consisted of helpful
responses in times of crises rather than adherence to a schedule; and, for
women, personal life course decisions were directed by family expectations
long after most men began to make choices based on individual and economic
considerations.36
These generalizations are obviously not valid for all women at all times.
Even certain women in Atlantic Canada--native Indian, Acadian and upper
class women for instance--would not always conform to such norms.
However, given the close ties with New England and their high level of
literacy, Anglo-Saxon women in Atlantic Canada eagerly subscribed to the
cult of domesticity as the production and reproduction of the domestic sphere
increasingly became the exclusive preserve of women in the nineteenth
century. 37 Since all of the women cited above were products of this culture
their devotion to the domestic ideal is not surprising. Not only were they

14 Time and Place

urged to conform to it by prescriptive literature, novels and community
standards; they were taught it by their mothers' example. However, the postSecond World War generation of women would move into the labour force in
larger numbers and the welfare state would shoulder some of the burden of
domesticity. A casuality of this process and the revolution in communications
which accompanied it was the custom of diary keeping and the art of private
letter writing-the very sources which, for over a century, chronicled the fate of
so many women in Atlantic Canada.

CONRAD

15

Footnotes
Portions of this paper will be incorporated in a forthcoming book entitled Recording
Angels, Diaries of Nova Scotia Women, 1775-1939 written in collaboration with
Donna E. Smyth and Toni Laidlaw.
I. See, for instance, Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American
Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982); Diana Gittens, Fair Sex: Family Size
and Structure, 1900-39 (London: Hutchinson, 1982); Lillian Faderman, Surpassing
the Love of Men (New York: William Morrow, 1981); Beth Light and Alison Prentice,
eds., Pioneer and Gentlewomen of British North America, 1713-1867 (Toronto: New
Hogtown Press, 1980); Beth Light and Joy Parr, eds., Canadian Women on the Move,
1867-1920 (Toronto: New Hogtown Press and OISE, 1983).
2. Gayle Kimball, ed., Women's Culture: The Women's Renaissance of the
Seventies (Metuchen, N. J. : Scarecrow Press, 1981): 3.
3.
Eliane Leslau Silverman, "Writing Canadian Women's History, 1970-82: an
Historiographical Analysis" Canadian Historical Review, Vol. LXIII, No. 4
(December 1982): 521.
4. Ruth Pierson and Alison Prentice, "Feminism and the Writing and Teaching of
History," Atlantis, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 43.
5. Mary O'Brien et al., "Feminism and Education: A Critical Review Essay,"
Resourcesfor Feminist Research, Vol. XII, No. 3 (Nov. 1983): 6.
6. Eds., Janice Acton, Penny Goldsmith and Bonnie Shepard (Toronto: Women's
Press, 1974).
7. Eds., Marie Lavigne, Jennifer Stoddart, Micheline Dumont and Michele Jean
( Montreal: Les Quinze, 1982).
8. Eds ., Barbara Latham and Cathy Kess (Victoria: Camosun College, 1980).
9.· Jennifer Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian
Country (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980); Sylvia Van Kirk,
"Many Tender Ties": Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870 (Winnipeg: Watson &
Dwyer, 1980); Susan Jackel, A Flannel Shirt and Liberty (Vancouver: University of
British Columbia Press, 1982); Eliane Leslau Silverman, The Last Best West: Women
on the Alberta Frontier, 1880-1930 (Montreal: Eden Press, 1984); Meg Luxton, More
than A Labour of Love (Toronto: Women's Press, 1980).
10. Comparative regional analysis offers a particularly valuable approach to
women's history. See, for example, Claudette Lacelle, "Les domestiques dans Jes villes
canadiennes au XIX siecle: effectifs et conditions de vie," Histoire Sociale, Vol. XV,
No. 29 (Mai 1982),pp. 181-207; Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein, "Family LifeCycles, Occupations and Networks of Mutual Aid," Historical Papers, (Canadian
Historical Association: Vancouver, 1983): 30-55.
11. John Gamer, The Franchise and Politics in British North America, 1755-1867
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969): 155-56.
12. Sarah Frost, "Diary" published in Walter Bates, Kingston and the Loyalists of
1783 ed., W. 0 . Raymond 1889 rept. (Woodstock: Non-entity Press, 1980): 26-30.
13. Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of
American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1980).
14. Margaret Conrad, Recording Angels: The Private Chronicles of Women from
the Maritime Provinces of Canada, 1750-1950 (Ottawa: CRIAW, 1982); Donna
Smyth, "Mothers, Grandmothers and Young Wives Tales," unpublished play based
on "Recording Angels" chronicles .
15. Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Micmac Quillwork (Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum,
1982).
16. Alan A. Brookes, "Out-migration from the Maritimes, 1860-1900: Some

16 Time and Place

Preliminary Considerations," Acadiensis, Vol. V, No. 2 (Spring 1976), pp. 25-55; "The
Golden Age and the Exodus: The Case of Canning, Kings County," Acadiensis, Vol.
XI, No. 1. (Autumn 1981), pp.57-82; Patricia Thornton "Some Preliminary
Comments on the Extent and Consequences of Out-Migration from the Atlantic
Region, 1870-1920," in Lewis R. Fischer and Eric Sager, eds., Merchant Shipping and
Economic Development in Atlantic Canada (St. John's: Memorial University, 1982).
17. Tamara K. Hareven and Maris A. Vinovskis, eds., Family and Population in
Nineteenth Century America (Princeton University Press, 1978); Shirley Ardener,
Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps (London: Croom Helm, 1981).
18. Ardener, Women and Space: 15.
19. Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (Cambridge University
Press, 1982).
20. Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Phoebe Collins Diary, 1815-16.
21. Beaton Institute, University College of Cape Breton, Mary Smith Diary, 1891.
22. Acadia University Archives, Rebecca Ells Diary, 1901-05.
23. Mary Bradley, A Narrative of the Life and Christian Experience of Mrs. Mary
Bradley (Boston: Strong and Brodhead, 1849) reprinted in part as "Mary Bradley's
Reminiscences: A Domestic Life in Colonial New Brunswick" Atlantis, Vol. 7, No. I
(Autumn 1981): 92-101.
24. Margaret Dickie Michener McCulloch Diary, Wo/fvil/e Acadian, December
1923-November 1929.
·
25. Albert Kennedy, "The Provincials," Acadiensis, Vol. IV, (Spring 1975): 94.
26. Beaton Institute, University College of Cape Breton, Ella Liscombe Diaries,
1915-1938.
27. Private, Hannah Richardson diary, 1872; Private, Lucie Bordendiary, 1905-09.
28. On shoemakers in Lynn see Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial
Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
29. Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Annie Butler Diary, 1871.
30. Private, Mary MacDougall MacDonald Mason Diary, 1873.
31. Emily Carr, Growing Pains (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin Company Ltd ., 1946): 4-6.
32. Mrs. George Churchill, Letters from My Home in India (New York: George H.
Doran Company, 1916): 92.
33. On the office situation see Graham S. Lowe, "Women, work and the office: the
feminization of clerical occupations in Canada, 1901-193 I," Canadian Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 5 ( 1980), pp. 361-381 ; "Class, Job and Gender in the Canadian Office,"
Labour/ Le Travailleur Vol. IO (Autumn 1982): 11-37.
34. Beaton Institute, University College of Cape Breton, Mary Killam MacQuarrie
Memoir, 1929.
35. Latham and Kess, eds., In Her Own Right, Appendix.
36. Tamara K. Hareven, "Family Time and Historical Time," in Alice Rossi, Jerome
Kagen and Tamara K. Hareven, eds., The Family (New York: Norton, 1978): 63-4.
37. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England,
1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
Leonore Davidoff, Jean L'Esperance and Howard Newby "Landscape with Figures:
Home and Community in English Society" in The Rights and Wrongs of Women,
eds., Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976): 155.