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Books Review/Compte rendu
© 1998, 1999
J.I. Little. State and Society in Transition:
The Politics of Institutional Reform in the Eastern Townships, 1838-1852.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. Pp. x, 320.
Reviewed by Bruce Curtis
Professor Little here offers another of his interesting
studies of the development of the Eastern Townships region of Lower Canada/Canada
East. He concerns himself mainly with the development of state institutions
at the local level in the formative years following the rebellion of 1837.
To this end, his several chapters examine the organization of political
patronage, the development of the legal system and forms of community regulation,
and the origins and operation of institutions of representative local government.
Of particular interest to historians of education are
two chapters on the local impact of school laws and of educational administration
from the Act of 1841 to that of 1851. Little considers the regional development
of schooling, pointing to the distribution of schools and scholars throughout
his period. He informs us about model schools and academies, but has little
to say about pedagogy and curriculum. He details local reactions to central
government attempts to impose property taxation, and examines how these
varied from one local community to another. He outlines the role played
by the educational inspectorate appointed under the School Act of 1851
in promoting compliance with administrative regulations.
Much of this examination is revealing and instructive.
Little shows, for instance, in contrast to a commonly held belief, that
opposition to taxation was most intense not in primarily Francophone or
seigneurial settlements, but rather in communities where alternative educational
institutions pre-dated administrative incursion. He offers a number of
enticing hints about how class-cultural organization and local tradition
shaped the fate of central government initiatives. Little may not have
examined in detail two prime sources for the early part of this period,
the investigative activities of the Buller Commission and of the Special
Council, but whatever one chooses to make of Little’s interpretation, his
is by far the most thorough account we have for this region and period.
Little’s discussion of the fate of the Durham/Sydenham
plan for politically educating “the people” by causing them to govern themselves
in local representative institutions is equally valuable. The development
of local government in Lower Canada/Canada East is, unfortunately, little
studied. Our knowledge of how local government acts were taken up or opposed
and of the consequences of such activity is underdeveloped. Little has
painstakingly reconstructed the fragmentary surviving information about
these bodies in the Eastern Townships region, showing, that, in some instances
at least, serious attempts were made to make them function in the early
1840s, before the railway construction projects gave new urgency to local
government organization.
These sections of the book alone recommend it strongly
to readers interested in the history of political administration, and Little
offers a number of useful comments on such other matters as the place of
the charivari in the community regulation of behaviour and of the
overlapping practices of official and popular justice.
As a contributor to the literature of Canadian state formation
and as the author of a recent piece on Lower Canadian educational development
in the 1840s,(1) I was particularly enticed
by Little’s several declarations that his study was intended to engage
with the state formation literature; however, I found the work to be quite
unsatisfactory from this point of view. Little has insight into the dynamics
of central-local relations despite, rather than because of, his general
outlook.
Little does not seriously examine the extensive critical
literature on state formation. From feminist attacks on Corrigan and Sayer’s
tendency to assimilate all forms of regulation to state forms, from the
burgeoning, Foucauldian “governmentality” school, and from neo-Marxist
responses, an historian could acquire a degree of conceptual fluency that
might make for a pointed study.(2) Little’s
unfamiliarity with the literature results in a tendency to treat some themes
that strike participants as problems as if they were dogmas,
and he comes remarkably close in places to the now groaningly tedious equation
of the state formation approach with that of social control.
Although at times Little adopts a more solid position
that would seek to investigate local forms of state formation as interaction
between recent central and local authorities, he more commonly attacks
a straw opponent who is held to see in state formation nothing but the
domination of local relations by all-powerful central state agents. Not
surprisingly, in setting out to examine “where on the state-community spectrum
the public figures and public institutions of the Eastern Townships tended
to fall” (p. 7), Little repeatedly demonstrates that local activists made
a contribution. In the course of this demonstration, however, one key question,
that of the form of the state, is lost from view. Indeed, what contributors
to the state formation literature would take as central elements of political
formation, such as the shift from local dominance by oligarchies to the dominance
of political parties, are not even described as being about the form
of political relations.
Little’s original research emphasized the civil secretary’s
correspondence files, a valuable source in state paper collections for
local voices on policy matters. His resuscitation of these voices is a
helpful contribution. However, he has not been similarly attentive to the
origin of government policy initiatives, often taking these as givens against
which people in localities reacted. This approach to the sources has the
ironic and unintended consequence of casting “the state” as a monolithic
entity on policy formation, and Little does not clarify matters by his
practice of using the concepts “the state,” “the government,” and “the
administration” interchangeably.
On the whole, then, historians of Canadian education should
certainly read this study, but they may find it, as I did, to be more interesting
and informative in its empirical materials than in its engagement with
debates of interpretation.
Bruce Curtis
Carleton University
Notes
1. “The State of Tutelage in Lower Canada, 1835–1855,”
History of Education Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1997): 25–43.
2. For an overview and bibliography
of the “governmentality” school by a member, see David Garland, “`Governmentality’
and the Problem of Crime: Foucault, Criminology, Sociology,” Theoretical
Criminology 1, no. 2 (1997): 173–214; for a neo-Marxist critique, Mark
Neocleous, Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power
(London: Macmillan, 1996) and B. Curtis, “Taking the State Back Out: Rose
and Miller on Political Power,” British Journal of Sociology 46,
no. 4 (1996): 575–89.
Jean-Pierre Bastian and Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Jofre, eds.
Protestant
Educational Conceptions, Religious Ideology and Schooling Practices: Selected
Papers (Monographs in Education no. 22). Winnipeg: University of Manitoba,
1994. Pp. 164.
The papers in this collection, the proceedings of a symposium
on Protestantism and education in Latin America, contribute significantly
to our knowledge of Protestant education in Latin America. When read with
other volumes on Christian home and foreign missions in the nineteenth
century, this work adds to our understanding of the Protestant mission
impulse.
Protestant Educational Conceptions, Religious Ideology
and Schooling Practices achieves partially the three major tasks Jean-Pierre
Bastian claims: (1) to create an inventory of the networks of Protestant
schools in selected Latin American countries, (2) to compare Protestant
education networks with state education systems and Catholic networks,
and (3) to contrast the models of education employed by the Protestant
missionaries and educators and the content of instruction in their schools.
The authors thereby portray the dynamics of Protestant schooling in Latin
America and show how far these efforts succeeded: "the formation of individuals
with [Protestant] character and democratic civil conscience."
Jether Periera Ramalho’s "The Pedagogical Characteristics
of Protestant Schools and the Ideological Categories of Liberalism" explores
the linkages between the theory of liberal progressive education and its
practice in Protestant schools in Brazil in the early twentieth century.
On the evidence, Protestant schools implemented the theory of progressivism:
education for liberal democratic development, emphasizing the integration
of theory and practice, respect for and development of the individual as
a citizen, and the promotion of civic responsibility. Based on a study
of three major schools, Periera Ramalho convincingly portrays a successful
experiment. We are not informed, however, to what extent the philosophy
and practice of these schools, along with their underlying Protestant ethos,
influenced a generation of civic leaders.
In "The Argentinean Evangelical Schools, 1898-1910," Amestoy
details the religious, social, and political ideological aims of the aes;
compares the aes with state and Roman Catholic schools; and contextualizes
the aes initiative in its social, religious, and political environments.
Amestoy characterizes the aes as both confrontational (with the Roman Catholic
Church) and nation building (supportive of the state education system and
of the "conservative liberal" ethos of Argentinean republicanism). The
aes served the lower classes and industrial suburbs of Buenos Aires, thereby
promoting education as an "efficient instrument in the process of social
change and modernization, as well as the fundamental agent in achieving
civilization and progress" (p. 18). The aes sought to create "good children
and good citizens." To promote citizenship development within a democratic
framework, the aes curriculum and pedagogical methods incorporated participatory,
progressive methods. To make productive citizens, education was practical
as well as theoretical, reflecting early twentieth-century enthusiasm with
progressive vocational education. The aes were perceived by the state as
useful since they served the immigrant and working-class sectors of the
metropolis. The Roman Catholic Church portrayed the aes and its Protestant
supporters as agents of imperialism and apostasy. Amestoy argues convincingly,
although not uncritically, that the aes were agents of progress, of democracy
and modernization.
In "Ideals of Protestant Womanhood, Religious Ideology
and the Education of Women in Mexico, 1880-1910," Bastian examines the
methods by which evangelical Protestants provided schooling to young women
and women of the lower orders, and the impact of these schools and how
their alumnae societies enhanced the position of women from the lower orders.
Shunned by the dominant classes, Protestantism used free schooling to attract
adherents. Combined with their primary schools, Protestant societies allocated
significant resources to the maintenance of secondary and normal schools
for women. Normal schools served two objectives: to provide female teachers
for mission schools and to provide Protestant teachers for the state schools,
thereby infiltrating the state system with suitably trained models of Protestant
womanhood. An innovative element is the discussion of alumnae associations'
effect on their members. These associations provided support networks for
women who worked alone in isolated towns, offered ongoing professional
education, and assisted in promoting the principles of Protestant maternal
feminism. Alumnae associations extended their work by providing "redemptive"
and adult education services to lower-class women--"ironing, midwiving,
and washing" and the branches of basic education: reading, writing, arithmetic,
and hygiene and home economics. As with Protestant missions in non-Christian
societies, Protestant schools combatted what they perceived to be systemic
and concerted efforts to keep women, the true reformers, in ignorance and
subjugation. The Protestant woman was the new woman, a reformer, a liberal,
and an educated woman.
Bruno-Jofre’s "The Ideal of Womanhood in the Context of
Protestant Missionaries' Concept of Education and Citizenship, 1916-1929"
explores the ideology of womanhood promoted by Protestant missionaries
and teachers. In her analysis of the proceedings of a series of international
conferences held in Panama (1916), Montevideo (1925) and Havana (1929)
and the writings of La Nueva Democracia, Bruno-Jofre shows that
both Latin American and North American Protestant women viewed the future
role of the Latin American woman in terms modelled after progressive North
American women. In the 1916 and 1925 conferences, the Social Gospel and
progressivism suggested for women an activist role in education and citizenship
formation, all the while promoting the cult of domesticity. By 1929, in
Latin America as in North America, the Social Gospel was waning and the
reformist model was replaced by a more traditional domestic role. Women,
in Latin America as in North America, were portrayed as having "regenerating
power" and could fashion "the ideals of the nation" in their role as mothers
and first educators. As Bruno-Jofre shows, the imperialism of evangelical
Protestant women missionaries ignored the progressive views of Latin American
women for an imported, superior model.
Bruno-Jofre’s critical analysis of the discussion of evangelism
and the feminist debates of the period is useful and Amestoy’s study of
ideology is well constructed. Protestant Educational Conceptions, Religious
Ideology and Schooling Practices fills gaps in our knowledge of evangelical
Protestant education in Latin America and shows the important, if at times
somewhat marginal, role of these denominations in the education of women
and men of this region. The authors demonstrate that for evangelical Protestants
education had sacred and secular roles, enhancing the respectability of
Protestantism in a predominantly Roman Catholic realm, and encouraging
republican and democratic movements for citizenship. Apart from these important
matters, the authors should have linked Latin American Protestant educational
and missionary efforts to the world-wide evangelical and missionary enterprise
and to progressive education and feminist movements of the era.
Michael Owen, Ryerson University
Margaret Gillett and Ann Beer, eds. Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical
Essays by Women Associated with McGill University. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Pp. 291.
"Having an agenda" means one has a goal and a plan to
reach that goal. For many women in Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical
Essays by Women Associated with McGill University, plans and goals
were not always explicit, yet their stories reveal agendas. This collection
of twenty-eight autobiographical essays not only reveals personal agendas,
but illustrates differences and similarities among women otherwise linked
only by affiliation with McGill University. Some contributors, such as
Emily White, Violet Archer, and Erika Ritter, attended McGill as students;
others, including Monique Bégin, Ratna Ghosh, and Janet G. Donald,
worked as professors or administrators. Support staff are not included
in this collection, although the editors say they sought a contribution
from a member of this group. Authors reflect on their relationship with
McGill, questions of feminism, and personal traumas, although some provide
merely linear descriptions of their lives, with little or no analysis.
The articles are not separated into thematic groups; each essay stands
alone and speaks for itself. Although some stories are flat, others are
moving and even inspiring. All are important and deserve to be told.
A sequel to A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by
McGill Women (1984), Our Own Agendas includes women from a wider
variety of backgrounds. The contributors are from different cultures, professions,
and age groups. As a result, the essays are diverse in style and in content.
This diversity comes across quite strongly in the various attitudes and
beliefs surrounding feminism. Essays by three of the oldest contributors
are reminiscent of older-style factually detailed autobiographies. Their
attitudes toward feminism, however, are clear. Laura Rowles, for example,
studied physics in the 1920s and believes that equity programs and discussions
of language use ("picayune fussing about the words 'chairman' and 'chair'")
are not only unnecessary but lower the level at which men see women. On
the other hand, Ginette Lamontagne, a senior administrator who never expected
to be part of McGill, admits that she is a feminist and has benefitted
from feminism, but thinks later generations will not need the label feminist.
Several contributors, like Laura Rowles and Ann McCall,
take for granted the right to an education and to a career. Others, like
Sara P. Gibbs and Patricia G. Kirkpatrick, fought for their right to pursue
their chosen careers. Gibbs, in "Fighting for My Own Agenda: A Life of
Science," describes her struggle to pursue research in biology despite
discouragement. Kirkpatrick’s "Priestesses, Goddesses, Witches, and Whores"
provides insight into the path to ordination in the Anglican priesthood
and the obstacles that women in organized religions continue to encounter.
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, Annie Neeposh Iserhoff, and others had to
fight racism to acquire their education. Nfah-Abbenyi writes, in "Why (What)
Am I (Doing) Here: A Cameroonian Woman," that every time she enters McGill,
she is struck by "the reality of its whiteness." In "Excerpts from My Life,"
Iserhoff describes life as a child in the bush, being taken away to a residential
school, and, finally, becoming a Cree teacher. In "Humour and Death," Lise
Demers, also a teacher, presents a different view of growing up in a Native
family. Although she draws much strength from her mother’s Algonquin family,
she also values the French-Canadian culture of her father’s family. The
combination of the two allows her to identify herself as a Native woman
with "two-way" knowledge.
Traumatic events and survival play significant parts in
several essays. One inspirational essay is "A Journey Within" by Jane Poulson,
a medical practitioner, who describes her acceptance of the onset of blindness
as a result of diabetes in her final year of medical school. In "Prelude,"
Mary-Margaret Jones describes and reflects upon her life before and after
her mother’s death, her life after being gang-raped at the beginning of
her university career, and coming to terms with herself and her sexuality.
A similarly painful contribution is an anonymous poem, "Life: Parts I-IV,"
which describes a woman’s anger with her father, who claims to be supportive
but demolishes her self-esteem in many little ways; with the man who raped
her at age sixteen at a party; and with the men who have raped other women.
But she also describes her struggle to come to terms with herself:
I can't give up on me.
Because I have to live with me.
And I want to be happy
with me.
Gillett and Beer argue that autobiography is central to a
feminism of difference. Feminist pedagogy encourages, if not requires,
the sharing of personal stories. Sue Middleton’s Educating Feminists:
Life Histories and Pedagogy argues that feminist pedagogy requires
an exploration of our own and other’s life histories. The relationships
between individual biographies, historical events, and the broader power
relations that have shaped and constrained our possibilities and perspectives
as educators must be analyzed. However, doing so involves taking both personal
and professional risks. Many contributors to Our Own Agendas do,
indeed, take risks in telling their stories. Although some of the women’s
achievements come by chance rather than by hard work and ambition, the
generous sharing of personal stories, combined with the narratives of career
achievements make for, as Gretta Chambers says in the Foreword, both "a
good read" and "a moving panorama of personal aspirations and experience."
In any future autobiographical collection, however, the voices of traditionally
silent support staff must be included.
Our Own Agendas is not traditional institutional
history. Many essays touch only indirectly on McGill. Those that do are
informative sources for researchers exploring the history of women and
higher education. The essays cover a wide range of activities and achievements.
The stories are as unique and diverse as the contributors themselves. Margaret
Gillett, a long-time professor at McGill, and Ann Beer, an assistant professor
also at McGill, have brought together the stories of a wide variety of
women. This collection is an important resource for anyone interested in
the lives of contemporary women and the history of women’s higher education.
Alyson E. King, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Carol Gold. Educating Middle Class Daughters: Private Girls' Schools
in Copenhagen, 1790-1820. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1996.
Pp. 243.
In 1814 Denmark became the first country in the western
world to make elementary education compulsory, four years after it had
been made compulsory in Copenhagen. The 1814 law stated that every child
between the ages of seven and fourteen--the year of confirmation--had to
be taught the three Rs and religion.
So far researchers in Danish history have limited themselves
to pointing out that, depending on the economic situation of the family,
schooling became part of the reality for some children earlier than for
others. U.S. historian Carol Gold has chosen another perspective. In her
book
Educating Middle Class Daughters, she concludes that some children
had already been to school several years before the introduction of a national
education system. According to Gold, the new public education system in
Copenhagen stood on the shoulders of an older private school system--and
to a large extent depended on it during much of the nineteenth century.
Between 1790 and 1817 there were 261 private "school keepers"
in Copenhagen, among whom were 210 women. Half of all children went to
school, and of these, 70% went to a private school. The female school keepers
share two things: their main reason to keep a school going was economic,
and they have all been judged harshly by later generations of historians
of education. Gold disputes this interpretation.
In Educating Middle Class Daughters, Gold depicts
a world of variegated schools, where small dame schools or daycare centres
existed side by side with bigger girls' schools or academies. Whereas girls
in some schools were taught at a very low level, girls in others were taught
at something near high school level.
Female school keepers were mainly single and relatively
poor, but in opposition to the tradition that holds the women were mostly
illiterate, Gold shows these women could read and write and sometimes more
than that. Most had a petit bourgeois or artisan background and some came
from school keepers' families.
The girls in private schools received an education in
line with the expectations of the time. They were taught to be loving wives
to their husbands but also to help them in their daily business. As far
as one can gather from the source materials, the girls at the highly ranked
and expensive girls' institutes had a middle-class background, whereas
those at in the daycare centres and smaller girls' schools had more modest
social backgrounds.
Gold shows us a series of parents--mainly fathers--who
belonged to the Copenhagen middle class and, inspired by the French Revolution,
wished both their sons and daughters could go to school to become citizens.
The parents energetically pursued this project: they created educational
societies, sat on the boards, hired teachers, and managed accounts. They
even organized charity schools for the daughters of middle class parents
who had lost their fortunes.
Without prior guiding traditions in the field of girls'
education these early school enthusiasts had to learn from daily experience
and from contemporary educational debates. Through case studies of the
Copenhagen Daughters School and the school of the Society for Sororal Charity,
both from 1791, Gold demonstrates how the curriculum gradually came to
harmonize with the new nineteenth-century middle-class conception of the
good mother and wife. The old vision of a woman as both wife and helper
was pushed to the background.
Gold has written a good and generally informative book.
She helps an audience unfamiliar with Danish history to understand developments.
For Danes, this is a relatively unknown chapter in the history of Danish
education. The source material and the author’s imaginative and creative
approach are impressive.
Sometimes the author’s fondness for the early girls' schools
allows her to get lost in empirical details. Further, any historian of
childhood will find it surprising that the history of the early private
girls' school are interpreted only from a women’s history perspective.
As a result, the relation between the history of education and the history
of childhood is absent.
Ning de Coninck-Smith
Paul Axelrod. The Promise of Schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914
(Themes in Canadian Social History). Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997.
Since the appearance of Canadian Education: A History
(edited by J. D. Wilson, R. M. Stamp and L.-P. Audet) in 1970 there has
been no one-volume synthesis of Canadian educational history. Although
Paul Axelrod’s The Promise of Schooling is not a full-pledged synthesis,
as his sub-title indicates it is a summary and analysis of educational
developments in nineteenth-century Canada up to World War I.
In about 125 pages of text, Axelrod has managed to survey
over a century of educational history. Drawing freely on the work of a
large number of educational historians published over the past three decades,
he succeeds in touching on all the main themes, including the drive for
free, universal, and compulsory education; the place of teachers and the
experience, to some degree, of students; separate schools for Roman Catholics
and alternative and segregated education for Blacks and Native students;
the continuance of private schooling, usually single sex; education in
French; university education (a special interest of the author); and the
first stages of the New Education or progressive education at the turn
of the century. All this is accomplished in a most readable style, clear
and concise, free of jargon and without overly academic language. Although
the book is organized topically, there is surprisingly little overlap.
It is a model, I am sure, of what the editors of this new series, "Themes
in Canadian Social History," were seeking to attain. Their series description
speaks of books "for undergraduate courses [that] fill the gap between
specialized monographs and textbooks." The Promise of Schooling
fits this description perfectly, with its 150 pages of text, absence of
footnotes, and list of major references, as well as with its modest paperback
price.
Axelrod is intent on showing the reader how the spread
of public schooling in Canada served to extend literacy to all, and thereby
to preserve British civilization, to prepare youth for work in an increasingly
industrialized economy, and after Confederation to help build the new Canadian
nation. Not only the native-born were to be schooled, but also the new
immigrants to Canada, who needed to be Canadianized. In some provinces
Blacks were educated separately, and of course Native Canadians, under
the jurisdiction of the federal government, had their own day and residential
schools. The "promise" of schooling was immense, eliciting support from
government authorities, church officials, manufacturers, newspaper editors,
and, in most cases, parents, too. For most people education was an undeniable
panacea for all of society’s ills and needs. That faith in education made
schooling a central feature of modern Canadian society and continues essentially
unabated despite persistent criticism to the present day.
The sorting function of schooling formerly carried out
at the secondary level has now been delayed to post-secondary institutions.
Even school’s severest critics have no desire to see society "de-schooled";
quite the contrary, as many Canadians would echo U.S. President Lyndon
Johnson’s famous credo: "The answer for all our national problems comes
down to one single word: education." Axelrod provides us with the means
to understand the origins of public schooling in Canada. Even though schooling
was not the sole agency of civilization, vocational training, or nation
building, most Canadians attributed success to the schools. I very much
doubt that anyone can fully understand Canadian history without some appreciation
of the centrality of education. The Promise of Schooling does an
admirable job of telling this story for the nineteenth century.
Axelrod writes with commendable balance. Always fair to
his sources, he eschews the harsh and petulant tone often evident among
radical revisionists writing in the 1970s. He is much more modest in proclaiming
the merits of his interpretation of events. The following is typical of
his approach to past histories: "This study contends that the traditional
account of the development of schooling in Canada is not so much incorrect
as incomplete" (p. viii). Or again, consider where he admits that public
education was "coercive," but then quickly adds, supported by "largely
popular legislation" (p. 24). He reminds us that although universal schooling
was a top-down project, ordinary citizens had their own reasons for supporting
it. Little wonder, then, that attendance figures rose to quite high levels
even before compulsory legislation was introduced in the last quarter of
the century.
In an account of this sort, no matter how well written,
errors are bound to creep in and this book is no exception. The first mechanics'
institute in British North America was opened in York (Toronto) in 1830,
not Halifax the following year. The original "Districts" in Upper Canada
were actually larger than counties. The school for Blacks at Buxton was
not in Brantford but near Chatham. British Columbia had a Compulsory Attendance
Act from 1876, though attendance was not enforced until after 1900; Axelrod
states that the first such legislation in B.C. dated from 1901. Pestalozzi
was Swiss, not Swedish.
Despite a thriving Canadian History of Education Association
with a twice-yearly journal of its own (this one), we professors are aware
that across Canada, History of Education is in decline as a component of
a slate of courses that Bachelor of Education students are required to
take. This is a pity, since a book like Axelrod’s is a perfect vehicle
for teaching the history of Canadian education. Comprehensive yet brief,
inclusive of historiographical debates yet highly readable, this book is
ideal for such students. But then, one hopes this book will also be adopted
in Canadian social history courses, for no topic is more central to social
history than education. Unfortunately, that might be news to some colleagues
in History departments.
J.D. Wilson, University of British Columbia
Dennis A. Bartels and Alice L. Bartels. When the North Was Red:
Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia (McGill-Queen’s Nature and Northern
Series). Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995.
Pp. xxviii, 126.
When we received a copy of When the North Was Red:
Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia for review, we looked forward
with excitement to reading the book. The title’s double meaning was striking
and promising. Canadians, especially Aboriginal Canadians, could at last
compare the experience of northern native peoples in the former Soviet
Union with our own experiences and perceptions.
The book’s map was disappointing--rudimentary and reminiscent
of maps in journals of early "explorers." The photographs, however, brought
the story to life. The text is a limited (ninety-eight pages) case study
claiming to "provoke useful comparison" and to analyze "whether Soviet
northern policy represented an alternative" to Canadian policy. This claim
alone might attract a wide audience and make for interesting reading. But
without discussion of the Russian and Soviet school systems in general
and without a study of the ideological differences between Czarist Russia
and the Soviet Union, the aboriginal case makes little sense. Consider,
for instance, that aboriginal experience of the Russian Revolutions differed
massively from that of urban people; news often did not reach Siberia for
up to a year. Besides, the authors argue that Russian studies are not trustworthy,
yet make use of government documentation written by Soviet ethnographers
on the government payroll.
Despite these problems, When the North Was Red: Aboriginal
Education in Soviet Siberia has its value. It provides careful definitions
of terms. The discussion concerning shamans who distrusted "education"
was delightful. The comparative treatment of Canadian reserves and the
multi-national Soviet okrugs also proved informative. However, if
the reader is unfamiliar with the Canadian experience, the book loses much
of its edge as the comparative aspect of the book appears only in Chapter
7.
The Canadian comparison should appear much earlier. For
example, the study recognizes that the Russian intelligentsia were a crucial
element of the culture, and that there were endeavours to create an Aboriginal
intelligentsia. This same intentional cultural policy is only now being
adopted in Canada. The Soviet insistence on retention of Aboriginal language
and culture, too, is in complete contrast to the historically paternalistic
Canadian policy. That these differences occurred due to the ideology of
"consolidation" rather than assimilation is clear. By observing the generational
changes the authors prove that Canada lacked insight and forethought in
its Aboriginal policies, whereas the Soviet Union used pedagogically advanced
ideas in promoting Aboriginal cultures.
According to the authors, many Aboriginals passed through
the Soviet education system and entered white-collar professions rather
than becoming the tradesmen and agricultural helpers as in the Canadian
system. Unarguably, the superior curriculum and retention of native language
and culture later helped the Soviet Union, whereas in Canada the treatment
of the Aboriginals has created social division.
Sovietization sounded rather like the Canadian policy
on multiculturalism. Both national systems eagerly changed the cultures
of the populations in question. On the other hand, Soviet policy allowed
Aboriginal peoples to determine their own membership, whereas the Canadian
system dictates to the Aboriginal peoples who have status. Another difference
is that in the Soviet Republic, Europeans are Aboriginal to the land also
and that is why this book uses the term nationalities rather than
Aboriginal.
In Canada, European descendants cannot be Aboriginal. The authors attempt
to compare three features of the Soviet system--Sovietization, national
consolidation, and northern consolidation--to analogous features of the
Canadian system. In each case, the treatment of When the North stands
in need of expansion.
The most striking of all comparisons, however, remains
that of the degree of democracy in each system in the relationship between
majority and minority populations. We agree with the text’s implied message
that this is the ultimate test of each system.
This study is a welcome addition to the literature on
Aboriginals, for it provides information heretofore unavailable.
Stan Wilson and Annette Richardson, University of Alberta
W. E. Marsden. An Anglo-Welsh Teaching Dynasty: The Adams Family
from the 1840s to the 1930s. London: The Woburn Press, 1997. Pp. 279.
This is the latest book by the prolific British educational
historian and geographer Professor William Marsden of Liverpool University.
Marsden is known to Canadian educational historians as a participant in
chea/ache conferences and as a contributor to Historical Studies in
Education. This book deserves notice if only for the originality of
the theme--the tracing of the teaching careers of father, son, and grandson
across nearly 100 years, from the 1840s to the 1930s. The only similar
study I am aware of is that of James M. Fleming, a Newfoundlander living
in the United States, whose unpublished study of three generations of the
Mackey family of Carbonear, Newfoundland, covers much the same period.
But whereas Fleming’s work is rather brief, Marsden’s study is a detailed
narrative that places the careers of the family members firmly in their
social, economic, and geographical setting.
A trans-generational work of this kind, covering a longer
period than a single biographical study, enables the author to trace school
organization, curricula, and teaching methods across a century in which
schooling developed from relatively primitive forms to the modern system
of mass compulsory education. The focus of attention on one family also
illustrates how individual teaching techniques are handed on--and transformed--from
one generation to the next in more detail and with greater illumination
than is possible in an orthodox narrative.
The story begins in 1817, when John Adams, the son of
an agricultural labourer, was born in the village of Chapehill, South Wales.
Married to Eliza Bateman, Adams had six children, three of whom followed
his profession of teacher--William Bateman Adams (born 1841), John Frederick
Adams (born 1843), and Richard Adams (born 1849). The father started teaching
at Stackpole National School, not far from his birthplace, in 1843, after
six months' training in London. Practising the monitorial system (that
is, using child monitor-teachers) then in vogue, he taught the thee Rs,
grammar, geography, history, and religion. After a move to another school,
he continued his teaching career in the large and growing seaport of Swansea
until his death in 1883.
Adams was an effective if somewhat strict teacher of the
old school, a nonconformist with a combative streak that on occasion brought
him into conflict with the Church of England and local authorities. Some
of these qualities he passed on to his eldest son, William Bateman Adams.
Better educated than his father, at one of the new teacher-training colleges,
this son taught at a succession of schools in Wales (including his father’s),
enhancing his reputation at each, before moving to London, where in 1878
he became principal of Fleet Road School, Hampstead. Fleet Road was one
of the new so-called Board Schools founded under the Education Act of 1870.
Better equipped in every way than the schools in which Adams Jr. had previously
taught, funded by local taxation, and situated in a prosperous area of
North London, Fleet Road under Adams' guidance quickly became known as
"the Eton of Board Schools."
One strength of Marsden’s book is that he shows how the
son combined his father’s positive traits--hard work, self-belief, a love
of teaching, and a tendency to self-advertisement--with the new pedagogical
theories and practices of the late Victorian era. The school was co-educational
and conducted on the Prussian system, in which children were taught in
classrooms and no pupil-teachers used in the upper school. The teaching
was far from mechanical--the three Rs were taught via "problems of everyday
life," history was a colourful "peoples' history," geography was learned
by vica voce methods and maps. The curriculum was at once liberal,
vocational, cultural, and practical, and extra-curricula activities included
lavish entertainments by the pupils.
W. B. Adams' two brothers, John Frederick and Richard,
also went into teaching in Wales, although the former, after transferring
to London, made a highly successful career as clerk to the Tottenham School
Board, becoming nationally known in his sphere. Richard Adams became head
of Rutland Street School, Swansea, in 1881, in which post he remained thirty
years. Unlike his brother William Bateman, he was more at ease with the
prescriptive and restrictive practices of the previous generation, and,
as Marsden notes, "Adams' teaching philosophy and practice were increasingly
seen as reactionary in the curriculum changes of the 1890s."
This could not be said of the representative of the third
generation, W. B. Adams' son John William Bateman Adams, born in 1868.
The son of a successful man often has difficulty emulating his parent,
but J. W. B. Adams, with the advantages provided by the increased educational
provision and opportunities of the last decades of the nineteenth century--he
was educated at London and Oxford Universities--and with self-confidence
and a flair for progressive teaching, in many ways exceeded his father’s
achievements. A Byronic figure--tall, silver haired, eloquent, and sybaritic;
a successful author and able amateur cricketer--Adams' greatest successes,
after the inevitable spell of teaching in Wales, were as principal of Ashford
Secondary School in Middlesex and Head of Christchurch School in Hampshire.
Sharing his father’s belief in a wide curriculum, he introduced languages
(including Spanish), sport, and entertainments (on his father’s pattern),
giving the latter school a progressive aura until his death in 1934.
Marsden gives a fascinating account of the dynasty, avoiding
the whiggish tendency to represent the story solely as one of onward and
upward progress, and to present the personages as plaster saints. Ambitious,
irascible, and egotistical as they sometimes were, the Adams are presented
as human beings in the round. The wives' contributions, where appropriate,
is also fully recognized. Not least of the book’s virtues is its interweaving
of human agency--the belief of all the actors in the civilizing and formative
influence of mass education, the exploitation of opportunities for upward
social mobility combined with respect for the social values of their time
(both W. B. Adams and his son were strong imperialists)--with the generally
improving socioeconomic landscape of the period and the consequent opening
of educational opportunities to those lower on the social scale.
The value and interest of this book is enhanced by the
provision of maps of school catchment areas, photographs and plans of the
schools, and photographs of the teaching family (and their residences)
and of school plays. All in all, Marsden’s book is a model educational
historians everywhere could peruse with advantage.
Philip McCann, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Kathryn McPherson. Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian
Nursing, 1900-1990. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996. P. 343.
L'ouvrage de McPherson est bien plus qu'une simple addition
à la liste des études sur les infirmières au Canada.
S'écartant des sentiers battus, l'auteure part en effet du point
de vue que le travail infirmier est précisément un travail
qui n'a pas reçu sa juste part d'analyse, se donnant pour objectif
de mettre en lumière les transformations qu'il a subies tout au
long du vingtième siècle. Les luttes professionnelles et
la culture propres à cet univers occupent une large place dans le
livre, mais McPherson nous convie à un renversement des perspectives,
car ces questions sont abordées non pas pour elles-mêmes,
mais parce qu'elles contribuent à mieux cerner les conditions de
pratique des infirmières. Refusant de s'en tenir aux modèles
théoriques exclusifs qui ont tenté d'expliquer les transformations
du nursing en termes de professionnalisation ou de prolétarisation,
elle soutient qu'il faut tenir compte simultanément de ces deux
processus pour bien comprendre la place que les infirmières ont
occupée dans le système de santé et surtout considérer
que cette position a aussi été déterminée en
fonction des relations de genre, de classe et de race. En réconciliant
ces différentes approches, elle parvient à montrer la complexité
de la position des infirmières au sein de la hiérarchie hospitalière
et à proposer une nouvelle vison de cette occupation féminine
par excellence.
Pour structurer son étude, McPherson utilise un
découpage chronologique qui rend compte du contexte économique
et médical dans lequel les infirmières ont exercé
leur métier, ce qui l'amène à distinguer entre cinq
générations de praticiennes. Celles qui ont gradué
entre 1874, date de l'ouverture de la première école d'infirmières
au Canada, et 1900 forment la première génération
qui n'est pas traitée dans le livre. Celui-ci s'ouvre avec l'entrée
en scène de la deuxième génération, formée
entre 1900 et 1920, soit à l'époque où les hôpitaux,
les agences gouvernementales et philanthropiques et le public en général
ne contestaient déjà plus la nécessité de recourir
à leurs services. Cette époque correspond à une phase
d'expansion qui sera suivie par une crise majeure que connaîtra la
troisième génération, diplômée entre
1920 et 1941. Les années d'après-guerre, entre 1942 et 1968,
verront une quatrième génération arriver en masse
dans les hôpitaux où sont désormais dispensés
la majorité des soins, alors que la dernière génération,
sortie des écoles à partir de 1968, sera celle qui se dotera
de nouvelles organisations pour mieux défendre ses intérêts
dans un secteur en pleine restructuration. Consciente que ces générations
d'infirmières ne sont pas étanches et que dans les faits,
certains des phénomènes qu'elle étudie ont chevauché
plusieurs périodes, l'auteure consacre quatre chapitres à
l'analyse des conditions spécifiques à chacune de ces générations
et deux autres à l'examen des continuités et des changements
intergénérationnels.
Une des grandes forces de ce livre est de s'attarder à
toutes les facettes du travail des infirmières et de montrer comment
elles se sont combinées pour définir leur identité
occupationnelle. McPherson analyse en effet autant les tâches et
les conditions de travail des infirmières, surtout dans le service
privé et les hôpitaux, que leurs origines sociales, raciales,
ethniques et géographiques, leur formation, le développement
de leurs associations, les relations entre les infirmières qui dirigeaient
ces associations et la base, et les rapports entre l'ensemble des infirmières
et les autres catégories de personnel soignant, les patients et
les médecins. L'auteure accorde en outre une attention particulière
au rapport qu'entretiennent les infirmières avec la science et à
leur conception de la féminité. Pour elle, tous ces éléments
participent à la définition de ce qu'est une infirmière
et c'est uniquement en considérant leur interaction que l'on peut
expliquer, de manière satisfaisante, certains phénomènes
inhérents à cette occupation.
La plupart des thèmes mentionnés plus haut
reviennent donc de manière récurrente tout au long des chapitres.
Il en est ainsi des rapports entre l'élite des infirmières,
qui dès le début du siècle s'est taillée une
place dans le milieu hospitalier et a pris la direction des différentes
associations, et les autres graduées que l'on retrouve d'abord majoritairement
dans le service privé, puis, après 1940, dans le secteur
hospitalier. McPherson démontre que dès la période
1900-1920, des divergences de vue au sujet des batailles à livrer
et des stratégies d'action apparaissent entre les dirigeantes et
la base. Jusqu'au milieu du siècle, la perspective de pouvoir se
consacrer au service privé, en dehors de l'institution hospitalière,
maintenait toutefois une forme d'égalité, ce qui a largement
contribué à apaiser les tensions. À partir des années
1940, les associations d'infirmières maintiennent leur cohésion
en capitalisant sur une identité occupationnelle commune, mais l'entrée
massive des infirmières dans les hôpitaux fait en sorte que
la plupart d'entre elles travaillent maintenant sous les ordres d'une de
leur semblable. Il deviendra alors plus difficile de se solidariser au
delà des frontières hiérarchiques, quoique durant
un certain temps, les infirmières en position d'autorité
parviendront à faire jouer leur influence pour améliorer
les conditions des infirmières de la base.
La présence d'associations qui sont parvenues à
entretenir une forte solidarité autour d'une identité occupationnelle
commune et l'attitude "maternaliste" de l'élite des infirmières
ne sont pas les seuls facteurs qui expliquent leur lente syndicalisation.
Selon McPherson, ce phénomène renvoie aussi au fait qu'elles
sont confrontées à des rapports de production qui impliquent
la prise en charge d'êtres humains. Dans ce contexte, leur sentiment
d'aliénation et leur conscience de classe pouvait plus difficilement
prendre forme. À cela, il faut ajouter que c'est seulement à
partir des années 1940 que la prolétarisation des infirmières
s'est véritablement enclenchée, alors que la plupart ont
commencé à exercer dans les hôpitaux. Mais au même
moment, elles connaissaient également un processus de professionnalisation,
alors qu'elles se voyaient confier plus de responsabilités médicales.
En fait, les infirmières de cette génération occupaient
une position ambiguë dans la hiérarchie hospitalière,
coincées entre des catégories de soignants moins qualifiés,
sur lesquels elles avaient autorité, et les médecins, les
administrateurs masculins et les infirmières en chef à qui
elles devaient rendre des comptes. Ces nouvelles conditions favorisèrent
l'émergence des premières revendications collectives, mais
les infirmières ont alors choisi de les véhiculer par l'entremise
de leurs associations traditionnelles, car elles se percevaient encore
difficilement comme des travailleuses "ordinaires." Ce sera la cinquième
génération, étudiée par McPherson dans le dernier
chapitre du livre, qui entreprendra de se syndiquer. Dans un contexte d'intensification
du rythme de travail et de contestation féministe, émerge
alors une nouvelle prise de conscience de la place réelle qu'elles
occupent au sein de la hiérarchie, en particulier vis-à-vis
des médecins, et de l'exploitation qu'elles subissent.
Dans le chapitre où elle examine le contenu du
travail des infirmières entre 1900 et 1942, McPherson présente
une analyse particulièrement fine et intelligemment construite des
rapports entre le nursing et la science. Elle y démontre de manière
tout à fait convaincante que la science, tant en terme de médecine
scientifique que de rationalisation scientifique du travail, se trouve
au coeur même des tâches accomplies par les infirmières.
Autant pour se conformer aux nouveaux diktats de la théorie des
germes, que pour être en mesure de traiter de nombreux patients dans
un minimum de temps, les infirmières sont en effet appelées
à adopter des méthodes de travail standardisées et
à ritualiser leurs procédures de soins. Ces techniques, apprises
tout au long de leur apprentissage, sont intégrées à
leur identité occupationnelle, car elles leur permettent de se distinguer
des autres soignantes sans formation, en particulier des mères de
famille. L'omniprésence de la science médicale et managériale
dans le quotidien du travail des infirmières amène l'auteure
à conclure que la distinction entre le care et le cure
ne tient pas. En fait, les infirmières doivent être en mesure
de manipuler leurs patients selon des techniques reposant sur des
connaissances et une rationalisation scientifiques, en même temps
qu'elles sont appelées à les materner. Même
dans le contexte d'après-guerre, alors qu'en principe elles délaissent
plusieurs tâches non spécifiquement médicales à
des employés moins qualifiés, caring et curing
continueront d'être étroitement associés dans leurs
tâches quotidiennes. L'éclatement des contradictions entre
les exigences de ces deux aspects de leurs interventions auprès
des patients représente d'ailleurs un autre facteur à l'origine
de leur mobilisation récente.
Si le rapport à la science contribue à forger
l'identité occupationnelle des infirmières, au début
du siècle, leur conception du nursing comme un travail "naturellement"
féminin et leur adhésion à l'idéal bourgeois
de la féminité, combinant pudeur, moralité sexuelle
(ce qui excluait d'office les femmes non blanches) et subordination aux
autorités masculines, y contribue tout autant. Afin de concilier
cette respectabilité féminine et les soins du corps, se met
alors en place un code vestimentaire et des règles de conduite qui
tendent à désexualiser l'infirmière, tout en lui permettant
de légitimer sa présence auprès des patients. Ce n'est
que durant les années 1920-1930, et plus encore après la
guerre, que l'acceptation de cette féminité toute victorienne
fera l'objet de contestations et de réaménagements. De l'infirmière
compétente parce que asexuée, on passe lentement à
l'infirmière compétente parce qu'elle sait faire valoir ses
attributs (hétéro)sexuels. Cette "modernisation" de l'image
de l'infirmière, que McPherson analyse au chapitre 5, se traduit
par un assouplissement des règles de conduite pour les élèves-infirmières,
par des changements apportés à l'uniforme et par l'acceptation
des infirmières mariées et d'origines ethniques et raciales
plus diversifiées. En fait, nous dit McPherson, il s'agissait, dans
un contexte de pénurie de main-d'oeuvre dans les hôpitaux
et de plus grande ouverture du marché de l'emploi pour les femmes,
de s'assurer que le travail infirmier continuerait de les attirer et demeurerait
un travail féminin. La nouvelle image de l'infirmière qui
associe, entre autres, connaissances scientifiques et expertise sexuelle,
est fortement imprégnée d'une féminité hétérosexuelle
qui est loin de représenter une libération; elle complique
plutôt les rapports entre l'infirmière, les médecins
et les patients masculins, car tout en les incitant à afficher leur
hétérosexualité (l'homosexualité est évidemment
exclue), les nouvelles normes culturelles exigent tout de même que
les infirmières évitent toute promiscuité.
Ces trois thèmes, luttes et culture organisationnelles,
rapport à la science et construction d'une féminité
particulière, ne représentent que quelques-uns des aspects
de cette étude fascinante. En fait, il est difficile de rendre justice
au travail de McPherson dans un espace restreint. La place manque pour
faire état de la richesse des thèmes abordés, de l'ensemble
des liens qu'elle établit entre les différents phénomènes
qu'elle aborde et des nuances qu'elle apporte tout au long de son analyse.
Solidement argumenté et fondé sur une exploitation intelligente
de sources écrites et orales, ce livre deviendra sûrement
un classique de l'histoire du nursing pour le Canada anglais. Espérons
qu'une aussi bonne synthèse traitera, dans un avenir rapproché,
des infirmières franco-québécoises.
Denyse Baillargeon, Université de Montréal
James Cameron. For The People: A History of St. Francis Xavier University.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. Pp. xx, 551
When reviewing an official university history, one has
an overriding concern: Will this study be an opportunity for hagiography
or will it offer an analysis of the institution that sets its evolution
in the wider historical context and accounts for its unique development?
Clearly James Cameron is fully aware of the risks that await the university
historian. As he makes clear in his preface, this first full-scale history
of St. Francis Xavier University (St. F.X.) "is not a promotional piece,
adorned with hagiography--the celebration of great presidents, world-renowned
faculty, and famous alumni." "On the contrary, it is about real human beings,
largely eastern Nova Scotia Roman Catholics of modest means and mostly
average capabilities, and their efforts from 1853 to 1970 to provide themselves
with adequate opportunities in higher education."
I would argue that Cameron has nevertheless written an
essentially celebratory history of St. F.X., conveying all the while the
daunting challenges and accomplishments of people involved in the university’s
development. Cameron is clearly convinced that the motor for change at
the university has resided in individuals. Faithful to this conviction,
he devotes more time to discussing the background and personalities of
the various individuals involved in the University`s development than to
the social circumstances that may have had as much to do with the paths
taken at St. F.X.
True to his objectives, Cameron does not deal with only
Presidents. We are exposed to the initiatives and priorities of a wide
range of university administrators and faculty. It remains that the spotlight
is on high administrators. Thus, in his view, in the early twentieth century,Vice-President
Tompkins (1902-1922) "was plainly the main driving force behind the soaring
ambitions of the college" to modernize and upgrade its faculty and academic
standards. Cameron indicates that "St. F.X. was aware of the growing influence
of the German research ideal at the major American and Canadian universities"
(142) but Tompkins’s influence is central. Cameron’s argument for Tompkins’s
influence would have been more convincing had the author shown how other
Catholic colleges in the region responded to the German influence. How
distinctive were this Vice-President’s reactions? And were St. F.X.’s reactions
unique?
Discussing the roots of the Department of Extension during
the late 1920s, the author briefly mentions the Depression as a contributing
factor, but in his view "Dr. Coady and A.B. Macdonald . . . were likewise
critical to the movement’s spread" (229). In fact, by their involvement,
"they altered the character of the college" (234). Cameron provides convincing
evidence that the Extension Department at St. F.X, and the Antigonish movement
to which it gave birth, were of great significance, but the nature of his
evidence does not allow us to appreciate fully the innovative, if not radical,
impact of this enterprise. The Department’s approach, and the knowledge
that other countries were invited to participate in the program eventually
through the Coady International Institute, leaves us wondering about the
program’s impact on the students' lives and the surrounding community it
aimed to serve. And more specifically, how did people in this "movement"
alter the character of the college?
The author’s emphasis on individual personalities leads
him to find positive character traits in these people. Some of these qualities
he discovered through interviews with alumni; elsewhere, they are the result
of his own cheerful outlook. Speaking of Coady, he writes: "He would leave
a defining mark on the institution and on grassroots eastern Nova Scotia
unequalled before and since" (199). As for Rector MacPherson (1906-1936),
"His tall, stately figure, fascinating nervous habits, and human warmth
were fixed in the memories of generations of St. F.X. alumni" (196). President
Nicholson (1944-1954) was "a zealous, tireless worker" (304). This is not
to say that Cameron shies away from making a few unflattering comments
when describing the individuals involved, but such comments are clearly
the exception. In effect, each chapter ends with a positive balance sheet
summing up the various accomplishments of all concerned, which leaves the
reader with a sense that the "Xaverian family" was largely composed of
exceptional people and that the university was on an ascending road leading
to improvement.
The author’s optimism also comes out when he discusses
the place of women at St. F.X. Not surprisingly, female students and faculty
were not treated as were their male counterparts throughout the university’s
history. Whereas the first men to receive a B.A from the Catholic college
did so in the 1850s , women had to wait until 1897. Unequal treatment continued
elsewhere as well. Yet when the author discusses women, it is to mention
the "improvements" to the unequal treatment they received. In fact, the
author adopts a conciliatory if not triumphant tone to note the institution’s
gradual progress in treatment of its female students. Thus, for instance,
the author informs us that when St. Bernard’s Academy in affiliation with
St. F.X. confers a B.A. on the female graduating class, the Academy "rightly
won a certain distinction with this first; two more years would pass before
another Catholic college in North America conferred the B.A. on female
graduates" (97). (In a footnote, he specifies that Mount Allison had given
a B.A. to a young woman twenty-two years before.) It would have been interesting
to explore more fully this distinction. Why did this particular Catholic
college take such a notable step?
Cameron does not convey the frustration of the pioneering
female students or their successors faced with the slow pace of change
to improve the status of women on campus. Cameron explains that "Overall,
St. F.X. students appeared contented with their circumstances and scholarly
challenges" (37). Historical studies of the attitudes of female university
students on other Canadian campuses throughout the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries show that women normally expressed frustration, or
felt embattled. It would be surprising if women at St. F.X. were exceptional
in this respect and if so, this issue deserves considerably more attention.
This study is meticulously researched. The 137 pages of
endnotes are but one manifestation. The author has examined all the relevant
documentary sources and conducted productive interviews with alumni. His
careful archival research is impressive, for example, when it comes to
presenting the reader with a continuous portrait of the financial affairs
of the institution over time. He provides all relevant information on fund-raising
ventures, deficits, and spending. In effect, one can follow the financial
health of the institution from its early days to 1970 and appreciate how
precarious was this institution before massive government funding. The
author also has devoted attention to institutions that became affiliated
with St. F.X. Thus, we follow the genesis and development of the Xavier
Junior College, which eventually became the University College of Cape
Breton. Cameron thus encompasses a wide range of institutions of importance
to Eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.
This study devotes considerable space to student life
at each stage in the institution’s development. Cameron proves himself
effective at relating the experience of a majority male population to their
changing expectations and priorities. Students at St. F.X were not notably
exceptional, yet Cameron’s discussion makes an important contribution to
historians of youth. Clearly the institution’s religious affiliation did
not influence students' central attitudes and priorities. Knowing the distinctiveness
of St. F.X as a Catholic college in the Maritimes leads us to qualify our
view of the impact of religion and region on the behaviour of youth.
Although Cameron’s study does not wholly succeed in avoiding
the pitfalls of an institutional history, it is nonetheless a valuable
contribution to the field.
Nicole Neatby, University of Prince Edward Island
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