The Small Details of Life: 20 Diaries by Women in Canada, 1830-1996 (review)

In the late 1970s, scholars in Canadian women's history first drew attention to the significance of manuscript diaries by women to be found in national, local, and private archives. Since then a number of individual diaries, regional collections, and anthologies of short excerpts from diaries have been published. They provide an entry point into the detail of women's lives which would otherwise largely be lost. Diaries that were never meant to be published differ considerably from the settler accounts and literary writings of well-known women such as Susanna Moodie and Anne Langton, who wrote for their family or for a broader audience. By and large, diaries from the nineteenth century, as well as many from the twentieth century, record daily events and activities, often in an abbreviated fashion and with little introspection. Diaries were more likely to be used as a safe place for emotional outpourings and self-discovery in the twentieth century.

The excerpts in this collection cover at least one year selected from diaries that extend over much longer periods. In a short introduction, the editor places the selection in context, both in terms of the longer text and the life of the author. She keeps notes to a minimum. For every contributor, she includes a physical description of the original diary, in a conscious effort to impart the possible limits imposed by the material used. She also maintains the structure of the original writing in terms of spaces and corrections and includes several illustrations of the original diaries. Although this structure limits the number of diarists, the choice is a valid one, as shorter excerpts would not sufficiently reflect the individual author or the seasonal rhythms of daily life.

Eleven of the diaries in this collection fall into the category of a daily record of activities. They extend from 1843 to 1990. With references to weather, visitors, visits made, the state of roads, chores, letters received and written, and health, these accounts seem interchangeable as to place and time except where a reference to a telephone call or to going to a show indicates a twentieth-century context. Four of the diaries are more reflective in nature. A student attending a Roman Catholic boarding school in 1926-7, Mary Dulhanty addresses her diary directly and talks of her crushes and her likes and dislikes, as well as giving a stream of information about what is going on. 'The college kids are taking exams. Everybody is so cranky I mean the sisters. But such is life. I made eighty on my Eleventh Lesson. Not so bad ... I wish I would get some notice of me taken by my loved one. Guess I'm just a fly upon the wall' (25 Jan. 1927). The poet Dorothy Herriman's diary, by contrast, has few connections to her daily activities. 'And I who walk, worshipping in the evening, join with immortal yearning in the praise of Being for the service of Beauty. I taste and drink a sweet communion of the spirit; I learn a new Beatitude' (28 Jan. 1933). Dorothy MacLennan's diary for 1953 and novelist Marian Engel's, written while summering in Prince Edward Island in 1976, fall somewhere in between. Three of the remaining diaries are travel journals: Frances Simpson's account of moving to the Prairie West, Mina Wylie's account of a trip to Europe with her family in 1911, and journalist Miriam Ellis's account of her trip into the Northwest Territories in 1922. One is the ship-board diary of young Amelia Holder, who accompanied her father aboard his ship in 1868. While at sea, her daily entries are often brief and focus on the weather. One diary covers a much shorter period and is the record of a very special event. An...