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484 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 other aspect concerns the persistence of religious (Manichean or ideological) mindsets within the very cultures of modernity which have not been well understood at all. To be as charitable as possible towards Nathanson and Young, this critique is, I think, what at best they are driving towards. Do they get there in this first volume? I don=t think so. But there are still two further volumes to come. (MICHAEL DORLAND) Monda Halpern. And on That Farm He Had a Wife: Ontario Farm Women and Feminism, 1900B1970 McGill-Queen=s University Press. viii, 234. $70.00 This book investigates the historical relationship of Ontario farm women and feminism. Monda Halpern relates the experiences of white Protestant farm women in the southern and southwestern parts of the province to illustrate her thesis that social feminism thrived there until 1970. For her definition of social feminism Halpern uses the work of Naomi Black published in 1989, and Louise Carbert in 1995. Social feminism was, she argues, directed outward: social feminists wished to superimpose maternal values of home and family onto a predominantly male public sphere. In rural Ontario it shared much with >agrarian feminism,= which recognized the way economic arrangements helped shape work, family, and marital relations in the home. The strength of Halpern=s book lies in her illustrations of social feminism among Ontario farm women. She makes full use of articles and letters to the editor printed in agricultural journals to let farm women speak in their own words. Adelaide Hoodless is a central protagonist. She started the home economics movement in Canada, ensured the foundation of Macdonald Institute at the Ontario Agricultural College, and began the Women=s Institutes. Despite Hoodless=s refusal to support suffrage, social feminism was, Halpern argues, >progressive, elevating and advantageous for women.= Later chapters deal with social feminism after the Second World War. Women=s Institutes undertook the ambitious Tweedsmuir projects of writing community histories. However, declining rural population, an increase in women=s off-farm employment, and the challenge of women=s liberation in the late 1960s undermined the appeal of social feminism. Halpern builds on secondary sources in Ontario rural history, particularly the work of Linda Ambrose (For Home and Country: The Centennial History of the Women=s Institutes in Ontario, 1996), Louise Carbert (Agrarian Feminism: The Politics of Ontario Farm Women, 1995), and Gloria Leckie (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1991). They provide the context, the perspective, and the social analysis for Halpern=s anecdotes of criticism and struggle. Halpern might have benefited from the literature on humanities 485 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 western Canadian farm women who offered radical social critiques in the early twentieth century. Perhaps in future work she might extend her interest to rural Aboriginal women and immigrants and consider the role of religion in women=s understanding of their situation. It would also be interesting to have a few numbers: what proportion of farm women were feminists, and how many rural women supported the ideas of Hoodless? It is good to see a book which brings the study of feminism, and rural women, into the inter-war years and up to the 1970s. The concept of doldrums in women=s activism between 1920 and 1970 is looking increasingly anachronistic. (MARY KINNEAR) Bradford James Rennie. The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909B1921 University of Toronto Press 2000. 282. $65.00 This book is a detailed study and cogent interpretation of the United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta from 1909 to 1921. The core idea is that the organization constituted a >movement culture,= that is, >a group venture extending beyond a local community or a single event and involving a systemic effort to inaugurate changes in thought, behavior, and social relationships.= In addition to wanting better prices for their grain and lower freight rates, the UFA had a vision of a better way to live. Bradford James Rennie takes the focus off the leaders and places it on the rank-andfile membership, who are the...

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