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  • A Canadian Girl in South Africa: A Teacher’s Experiences in the South African War, 1899–1902 by E. Maud Graham
  • Carman Miller
A Canadian Girl in South Africa: A Teacher’s Experiences in the South African War, 1899–1902. E. Maud Graham. Michael Dawson, Catherine Gidney, and Susanne M. Klausen, eds. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2015. Pp. 264, $34.95 paper

The reprint of E. Maud Graham’s A Canadian Girl in South Africa is a welcome addition to a growing literature on Canada’s participation in the South African War, 1899–1902, a conflict that was soon overshadowed by the Great War and post-war Canadian historians’ discomfort with imperial adventures. At the time of the Boer War, however, Canada was at the height of its imperial popularity, its reputation and example out of proportion to its relative military contribution. Britain’s loyal, binational, prosperous, self-governing senior dominion was seen as the vindication of liberal imperial rule. For some, its bilingual coexistence served as an example (for others, a warning) for South Africa; its North-West Mounted Police (nwmp) was a model for Baden-Powell’s South African Constabulary; and its francophone, Catholic, diplomatic prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was suitable to negotiate a just and lasting peace in South Africa. Many were equally impressed with Canada’s (Ontario’s) public school system. Consequently, when Lord Milner and his kindergarten were planning their “pacification of South Africa,” a plan in which education played a central role, they were anxious to recruit Canadian teachers. Canada’s enthusiastic response persuaded Imperial authorities eventually to accept forty volunteer teachers.

After all, it was Canada’s empire too, and Canadian teachers believed they had something to contribute, an experience as distinct and appropriate as that of the 1,200 Canadian constables in Baden-Powell’s South African Constabulary. Among the forty successful volunteer teachers was Ellen Maud Graham, an educated, intelligent, experienced, perceptive, and articulate teacher who published her well-written memoirs in 1905, soon after her two-year service in post-Boer War South Africa. Her skilfully composed text combines her personal experiences with reflective observations and informed criticisms. Firm in [End Page 596] her imperial loyalties, but no less conscious of her Canadian origins, she was also a captive of the class, race, and gender attitudes of her times.

The present reprint contains an introduction, bibliography, annotations, index, maps, and photographs (from Graham’s album in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library), items not included in Graham’s 1905 edition. Unfortunately, almost half the photographs in Graham’s original edition are absent from the reprint. The editors’ introduction consists of a helpful, researched biographical portrait of Graham, and an unfocused historiographical commentary. The reprint’s extensive, if uneven, bibliography lacks relevant items. Finally, its annotations are sometimes incomplete. For example, the legendary Sam Steele of the nwmp is identified simply as a “leading officer” of the Canadian nwmp who “had earlier been appointed as commanding officer of the Strathcona’s Horse,” whereas during Graham’s tenure in South Africa, Steele commanded one of the four divisions of Baden-Powell’s constabulary. The editors seem oblivious to Steele’s role in shaping the constabulary along nwmp lines, and its complementary role in Milner’s pacification of South Africa. Graham was more aware. Less explicable is the editors’ misleading sub-title: A Teacher’s Experiences in the South African War, 1899–1902. Graham arrived in South Africa a day after the war ended and served for two years in post-war South Africa, the subject of her fascinating account.

Carman Miller
McGill University
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