“You be sure to tell it like it is”: The Recovery of Canada’s Past

Review article "You be sure to tell it like it is'': The Recovery of Canada's Past VERONICA STRONG-BOAG Patricia Godsell, ed., Letters and Diaries of Lady Durham. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1979. W. L. Morton, ed., God's Galloping Girl: The Peace River Diaries of Monica Storrs 1929-1931. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1979. Meg Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love, Three Generations of Women 's Work in the Home. Toronto: The Women's Press, 1980. Sylvia Van Kirk, "Many Tender Ties": Women in Fur-Trade Society 1670-1870. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1980. Not too long ago Canada's past was regularly dismissed as dull and history textbooks were condemned as worse still. That charge may still be levelled at many a highly touted survey but, as recent additions to wntmg on Canada's women suggest, the past is another matter. These five volumes, ranging in treatment from the conventional to the radical, testify to a broad-ranging assault on a traditional discipline which too often has failed to treat women and women's experience as historically significant. Not surprisingly, in view of the stiff-necked attitude of some professional historians and the special insights of interdisciplinary explorations, the flesh-and-blood reality of Canadian life is being resurrected most successfully by researchers receptive to the methodologies, sources and perspectives of a variety of disciplines. The breaching of professional boundaries is essential. Only this will put to flight time-worn historical conventions which relegate women's experience to the footnotes and marginalia of the public record. As True Daughters of the North. Canadian Women 's History: An Annotated Bibliography (Toronto: OISE Press, 1980) by Beth Light and Veronica StrongBoag makes abundantly clear, the last five years have brought a tremendous increase in the number of titles treating female subjects. At the same time, as the annotations indicate, much of this new work is of an uneven quality. Patricia Godsell's edition of the Letters and Diaries ofLady Durham falls into this latter category . The introduction is especially disappointing. For all her "remarkable beauty and charm" (p. 5), Lady Louisa Lambton plays second fiddle here, as she evidently did in life, to John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham. The result is a tedious reminder of the husband's significance. The "quiet and unassuming," "private" Louisa emerges obliquely at best, and only Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 16, Nos. 3&4 (Automne-Hiver 1981 Fall-Winter) inasmuch as she made her husband "the most fortunate of men" (p. 6). It is hard to imagine what point this introduction was to serve. Its exemplification of the type of conventional history which saw women only so far as they touched the lives of men makes it an anachronism . In it we discover little of Louisa and nothing meaningful about the women of her time. The fact that almost one half the text is taken up by Charles Buller's "Sketch of Lord Durham's Mission to Canada ,'' further affirms how tangential Louisa is to the editor's true intent. Ironically enough, however, even those readers interested in a purely political account of Lord Durham's sojourn in the Canadas will find little new here to whet the appetite. The diaries and letters are, however, somewhat better than the introduction. The editor's annotations are also useful, although they too tend to dwell upon the males who figure in the diaries and letters. Louisa herself provides passages largely familiar to readers of travellers' accounts and viceregal goings-on. The devoted wife, mother and daughter emerge clearly, but how much more valuable this portrait would have been if Godsell's introduction had described the responsibilities of household organization, social intercourse and 'tension management' for the Victorian woman of Louisa's class. There are many clues that might have been followed up. How was life affected, for example, by the constant threat of illness, especially tuberculosis? How did women manage large households when domestic help was as unsatisfactory as Louisa suggests? How did close families endure the separations that imperial command demanded? How were women's relationships with husbands influenced by the presence of powerful family ties? A serious attempt to answer some of these questions would have added...