Showing papers in "British Journal of Canadian Studies in 2016"

Forgotten pasts and contested futures in Vancouver (Passés oubliés et futurs contestés à Vancouver)

Abstract: Vancouver has long enjoyed a widespread reputation as a young and forward-looking city, where the quality of life is high and the possibilities for prosperity and enjoyment are endless This image has been crafted by generations of municipal politicians, real estate developers, and tourism boosters who present Vancouver as a city without a history, ever prepared to seize the opportunities of a globalised consumer economy But as municipal officials and private investors continue to market this image, critics have denounced the encroachment of luxury housing and amenities in neighbourhoods long inhabited by working-class, Indigenous, immigrant, and otherwise precarious populations Vancouver does have a history, they point out, and it is one of dispossession, exclusion, and discrimination This article analyses the terms on which Vancouver’s past has been alternately papered over and mobilised in competing visions of urban development and planning, and suggests that historical awareness is a necessary condition for a more inclusive urban form on Canada’s Pacific coast Abstract: Vancouver a longtemps joui d’une grande reputation de ville jeune, tournee vers l’avenir, offrant une tres bonne qualite de vie et des possibilites de prosperite et de plaisir infinies Cette image a ete faconnee par des generations de politiciens municipaux, de promoteurs immobiliers et supporteurs de tourisme qui la presentent comme une ville n’ayant pas d’histoire toujours prete a saisir les opportunites offertes par une economie consumeriste globalisee Mais alors que representants municipaux et investisseurs prives continuent a vendre cette image, des critiques denoncent l’empietement des logements de luxe et des equipements urbains dans des voisinages habites depuis longtemps par des ouvriers, des Autochtones, des immigrants et autres populations en situation precaires Vancouver a bien une histoire, soulignent-ils, et c’est une histoire de depossession, d’exclusion et de discrimination Cet article analyse les modalites selon lesquelles le passe de Vancouver a ete alternativement masque ou mobilise dans le cadre de visions concurrentes de developpement et de planification urbain et suggere que la conscience historique est une condition necessaire a une forme urbaine plus inclusive sur la cote Pacifique du Canada

Conservatives and conditional loyalty: The Rebellion Losses Crisis of 1849 in Montreal (Les conservateurs et la loyauté conditionnelle: la crise de la Loi d’indemnisation pour le Bas-Canada de 1849 à Montréal)

Abstract: In 1849, the conservatives of Montreal engaged in a series of ostensibly disloyal actions: the burning of the Parliament, attacks on the Governor General, and the publication of the Annexation Manifesto. Yet even as they did so they refused to abandon the language of loyalty. Canadian conservatives instead chose to follow the political philosophy of John Locke, endorsing his ‘right of revolution’. In so doing, they demonstrated an ideology eerily similar to that of the American Patriots three quarters of a century earlier. They held a conditional conception of loyalty as a social contract between monarch and subject. The British Crown was seen to have broken this contract through its sanctioning of the Rebellion Losses Bill and its implicit support of ‘French Domination’. The connection between mother country and colony was now conceived as open to negotiation.

The fragmented or cosmopolitan metropolis?: A neighbourhood story of immigration in Montreal (La métropole fragmentée ou cosmopolite? Une histoire de quartiers de l'immigration montréalaise)

Abstract: Immigration and the metropolis have long been linked, impacting upon the way we think about the contemporary city. However, quite different narratives, anchored in specific urban and social experiences, have informed traditions of this thinking, from the Chicago School to the Los Angeles School. In Montreal’s case, the narrative is a story of immigrant neighbourhoods, and illustrates both takes on the metropolis; namely that it can be cosmopolitan or fragmented in nature. This article will trace the various chapters of Montreal’s history to demonstrate that, whilst its narrative has, for the most part, identified it as a cosmopolitan city, recent developments seem to have triggered a twist in the tale towards a vision of a fragmented city; at least in sociopolitical discourses.

Magazines, Travel, and Middlebrow Culture: Canadian Periodicals in English and French, 1925–1960 by Faye Hammill and Michelle Smith (review)

Abstract: may veer away from the collection’s theme. Finally, Sonja Boon uses letters written to the province’s premier, J.R. Smallwood, by women inquiring about work-related issues. The action of letter writing, Boon argues, meant that women utilised their own authority to penetrate the political sphere. Although this collection covers a 50-year period of great change for Newfoundland, the chapters are interwoven with themes of gender, class, citizenship, nation-building, and space. The wide variety of sources illuminate gender and class boundaries but also depict women as agents of social and political change in Newfoundland. This collection will be of interest to Canadian historians as well as those who study gender, childhood, class, state formation, agency, and urban spaces. Claire L. Halstead, University of Western Ontario

‘You might understand Toronto’: tracing the histories of writing on Toronto writing

Abstract: Modern literature frequently evokes Toronto. The city is prominent in the poetry of Dennis Lee and Dionne Brand, and the novels of Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, Margaret Atwood, or Emily St. John Mandel. A boom in Canadian literary criticism focusing on the city reflects this prominence. However, only recently has critical attention turned to the Canadian city’s literary past. This article reopens the history of Toronto’s literary histories, re-examining moments in the twentieth century when the city’s literature has been appraised. Drawing on the work of Tony Kilgallin, Isabelle Hughes, William Kilbourn, book reviews, and archival papers from the Toronto Book Awards, it looks at the critical evolution of how Toronto has been represented in both national and civic literature. It also examines literary figures once championed but now out of print and seldom read, considering how and why certain literary evocations of Toronto have endured.

Blockades or Breakthroughs? Aboriginal Peoples Confront the Canadian State by Yale D. Belanger and P. Whitney Lackenbauer (review)

Abstract: in three sections: ‘The Politics of Diversity’, ‘Political Mobilization’, and ‘Political Institutions and Public Policy’. As it is impossible for me to review all the excellent chapters, I have selected two – one each from the first and second sections. Luc Turgeon et al. make a persuasive case for the study of comparative politics in Canada. One of their key arguments, which counters a criticism often made of the field, is that it does not diminish the study of Canadian politics. On the contrary, they argue that comparing Canada with other countries helps to understand the peculiarities of the Canadian experience. Martin Papillon maintains, in his chapter ‘Framing Self-Determination: The Politics of Indigenous Rights in Canada and the United States’, that Canada and the US make a useful comparison in terms of Indigenous politics as they have similar systems. However, he acknowledges that there are small but important differences – the most prominent being the different constitutional relationships between Indigenous peoples in the US and in Canada. One of the common features of both countries in terms of Indigenous politics is self-determination. Papillon charts some of the major milestones in this area in both countries in the past 50 years or so. An important theme in his chapter is that this was a process which was very much influenced by different governments, court decisions, international circumstances and, in some ways most importantly, changes in the views of Indigenous groups themselves on the best methods to be adopted to achieve their goals. ‘Canadian Immigrant Electoral Support in Comparative Perspective’ by Stephen White and Antoine Bilodeau compares immigrant electoral support in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. One of the fundamental arguments they make is that, generally speaking, immigrants from non-traditional sources in the three countries are disproportionately strong supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada, the Australian Labor Party, and the New Zealand Labour Party – the main left of centre parties. One of the explanations offered for this is the general perception held by these immigrants that these political parties are overall more supportive of immigration and greater ethnic diversity in their respective polities. But White and Bilodeau make the point that the gap between native-born or immigrants from more traditional sources and non-traditional sources is wider in Canada than in Australia and New Zealand. This is an excellent example of the benefits of comparative studies, for without comparing the former to the latter two this would not have come to light. This is a noteworthy edited collection which illustrates the benefits of comparative studies in political science in Canada. It will appeal more to specialist readers than general readers as some of the chapters are quite theoretical, but it is nevertheless highly recommended. Jatinder Mann, University of Alberta

Rose-tinted ideals and the threat of spinsterhood: Teaching and maternalism in Anne of Avonlea (1909) (Idéaux édulcorés et la menace du statut de "vieille fille": l'enseignement et le maternalisme dans Anne of Avonlea (1909))

Abstract: Concentrating on L.M. Montgomery’s often overlooked Anne sequel Anne of Avonlea(1909), this article interrogates the representation of Anne-as-teacher, particularly focusing on the ways in which Montgomery extends this role beyond the confines of the schoolhouse. It explores the ways Anne’s ‘teaching’ is presented to the reader as both a mode of employment and a route for her own personal development that both draws upon and extends her seemingly innate maternalism. It also examines the extent to which Montgomery’s intended narrative destiny for Anne was shaped by both societal expectations of the period regarding young women, and by the conventions of the domestic romance genre itself. This article intends to encourage new evaluations and reassessment of the Anne sequels by drawing attention to the conflicting relationships between writing, paid work, and gender in this period, which both Montgomery and her protagonist were forced to overcome.

Playing the art world: The rise and fall of Greg Curnoe (Jouer le jeu du monde artistique: montée et chute de Greg Curnoe)

Abstract: From the 1960s until the early 1980s the London, Ontario artist Greg Curnoe was championed on the national and international stage by the National Gallery of Canada. A committed regionalist whose representational art reflected his daily experiences, Curnoe’s art was celebrated as evidence of the nation’s cultural maturation in the heady years surrounding Canada’s centennial. However, fame can be notoriously fickle: by the early 1980s, Curnoe’s career was in decline. This article examines Curnoe’s rise and fall at a culturally and politically charged point in Canada’s history.

Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship by Adrienne Clarkson (review)

Abstract: In this book, Canada’s twenty-sixth Governor-General considers what it takes to feel a sense of belonging as a citizen in today’s Canada. Originally broadcast on CBC Radio, its contents comprise the 2014 Massey Lectures, so were first heard, spoken in Clarkson’s own voice. She wanted to stimulate ‘an ongoing conversation’ with radio’s large public audience and she emphasises that the lectures were ‘never intended to be academic’ (both quotes p. 212). A deeply personal thread runs through the lectures in the form of a reflection on Clarkson’s own journey from arriving in Canada with her family as a child refugee from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942 to becoming Governor-General in 1999. A best-selling author with a distinguished career at CBC Television behind her, Clarkson is a Privy Counsellor, a Companion of the Order of Canada, and co-founder of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship in 2005. From the first page, Clarkson takes readers on a journey of encounters with the Other, presenting examples that are distant in place and time from contemporary Canada. She places these examples within the metaphor of widening circles, derived from the emphasis within Canadian Aboriginal Circles that ‘inclusiveness is a form of expansion’ (p. 5). Her discussion includes fictional and factual, historical and contemporary referents, each example having some personal or autobiographical significance and each, as her discussion progresses, considered in terms of the light it sheds on notions of citizenship and belonging in Canada now: the Provence village of Eygalières from medieval times to the Second World War resistance of Jean Moulin; the life of Martin Guerre as presented in book and film; the story of Aspasia and Pericles, with particular reference to ancient Greek democracy; Nelson Mandela’s life and the fight against apartheid; the Bantu people’s ethical value of ubuntu or ‘connectedness’; the Bhutanese concept of gross national happiness; political and religious philosophies from Arendt and Burke to Buddhism and Vaihinger. All these, and many others, are related to features she sees as distinctive to Canada, such as its openness to immigrants, its culture of volunteering, its citizenship ceremonies, its Aboriginal, anglophone and francophone ‘three pillars’ (p. 108), its northern communities, its ‘own Ubuntu project’ (p. 134) of relations with First Nations communities, its culture of generosity and tolerance of difference, its climate. There is no shortage of relevant statistics on Canada en route but Clarkson ultimately sees citizenship as an imaginative project in which Canadians new and established jointly create ‘a healthy fiction’ (p. 156) by behaving ‘As If ’ (pp. 149–56) ‘our multicultural, diverse country has become a reality’ as ‘a pluralistic society’ (p. 153). Out of what she calls the shock of loss and starting over, which all Canadians share in their current or past experience, she calls on the paradox of individual commitment to the community to create belonging and thus ‘to imagine the future of the citizen into being’ (p. 184). Frankie Todd, Chichester

Apartment Housing Then and Now: Vignettes from Toronto and Montreal/Le Logement En Appartement Alors et Aujourd'hui: Vignettes De Toronto et De Montréal

Abstract: Apartment houses were controversial insertions into the built environment of Canadian cities in the early twentieth century. More recently, some early apartments have been demolished and replaced by high-rise or non-residential buildings, but others have acquired heritage status. Small-scale, originally walk-up apartments on inner suburban residential streets are praised for their domestic and homely characteristics, precisely what they were thought to lack when first erected. Through a series of brief case studies, this article traces the changing fortunes of pre-First World War apartment houses in Toronto and Montreal. It charts both their ‘real’ experience of neglect, abandonment, reuse, conservation or renovation, and their representation in literature and on screen: as ‘bohemian’, ‘modern’, home to dysfunctional or marginal characters, or complex mixtures of semi-public and semi-private space. While survival or demolition has sometimes been a matter of chance, it is also evident that geography is critical in determining their fate. Abstract: Les immeubles de rapport ont ete une insertion controversee dans les zones construites des villes canadiennes du debut du vingtieme siecle. Plus recemment, certains de ces premiers appartements ont ete demolis et remplaces par des gratte-ciels ou par des immeubles non residentiels, mais d’autres ont acquis le statut de bâtiments proteges. Les immeubles de petite taille accessibles par des escaliers dans les rues des banlieues residentielles sont loues pour leurs caracteristiques d’interieurs chaleureux et accueillants, ce qui etait precisement ce qu’on leur reprochait de manquer a l’epoque ou ils ont ete construits. A travers une serie d’etudes de cas breves, cette etude retrace les revers de fortune des immeubles de rapport eriges avant la premiere guerre mondiale a Toronto et a Montreal. Elle rend compte a la fois de leur ‘veritable’ manque d’entretien, de leur abandon, reutilisation, preservation et renovation et de leur representation dans la litterature et au cinema comme logement ‘boheme’, ‘moderne’ pour les personnages marginaux ou dysfonctionnels mais aussi de melanges complexes d’espaces semi-publics et semi-prives. Tandis que la survie ou la demolition de ces bâtiments a parfois ete une question de chance, il est manifeste que la geographie joue un role crucial dans la determination de leur sort.

Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers and New Leftists in English Canada by Ian Milligan (review)

Abstract: unique class of immigrants: they were overwhelmingly urban, educated, and middle class; they spoke English and could easily ‘pass’ as native born; but unlike other groups they were reluctant to identify with their national heritage. Rodgers notes two reasons. First, their act of immigration was not merely an escape; it was a political act in which they voiced not only discomfort with their existing identities, but a conscious desire to create new ones in Canada. Second, growing anti-Americanism only complicated their ability to realise their countercultural goals. For these reasons, the American exile community never based its identity on its shared American-ness or even resister status. The sharpest element of Rodgers’s analysis is her demonstration that individual American exiles did not arrive with pre-set plans to collectively transform the life of the Kootenays; they simply hoped to ‘live otherwise’ according to their values. Although many of the exiles shared counterculture values, Rodgers argues that ‘these ideas were not simply transferred from one location to another but were fostered, negotiated, adapted, and sharpened as the migrants settled’ (p. 13). Eventually, these expatriates found each other to build a range of institutions and political projects that fostered a vision of a more equitable, creative, and environmentally sustainable community (p. 23). Though Rodgers’s story is one of a unique immigrant group, it follows the standard Canadian multicultural narrative of how embattled, but resolute, minorities slowly transformed and enhanced the Canadian social fabric. Indeed, her story is the successful resurrection of the West Kootenays from a declining resource extraction region to a vibrant and funky countercultural haven. But as we know, not all immigrants make successful transitions and many choose to return or move on. This was also true of the back to the land movement. Unfortunately, there are no such stories here to understand why some stayed and others did not. Similarly, there is little analysis of the sociocultural backgrounds of Rodgers’s sources. The idea that Americans could ‘pass’ as Canadian suggests that few if any non-white middle-class exiles made the Kootenays their home. That said, Rodgers’s study provides future scholars with a rich and complex body of material to better understand a whole range of changes to Canadian society that ensued in the aftermath of yet another American invasion. Kevin Brushett, Royal Military College of Canada

Private Women and the Public Good: Charity and State Formation in Hamilton, Ontario, 1846–93 by Carmen J. Nielson (review)

Abstract: funding and costs of Nunavut’s health system, its health infrastructure, and workforce and programme provision. In Chapter 7, Marchildon and Torgerson focus on ‘mental health and addictions’ (p. 110). After a detailed review of different factors that could lead to such conditions, the existing services and approaches that are in place to address mental health and addictions issues are introduced. The legacy of colonialism as well as culturally sensitive approaches to healing are two crucial threads woven into the fabric of this chapter, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the impact of colonialism on Inuit culture and the importance of incorporating traditional knowledge in healing processes. Chapter 8 provides an evaluation of ‘policy, planning, and performance’ (p. 120) with a focus on strengths, weaknesses, future opportunities, threats, and ‘long-term health service planning’ (p. 125) in Nunavut’s health system. Due to its ‘interpretive’ and ‘speculative’ (p. 120) nature, it is one of the most interesting chapters. Parts of the book are also oriented towards a qualitative assessment of the importance of Inuit culture. Thus, the authors outline interpreter services, attempts to incorporate Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit into the health system, Inuit training in healthcare professions and health-related issues among Inuit. However, the subchapter on the cultural context of Nunavut (pp. 17–18) lacks a more thorough description and contextualisation of Inuit history, culture, and traditional knowledge. The book would benefit from the use of more recent data in general and a more comprehensive comparison ‘with a very different “Inuit” health system’ (p. xi) in Greenland as announced in the preface. Lydia Schöppner, University of Manitoba

Towards Constructive Change in Aboriginal Communities: A Social Psychology Perspective by Donald M. Taylor and Roxane de la Sablonnière (review)

Abstract: suggestions as to how matters might be improved so that people can obtain the untainted information they need in order to be responsible citizens. The editor makes it clear in her introduction that she is happy to say where her own political sympathies lie when she declares that in any state that can be described as capitalist, ‘the quest for power dominates both the material and symbolic spheres of influence’ (p. 6). It is not that one necessarily disagrees with this conclusion, but would it not be better to pose it as a question, in the interests of disinterested analysis? That kind of analysis is exactly what Frederick Fletcher provides in his sobering account of what has been happening to journalism of late, as ownership has become more concentrated. He notes that ‘since the late 1980s, the culture of mainstream Canadian journalism has gradually shifted from a centre-Left consensus, generally supportive of the status quo, to a centre-Right position’ (p. 33). Donald Gutstein shows how (mainly right-wing) think tanks, such as the Fraser Institute, have ensured the hegemony of neoliberal ideas in public discourse. Even conservatives should be uneasy about the ways in which these well-funded organisations have succeeded in creating an agenda of their choosing. Inevitably there is frequent reference to the Liberal sponsorship scandal through which government advertising, ostensibly designed to promote the idea of Canada in Quebec, was also designed to funnel cash to the Liberal Party itself. The Harper government’s attempts to ‘rebrand’ Canada’ are also discussed but, as Richard Nimijean points out, there is a long tradition of such branding and rebranding stretching back to Sir John A. Macdonald’s ‘National Policy’ (p. 181). What was different about the Harper government’s approach was its single-minded determination to use the government machine to promote a particular conservative vision, its scant regard for the checks and balances of liberal democracy, and its contempt for pluralism. The book appeared before the electorate decided it had had enough of Mr Harper, and so it might be argued that the final section, in which various writers discuss strategies of resistance to the publicity state – online, through social movements and alternative media – is irrelevant. But only an incurable optimist would expect Justin Trudeau’s government to undo all of the damage which so many of the contributors to this collection analyse and lament. Very well worth reading, despite the regrettable absence of an index. David Hutchison, Glasgow Caledonian University

Frank Underhill and the Politics of Ideas by Kenneth C. Dewar, and: Donald Creighton: A Life in History by Donald Wright (review)

Abstract: Kenneth C. Dewar, Frank Underhill and the Politics of Ideas (Montreal & Kingston: McGillQueen's University Press, 2015), 232 pp. Cased. $85. ISBN 978-0-7735-4487-1. Paper. $22.95. ISBN 978-0-7735-4520-5.Donald Wright, Donald Creighton: A Life in History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 496 pp. 41 images. Cased. $90. ISBN 978-1-4426-4947-7. Paper. $37.95. ISBN 978-1-4426-2682-9.Donald Creighton and Frank Underhill were two of the most influential historians of their generation and both deserve good biographical studies. In fact, there already is a ver y fine study on the latter, Frank H. Underhill: Intellectual Provocateur by Doug Francis, and Dewar never really makes clear where his book revises Francis's interpretation. It is certainly not in the biographical details for Dewar is little interested in Underhill's personal life. If Dewar's book offers anything original, it is his attempt to describe the evolution of Underhill's political ideas over time, by examining ever ything he wrote from his student essays to the numerous articles, book reviews, and letters to newspapers that he published, and even the drafts of the articles and books in Underhill's private papers that remain unpublished. Dewar is particularly concerned to show how various authors from Thomas Hobbes to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. influenced Underhill, though sometimes the influences he purports to find are less than clear-cut. Dewar clearly admires Underhill and makes some exaggerated claims about his importance. Underhill did not invent 'the role of the intellectual in English-speaking Canada' (p. 3) and to compare his influence 'as the Grand Old Man of Canadian Liberalism' with that of William Ewart Gladstone in Britain is just plain silly (p. 158). Dewar also glosses over some rather important questions. He admits that Underhill's view of women 'verged on the misogynist' (p. 91), but does not examine how this attitude affected Underhill's political views. In 1915, Underhill argued that the primar y task of the British Empire was 'governing the inferior races' (p. 38), but Dewar never discusses the importance of racial attitudes in shaping Underhill's political ideas. Dewar argues that Underhill's decision to abandon the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and join the Liberal Party in the 1960s was based upon the belief that 'the great problems of economic production that had led to the CCF's birth had actually been solved' (p. 151) - an argument which in retrospect looks very naive. So does Underhill's critique of the 1960s Canadian radicals for their 'moralistic criticisms of US imperialism' (p. 156). As Dewar points out in his Epilogue, Underhill was ambivalent about his own legacy. Initially, he planned for his epitaph to declare that he had drafted the Regina Manifesto, but then decided that the Manifesto really had not been all that important. Yet, ironically, the part Underhill played in the creation of the CCF continues to be his only lasting contribution to Canadian history, for he never did write a major historical study and the articles and books he did produce have not withstood the test of time, despite Dewar's attempts to prove the contrar y.Donald Creighton was a far more important historian and had far greater contemporar y influence than Underhill, an influence that continues in the present even though his views no longer resonate with most historians today. …

French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest by Jean Barman (review)

Abstract: embarrassing and racially motivated past – something many Canadian public and social historians before her have been unwilling to engage with on such a large scale. Passage to Promise Land not only provides a voice for these 28 women and their experiences in Canada, it also lends itself to the larger historical narrative of immigration and grapples with the ever-elusive issue of Canadian identity. Rachel Wong, University of Western Ontario

Invisible Immigrants: The English in Canada since 1945 by Marilyn Barber and Murray Watson (review)

Abstract: men of the period. It might have been interesting for Ducharme to spend some more time illustrating how exactly such figures were influenced by their wider, transatlantic contexts, but that is a minor criticism. In short, Michel Ducharme’s The Idea of Liberty is an intellectually engaging and exciting book that will be of interest to both scholars and the general public. It ends with the collapse of republican liberty and the triumph of modern liberty in the aftermath of the rebellions of 1837 and 1838. Though Ducharme himself is careful not to take sides, it is hard not to see the defeat of the republican ideal as a tragic moment. After all, given what was to come in Canadian politics, who would say that the country could not have used some more virtue? Todd Webb, Laurentian University

Contradictory Mobility: Child Self-Protection and Automobiles in Interwar Toronto's Globe/Mobilité Contradictoire: L'autoprotection Des Enfants et Les Automobiles Dans le Globe De Toronto De L'entre-Deux Guerres

Abstract: Twenty-first-century Toronto recapitulates its early twentieth-century self in one important respect: the automobilism of present-day Toronto injures and kills pedestrians in the same way – in the city’s crowded streets – and at roughly the same rate. The difference between the two eras lies in the types of injury and causes of death among children. Interwar Toronto endangered its children on increasingly crowded and automobilising streets, with virtually no municipal policy to protect them, especially those aged four and younger. The Toronto Globe determined that the next best thing to a policy option was to advance child self-protection. The newspaper’s ‘Just Kids Safety Club’ trained young pedestrians ‘to look up and down’ before crossing the street. In this, the Globe and the Torontonians who supported the paper contradicted decades of child protection discourse, which required all adults to protect all children.

Lives of their own, a place of their own? The living arrangements of 'business girls' in early twentieth-century Canadian cities (Des vies à elles, un endroit à elles? Les modes de vie résidentiels des jeunes employées de bureau dans les villes canadiennes du début du vingtième siècle)

Abstract: The rise of living alone since the 1960s and women’s diversifying employment opportunities are signifiers of an accelerated individualisation of lives, with marked repercussions for urban housing markets. Yet early twentieth-century youth married later than baby boomers, and metropolitan urbanisation, combined with cultural and technological modernisation post-First World War, helped entrench single women in white-collar employment and legitimise them as urban consumers. In this article, we exploit microdata census samples for urban Canada, 1921–51, to document the living arrangements of young (15–29) single women clerical workers in these tumultuous decades of urban modernity. To what extent did they achieve residential independence by leaving their parents’ home to head their own household or share with a peer, inhabit the grey zones of boarding and lodging, or remain ‘dutiful daughters’ living at home? Comparisons with other occupations and print media coverage of the business girl’s aspirations and dilemmas assist us in interpretation.