Invisible Women

By Carol Bennett-McCuaig

This book focuses on the 'invisible women' without whom the settlement and development of Ontario would have been impossible. Narratives of the experiences of specific women in Eastern Ontario bring this book to life. Check the Index to see who is mentioned by name.

Apart from the few whose activities thrust women into the limelight it is an unfortunate fact that women in our society were rendered virtually invisible until the second half of the twentieth century. In countless obituaries in small town newspapers they were almost anonymous, mentioned only as 'the wife of John Smith' or 'the relict of Henry Woods.' Although they might have been celebrated as "a beloved wife and mother' or 'a good Christian woman' there was seldom any clue to the personal life of these members of 'the weaker sex', their hopes and dreams and achievements.

If we are to believe that women were meek creatures contented with their subservient role, how does this tally with the myth of the stereotypical pioneer woman, bravely fighting off wild animals in the lonely forest? Was she then a different breed from the rest of us, noble, strong, courageous? She certainly existed: remembering the scenes of his Glengarry boyhood, novelist Ralph Connor wrote of "The appalling loneliness, the dangers, the hardships that mothers and daughters have to meet and endure in the little log houses in the clearing ... ". His own mother, a brilliant, well-educated young woman, married a Presbyterian minister from the Scottish Highlands and served with him in his backwoods charges, gallantly dealing with poverty and wolves and other hardships. Many more examples are discussed and documented in this book.

This book celebrates the lives of all the invisible women who have helped to make Canada what it is today.

Contents include:

• The Invisible Woman
• The journey
• Hearth and home
• Women's work in the home
• Work outside the home
• Marriage and widowhood
• Health and mortality
• Education
• Response to religion
• Recreation
• Organizations
• Suffrage and politics
• Women at war
• The Women's Movement
• Looking back
• A tribute
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• Index (click here to view Index)

Invisible Women, after being long out-of-print, is available once again in its complete original format. This book has be republished under an exclusive publishing agreement with the author's heirs.

Details:

• 150 Pages
  
• 8-1/2 x 11"
  
• Many photographs
• Index
  
• Softcover - Perfect bound
  
• Originally published by Juniper Books, Renfrew, 1999 under ISBN 0-919137-34-2
  
• This new edition published by Global Heritage Press, Ottawa, 2022 under ISBN 978-1-77240-190-5