Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Norman, Renee

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 9
picture in the room is above the bed, a framed picture of 
kids sledding down the hill. I think it came like that from 
the store but I stare anyways to see if there’s someone I 
know. I look for me but see only strangers smiling in the 
snow. I’m feeling crazy but I need to find something. I 
check the bedside table and it’s empty. I rip back the quilt, 
desperate to find her old red satin sheets, but there’s just 
the white scratchy polyester kind. 
Where’s your stuff Grandma, I want to yell and then I 
see them. Her dentures. Sitting in a glass next to the sink 
are her old teeth. She used to let me watch her take them 
out at the end of the day.
I glance at the door. My mom will be back any second. 
Then I look over at my grandma but her eyes are turned 
towards the wall. The thing is, I know if I asked her, she’d 
give them to me. I know she would. I reach into the glass, 
my hands gripping the teeth and plastic, and scoop them 
up. They’re not squishy like I expected. I tuck them in 
my sweatshirt pocket and run back to the chair beside 
my grandma. Her lips have turned up. I could swear she 
was smiling. She won’t tell my mom, even if she could. 
My mom sweeps back into the room carrying two bags. 
“I’m back. Sorry about that,” she says as she pushes the 
door open and wedges the doorstop underneath. “Let’s 
let in some fresh air. I think it’s going to rain. Have you 
two been visiting? I used to call Margaret your shadow 
when she was younger because she never left your side. 
Right, Mom? You remember Margaret. Of course you do. 
Margaret come closer to grandma.” 
The teeth have soaked my pocket. 
“Margaret, bring the chair closer.”
Holding onto the dentures in one hand, keeping them 
safe in my pocket, I drag my chair so it butts up against 
my grandma’s. I can’t seem to let go of the dentures. 
Now that the door’s open we can hear the guy down the 
hall moaning again. My mom unwraps the new sheets, 
flapping them in the air. 
I look over at my grandma but her eyes are glazed. 
She’s rubbing the sleeve of my coat between her fingers. 
I take my free hand and rest it over hers. They look the 
same but hers feel soft and moist. I rub my thumb along 
her bones, over her wrist and down her fingers, back and 
forth. She used to tell me she was big boned but she was 
wrong. She was always small and breakable underneath. 
Marcia Walker is a fomer lawyer whose stories have been 
published in The Globe and Mail, and featured on cbc 
radio programs dnto and The Wild Side. She lives in Toronto 
with her husband and two children.
Renee noRman
These Women
I am making a list
women in middle age
who rose
no floated
to that cliché ceiling
& seeing their image there
the double chin
lines around the neck
skin tags the first signs
of flabby arms & wiry
stray black hair
in their chin
like some old crone
were grateful
for the occasional blur
of progressive lenses
determined, strong
mindful of lost time
goals to achieve
took their place there
with the fierceness
only years of invisibility
grow
Renee Norman is a poet, writer, and retired educator, 
currently offering workshops and teaching courses 
on a freelance basis. She has worked as a university 
professor, education consultant, and classroom teacher. 
She holds a Ph.D. from the University of British 
Columbia and her published dissertation was about 
women’s autobiographical writings. Her three books 
of poetry were published by Inanna Publications: 
True Confessions, which received the 2006 Canadian 
Jewish Book Award for Poetry, Backhand Through 
the Mother, and Martha in the Mirror.


These Women

Driedger, Diane

In Memory of Farideh de Bosset

Albanese, Eleanor

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 63
L’auteure se rappelle les nombreuses 
visites de sa tante qui voulait dorloter 
sa mère en lui offrant manucures et 
coiffures pour l’embellir et la faire res-
sembler à une reine ou encore à sainte 
Cécile. Sa fille la revoit plutôt avec un 
balai à la main, un tablier taché autour 
de la taille et des épingles à la bouche 
tout en changeant les couches du bébé.
There are so many aunts who pop 
in and out of our house, like ladies 
jumping on and off the Ferris wheel. 
Some aunts are crabby and some are 
nice; some wear long black nun’s cloaks 
and others wear pumps with matching 
mini-skirts and jackets; some smoke 
cigarettes and some turn up their 
noses at the smell of smoke. When 
the non-smoking aunts come over 
to our house, I hide out in my room 
playing dolls and trying to stay out of 
their hair. They’ll cook up a massive 
pot of stew or clean out the closets 
or vacuum up the floors. My Mom is 
so glad when they do the vacuuming 
because you need two hands and 
usually one of her hands is holding 
one of my little sisters. When the 
smoking aunts come to visit—Aun-
tie Lorraine and Auntie Bernice and 
Auntie Jeanie—filling up the ashtrays 
The Queen of Peter Street
eleanor albanese
with half-smoked butts and rings of 
red lipstick that circle around the filters 
like lucky red horseshoes, I sit as close 
to them as I can. They fill up the house 
with cackles of laughter. They pluck 
their eyebrows bald, and draw black 
eyebrow pencil lines that curve above 
their eyes like Chinese brush strokes. 
Sometimes Auntie Lorraine gives me 
loose change, pressing a quarter or 
dime firmly into my hand. After that, 
I’m glued to her like a baby kitten to 
its mother. 
The smoking aunts usually come 
over to the house to cheer up my 
mother or take her out. Sometimes 
they paint shiny red nail polish onto 
her fingernails. The nail polish lasts an 
entire eight days, even if my mother 
does have her hands in dish water or 
laundry soap for most of the day. I 
watch as my mother’s red nails slowly 
chip off, becoming tiny flecks of red 
dots as if her fingernails have the 
red measles. Today, my aunts have 
brought my Mom to the Nu-Fashion 
Beauty Parlour to get her hair done. 
When she comes in through the front 
door, she is wearing a new blouse with 
sea shell buttons and a white kerchief 
on her hair. She looks like she just 
floated up from the big lake—a pearly 
water angel. When she takes off the 
kerchief, I see she has shiny hair with 
soft curls sitting like a crown on top 
of her head. I wonder if maybe there 
are little flowers or birds hiding inside 
her curls. I’m pretty sure if I asked 
her to do cartwheels, she would do 
it. Or if I asked her to take us to the 
beach, she would scoop us out the 
door—like the moms on television 
with pink lipstick and not a hair out 
of place. But it’s winter and by the 
time summer comes, she will be back 
to her old self—a mop in her hand, 
an apron with sticky splotches and 
safety pins clenched between her teeth 
as she gets ready to change a diaper. 
But it doesn’t matter because today 
she is perfect; she is the queen of 
Peter Street and prettier than all the 
other moms. 
My Mom is smiling at us from the 
hallway when my aunts tell her to sit 
down and relax. She is about to sit 
on the orange couch with upholstery 
that looks like a manic cat chewed it 
to bits. But before she sits, my Auntie 
Dee scoots us all off the couch and 
puts it back to the way it is supposed 
to be. (It isn’t really one couch; it’s 
three little couches sectioned together, 
like a wiener dog candy dish with one 
64 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
part of the dog fitting into the next 
part. But because my sisters are always 
bouncing up and down on the fur-
niture, the parts separate and clothes 
and toys get stuck under the cushions 
or in between the couch sections.) 
I snuggle up beside my Mom until 
I’m close enough to smell her hair. 
It smells like perfume and soap and 
potatoes. Her hair-do is put together 
a tiny bit of sugar. I love the taste of 
tea, how it feels warm floating down 
my throat. My best friend Suzie-Ann 
drinks coffee. She fills a mug half 
way, then adds carnation milk and a 
heaping teaspoon of sugar. She dips 
her toast into the coffee until the toast 
gets so soggy, the bottom part almost 
drops off from the crispy part. When 
I’m there, I drink coffee too but my 
“pet” or “little one.” It doesn’t matter 
how big you are. You could be a little 
girl or a very big lady or man and if 
my Auntie Lorraine likes you, she 
will call you “little one.” 
“Let’s take her for the driving test 
this week,” says Auntie Dee. Auntie 
Dee likes to do things right away. She 
doesn’t like to wait. Every year almost, 
she has another baby and I think it’s 
with hidden bobby pins that match 
the colour of her dyed hair. I know 
I shouldn’t touch her hair because I 
might muss it up, so instead I touch 
her hands. Soft, puffy veins run like 
blue rivers along the tops of her hands. 
“Mom, you look like the picture of 
St. Cecelia at the convent,” I tell her. 
My aunts laugh. What’s so funny? 
Just then, my little sisters begin to 
crawl all over my mother. Don’t they 
realize they’re going to mess her hair? 
I wish my aunts would tell them to 
“go play.” I wish they’d go upstairs to 
their rooms or sit quietly beside my 
brother on the piano bench. Finally, 
Auntie Dee takes charge and says, 
“Monica, see if Mary and Andrea will 
play with that doll by the piano. And 
Philip, make your mother some tea.” 
My brother Philip gets up from the 
piano bench and slowly walks into the 
kitchen. I am pretty sure he doesn’t 
know how to make tea any more than 
he knows how to knit doilies. But he’s 
not going to argue with Auntie Dee. 
Nobody argues with Auntie Dee. 
Philip wanders in circles in the kitchen 
until my mother gets up to help him 
put on the kettle and set out the tea 
bags. I wonder if today my mother 
will allow us to have tea with milk and 
fingers started shaking and my teeth 
feel funny. I’m happy that in our 
house we drink tea instead. 
After my mother helps Philip, she 
heads upstairs to the bathroom. My 
mother is the only one who doesn’t 
make creaking sounds when she 
moves around our old house. It’s as 
if she’s a friendly ghost who doesn’t 
walk, but floats up the staircase. I 
whisper to myself the word “staircase.” 
I like the way it sounds in my mouth. 
It’s what the girls in England would 
say. They would never say “steps” or 
“stairs.” They would only say “stair-
case.” I wish I could be a little English 
girl with pretty ringlets in my hair and 
a room full of dolls and doll houses 
and blue birds in golden cages. Instead 
I’m stuck on a cat-eaten couch. 
“She doesn’t do enough for herself,” 
my Auntie Dee says, as soon as my 
mother is out of sight. “It’s pretty 
hard when you don’t drive. She has 
to ask Phil every time she needs 
something.” (“Phil” is my Dad. He 
does all the grocery shopping and all 
the “everything” shopping.)
“She should get her driver’s license,” 
my Auntie Dee says. 
“Yes pet,” Auntie Lorraine says. 
Auntie Lorraine calls everyone pet‒ 
because she doesn’t like waiting too 
long for her babies. 
“Who’s going to talk to her about 
it?” asks Auntie Lorraine.
“There’s no talking necessary,” 
Auntie Dee says. “We’ll bring her 
there and that’s all there is to it. I’ll 
pick up the manual today. It only 
takes a few hours to study the rules. 
The written test is easy.” 
As Auntie Lorraine takes a long drag 
on her cigarette, the lines all around 
her mouth get little creases in them. 
Smoke trickles out of her mouth and 
nose as she talks, like she’s a genie that 
someone has rubbed and made a wish 
from. “She’s pretty tied up with the 
kids. When is she going to find time 
to practice?” 
“No, no, no. We can’t start that. 
Maybe the kids can eat sandwiches one 
night. Maybe they have to wash their 
own socks if they want clean socks.” 
“If it’s what Geri wants. But we 
should ask her first.” 
“Of course it’s what she wants.” 
“Have you asked her?” 
“I don’t need to.” 
When my mother begins to climb 
down the staircase, the aunts stop 
talking. I’m glad to see that none of 
the bobby pins have fallen out of her 
When my mother begins to climb down the staircase, the aunts stop 
talking. I’m glad to see that none of the bobby pins have fallen out of her 
hair and the visit to the bathroom hasn’t changed how she looks. She is 
still perfect. She is St. Cecelia and the Queen of Peter Street rolled into 
one beautiful lady and it doesn’t matter one bit if she learns to drive.
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 65
hair and the visit to the bathroom 
hasn’t changed how she looks. She 
is still perfect. She is St. Cecelia and 
the Queen of Peter Street rolled into 
one beautiful lady and it doesn’t 
matter one bit if she learns to drive. 
Where would she go, even if she could 
drive? She belongs here sitting on the 
couch beside me—her daughter, the 
princess. Together we will hold hands 
and read stories to each other and 
drink tea with sugar. And my brothers 
and sisters can all go live with Auntie 
Dee. Because Auntie Dee knows just 
what to do with bothersome children.
Eleanor Albanese's plays for young 
audiences have toured nationally 
from coast to coast. Recent productions 
include Under the Moon with Aunt 
Birdie with Thunder Bay Symphony 
Orchestra, an adaptation of the folk tale 
East of the Sun; West of the Moon 
with Motus O, and Dancing on Salt 
'n Snow with Broken Moons Collective. 
A. MArY MUrPhY
my mother would put ribbons
my mother would put ribbons
bows of bright red ribbons
in my tightly braided hair
and I hated those red ribbons
bigger than my head
pulled them out on the school bus
stuffed them in my lunch kit
before I got to school grade one
grade two grade three
and now for the touch
of my mother’s hands
I would tolerate those ribbons
I promise you I would
A. Mary Murphy is a Canadian poet. She has a Ph.D. in English, specializing 
in Life Writing. Her poems have been placed in numerous journals in Canada 
and also in the United States, France, England, Wales, Australia, and New 
Zealand. Her first book, Shattered Fanatics, was published by BuschekBooks 
in 2007. Her second collection of poetry, The Hungry Grass, is forthcoming 
from Inanna Publications in 2014.
JOCelYn WilliAMS
like Mother
Until my nights felt
like days, I believed her
less for asking
about him.
Until I dreamed
of the boy from twenty
years ago that left me
blushing, no, bruising,
I knew
lies.
Jocelyn Williams is a professor in 
Calgary who writes about women 
and trauma and teaches about poetry 
and prose. Her novel, Pillow Talk 
and Other Files, is forthcoming.
SUSAn MCCASlin
enna
I meet my daughter in a field
and know she is thinner
gather her in my arms, weeping.
Burden of light,
light load sifting through my fingers
falls to a scale, suspended
balance, where Maat weighs
the dead against a feather.
O, give the soul its lightness and levity,
the body its heft of flesh.
Susan McCaslin’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


English

The Queen of Peter Street

Martin, Linda

112 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
LINDA MARTIN
Wild Plunge
I accepted the harness, someone to control the 
rope,
I used the goggles, wore the helmet, had the 
parachute on my back
but it wouldn’t open and every return to earth 
was hard,
the way the soil came at me, came at my children
spraying us in the face, and making us spit.
There is still a longing for the wild plunge
riding the air, losing and catching my breath
mouth open wide to suck it all in.
I locked and unlocked the bracelets
click, click, click, one link to another,
applied the grease but the rust formed,
some things never left my throat
then the steely voice spoke.   
I know that demon lover
throwing me, each time, over the edge
arms up, hands wide, fingers grasping.
Shuffling, the unsteady gait, small steps inside 
the shackles
a hobbling run at tulips, spruce, boulders, river 
banks
kicking over the traces, but circumscribed
only a toe’s width, a nail’s worth, a tip
I’ve jumped the rope, leapt from the branch, 
flown from the swing
been chased, been hidden and found
that was when I wanted to be caught.
Linda Martin’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
DIANE DRIEDGER
I Have a Dream
I’m flying
loose from my barbell body
I now understand
why people had to invent airplanes
why I want to fly 
instead I walk
with plodding gait
pacing my energy
teaspoonfuls at a time
my mind is a lightning flash
away from the body
how will the two work together?
I will find my way
and this leap
                   will be flying
Diane Driedger’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
MADELINE SONIK
Reduction
Girls are the most difficult sex
all the adults agreed
especially when they flirt with boys,
grow breasts, and start to bleed.
Madeline Sonik is an eceletic award-winning author 
and anthologist. Her published book-length works 
include a novel, Arms, a collection of short fiction, 
Drying the Bones, a children’s novel, Belinda 
and the Dustbunnys, two poetry collection, Stone 
Sightings and The Book of Changes and a volume 
of personal essays, Afflictions & Departures, which 
was recently nominated for the bc National Award for 
Canadian Non-fiction, was a finalist for The Charles 
Taylor prize for literary non-fiction, and winner of the 
2012 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.


Wild Plunge

Beer, Frances

Chestnut Hill Farm

Hanrahan, Moira

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 61
L’auteure a assisté aux funérailles d’une 
parente dans une communauté rurale 
de Terre-Neuve où elle a rencontré 
une dame charmante, une rabbit cat 
woman, eccentrique, chaleureuse et 
ouverte. Inopinément , elle lui fait part 
de détails sur la vie de sa mère qui avait 
des problèmes. 
I’d heard about her for many years 
but I was meeting the rabbit cat 
lady for the first time. A late uncle 
of mine had married the rabbit cat 
lady’s sister and, in Newfoundland, 
this made us kin. So there weren’t 
introductions when she came to 
view the pine-coffined body of her 
sister. Introductions would have been 
awkward and would have insulted the 
rabbit cat lady. She began speaking to 
me as if I brought her the mail every 
day. Her eyes were blue and tiny and 
she was stooped over. Her Mountain 
Equipment Co-op fleece was the kind 
worn by wiry kind young men in 
Toronto who go hiking in Algonquin 
Park, and it was wrapped around her 
shoulders somewhat incongruously. 
She had a palsy that added to the 
air of unreality about her. She’d had 
the palsy for over a decade and it 
remained wholly unexplained. She 
The Mother on the Shore
maura hanrahan
wasn’t the type to rush all the way 
into St. John’s to bother doctors for 
something as insignificant as that. 
The only real trouble it gave her was 
when she wanted a cup of tea but 
she said nothing of this and quietly 
perched the cup on the table, brought 
her head down and slurped her tea, 
increasing the tilt of the cup it drained. 
Someone mentioned how a plastic 
Tim Horton’s cup with a lid would 
work but that was of no interest to the 
rabbit cat lady who was content with 
the way things are. She ignored what 
she didn’t want to hear, as we all do, 
but when the elderly do it, we think 
they are senile. And that, I confess, 
was what I first thought of her. 
She was not senile. She was poor 
and palsied and alone now with all 
her siblings dead and her parents long 
in the ground. She had never married 
or even had a beau. “She’s a virgin,” 
one of her nieces whispered to me, 
one eyebrow raised, “a seventy-six-
year-old virgin.” Entanglements with 
young men from the shore smelling 
of fish were not for the rabbit cat lady 
and the world beyond the shore was 
virtually unknown to her. She had 
her horror movies—Jason and Linda 
Blair with the spinning head and even 
Shaun—snaking around the walls 
of her sitting room in the house her 
father had bought from the railway 
company when they pulled up the 
tracks on the shore and didn’t need 
staff accommodations anymore. The 
house had been three storeys high but 
you know how the wind is on that hill 
so the rabbit cat lady’s mother begged 
her husband to take down the top sto-
rey. And he did; I’ve always heard that 
Old Mark was a man eager to please 
his wife and children. Unlike some 
fathers on the shore, his daughters 
didn’t seem eager to get away from 
him—certainly not the rabbit cat 
lady who lived with him ’til his heart 
gave out some thirty years before we 
gathered here today after the burial of 
the rabbit cat lady’s last sister.
She had never left home, the 
rabbit cat lady, but she had her cats, 
twenty-two at one time they said. 
Most of them lived in the tilted barn 
out back, with its slowly peeling sea-
splashed white paint but there were 
two or three who slept on her bed 
with her. Now it was Blackie and 
Cuddles. The rabbit cat lady spent 
most of her old age pension on cat 
food, Friskies or the No Name brand 
at the Quick Stop when she was short 
62 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
of cash, and on vets’ bills in the city. 
She didn’t get the cats spayed—she 
could never have managed that but 
when one developed a nasty sty or got 
torn by some of the scrap metal that 
littered the harbour, she put them 
in a cardboard box and boarded the 
Fleetline Bus to the Sunrise Animal 
Hospital in St. John’s. 
She could never catch the rabbit 
answered me. But on the tenth day I 
found him and he was in a bad way, 
he was suffering, he hadn’t eaten, he 
was just bones, he was. T’would break 
your heart. I took him to St. John’s 
but the vet said there was nothing he 
could for him and they put him down 
and I held him, I stroked his head 
and I whispered ‘Muffin, Muffin’ in 
his ear, and he was dead, gone. She 
cat to get him to a vet. His wiry fur 
was a pale amber and he had rabbit’s 
paws in front, huge and broad and 
stronger than you could imagine. Boy, 
could he hop, they said. I never saw 
him but he was no less famous than 
Joey Smallwood on the shore. His 
mother must have got in tack with a 
rabbit, the rabbit cat lady said, sure, 
that was the only explanation. The 
rabbit cat did come in the house once 
or twice, she said, when he was really 
hungry but he loved the woods, my, 
how he loved the woods. I called him 
Muffin, she said, Muffin, did you 
know that? I did, I nodded. I had 
been hearing about the rabbit cat 
since my childhood. I loved him, you 
know, she said, he was like my child. 
I knew how the rabbit cat died as 
well but I didn’t want to bring that 
up; it was a sad enough day. The 
rabbit cat lady did, though. Some of 
the boys around here, she said, they 
caught him and tried to skin him, 
the tore the skin right off him. He 
got away but they hurt him bad and 
made him bleed and he went to the 
woods. He was in there for days and 
days and every day and night I went 
in there looking for him, calling out 
to him, Muffin! Muffin! He never 
went silent but then straightened her 
hunched back and said there was no 
sense going to their parents because 
those boys did what they liked and 
their parents paid no mind to it 
anyway, that’s the way it is around 
here. And it cost $200 to put Muffin 
down and I never had the money on 
me and they said they’d send the bill 
in the mail but they never did. At 
this a gentle smile crossed her face.
Now it was her sister’s time to 
return to the sod and here we were, 
the rabbit cat lady and I and a few 
dozen mourners, eating cold chicken 
and mushy potato salad in the parish 
hall. The drinks had started to go 
around but this crowd was too old to 
get rowdy, even if this was the shore.
I met you before, I did, I remem-
ber you, she said to me, her voice 
dropping down the register. But it’s 
your mother I call to mind so easy. 
She came to our house one day, your 
mother, her red hair all flying in the 
wind, she did. The gales were on. I 
laughed I did, cause she never came 
over to our house, she never did that, 
and she never said a word to us, sure, 
never, and here she was, in a mad 
rush, saying “take the baby I have to 
go to the store I won’t be long take 
her,” and that was you, the baby. 
The rabbit cat spent all its time in 
the woods. I called her Muffin. She 
only stayed a second, your mother, 
but you were here a long time, you 
were just a baby about six months old 
and there wasn’t a peep out of you, 
you just stared. You were so easy to 
take care of. When your mother came 
back she took you, just like that, she 
never said a word, and that was it, I 
never saw her again. But she knew 
about Muffin, your mother. Did you 
always know about Muffin? 
I nodded. 
Are you sure the rabbit cat lady is 
still in her right mind I ask one of 
my cousins still living on the shore. 
God, yes, her mind is as sharp as a 
tack, what odds about the cats, she 
says, she’s got a mind like a steel trap, 
she never forgets a thing. 
I thought of my mother passing 
me to the rabbit cat lady and there 
was a kind of shivering in my heart. 
I could see her fiery hair flying in the 
gales swirling around her, her fingers 
hard around me. My mother’s jaw was 
always firm and I can’t remember her 
ever looking into my eyes. 
Maura Hanrahan, Ph.D. is the author, 
editor or co-author of eleven books in 
several genres, including Sheilagh’s 
Brush, a novel, which won an ippy 
bronze medal for regional fiction. 
Maura’s short fiction and travel writing 
have awards in Canada , the U.S. and 
Britain. She is currently the Special 
Adviser to the President for Aboriginal 
Affairs at Memorial University, where 
is she also an adjunct professor.
It’s your mother I call to mind so easy. She came to our house one day, 
your mother, her red hair all flying in the wind, she did. The gales were on. 
I laughed I did, cause she never came over to our house, and she never said 
a word to us, never, and here she was, in a mad rush, saying “take the baby 
I have to go to the store I won’t be long,” and that was you, the baby. 


The Mother on the Shore

Stevenson, June

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 67
JUne SteVenSOn
Silhouette on the Snow
Her silhouette cavorts on the new fallen snow,
Elegant, hat and sweeping coat,
A lone figure, gray and white.
Beside me the shadow moves,
Long and lean and lonely.
Are those diamonds in this Christmas snowfall,
Sparkling, twinkling, or are they the tears
That run cold and crisp down my cheek
As the long, lone figure strides with me,
A comfort in the night, silent, sympathetic?
Together we drift into the snowflakes,
Away from the cozy fire of friends and family turned strangers,
Their lives intact, untouched,
Their smiles reflecting the frost of uncertainty
And inability to deal with the broken wing,
The once in-law, now outlaw,
She who goes with me into the swirling wind,
Footfall after footfall, soft crunches
Muffled by the mounting depth.
Point the boots in the direction of home,
Empty apartment, no more hearth and mistletoe
Or presents by the tree.
Just the cats and me
And the ghosts of Christmas past.
Misfits, stray pieces of a puzzle now discarded,
The shadow shortens in the streetlight
Now fat and dumpy, more like I feel.
Then in the burst of opaque light, suddenly gone,
Flattened like the snow beneath my trudging feet
That push reluctantly forward, dawdling like a child;
Out of the light my companion recedes into the background
Dodging my footsteps.
I turn, she dodges back, cat and mouse.
Let her go that elegant lady with the hat and sweeping coat
She is me who was and is no more.
L. June Stevenson (the L. is for Lorna but she goes by June) is an award-
winning writer and editor now retired. For 24 years she edited a publication 
with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Her many greeting card verses, 
poems, articles and daily devotionals have been published internationally 
in both denominational and secular sources.
SheilA SteWArt
A Fugue on the World
              The world is not an object
              such that I have
              in my possession the law
              of its making.
             —Maurice Merleau-Ponty
  The world is a 
(not) object — a table, a street,
a classroom. Yes, table,
street, class
room making — not possessing
the law. My tenuous
relationship with the text
book. (History
  with author/ity.)
  I sit midlife, clear
some papers to place my palm
mid-desk, my mother’s desk.
I remember her taking the front panel
  to be re-stained.
         My mother’s mid-
   back. Her sway-
back. You could rest a tea-cup on the 
small of my back, my mother said. The 
world is a knot-poem saying:
World, you are holding
too tight, be 
  holding.
Or is it me?
Sheila Stewart’s poetry appears earlier in 
this volume. 
JUne SteVenSOn
Silhoue te on the Snow
Her silhouette cavorts on the new fallen snow,
Elegant, hat and sw eping coat,
A lone figure, gray and white.
Beside me the shadow moves,
Long and lean and lonely.
Are those diamonds in this Christmas snowfall,
Sparkling, twinkling, or are they the tears
That run cold and crisp down my ch ek
As the long, lone figure strides with me,
A comfort in the night, silent, sympathetic?
Together we drift into the snowflakes,
Away from the cozy fi e of friends and family turned 
strangers,
Their lives intact, untouched,
The r smiles reflecting e frost f uncertainty
And inability to deal with the broken wing,
The once in-law, now outlaw,
She who goes with me into the swirling wind,
Footfall after footfall, soft crunches
Muffled y the mount ng depth.
Point the boots in the di ction of home,
Empty apartment, no more hearth and mistletoe
Or pr sents by the tree.
Just t e cats and me
And the ghosts of Christmas past.
Misfits, stray pieces of a puzzle now discarded,
The shadow shortens in the streetlight
Now fat and dumpy, mor ke I feel.
Then in the burst of opaqu  light, sud enly gone,
Fl ttened like the snow beneath my trudging feet
That push reluctantly forward, dawdl g lik a child;
Out of the light my companion recedes into the background
Dodging my footsteps.
I urn, she dodg s back, cat and mouse.
L t her go t at elegant lady with the hat and sweeping coat
She is me who was and is no more.
L. June Stevenson (the L. is for Lorna but she goes by June) is an award-
winning writer and editor now retired. For 24 years she edited a publication 
with The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Her many greeting card verses, 
poems, articles and daily devotionals have been published internationally in 
both denominational and secular sources.


Silhouette on the Snow

de Nikolits, Lisa

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 73
“I can’t move the fridge,” she 
mumbled meekly.
“You can’t move the fridge?! Why 
in God’s name do you have to move 
the fridge?”
“To clean under it.”
“Oh, jeezus— You have to rope me 
into this somehow, don’t you. I can’t 
just come home at night and relax; 
you’ve always got something you want 
me to do. Something you couldn’t 
do by yourself because you were too 
weak, or you didn’t have the car, or 
you had your head up your ass and 
you couldn’t get it back out.
“Well, you got it figured wrong, 
missy. I’m not moving no fridge. Not 
tonight. You clean everything else up 
and I’ll move it tomorrow morning. 
You can clean under it then.”
He lumbered back up to his den. 
“Christ, it’s all through the house. 
What the fuck were you thinking? 
Can’t even wipe your feet….” His 
voice trailed away up the stairs.
She paused. She dropped the yogurt 
MARION MUTALA
It was really nothing
Was it the remote thrown through the tv that did it?
Naw, too drastic
Was it my birthday present concert ticket that you gave away to 
a brother you dislike?
Nope, too unbelievable
How about the hole in the bathroom wall or in the bedroom door?
Never, much too crazy
Or the constant fighting and bickering with my children?
No, way too childish
Or, how about my 11 year old calling 911
when you and my 13 year old
were fighting over what tv show to watch?
Never, too stupid
Tell me, what was it you asked?
Why are we divorcing?
After ten long years
What was it?
Really, do you need to ask?
Come on now, get real
Do you really need to fricking ask, hey?
The answer is quite explicitly obvious, you jerk
You figure it out,
I told my lawyer
It was nothing, really nothing
Nothing at all
Marion Mutala has a Masters degree in education administration and taught 
for 30 years. With a mad passion for the arts, she loves to write, folkdance, 
sing, play guitar, flower garden, travel, and read. Her two bestselling, award-
winning books, Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Christmas and 
Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Easter are followed by the soon to 
be released Baba’s Babushka: A Magical Ukrainian Wedding.
container back on the floor. She poked 
the pooling liquid with the mop. She 
pushed one of the mouldy pieces of 
bread into to it and watched the bread 
soak up the goo. Then, changing from 
her slippers to her shoes, she left the 
house to go to Sarah’s. She didn’t 
even stop to check her hair in the 
little mirror. She grabbed her purse 
and started moving. She walked out 
the screen door and off the porch. 
She walked down the steps, down 
the side path, across the yard. She 
turned up the sidewalk and walked 
away from the house.
What was it Sarah had said about 
walking away?
Esther Vincent likes to tell stories. She 
does so using photography, theatre and 
the written word. Her stories, photo-
graphs, articles and essays have been 
published in magazines, journals and 
anthologies. She has had eleven plays 
and three movement works produced 
for stage. One of her plays, Shafted, was 
published by Ordinary Press.
LISA DE NIKOLITS
SILENCE
your
silence
unnerves
me
have you
left me
again?
how many
times
can you
leave?
Lisa de Nikolits is the award-
winning author of The Hungry 
Mirror and West Of Wawa. 
Her third novel with Inanna, A 
Glittering Chaos, was released in 
Spring of 2013.


Silence

Scrabble Poetry

Travis, Kathryn

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME150
feminist scholarship and despite the 
varying subject matter in her essays, 
she seems to be concerned about 
how power relations are sustained 
and experienced. The following 
questions seem to drive her new 
work and the reexamination of her 
past publications:
does our writing effectively 
uncover and understand power 
relations in the past, and if so, 
how and why does it do this? 
In this regard, both gender 
and women’s history can be 
considered ‘feminist’ history 
(or not), depending on their 
commitment to feminist politics 
and perspectives.
Ultimately, Sangster encourages 
us to think of gender and women’s 
history “through feminist eyes” and 
view it as feminist history. 
In each of her chapters, she includes 
a preface examining the ways in which 
the debates and theories have evolved 
since they were published and how 
her own ideologies have shifted over 
time. According to Sangster, new 
research questions are being posed 
that were not thought about before, 
new generations of historians are re-
visiting old problems that were never 
solved and more and more work is 
being published, which in turn, not 
only challenges previous notions of 
women’s history but also sheds new 
light on the previous debates and 
theories used. 
Although she does not aim to pro-
vide “a detailed ‘from then to now’” 
history of feminist scholarship in 
Canada, Sangster argues that
Canadian women’s history does 
have its own peculiarities, shaped 
by distinct patterns of economic 
and social development, by Can-
ada’s own version of colonialism, 
and by in- and out- migration, 
not to mention historians’ 
past preoccupation with the 
nation-state and nationalisms.
Her essays include well-researched 
and documented case studies, which 
demonstrate the ways in which Ca-
nadian women’s history is shaped 
by social, economic and political 
movements. She particularly fo-
cuses on gender, class, politics, and 
colonialism. In Discovering Women’s 
History, a preface to The 1907 Bell 
Telephone Strike, Sangster explains 
how her methodology and political 
stance attempts to understand the 
agency of women who worked in 
factories at the turn of the twentieth 
century. She draws on skillful empir-
ical research and uses such sources as 
government documents, newspapers, 
personal letters, and company files 
to further explore organized labour 
movements. Her other essays, Girls 
in Conflict with the Law and Crimi-
nalizing the Colonized uncovers the 
history of criminality and power 
imbalances in the court towards 
girls and women—both Native and 
non-Native—who were socially 
marginalized. In her final essay in 
this collection, “Making A Fur Coat,” 
Sangster argues that “feminist writing 
on fur as a gendered symbol for the 
nation, or as the feminine ‘skin of the 
body’ reflects the continuing influ-
ence of postmodern preoccupations 
with the discursive, representation, 
and sexual identities.” Instead, she 
takes a path not taken in previous 
feminist scholarship and focuses on 
women’s labour, bush production, 
manufacturing work and retail labour 
of skinning, sewing, and selling fur, all 
by women, in mid-twentieth-century 
Canada. 
This groundbreaking work would 
be of great interest to graduate stu-
dents and academics interested in 
feminist scholarship and women’s 
lived experiences in Canada. Sangster 
does an extraordinary job at situating 
her work within the literature of 
Let me tell you something, kid. 
Love is like a magic carpet with 
a mind of its own. You step on 
that carpet and it takes you plac-
es–marvelous places, odd places, 
terrifying places, places you’d never 
have been able to reach on foot. 
Yeah, love’s a real adventure! But 
you go where the carpet goes; after 
you’ve stepped onto it you don’t 
get to choose a goddamned thing.
Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, Mr. Fox, is a 
complicated matter. Complicated, I 
must add, in an incredibly powerful 
and generative way. The vignettes that 
Oyeyemi unfolds through the lives of 
the foxes are a haunting reminder of 
the dynamics that saturate all kinds 
of relationships (especially those of an 
intimate kind) and of power in its very 
Mr. Fox
Helen Oyeyemi
Toronto: Hamilton Hamish Canada, 
2011
reviewed by kathryn 
travis
women’s history and politics and 
engages with theoretical debates 
in feminist ideologies since its first 
emergence in academia. She goes 
beyond a historical examination 
of gender and women’s history by 
interweaving her own experiences 
and challenges as a feminist academic 
conducting research in the field for 
over thirty years. This text is a vital 
contribution to the scholarship of 
Canadian women’s history. 
Marlene Mendonça is a doctoral stu-
dent in Theatre Studies at York Uni-
versity. Her main research interests 
include: feminist theory, Girl culture 
and Girl Studies, Women in theatre 
and performance in the early twenti-
eth century. 
VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 151
real capacity to ripple through life, in 
all of its various shapes and forms. As 
the writer St. John Fox and his muse 
Mary Foxe play out a narrative back-
and-forth over nine different scenes, 
it is the capacity of these narrative 
forays to increasingly bubble over and 
spill into the everyday landscape of St. 
John and his wife, Daphne’s domestic 
life which finally forces the three to 
openly face one another. Through 
the character of Mary—character in 
a dual sense, as she is both a character 
for *us*, the reader, and questionably 
one for St. John and Daphne—each 
are able to examine what it means to 
be with one another. 
The challenge becomes whether 
we, as readers, are able to follow 
Oyeyemi and her cast of characters 
in their processes of unravelling. By 
pushing the boundaries of relation-
ships, by having them change—from 
love, to dependence, to aloofness, to 
harm, to name but a few states—her 
characters test the limits of how we 
conceive of being-with another. In 
many ways, Mr. Fox is a tale about 
“knowing”; how we uncover the 
knowledge that we have of others, of 
those with whom we find ourselves 
in relationships, and how we come 
to know ourselves in the process of 
relating to another. How, oftentimes, 
it takes the act of being with someone 
else to finally begin to know ourselves. 
By the end of one’s reading journey, 
it is clear that Oyeyemi has affectively 
moved her reader to reconsider the 
boundaries between fact/fiction and 
real/make-believe. As the character of 
Mary Foxe so aptly portrays, these 
divisions cannot be so easily made 
or steadfastly upheld. Abiding too 
rigidly to preconceived notions or 
perspectives—such as how one un-
derstands “reality” or, quite simply, 
the nature of relating to others—only 
guarantees that one’s sense of the 
world will be rather limited. 
For any reader that has been 
touched by a book, the ending is a 
complicated matter; it is the slow 
working down of pages, and the 
culmination of events having passed, 
which mark the reality that those 
still-yet-to-come are dwindling. The 
reader, so touched, hopes that pages 
in some magical way do not corre-
spond to an ending, or a closing, or 
anything which will signal that the 
finale is slowly creeping closer. It 
speaks volumes of Helen Oyeyemi’s 
abilities as a storyteller and writer 
that she is able to affect her readers 
so deeply. While she taps into a wide 
genre of writing that speaks to the 
relationship between imagination 
and the experience of unbearable 
events, it is her ability to carry her 
reader into an “openness-towards” 
that marks her abilities as an artist; 
to be open to the potential that 
anything is possible. It is her gift of 
weaving-between, of folding stories, 
characters, and ways of knowing and 
perceiving the world together that 
affectively moves those who read 
her work. It reminds each of us to 
be wary of the rigid and inflexible 
borders that oftentimes shape how 
we know and what we can know; 
for it is these same borders which 
contain the ability to close us off 
from experiencing that which is truly 
extraordinary.
I almost forgot to mention another 
fox I know of—a very wicked 
fox indeed. But you are tired of 
hearing about foxes now, so I 
won’t go on. 
I for one hope that there will be 
more foxes. 
Kathryn Travis is a third-year Ph.D. 
student in the Gender, Feminist, and 
Women’s Studies program at York 
University. Her research focuses on 
how multiple forms of cultural pro-
duction work collectively to reconfig-
ure the Paris ‘banlieues’ in representa-
tion and experience.
To many in the lgbt social justice 
and aids movement circles, Sarah 
Schulman is a well known figure, 
whose earlier works, for example 
the 1990 novel, People in Trouble, 
describes the turbulent lives and loves 
of queer women and men living and 
struggling with aids. It highlights 
how important queer women were 
(and still are) to a complex array of 
resistance and community-building 
that was necessary to save lives and 
to help dignify a complex terrain of 
emotional and health crises where 
activists responded to the murderous 
indifference governments displayed 
toward phas at the time. 
A prolific author and activist, 
Schulman holds a position as Distin-
guished Professor of English at City 
University of New York, College of 
Staten Island. During the Reagan 
era in the US, which witnessed a 
juggernaut of anti-gay backlash in 
the midst of the aids crisis, Schul-
man participated in act-up’s many 
creative actions and was one of the 
co-founders of the Lesbian Avengers. 
These two radical queer organizations 
were responsible for advancing di-
rect-action resistance with a queerly 
theatrical twist to the annals of radical 
resistance movements well before 
such tactics were more popularly 
taken up by the anti-globalization 
demos a decade later. 
In her 2011 novel, The Mere Future, 
her first foray into the science-fiction 
genre, we are treated to startlingly 
angular prose where descriptions 
slightly off the mark of recognizable 
reality are yet all to often transpos-
able to the over-familiar lexicon of 
marketing lingo and ad copy. In 
ThE MErE FuTurE
Sarah Schulman
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011
reviewed by robert 
teixeira


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