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

Fejer, Karen

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 93
En septembre 1997, mon conjoint, Tom 
Fejer, ophthalmologiste, a développé les 
symptômes de dysphagie. Une échogra-
phie a révélé la présence d’une tumeur 
cancéreuse maligne au cerveau, Cau-
chemar et confusion ont suivi pendant 
les mois de traitements des médecins qui 
en oubliaient le patient. 
My husband Tom and I race our bikes 
along the trail. Tom can ride faster 
than me. He’s bigger and stronger. 
But that day, for some reason, I’m 
winning. I wait for him at the inter-
section of the trail and the dirt road 
that leads back to our cottage. In 
response to the puzzled look on my 
face he says, “I was just going my own 
pace.” That seems odd, not like him. 
I don’t comment. We ride down the 
hill together and along the lakefront 
back to the cottage.
We eat our lunch on the deck over-
looking the water. On this languid, 
late summer day, the lake is still and 
smooth and soothing. Soon I’m bliss-
fully asleep on a lounge chair. When 
I wake up, it’s time to get packed and 
head back to the city. Tom loads our 
bags into the trunk of the car. He 
complains as he always does that I’m 
taking too much stuff back and why 
Dear Doctor
karen fejer
don’t I just leave it at the cottage for 
next weekend. Then I explain again 
how the milk won’t be fresh if I leave 
it all week and the cheese will dry 
out and the lettuce will wilt. It’s our 
regular dialogue.
Tom and I married young, just after 
he graduated from medical school and 
I graduated from library school. Tom 
then trained as an ophthalmologist. 
We raised our family of two sons. 
Finally now, the kids are in their 
twenties and out of the house, and 
there’s just the two of us. A new phase 
in our lives is beginning. The stress 
of raising our kids, building a career 
has eased. There are lots of things we 
want to do in the upcoming years.
One night that week as we get ready 
for bed Tom misspeaks a word. He 
confuses the words “he” and “she.” 
Tom’s first language is Hungarian. 
There are no words for “he” and 
“she” in Hungarian. Tom came to 
Canada as a young child. He’s fluently 
bilingual. He’s never made a mistake 
like that before.
Another worrisome thing has 
happened, Tom tells me. That day, he 
operated on a patient and removed 
their cataract. The next step was 
implantation of the lens. He asked 
the nurse to bring a specific type of 
lens. It was the wrong one. The nurse 
recognized his mistake. A terrible 
error was avoided.
As Tom tells me this story, I no-
tice he’s making other errors in his 
speech, mixing up his words. I’m 
very alarmed. Something is wrong, 
I’m sure of it. Is it a sign of early 
Alzheimer’s Disease or possibly a 
mini stroke? We better see Otto, I 
say. Otto is a friend of Tom’s who’s a 
neurologist.
Saturday morning. We’re at Otto 
and Marilyn’s house, in the den, the 
four of us. I want Otto to hear how 
Tom is speaking, the mistakes he’s 
making. Otto listens for a while. 
“Tom’s 60 now,” he says, “he’s get-
ting older. In a month, he can have 
a cat scan.” 
“He’s going to have a cat  scan on 
Monday,” I say. There’s no point in 
putting this off.
Monday morning. We’re at the 
x-ray department of the hospital. 
Maybe someone won’t show up for 
their cat  scan appointment and Tom 
can take their place. We wait. No 
one skips their appointment. Tom 
is booked for a cat  scan tomorrow.
Next day. Tom doesn’t want me to 
94 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
come with him for the cat  scan. I’m 
hurt but I understand he wants to be 
alone. In the morning he goes to the 
hospital for his appointment. I wait 
at home, full of dread and anxiety. He 
arrives home with the news. The cat 
scan has revealed a lesion in his brain.
A few days later we’re at the neuro-
surgeon’s office. He looks at the cat 
scan films, examining them minutely. 
My mind’s in a blur. I don’t hear 
what he’s saying. The brain biopsy 
is booked for next week.
Each day is interminable. I’m foggy, 
unfocused. Can’t get anything done. 
Finally it’s the day of the biopsy. I 
drive Tom to the hospital. In the 
day surgery department, they attach 
a wire frame to his head. Then they 
take him to the operating room for 
the procedure.
My mother is with me in the 
waiting room. I can’t sit in a chair. 
I pace the hall back and forth. An 
hour and a half passes. What’s taking 
so long? I scan the corridor looking 
for the doctor. The woman at the 
desk doesn’t know anything. More 
pacing, more waiting. Finally, I see the 
doctor walking towards me. His face 
is impassive. My heart is thumping 
out of my chest.
Tom has a Glioblastoma Mul-
tiforme brain tumour, the doctor 
tells me. It’s in the speech centre. It’s 
inoperable and highly aggressive. 
His life expectancy is six to eighteen 
months. Please God, let me wake up 
from this horrific nightmare.
Tom is out of recovery and back 
in a hospital room. He looks like 
he’s sleeping when I come into the 
room. As I stand over his bed he 
wakes. A solitary tear has formed in 
the corner of each of his eyes.” We 
weren’t lucky,” he says.
He’s supposed to stay in the hospital 
overnight to make sure there are no 
complications from the biopsy. Tom 
doesn’t want to stay. He signs himself 
out of the hospital.
Tom is upbeat, he’s euphoric. Other 
times he’s very angry. That comes 
from the brain tumour. Tom is a 
different person now, his personality 
has changed. He’s in denial. He tells 
Otto it’s a good thing he got this so 
he could retire. Tom was never plan-
ning to retire. He loved his work as 
an ophthalmologist.
Tom’s speech is getting worse. 
He knows what he wants to say but 
something different comes out. I try 
to guess. It’s frustrating for both of us.
Dear Dr. X, My husband Tom Fejer 
has a newly diagnosed Glioblastoma. 
He has an appointment to see you 
next week. Currently, he’s in denial 
about his tumour. When you see him, 
I would appreciate if you could answer 
his questions. However, please don’t 
volunteer anything negative unless 
he asks you specifically. He isn’t ready 
to accept the reality of his illness. 
You can tell me anything. Sincerely, 
Karen Fejer.
The morning appointment. We’re 
in an examining room, waiting for the 
neuro-oncologist. When he arrives, he 
asks me to leave. He wants to talk to 
Tom alone. I’m reluctant to go, but 
he insists. They’re in the examining 
room together for a long time before 
the doctor exits. I reenter the room 
where Tom is lying on an examining 
table. “How are you sweetie?” I ask. 
Tom tells me he has just had a near 
death experience. The doctor gave 
him his prognosis. Afterwards he felt 
as though he was in a tunnel moving 
toward a bright, piercing light. He 
was disconnected from his body, he 
was dying. It was only when I spoke 
to him that he came back to life. The 
doctor returns to the examining room. 
“Tom needs immediate chemother-
apy,” he says.
The afternoon appointment.
We’re waiting to see the radiation 
oncologist. He asks me to come into 
his office. We sit down in front of a 
large screen. This is a picture of Tom’s 
tumour he explains. Radiation will 
stop it from growing temporarily. 
Don’t bother with chemotherapy, he 
tells me. It doesn’t work.
On one day we have two appoint-
ments with two oncologists and get 
two completely different opinions. 
What are we supposed to do?
I make plans to take Tom to Lon-
don, Ontario, for another opinion. 
The oncologist there has been highly 
recommended by people I met in a 
brain tumour support group I joined. 
This doctor is associated with a re-
spected university teaching hospital. 
Over the telephone, I tell him Tom 
has a glioblastoma. He says he can 
help him. I’m surprised, no one else 
has been encouraging. We drive to 
London for the appointment. The 
doctor’s first question to Tom is, 
how did you get this brain tumour? 
It seems he cares about his patients 
as people. He’s not detached as Tom’s 
Dear Dr. X, My husband has a newly diagnosed Glioblastoma. He has an 
appointment to see you next week. Currently, he’s in denial about his 
tumour. When you see him, I would appreciate if you could answer his 
questions. However, please don’t volunteer anything negative unless he 
asks you specifically. He isn’t ready to accept the reality of his illness. 
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 95
other doctors are. After giving Tom 
a neurological examination he says 
that he knows the type of treatment 
Tom needs. Next month, he’s going 
to a brain tumour conference in the 
U.S. When he comes back, he’ll have 
a treatment to offer Tom. Please call 
him in a month.
A month later, I call. He has only 
a vague recollection of our conversa-
tion. “I’m not sure what you know 
about this tumour,” he says, “but 
there’s not much that can be done.” I 
don’t understand. I clearly remember 
DIANE DRIEDGER
Cyborg
picc line apparatus
removed
from my heart
can’t leave it behind
it’s part of me
like Seven of Nine
in Star Trek Voyager
I ask the nurse
can I have it?
you never know when it will come
in handy when making art
at home I look at the tubing
is this like artmaking with
nail clippings
or my hair?
Diane Driedger’s poetry appears 
earlier in this volume.
our discussion and his hopeful words. 
He asked me to bring Tom to London 
to see him with the understanding 
that he could help him. He received us 
in a humane and compassionate way. 
And now this complete disavowal. I’m 
totally disheartened.
And then it comes to me. Tom 
has a very rare tumour, one that is 
not well understood. By examining 
Tom, this doctor is able to further 
his medical knowledge. Is he doing a 
study and needing more participants, 
I wonder? He knows there’s no possi-
ble treatment he can offer Tom. He 
has enticed us to London with a false 
promise. I feel cheated and angry. 
And this is just the beginning of our 
desperate journey.
Karen Fejer is a personal historian. 
Previously, she was a freelance contrib-
utor to cbc Radio. She has written for 
Women’s Quarterly, Ontario Medical 
Journal, Canadian Jewish News, and 
other publications.
Diane Driedger, “Self-Portrait with Skeleton (After Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait 
with Parrot),” 2011, watercolour, 12 in. x 16 in.


Dear Doctor

Circé-Côté, Eva

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 43
The author, a feminist journalist who wrote under a male 
pseudonym, is well known in Montreal for her satirical 
articles. In this article, a young woman posing as a man gets 
a much-needed job previouly refused to her when she was 
interviewed dressed as a woman. When discovered, she is 
fired and her employer sues her for the extra money he paid 
her since she had been hired on a man’s salary. This article 
was originally published in 1937.
Il s’est passé une aventure cocasse et qui est de nature à 
nous faire réfléchir sur la mentalité faussée d’une bonne 
partie de l’humanité. Une jeune fille en quête de travail et 
qui avait en vain frappé à toutes les portes pour demander 
une position quelconque—on n’est pas difficile quand on 
est menacé de famine—prit la résolution désespérée de se 
travestir pour arriver à son but. Le temps de le dire, elle 
avait sinon modifié son anatomie, au moins changé son 
apparence. C’est relativement facile à présent d’opérer 
ces transformations, depuis que ces demoiselles ont des 
têtes bobbées (sic) et des manières masculines. Les gens 
n’y voient que du feu et il arriva ce que la jeune fille avait 
prévu, une place lui fut offerte par un de ceux qui l’avaient 
éconduites brutalement quand elle portait une jupe et des 
talons hauts. Le patron était émerveillé de son « employé ». 
Il n’en avait jamais eu d’aussi docile, d’aussi poli, d’aussi 
sobre, d’aussi ponctuel. Mais le fils du patron qui avait 
meilleure vue et un instinct plus neuf, plus averti ne fut 
pas dupe de cette mascarade. À certains signes, qu’il n’a 
pas fait reconnaître, il pressentit dans le garçon de bureau 
si parfait, l’âme-sœur de la sienne, l’idéal qu’il poursuivait 
depuis toujours. Aussi saisit-il la première occasion pour 
lui offrir son coeur. La jeune fille qui avait des raisons 
Vengeance infâme
eva circé-côté
sérieuses de garder l’incognito, refusa ce don précieux lui 
préférant de l’argent légitimement gagné. Le monsieur 
furieux de sa déconvenue avertit son père du tour qu’il 
s’était fait jouer. Ce dernier humilié de ne pas avoir fait 
lui-même lever le gibier et de se faire damer le pion par 
son héritier, non seulement la chassa de sa maison, mais 
lui intenta un procès pour obtention d’argent sous de 
faux prétextes. Le bonhomme aurait dû avoir pitié de 
la pauvrette forcée de recourir à cet expédient, honteux 
pour son sexe, de rompre avec la tradition afin de gagner 
sa pitance. Un homme d’esprit aurait ri de l’incident. Un 
moraliste se serait indigné contre cette société qui protège 
le fort contre le faible, qui fait la part double à l’un et ne 
permet à l’autre de manger que d’un côté de la mâchoire. 
Mais ce bourgeois borné, savez-vous ce qu’il allègue pour 
avoir gain de cause? Il prétend que parce que sa bonne 
foi a été surprise, il a dû donner plus à cette misérable 
créature qu’à un employé barbu et rasé. Mais s’il en a eu 
pour son argent et davantage, pourquoi se prétend-il lésé 
et volé? En pleine civilisation, dans le siècle de la radio et 
du cinéma, peut-il se trouver des êtres aussi férocement 
mesquins et égoistes? On devrait le mettre en prison à la 
place de la jeune fille qu’un juge intelligent a libérée de 
l’accusation qu’on avait fait peser sur elle. Pas de sévices 
contre ce fils à papa qui essaie de détourner une jeune fille 
de ses devoirs et qui par vengeance la dénonce à l’auteur 
de ses jours et lui fait perdre sa position!... Et l’on dira 
que la femme a tous les droits! Elle a surtout le droit de 
crever de faim quand son compagnon peut s’empiffrer au 
point que son estomac blasé par tant d’excès en régurgite.
Allez donc nier les prérogatives exagérées des fils d’Adam. 
Vous avez la preuve de l’influence qu’exerce le pantalon 
44 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
.
sur la société. De son côté la jupe, essayez de le nier, est 
une pierre d’achoppement, sinon un empêchement de 
danser en rond. Ce n’est plus « pardessus le moulin » C’est 
la tunique de Nessus qui adhère à la peau mais qu’il faut 
arracher à tout prix même si elle emporte avec elle des 
lambeaux de chair. Et on parle d’allonger les robes pour 
qu’elles remplacent les balais de la Corporation et nettoient 
les rues de leurs immondices et propagent les microbes! …
Quand érigera-t-on en principe qu’à « même peine, il faut 
même salaire »? Ce serait trop simple, trop honnête, trop 
juste. Il faut toujours faire des subtilités, des distinguos 
spécieux, sans cesse la femme sur un plan d’infériorité.…
Ces pharisiens qui essaient de nous faire croire qu’ils 
ont brisé les chaines de l’esclavage où languissait le beau 
sexe, qu’ils ont rendu à la femme la dignité de son sexe! 
…On a voulu la mettre sur un piédestal pour l’empêcher 
de s’asseoir sur un rond de cuir, sur une chaise tournante, 
I. (slime and other discrepancies) 
—after Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the 
Wall”
slime and other discrepancies
when my foot touches down upon the life of 
a snail
and that little life is pressed into my shoe
this must be a day for mourning
on the wall, on the stairs, a speck or dent
or curved shadow
a pause or sprint
snail imagines – who knows what?
the sorry landscape
after a night of rain
and perhaps the lunching of a bird or two
an indefinable smear
between this mess and yesterday’s crunch
I am jarred awake
by the massive space of the still clouds
the brief cachinnations of the winded trees
II. (to know death, impossible)
To know death (impossible)
is to drag out our hair
along our bodies
and to rub our feet with sleep
as cicadas
to know death (impossible)
is to stare into the night
till only breath
and in the black new silhouettes
to know death (impossible)
is to drift with the wind
with eyes that follow a winded scarf
with breath that is lost in warming air
to breathe into the night
dense, polluted
to know death (impossible)
is only through hushed hands
through longing
through stories of extermination
dans une stalle de député, dans un fauteuil de sénateur, 
sur un trône, comme c’est malin! Qu’ils sont généreux nos 
législateurs! Quel respect, quelle vénération pour celle qui 
les a portés dans son sein, qui les a nourris de son sang, 
qui les a bercés sur ses genoux, qui les a soignés, dorlotés 
et élevés! Cette jupe qui devrait être comme un drapeau 
et solliciter des hommages et des saluts, on en a fait une 
entrave, presqu’un opprobre. 
This article was orginally published in 1937 in Le monde 
ouvrier. Eva Circé-Côté (1871-1949) was an iconoclast 
journalist who wrote more than a thousand articles for 
Montreal newspapers and magazines at the beginning of the 
century. She rarely used her name, preferring instead male 
pseudonyms (such as Julien Saint-Michel). She was appointed 
first librarian at the Montreal Municipal Library in 1903, a 
fact rarely acknowledged, and was also the author of four plays.
ela PRZYBYlo
Ela Przybylo is a Ph.D. student in t he Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Program at York University. She is 
the author of the collection of poetry, Threats of Intimacy (2008), and more recently her poetry has been available in 
Branch. Haunted by times once present, now fading, she assembles words to remember and anticipate personal, familial, 
and collective traumas and joys.


Vengeance infâme

Hartai, Michelle

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 113
Digging in the Dirt
michelle hartai
Dans les premières pages du roman de Nora Sparks, la pro-
tagoniste éponyme rapporte les déboires et malheurs de ceux 
qui vivent autour d’elle. Elle n’a que neuf ans mais on sent 
chez Nora un esprit vif et tenace qui cherche à être vue comme 
elle se voit alors qu’elle vit dans le chagrin et l’incertitude.
We are on our way to Norwell again. Mom and Dad are 
building a house near Grandma Sparks’ to rent out so we 
usually have to drive back and forth three or four times 
a week. The new house has to be finished and rented out 
before the fall, or Dad said the bank’s gonna nail his ass 
to the wall and take the house we live in too. Mom said 
the bank will think twice about that when they lay eyes 
on what they’re getting. 
The drive to Norwell is an hour long and always feels 
like forever. I let my eyes zipper along the fence lines that 
section off property and hold in cows. The trees and grass 
are so green now, it’s nice. Since we’re off the dirt roads, 
I can have my window down and my chin on my arm. 
The wind is just perfect. 
I think the people that live on the farms we go by 
are probably really different from us. They come from 
different places, and grow up living near different towns. 
They probably wonder what we’re up to driving past their 
homes so many times. They probably wish they could get 
away as often as we do—go places all the time—instead of 
staying home all day, going to work or school, and doing 
house chores like laundry. People on these farms hang 
their clothes out to dry. We have a dryer.
“…Well, they don’t call her Snakebite for no reason, 
do they?” says Mom in the front seat.
She’s talking about Mrs. Grobe who lives across from the 
Centennial Hall and ballpark in Parry. I’ve seen her about 
five times in the four years since we moved to Parry and I 
started grade one. Dad sees her all the time ’cause she’s a 
Gowing Township Board Member and Dad is the Parry 
Recreation Director. All the board members give Dad a 
hard time ’cause they’re full of themselves Mom says, but 
Snakebite’s one of the worst ’cause she lives so close to 
where Dad works, she looks for anything that’s wrong. 
“What did Snakebite say?” I ask. 
Dad laughs. Mom makes quick eye contact warning 
Dad, then turns to me from the front seat: “Don’t you 
call her that.” 
“Is it about Dad?” 
Mom and Dad look at each other but ignore me.
The last time I saw Snakebite, she was sweeping her 
walkway wearing light brown shorts and a grey shirt that 
was loose and boring. She stared at me biking by. “That’s 
not a girl’s bike is it?” she asked. I didn’t want to, but I 
stopped. My bike isn’t a girl’s bike because girls’ bikes look 
weak and I need a crossbar so I can steer with no hands 
while I eat Popsicles or drink pop at the same time. 
“No,” I said, “I don’t like girls’ bikes.”
She chuckled with a straight face. “Is that right?” 
I made my getaway when her stupid kid Grant came 
riding up the sidewalk and distracted her. He is a jerk at 
school. If you spill something on your shirt, he’ll point 
it out, or if you bring something lame to Show and Tell 
he’ll whisper jokes about it to other kids, and you can 
hear them laughing. And he’s really strong, so as long as 
we’re not alone, we’ll tease him about failing grade three 
or having an old mom … Snakebite’s way older than my 
mom, and she has a droopy face so you can see the red 
114 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
tissue under her eyeballs. My mom’s face is round and 
still looks the same as it did in pictures from when I was 
a baby, except she perms her brown hair into an afro now. 
I lean up to the front seat, “Tell me what she said, I 
won’t tell nobody.”
Mom looks out the window. “It’s the same snide remarks 
about people she always makes … somebody’s drinking 
too much, so and so’s spending too much time at so and 
so’s.” She looks at Dad. “Nobody’s spending time with her, 
that’s why. Hmph, and that nobody has gone and hooked 
up with another one who can’t keep her mouth shut to 
save her life; although, I wouldn’t want to run into her in 
a dark alley …jeez.”
Snakebite’s husband didn’t like her so much he divorced 
her. He owns Grobe Meat downtown. The new Mrs. 
Grobe is tall and square-ish, like if Fred Flintstone was 
a girl. She winks at me like a man when I come into the 
store with Mom to pick up meat. She was in the army so 
people call her Sarge behind her back and call Mr. Grobe 
The Wife now. I’d like to join the army to be strong but 
not to fight in a war. 
“Just drop it will ya,” snaps Dad. “Get me a Coke out 
of the back, Donna.”
Mom reaches back around my feet and ruffles through 
the floor garbage and Dad’s music papers for his half-fin-
ished case of Coke. Mom and Dad don’t clean out the 
car—they’re too busy. Our house is mostly messy too. And 
Dad always has his music papers in the back seat and his 
guitar in the trunk, in case he becomes “suddenly inspired 
to write the big one,” or someone has a guitar and wants 
to jam. He always says, “you never know” about being 
prepared for stuff.
Dad’s been in a band since 1966 and he was twenty … 
about fifteen years ago. His first band was called Little 
Willy. In the band poster they dressed like ccr and my 
Dad looks like John Fogerty, except Mom says she got the 
shorter version. Little Willy almost made it big but the 
guitar player, Jay, stabbed Dad in the back. Dad said Jay 
is “one of those people who don’t know they’re stupid.” 
So Jay wrecked the band, and Dad didn’t get to tour with 
famous bands in Europe, otherwise, we’d be living the high 
life. I hate what Jay did. My Dad should’ve got his chance. 
Mom finds a Coke. “It’s not very cold.”
“Just give it to me.” Dad opens the can and presses the 
tab into his giant bristly moustache. He loves Coke. He 
has his first one at breakfast every day. 
Matt sits behind Dad reading another Hardy Boys book. 
Even though he’s a year younger than me, he’s read way 
more books, and he always reads in the car. I can’t or I 
get sick. I wouldn’t anyway, it’s boring and Dad doesn’t 
like it. Matt loves to read but Dad thinks Matt should 
do something useful. 
I’ve only read one book I liked so far and that was 
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. We had to read it for 
school last year in grade three. I thought for a long time 
about that book: how Charlotte had to give up her babies 
to Templeton, how Wilbur felt leaving his best friend to 
die alone at the fairgrounds, Wilbur crying and begging 
Charlotte’s babies to come back and his hooves on the 
fence and tears springing out of his eyes. Even though 
some of Charlotte’s kids stayed, the ending was still hurtful.
Next week my grade four class is going on a camping 
trip for two nights at the Erin Park Campgrounds because 
it’s the last week of school. At first I was happy about 
staying overnight somewhere without my family and 
going camping, but then I thought about the things that 
won’t be great, like that people will see me sleep, or see 
my underwear, or there might not be enough food that I 
like and I’ll get my sick stomach from not eating enough. 
Mom says I snore with my mouth hanging open. So does 
she. My friend Amy Schwartz is excited about the trip 
for one reason: she’s in love with Chris Lapierre and she 
thinks she can get him to like her for who she is deep 
down, because she’s kinda fat on the outside. But Chris 
only likes the popular girls, Krista Bristol and Paulina 
Carrey. It’s dumb. Having a boyfriend is retarded anyway 
but she won’t listen.
The green sign says “Walmer, Population 1500.” Dad 
has to say “Wammer.” That’s how you say it, if you’re from 
Norwell. But there’s an “l” between the “a” and the “m” 
so I think he’s wrong. So I always say “Wall-mer,” and he 
says “Wammer!” And I say “Walmer” and then he says 
‘Well, you’re wrong.’ And sometimes I tell him about the 
“l” and sometimes I don’t care. 
My Grandma Sparks lives on the corner of Allen and 
Elizabeth Streets in Norwell. Across the road—kitty cor-
ner—is the first house I lived in until half way through 
kindergarten. Dad bought the house from Great Grandma 
Sparks for five thousand bucks. Now he rents it out to 
people. First, he rented it out to a lady named kp. She 
stopped paying her rent, so Dad kicked her out. kp left a 
dress-fitting mannequin on the back steps that got damp 
from the rain. She looked like a Matilda. I pictured her in 
Mom’s bearskin coat to keep her warm and I was going to 
make her a face out of something and put Dad’s blonde 
Halloween wig on her head. I imagined her standing by 
my bed watching whether I was there or not. But Mom 
said she smelled all mildewy so I couldn’t have her. It was 
awful seeing her lean up against the rotting clothesline 
pole, then Dad throwing her in the trailer for a dump 
run. How can people leave their stuff? It’s sad to think 
about your things piled in a dump. 
The house we’re building is behind Great Grandma’s old 
house. We dug out the foundation two years ago. Dad says 
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 115
it’s coming along but not fast enough. He keeps getting 
called back to work by board members for stupid reasons 
like the grass in front of the arena isn’t short enough, or 
the ball diamond has to be raked, or someone wants to 
book the Centennial Hall. Dad shouldn’t have given them 
Grandma’s number. Mom agreed ’cause then we have 
to drive all the way back to Parry and go to Norwell all 
over again the next day after school. Dad said a few extra 
trips to Norwell is sure as hell better than a trip to the 
unemployment office.
When he was out, I’d sit at his table and think about how 
he lived in there since there was no electricity and his bed 
was so dirty. He still shows up at our place if Dad runs 
into him at the Parry Hotel, which usually means they 
did something drunk and embarrassing in town that me 
and Matt will get teased about at school for.
The only thing I like about Jerry is that he has a tonne 
of records. I used to sneak them into the house to play on 
Dad’s record player. Dad taught me how to use the record 
player when I was three and a half. He liked that I wanted 
Dad hands his empty Coke can to Mom. She rolls 
down the window, leans out squishing her giant boobs 
into the window groove, and whips the can at the ditch. 
The wind catches it and takes it back diagonally dropping 
it into the long grass.
I still hate that we had to tear down the old barn to 
make room for the new house. I felt bad for all the friendly 
pigeons and squirrels living in the barn rafters, especially 
since we started the demolition just before the fall got 
cold. Dad’s friend Jerry had to move out too. He was living 
there since we lived in Great Grandma’s house. It wasn’t 
fixed up either. There was straw and bird shit all over the 
place, and holes in the springy wood floors. Even though 
I liked being in there, I paid close attention to every board 
I stepped on. It felt like a warm shadow was always just 
barely touching my back.
But Jerry is insane. Back then he only ate peanut butter 
sandwiches. Now he mostly eats processed cheese slices 
on white bread and drinks beer and coffee all day. For 
spring and summer he wears cut-off jeans that he rolls up 
to where his legs start and running shoes with no socks. 
He keeps a t-shirt hanging out of his back pocket in case 
he has to go into a store or a hotel. In the winter he never 
wears a coat. And he does a hundred sit-ups and push-ups 
before he goes out every morning. When he lived in the 
barn, he slept behind the tractor door on a mattress he 
laid over milk crates. He had a metal table and squeaky 
folding chairs at the end of his bed, where sunrays swirl-
ing with specks of dust sliced between the barn boards in 
the afternoon. He used beer cases to set stuff on like his 
brand new Realistic record player, a broken mirror, his 
hair pick, his Brut cologne, and his Playboy magazines. 
to listen to good music like The Beach Boys, Fleetwood 
Mac, and The Beatles, instead of stupid kid-songs. I was 
very careful putting the needle down so I never scratched 
a record once. I don’t like automatic play. 
Oh, I bet we’re probably gonna have to sing campfire 
songs on the class trip, Kookaburra or Fire’s Burning … I 
just know it. Some kids actually like doing that, but those 
songs are so dumb. I’d rather sing the fifties and sixties 
songs that Dad and his friends sing when they get drunk 
and stay up jamming. Mom doesn’t like that about Dad’s 
friends. They pass out at the kitchen table or on the living 
room floor missing their shirts, clasping towels like shawls 
around their shoulders for blankets, or using their jackets 
for pillows. Mom gets us to eat breakfast on the couch so 
the first thing they see when they wake up is us kids and 
hopefully they feel ashamed of themselves. 
It’s kinda funny though. They’re like dumb farm animals 
with this duh-look on their face trying to figure things out, 
but looking right at you. Their hair is all smushed up and 
matted, their faces swollen. Mom will stop whatever she’s 
doing loud in the kitchen, stomp in and threaten to call 
their wives if they don’t get up and out fast enough. They 
always look at her stunned. Dad’s friends worry about 
getting in shit by their wives, so they stand up slow and 
groaning, and Mom gets behind them like a border collie 
and herds them out the door. Dad sometimes gets mad 
at Mom for being so rude, then Mom gets mad at Dad 
for drinking and partying like a teenager, but Dad doesn’t 
care if Mom gets mad at him. Mom cares if Dad is mad 
at her though, she’ll go silent the whole day. 
When we get to Grandma’s, she’s still working at the 
hospital. She’s a cleaning lady but she doesn’t mind it. She 
I bet we’re probably gonna have to sing campfire songs on the class 
trip, Kookaburra or Fire’s Burning … I just know it. Some kids actually 
like doing that, but those songs are so dumb. I’d rather sing the fifties 
and sixties songs that Dad and his friends sing when they get drunk 
and stay up jamming. Mom doesn’t like that about Dad’s friends. 
116 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
said if she had to spend all day with Grandpa anyway, one 
of them would end up a patient in the hospital instead. 
Grandpa Sparks doesn’t work ’cause a bomb hurt his legs 
in World War II and now his legs are pretty much useless. 
He has to walk extremely slow with his hands groping the 
wall. Usually he sits at the kitchen table smoking behind 
a newspaper when we’re here, or he talks with Dad, or 
he takes a nap. He doesn’t leave the house much. He says 
he doesn’t give a good goddamn about nobody anymore 
anyway. Most of Grandpa’s best friends and two of his 
four brothers died in the war. Grandma said he came back 
miserable and has been in a bad mood ever since, which 
was a rotten deal for her ‘cause that wasn’t the man she 
married before he went off.
Grandma and Grandpa Sparks say mean things and 
swear at each other all the time, but it’s funny. Mom 
hopes her and Dad don’t end up talking to each other the 
way Grandma and Grandpa do. Dad thinks Mom’s mom 
and dad, Grandma and Grandpa Beale, have brainwashed 
my mom into thinking the way she grew up was normal, 
where nobody swears and everyone lives in La La Land 
and happy endings. Grandma and Grandpa Beale live on 
a farm about a half hour away from Grandma Sparks, but 
we’re usually too busy to go see them. 
Mom lifts our bikes out of the trailer and sets them 
against the house where the foundation meets the white 
siding. Dad backs the trailer out and they drive over to 
the new house to work. 
Our whole family builds houses. Grandpa and Grandma 
Sparks built their house in the late forties when Dad was a 
baby. Because it’s two storeys, it was probably harder to build 
than the bungalow Dad’s working on now. Dad showed 
me ancient black and white pictures of them building their 
house: happy Grandma holding a two-by-four stabbed in 
a dirt hill, one foot on a cinder block—like the captain 
of a ship, pictures of Grandpa and his brothers sitting on 
the roof against blank white skies, cigarettes in the corners 
of their grins, grey skin, work pants, and black boots, a 
picture where the house was just wrapped in tar paper: a 
two story black block face with its neck stuck in dirt, dark 
empty windows for eyes, and the front door-hole like an 
open mouth saying “awww.”’ There is one picture of the 
finished house. The massive oak at the edge of Grandma’s 
lawn looks the same in the pictures as it does today. The 
maples we climb in now were scrawny babies. Trees have 
to survive through anything.
Michelle Hartai is inspired and supported by her family (even 
the strange ones), and resides in Guelph. This novel-in-progress 
is the focus of her current work in the Humber School for 
Writers Correspondence Program.
CLAUDIA COSTA
Do you remember?
Do you remember
How cold it was that night?
I do.
I could see my breath float away
The air frosty.
I remember the ground,
How hard it was.
I remember the speed,
at which your truck slammed
into my bike
The speed at which,
helpless, a rag doll,
my body was propelled.
Do you remember?
I remember the sounds:
The crunch of 
metal hitting metal,
intertwining battling rams.
Bones snapping like twigs.
The sound of my voice.
Did you hear me?
My desperate whimper
The way it echoed
Down the canyon of that street?
Maybe you hear it now.
Only it sounds more like
The pounding of a gavel,
Minimal justice.
You may have also forgotten
picking up your keys.
Or how many times
you picked up that bottle.
But you will have plenty of time
to put the pieces together now.
Which is more than I
will ever have a chance to do.
Claudia Costa is a grade 12 student living in the 
Madawaskwa valley.


Digging in the Dirt

van Daalen-Smith, C.

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME146
in 1985), Lucy Maud’s entries weren’t 
in any kind of order or categorized 
or organized. Of course not, for they 
were a woman’s journal—a writing 
space. Her friend. Her confidante. 
Her solace. Her sounding board. And 
like Virginia Woolf, she too needed 
a room of her own, and the right to 
write. Journals have long provided 
this space for women. Audre Lorde’s 
cancer journals provided a candid 
and profound lens on her life and 
on the experience of being viewed 
as a patient and as a diagnosis. And 
of course the diary of Anne Frank 
gave the world an unobstructed view 
of a hidden existence during one of 
the worst atrocities ever known to 
our world. 
Rubio and Waterston reviewed 
and catalogued thousands of lm’s 
entries and presented them for us in 
what at the time felt like a coherent 
way. But in so doing, they felt forced 
to make decisions regarding what 
to include and what to leave out. 
Oxford University Press explains 
on the back cover of The pei Years, 
that editing decisions had as much 
to do with space as with ensuring 
the collection was “easily-digestible.” 
And so the decision was to leave out 
lm’s “darker, more reflective moods 
and her religious and philosophical 
speculations.” I don’t know about 
you, but leaving out these reflections 
and assertions  …  left Lucy Maud 
out. I’m not sure what “easily-digest-
ible” was to mean, but a journal is an 
exceptionally private space to whom 
a woman (in this case) can express 
that which she may never otherwise. 
If you take pause, you will see that 
Lucy Maud wrote directly to her 
reader… It’s not directionless reflec-
tions, but rather noticings, assertions 
and descriptions for. Notice it in this 
passage: “ And I speak of this so that 
you may realize the straights to which 
I am reduced.” Lucy Maud is writing 
to us. She is communicating directly 
with her imagined readers and in 
These are some letters! And the ur-
bane wit they transmit is clear.
The section of the book that seems 
to me most valuable from the perspec-
tive of historical study is the section 
that deals with Heller’s parents as 
left-wing Jewish schoolteachers 
during the McCarthy period. She 
details what it was like to live in the 
expectation of a letter that might call 
her parents up to testify and “name 
names” in this extraordinary period 
when the New York State Feinberg 
Loyalty Law was established for the 
“elimination of subversive persons 
from the public school system.” Up-
held by the Supreme Court in March 
1952, over the dissenting arguments 
of William O. Douglas and Hugo 
Black, the law was part of the appa-
ratus assembled to dismiss teachers 
on grounds of “insubordination” and 
“conduct unbecoming a teacher” if 
they refused to answer any of the in-
vestigator’s questions. Heller’s sharing 
of some information from these files 
(made available to the public only 
recently) is spellbinding. One item 
in the indictment concerns a person 
also named Heller who lived some five 
blocks away from the author’s father. 
This Stephen Heller is (erroneously) 
judged to be a relative and, there-
fore, his signing petitions involving 
Communist Party members is used 
as evidence against Isaiah. The entire 
conduct of this investigation is illu-
minating and terrifying, a chastening 
example of witch hunts and hysteria. 
Again, Heller broadens the scope 
with citations from a host of other 
scholars of the period, but it is her 
own dramatic recital of the personal 
that reverberates for the reader. 
These are some of the high points 
in the history, but it is the cumulative 
effect of generation growing from 
generation and the artful reading of 
the traces of this history that is most 
compelling.
Marjorie Roemer is a retired pro-
I am going to begin a new kind 
of diary. I have kept one of a kind 
for years – ever since I was a tot 
of nine. But I burned it to-day. 
It was so silly. I was ashamed 
of it. And it was also very dull.
—Sept 21, 1889 Cavendish, 
p.e. Island.
I wonder if she knew. Or hoped. I 
wonder if she knew or hoped on any 
level, that so many women would 
be interested in her thoughts, her 
dreams, her life?
I hope so. In fact, some literary 
scholars propose that she returned 
to her journals and adjusted them in 
the hopes that they would be pub-
lished posthumously. And thanks to 
scholars Mary Rubio and Elizabeth 
Waterston, they have been. These two 
literary women have worked tirelessly 
to bring to us the gift that is Lucy 
Maud’s journal. This has been no 
small task, to say the least. According 
to the publisher of The pei Years, as 
well as the earlier collection named 
The Selected Journals (first published 
ThE coMplETE 
JourNalS oF l.M. 
MoNTGoMErY: ThE 
pEI YEarS, 1889-1900
 
Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth 
Hillman Waterston, Eds.
Don Mills, on: Oxford University 
Press, 2012
reviewed by c. van 
daalen-smith
fessor of English from Rhode Island 
College, where she directed the Rhode 
Island Writing Project. Dr. Roemer 
now teaches memoir writing at the 
Brandeis Osher LifeLong Learning 
Institute.
VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 147
so doing demonstrates how journal 
writing for women has often been 
used as a communication tool. An 
honest and authentic one.
And it is in these authentic 
reflections, now included in this 
unabridged version, that I am most 
interested in. For sometimes what 
we don’t or can’t say in public is 
what connects women most deeply. 
Journals are a gift, a glimpse, or 
a pronouncement of truths. And 
journal writing for women has been 
studied for decades within feminist 
literary criticism circles. That the 
interest has not waned is perhaps 
due in part to the candid hidden 
truths about women’s lives that can 
often be discovered there. And that 
journal writing is emancipatory for 
some women may also explain the 
ongoing scholarly interest, exploring 
them as an act of resistance as well 
as a genre of women’s literature and 
culture in and of themselves. 
I was so pleased to hear that Rubio 
and Waterston had published a com-
plete volume of Lucy Maud’s life—the 
eleven years in pei. This collection of 
her journals is unabridged, and one of 
the great journals in Canada’s literary 
collective. In fact, I would argue that 
the Lucy Maud Montgomery jour-
nals are comparable to those of W. 
L. Mackenzie despite having received 
far less accolade. Until Rubio and 
Waterston that is. For to fold into 
these journals with a cup of tea and 
a comfy sweater is to succumb to 
the lure of lush literary alliteration 
…. sadly now a rarity in both the 
spoken and written word.
Even Lucy Maud returned to her 
journals, adding photos, clippings, 
dried flowers, and event stubs to 
expound her descriptions of events, 
places and her own comings and 
goings. The end result can be found, 
at least in part, in The pei Years—a 
delicious multi-media experience 
akin to her sumptuous and famous 
scrapbooks. 
Lucy Maud Montgomery is a liter-
ary woman. Of that we are all aware. 
And perhaps she’ll always remain 
one of Canada’s best known. To me, 
Anne is palpable in many of the little 
vignettes lm recounts. Honest. Ok, I 
admit it – I might have been looking 
for that sort of a feel as I often find 
myself longing to be drawn back into 
those delightful descriptions of red 
sand, craggy cliffs, church socials, and 
those memorably endearing mishaps. 
And while I do know that  lmm 
was and is so much more than her 
best-known novel, in the pei  Years, 
glimmers of Anne and even perhaps 
Lucy Maud’s childhood imaginings 
abound. Who knows what you’ll feel 
or find when you allow yourself to 
descend into The pei  Years. But I’m 
sure you’ll agree with me, that you’re 
glad she wrote. That she revised. And 
that Rubio and Waterston gifted the 
world with these collections. 
“So long as you write what you 
wish to write, that is all that mat-
ters; and whether it matters for 
ages or only for hours, nobody 
can say.”—Virginia Woolf, A 
Room of One’s Own.
For Lucy Maud, I hope it was both.
Cheryl van Daalen-Smith, is an Asso-
ciate Professor at York University with 
appointments in the School of Gen-
der, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at 
York University, the Children’s Stud-
ies Program and the School of Nurs-
ing. In her (spare) time, she cares for 
and about a menagerie of cast-away 
farm animals at her farm in Caledon, 
Ontario.
ThE caMbrIdGE 
coMpaNIoN To 
JaNE auSTEN, 
SEcoNd EdITIoN
Edward Copeland and Juliet 
McMaster, Eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 2011
reviewed by marilyn
j. batey
This recently published second 
edition contains many of the same 
contributors as the first edition with a 
few revisions, as well as some notable 
additions. It is an excellent collection 
which belongs in the library of every 
serious Austen scholar, as well as those 
who simply want a new or different 
insight into Austen’s work. 
The Companion commences with 
Deirdre Le Faye’s chronology and the 
editors have grouped the balance of 
the essays in such a way that they 
flow from the chronology through 
the problems of women writers to 
Austen’s six completed novels, her 
early works, and those left unfinished. 
These essays are followed by critiques 
involving letters, class, money, mak-
ing a living, and sociability, as well 
as “Jane Austen on screen.” The final 
chapter, entitled “Further reading,” is 
an extensive selection of books, essays, 
and articles—an excellent follow up 
to this Companion.
For example, Jan Fergus’s essay, 
“The professional woman writer,” 
gives an excellent insight into prob-
lems faced by women novelists in the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
Austen, as well as other contempo-
rary women writers, faced not only 
financial difficulties, but in many 
cases, moral and social repercussions 
if their identities were revealed, hence 
the use of pseudonyms and/or male 
names. Even Jane herself was only 


English

The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The p.e.i. Years, 1889-1900

Lipszyc, Carol

20 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
les battements de mon cœur, la puissance de ma mémoire 
et ma passion de femme du monde.
Micheline Mercier was born in Windsor in the Eastern Town-
ships (Quebec). She worked in the field of finance for some 
40 years and on retirement she trained to work in palliative 
care. She is currently writing hear autobiography, “‘Mémoires 
intérieures,” a reflection on her personal accomplishments. 
CaRol lIPSZYC
letter for emily D.
Convention saw a pallid shell,
and not her myriad colour,—
Mute to the lyric form she fused
with elemental power.
How she gleaned ripe the natural world,
her open heart, a grail,—
And steered ethereal her verse,
its earthly light unveiled.
The first book of poetry I bought as an adolescent was a 
complete collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. 
On its lemon yellow cover, I studied Emily’s supposed 
likeness, the sketch of a thoughtful, diminutive face. I read 
the book aloud, carrying it with me like a secret companion, 
as if I alone had discovered her work in a place undisclosed 
to others.
In my response to her call from anonymity, to the “tender 
majesty” of Dickinson’s words, I composed these couplets. 
And in writing back, I returned to a point of personal 
origin, drawn as ever to Dickinson’s meter, to the honesty 
and empathy in her voice, and to the dichotomies she 
explored with self-effacing energy. Attendant to the natural 
world around her, she sought answers to all-encompassing 
questions that leaped beyond the here-and-now.
So many years have passed since I first read Emily 
Dickinson’s poems, yet I remember having a felt sense about 
the trajectory of a life devoted to the arts, a path I intuited 
might one day be my own.
Carol Lipszyc’s book of poetry, Singing Me Home, was 
published by Inanna in 2010.  Short stories on children in 
the Shoah have been published in Parchment, Midstream, 
www.jewishfiction.net. She is currently an Assistant 
Professor at State University of New York, Plattsburgh, 
teaching English teacher education and writing arts.
Janna PaYne
mother teresa
patron saint of burnt out—
destroyed the shit out of that San Francisco 
convent
ripped up the carpet, spewed her agenda 
(solidarity with the poor) & let the cameras 
roll
made a scene & a name for herself
claimed space
the whole space, essentially
vandalism over a thousand, but she was in 
the clear
already served her time—
carrying the weight of the church
the weight of a thousand crying babies &
the weight of losing her unfaltering faith
oh & when she cracked
oh we didn’t just sit there
oh no we di’int
we overlooked her compassion fatigue & 
begged for her canonization
it was the least we could do
after parading her off the grid of humanity
Janna Payne is a Canadian poet. She holds a Masters 
from Loyola University Chicago. Her work has recently 
been featured (or is forthcoming) in broad: A Feminist 
and Social Justice Magazine, Communities, Role/
Reboot, Room, The Steel Chisel, and Women and 
Environments Magazine. To read more, visit <www.
facebook.com/jannaspeaks>.


Letter for Emily D.

Williams, Jocelyn

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.


Like Mother

Soutar-Hynes, Mary Lou

66 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
MArY lOU SOUtAr-hYneS
Because
     words,     a mother’s 
 tongue —     unleavened insinuations     wafer-thin,     desire’s
    muffled womb     
    
  because time 
 slips from its moorings,     because grief,     because prayer
     promise of a canvas
 primed —     discernment’s    double-locked doors
   a tree’s lost leaves
 the advent of coincidence,     affirmation,     melting snow     
  a crystal egg —
   because light comes
     full circle 
       
  because night
 because there is no other —     just brush-strokes    
   benediction,     an angel’s 
    broken gravity
 
   where no tears fall
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes is a Jamaican-Canadian poet/educator. A 2009 
Hawthornden Fellow, her publications include Dark Water Songs (Inanna 
Publications 2013); Travelling Light (Seraphim 2006), long-listed for the 2007 
ReLit Poetry Award, and The Fires of Naming (Seraphim 2001). Her poetry 
and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada and the uk.
CWS/cf
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Because

Hayter, Jennifer

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME148
FINdING a waY To 
ThE hEarT: FEMINIST 
wrITINGS oN 
aborIGINal aNd 
woMEN’S hISTorY IN 
caNada
Robin Jarvis Brownlie and Valerie J. 
Korinek, Eds.
Winnipeg: University of Manitoba 
Press, 2012
reviewed by jennifer 
hayter
In the 1970s when historian Sylvia 
Van Kirk was in grad school, female 
academics were a rarity, women’s 
history was viewed with suspicion, 
and aboriginal history was considered 
only a preface to the “real” history 
of Canada. Today, history majors at 
any Canadian university can hardly 
avoid reading Van Kirk, a female aca-
demic who put indigenous women 
at the centre of fur trade history. The 
twelve essays in Finding a Way to the 
Heart consider some of the changes 
that made this possible, while also 
providing examples of some new 
research inspired by Van Kirk’s in-
novative subjects and methodologies. 
This collection is the result of a 2007 
roundtable, a retrospective on Van 
Kirk’s work. Its contributors include 
colleagues and former students who 
work on native-newcomer relations, 
the West, and women’s history. 
The first part of the book contains 
reflections on the many facets of Syl-
via’s work. Jennifer Brown’s chapter 
describes their shared experience 
of being female academics in the 
1970s, and how things have changed 
since then. Franca Iacovetta’s piece, 
one of the highlights of the book, 
focuses on underappreciated but 
vital behind the scenes activities. 
Through her extensive participation 
on committees—approximately 
100—Van Kirk made substantial 
identified in her first novels as being 
“by the author.” 
Essays on the six completed nov-
els follow and cover a number of 
interesting viewpoints. Penny Gay’s 
“Emma and Persuasion” questions 
whether Emma is narrated from her 
point of view, or by an ironic narrator 
who seems to be perched just behind 
Emma’s shoulder. In Persuasion, we 
see reflected some of the changes that 
were taking place in society where 
“professions (in this case the navy) 
that actively serve and protect, and 
where energy, determination, and 
luck outweigh ‘good family’.” 
In Margaret Anne Doody’s “The 
early short fiction,” we see chronology 
playing a part as she explores the 
changes in Austen’s work over time. 
There is also some indication that 
sometime around 1809 to 1811, 
Austen revised and/or cannibalized 
her earlier works, while Janet Todd 
looks at “Lady Susan, The Watsons, 
and Sanditon,” and speaks of the 
“unique” light cast on Austen’s 
creative process—certainly true of 
Lady Susan, which is almost risqué 
and The Watsons which seems to lack 
some of Austen’s sophistication in her 
characterizations.
There is an essay entitled “The 
letters” which reveals some of the con-
troversy, even today, over Cassandra 
Austen’s apparent destruction after 
her death of much of Jane’s corre-
spondence. However, those letters 
that do exist “reveal the difficulties 
that she faced under a system of 
checks and repressions that needed 
to be negotiated.” This is followed 
by reviews on such subjects as class, 
money, making a living, gender, 
and sociability. Juliet McMaster, for 
instance, suggests that when dealing 
with the subject of class and its place 
in the novels of Jane Austen, and in 
answer to the question “who cares?” 
states “it is the business of the novel 
to represent people—not exclusively, 
but prominently—in their social 
roles.” Also, “[a]s a sensitive and 
informed commentator on class, that 
huge topic of the nineteenth century, 
Austen shows us amply how such 
things matter. She also shows us how 
they should not matter too much.”
Edward Copeland’s “Money” 
points out very clearly, and in great 
detail, the impact of ‘money’ on 
Austen’s society, while Clery sees 
“gender”as a basis for comedy, and 
Gillian Russell’s essay sees the role of 
women coming into its own through 
“sociability” and its infrastructure 
which arises partly from industrializa-
tion and the rise of the middle class. 
A very good flow of ideas. 
These essays are followed by Isobel 
Grundy’s “Jane Austen and literary 
tradition” and Kathryn Sutherland’s 
“Jane Austen on screen” while Clau-
dia L. Johnson looks at “Austen cults 
and cultures.” 
The Companion concludes with 
Bruce Stovel and Mary M. Chan’s 
excellent essay titled “Further read-
ing,” which provides comprehensive 
references for any student of Jane 
Austen and her writings, and is the 
perfect follow up for all those wishing 
to read further—after all, these read-
ings must surely have whetted one’s 
appetite for finding the “real Jane”! 
Marilyn J. Batey graduated from York 
University with a B.A. Honours in 
History (1998) and English (2007). 
Retired, she now spends her time vol-
unteering at various organizations. 
She is a member of the jasna (Jane 
Austen Society of North America).
VOLUME 30,  NUMBER 1 149
society. Others seem more embry-
onic or speculative: Robin Jarvis 
Brownlie’s comparison of settler 
and indigenous understandings of 
race in Upper Canada and Victo-
ria Freeman’s exploratory essay on 
attitudes towards miscegenation in 
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, 
and the United States, for instance. 
Similarly Kathryn McPherson’s 
chapter may not answer the ques-
tion of how white women actually 
interacted with indigenous people, 
but it effectively analyzes “domestic 
intrusion” narratives—white pioneer 
women’s stories of surprise visits by 
indigenous neighbours. She finds 
these stories follow a particular con-
vention: the visits initially produced 
fear, but the women survived with 
their dignity intact (usually helping 
the stranger), deploying the pioneer 
woman archetype of respectable na-
tion builders (through the civilizing 
power of their domestic realm).
The essays are generally written in 
an accessible style, which makes them 
suitable for upper year undergradu-
ates. Some readers may think the two 
sections of the book might be discor-
dant, but they are kept harmonious 
by their connection to Sylvia Van 
Kirk. While the research essays are 
informative and introduce the type 
of exciting research we can expect to 
see more of in the near future, the 
book’s most unique contribution 
is its self-reflective look at changes 
in the academy and the discipline 
of history, a useful reminder of the 
giants’ shoulders that we historians 
stand on, which is both inspiring 
and humbling.
Jennifer Hayter is a fourth year Ph.D. 
student in history at the University 
of Toronto. Research interests include 
ideologies of race, gender, and the 
family, particularly the cultural and 
intellectual foundations of identity 
regimes. Her dissertation examines 
laws, policies, and everyday state ac-
changes in the academy, in terms of 
equity hiring and the establishment 
of new fields such as gender history. 
Iacovetta credits her successes to her 
approach; she assumed her colleagues 
were reasonable and would make the 
right decision if presented with com-
pelling facts in a respectful manner. 
Van Kirk also helped many students 
battle marginalization through 
her work as a feminist teacher and 
mentor, as Valerie Korinek describes. 
And of course, as detailed by Eliz-
abeth Jameson’s historiographical 
chapter, Van Kirk’s research was 
extremely influential, even outside 
of Canada, in fur trade, western, 
indigenous, and women’s histories. 
Finally, Adele Perry writes that Van 
Kirk can inspire all scholars with 
her skillful interweaving of intimate 
and political histories. Perry argues 
for replacing the impossible goal of 
scholarly objectivity with a “located, 
embodied, and empathetic” history. 
(Incidentally, the chapter by Katrina 
Srigley admirably succeeds in this, 
delivering both a well-researched 
argument about the effects of Bill 
C-31 on indigenous women as well 
as a sense of connection to the women 
she interviews.)
The second part offers a taste of 
the latest research made possible by 
the path-breaking work of historians 
like Van Kirk. The essays are valuable, 
filling gaps in our knowledge or offer-
ing needed corrections to established 
views. Robert Alexander, for example, 
argues historians have been overly 
fixated on “tribal” histories, which 
obscure the multicultural composi-
tion of most bands of the northern 
plains. Some of the essays consist 
of straightforward well-developed 
research, such as Angela Wanhalla’s 
chapter about intermarriage among 
the shore whaling communities in 
Southern New Zealand, and Patricia 
A. McCormack’s portrayal of Fort 
Chipewyan’s “fur trade mode of 
production” and pluralist fur trade 
tivities to reveal how the Canadian 
state understood and categorized the 
Métis in the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries.
ThrouGh FEMINIST 
EYES: ESSaYS oN 
caNadIaN woMEN’S 
hISTorY
Joan Sangster
Edmonton: Athabasca University 
Press, 2011
reviewed by marlene 
mendonça
Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on 
Canadian Women’s History includes 
an extensive compilation of essays, 
all written by distinguished histori-
an Joan Sangster over a thirty year 
period. These carefully chosen essays 
are used as a gateway to reflect the 
changing concerns and debates that 
have not only shaped feminist his-
toriography in Canada throughout 
the past thirty years, but are also 
a reflection of Sangster’s past work 
and ideas. In addition to a number 
of essays previously published by 
Sangster in the past three decades, 
it also includes some new scholarly 
work published for the first time.
Sangster’s book provides a wealth 
of information on different method-
ological and theoretical approaches 
to the history of Canadian women. 
In her explanatory introduction, 
“Reflections on Thirty Years of 
Women’s History,” which was written 
specifically for this collection, Sang-
ster documents the significant work 
that has been done by prominent 
feminist historians in Canada since 
its emergence to the academic scene 
in the 1960s. In addition, she sheds 
light on new ways of thinking about 


Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women's History in Canada

Weston, Joanna M.

18 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
through her Magnani mane, still thick and well coloured 
and after a couple of deep sighs she begins telling me how 
striking she was when she was young and how the suitors 
of her day would not leave her alone. She had many to 
choose from as she recalls,“I was too beautiful not to marry, 
so many want to make me their wife, so many, but I choose 
the first one because he love me.”
Her cheeks darken with a blush as she turns to look at 
the picture of the man with the moustache. If the first 
one had not died, she would have been a fine lady in a 
fine house. If the first one had not died she would have 
lived a pampered life. The first one was from a family 
of merchants, well established in commerce and highly 
respected in their village and she would have inherited 
much property in due time. But he died before he could 
give her children and without children there was no claim 
to position or property. 
“In my time the women … we marry … we make 
children … we become good wife, good mother, that’s 
what we do.”
There is a look in her eyes that is unconvincing, faintly 
distant, as if she might be trying to talk herself into believ-
ing her own words, or perhaps hoping that I will accept 
them without any further questions. I know she married 
the first one for love, so she says, the second she married 
because the first one died. It was the second who gave her 
the children but not the indulgent, lavish life. 
“A young widow no good in my days. For the womens 
in that time with no husband you don’t got nothing in 
the life, so you find the husband and you make the life.”
The second one brought her to Toronto, gave her the 
children and a house that was less than fine. It’s the same 
house where the photographs now hang, where my mother 
was born and where I played as a child among the knick-
knacks and photographs. It is the same house where my 
grandmother waits for my drop-ins, where we sit on her 
bed and flip through memories in between folding laundry 
or making pots of espresso which we drink as if we never 
had need to sleep again. 
It is this house she will leave to my brother and me when 
her time comes, her simple and unpretentious legacy, her 
gift to us. She will leave us this house so we will remember, 
on occasion, that she once existed. 
But I do not know what house I will live in, or whom 
I will share it with. I don’t know what I will remember 
if I live to be her age or if I will ever have children of my 
own. I cannot tell my grandmother my dreams because I 
know they would upset her. There are truths and desires in 
my life that have no words or prayers she will understand. 
I am as much a casualty of my time as she was of hers. 
But now, in this room with her photographs and mem-
ories I will remain the granddaughter who could not find 
a man to make her a wife, and hope, while we fold sheets 
and iron pillowcases and talk of her lovers who hang 
dust free on her pale blue walls that she can feel in her 
old, settled heart how much I love her and that I need so 
much more than a man, or even two, to “make the life.” 
Gianna Patriarca is an award-winning author of eight books 
of poetry and a book for children. Her work, adapted for stage 
and radio, is featured in numerous documentaries. Her work 
is taught in universities in Canada, the United States and 
Italy. She was runner-up to the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry 
Award, shortlisted for the Bressani Prize, and in 2010, she 
was the first recipient of the Science and Cultural Award 
from the Italian Chamber of Commerce. In 2009, an Ital-
ian translation of her first book, Italian Women and Other 
Tragedies, was launched in Italy. She is currently working on 
a short story collection, All My Fallen Angelas, stories about 
Italian-Canadian women. She lives in Toronto.
Joanna m. WeSTon
In another Time
they fire-bombed
the cities
rose petals
fell from your
bruised hands
when I remember
stories of gun-smoke
I breathe
the scent
of Christmas roses
my hand in yours
on the beach
dune grass blows
where young women
grew roses
Joanna M. Weston is married with two cats, multiple 
spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen houses. 
Her middle-reader, Those Blue Shoes, was published 
by Clarity House Press. Frontenac House of Calgary 
published her poetry collection, A Summer Father. 


In Another Time

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 1 141
MARY LOU SOUTAR-HYNES
Soundings
i.
     No coral breath 
   or sand,     no sun            
   just water’s marbled urgency,     a body’s longing —     
     still deep enough     for drowning
     Alternate days,     
   she seeks out words,     gathers them close beneath her ribs 
       slips into page  
    adrift in memory’s wash — 
   Sundays at the Rockforth baths,     Yallas Pond and St. Ann’s  
    Roaring River,     cataracts and cold springs  
      verging     
     
ii.
     
    Through the night 
   mercy’s prayer —    
   absolution’s ashes,     water, salt,     and wine
    crystal-cloud insinuations     
   blue holes, pools and waterfalls —    where a river goes  
       to ground  
     From the doorway     
   she sees both rooms —     the cats curled into dreams      
     cobalt pillows,     silent waiting — 
   water’s lustrous language     
       like a skin
Note: The Rockforth baths is a spa near Kingston Harbour; Yallas Pond, one of two enclosed by sand spits, is 
in the Parish of St. Thomas; and roaring River is in St. Ann Parish. Source: Olive Senior, Encyclopedia of 
Jamaican Heritage (Twin Guinep Publishers: 2003), St Andrew, Jamaica.
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.


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