The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925

R. Douglas Francis is a history professor at the University of Calgary
and author of Images of the Canadian West.

In recent years, the Social Gospel movement has received considerable
attention from Canadian intellectual and social historians. While these
experts differ regarding the movement’s nature, they are united in
accepting a common core of subjects for the basis of their
studies—main-line thinkers, noted social activists, and prominent
radical theological or intellectual leaders (such as J.S. Woodsworth,
W.D. LeSueur, or B.F. Austin).

Valverde argues that such studies have overlooked a significant
subgroup of reformers— educators, doctors, community or social
workers, and pamphlet writers—who were equally influential in shaping
Canadian attitudes toward social and moral reform in the years 1885 to
1925. They were less concerned with social conditions in slums and
factories, with spiritualism, or with free thought, and more concerned
with “the sexual and moral aspects of social life.” As a result,
they concentrated on the abolition of prostitution, the dissemination of
“sex hygiene” or purity education, the elimination of obscene
literature, and the maintenance of race purity—an agenda Valverde
aptly describes (borrowing a phrase from the time) as building “an age
of light, soap, and water.” Valverde labels this group of moral
reformers a “social purity movement,” cautioning the reader that
“it would be misleading to imagine it as a distinct movement with its
own headquarters and publications, when in fact it was in one sense an
aspect of a wider movement that also included critical studies of
industrial conditions and other issues not generally regarded as
‘moral’.”

Valverde’s study—which includes chapters on “The White Slavery
Panic” (prostitution); “Racial Purity, Sexual Purity and Immigration
Policy”; and “The City as Moral Problem”—makes a valuable
contribution to our knowledge of social and moral reform in Canada. By
taking these “purists” at face value, Valverde shows that these
moral reformers were not motivated by sadistic desires to punish and
repress the pleasure and sexuality of individuals or of the “lower
class” collectively, but instead held positive national and religious
aspirations associated with nation-building. They had “a common vision
of the pure life that individuals, families, and the nation would lead
in the near future.”

Valverde begins her study with an informative discussion of her
methodology, which is based on “discourse analysis.” Although she
claims to have gone beyond traditional historians in deriving insights
from her sources, her approach is in reality no more and no less than
that of an insightful historian (though she is a sociologist by
training). She approaches her sources with sensitivity, yet with a
critical and inquiring mind, and uses those sources to draw inferences
that help illuminate our understanding of a heretofore neglected
subject. It is her analysis of, and conclusions about, these moral
reformers rather than her discussion of methodology that remains of
greatest value to readers of her book.