Transformations

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Best known as the former president of Mount St. Vincent University
(1978–1986), Margaret Fulton, over the course of a busy career, seemed
to have an impact wherever she went—as a high-school English teacher
in Thunder Bay; as a professor at Waterloo Lutheran University
(1967–69), where she met the author of this book; as dean of women at
the University of British Columbia—before the Mount St. Vincent
opportunity opened up.

Throughout her life, Fulton earned a growing reputation as a passionate
champion of “world peace, the rights of women, the protection of the
environment, the restructuring of higher education and many other
humanitarian causes.” In fact, it is her ideas rather than her life
per se that Doyle, now also a retired professor of English, chooses to
explore in this short book. Thus, those looking for an in-depth analysis
of Fulton’s impact on the history of “The Mount,” or a salacious
peek into her private life, will have to look elsewhere. It is an open
question whether the decision to focus on her ideas was deliberate or
the result of Doyle’s reliance on the papers, letters, email, and
interviews that Fulton herself supplied.

That said, Fulton’s ideas are worth exploring in themselves. Their
overall intent was to transform the society in which she lived, although
as Doyle continually points out, Fulton herself was also transformed by
her own life experiences. One of the strengths of the book is that Doyle
is able to show the impact of the authors Fulton studied—Thomas
Carlyle and Virginia Woolf in particular—on the growing evolution of
her ideas. On the other hand, because Doyle confesses to agreeing with
Fulton’s opinions “on society, politics, education, and women’s
issues,” he doesn’t take a very critical look at any of them. The
end result: while Fulton has said that she has no intention of ever
writing her memoirs or an autobiography, Doyle has provided us with the
next best thing.