Canadian Women Adventurers: Stories of Daring and Courage

Virginia Gillham is university librarian and archivist at Wilfrid
Laurier University library. She is also a judge of national and
international figure skating competitions.

Georgi and Wojna have assembled the stories of 10 outstanding Canadian
women, beginning with Jeanne Mance, a 17th-century nurse and angel of
mercy in New France, and culminating with two late-20th-century
heroines: Everest champion Sharon Woods and astronaut Roberta Bondar.
Although some of the women are well known and others have passed quietly
into history, their accomplishments are uniformly impressive and
inspiring. A two-page list of source material will facilitate further
research.

The book is marred by the simplistic, unsophisticated writing style.
Each chapter is a superficial summary, about 10 pages in length, replete
with awkward sentence structure, a repetitious style, and the occasional
grammatical error. Indeed, the combination of the writing style and the
large print would imply a youthful audience, though there is no
suggestion that the intended readership is anything but mainstream. It
is the book’s content, not its form, that makes Canadian Women
Adventurers a worthwhile acquisition by libraries.