Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution

Allison Sivak is a librarian in the Science and Technology Library,
University of Alberta.

Judy Rebick is a long-time activist, the former director of the National
Action Committee on the Status of Women, and the current publisher of
the online magazine rabble.ca. She is also a resounding voice for social
justice and anti-globalism whose publication Imagine Democracy (2000),
an argument for achieving egalitarianism and participatory democracy.
She has now followed that vision for the future with a view of the past,
as found in Ten Thousand Roses, an important oral history of Canadian
second-wave feminism from the 1960s to the present. Incorporating
interviews with more than 80 activists, Rebick has compiled a lively,
passionate, and varied view of the feminist movement in Canada from the
words of those who were at its forefront.

The book is organized chronologically, examining some of the key issues
of each decade: the Status of Women committees, the fight for legalized
abortion, union and child-care organizing, anti-violence and
anti-poverty work, constitutional rights, and the pornography wars.
Other chapters document the particular obstacles faced by women of
colour, Aboriginal women, and women with disabilities, in their fight to
end discrimination not only in the larger society, but also within the
women’s movement itself. Presenting different sides of some of the
more controversial issues (particularly the National Action
Committee’s work in federal politics and the pro- and anti-porn
movements), interviewees vividly evoke the gains made throughout
Canadian society, as well as the fierce opposition feminists dealt with
in politics and in their communities, particularly in the face of such
political and social crises as the Charlottetown Accord and the Montreal
Massacre.

Rebick acknowledges that Ten Thousand Roses is not comprehensive in its
coverage, but rather represents a broad and accessible introduction to
Canadian feminist history. It serves its function well, and will, one
hopes, encourage readers to investigate further into the history of
Canadian activism.