"Through Sunshine and Shadow": The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Women’s moral superiority was an established premise in the 19th
century. Nowhere was it more visible than in the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU), a key voluntary association for many women in
Ontario communities. Originally established to eradicate men’s liquor
consumption, which caused suffering to many women and children, the
Union became a feminist rallying point and an instrument through which
women learned public speaking and organizational skills. The WCTU was
one of the largest nondenominational women’s organizations in
19th-century Canada.

Drawing on many primary sources, Sharon Cook describes the origins,
development, and achievements of the movement at the turn of the
century, along with its positions on “social purity,” the franchise,
working women’s rights, and the treatment of women offenders. She
argues that the culture behind the WCTU was based on an evangelical
vision for society, which in turn created a liberated climate for women
dubbed “evangelical feminism.” The movement empowered women, taught
them the power of collective action, and provided a rationale for taking
progressive action against male vices. It was their support for the
centrality of home and family that validated the progressive behavior of
these basically conservative women.

“Through Sunshine and Shadow” is a careful, thorough, and very
readable work of scholarship, which includes 13 pages of archival
photos—some feature WCTU leaders Bertha Wright and Letitia Youmans,
and others catch the spirit of the times in posters, flyers, and
pledges—an index, and a long bibliography.