Marriage of Minds: Isabel and Oscar Skelton Reinventing Canada

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.

Today, O.D. Skelton is primarily thought of as the éminence grise who
worked effectively for three prime ministers as undersecretary of state
for External Affairs from 1925 to 1941. He is also remembered as a
successful Queen’s University academic who published books on such
topics as socialism, railways, Wilfrid Laurier, and Alexander Galt.
Isabel, his wife, is remembered not at all—even though she wrote
several books herself, including Backwoodswoman: A Chronicle of Pioneer
Home Life in Upper and Lower Canada, the first history of Canadian women
to treat them in their own right.

Why the different treatment? In Terry Crowley’s view, Oscar benefited
from the privileges awarded men of his generation. The topics of his
research reflected mainstream historical and political interests,
whereas his wife wrote “social history” that was not then in
fashion. Further, as a husband, Oscar was able to enjoy a successful
career in part because he had a dutiful wife back home who moved when he
needed to move, looked after the kids, and entertained his associates.

How could such a bright and talented woman put up with this state of
affairs? In part, Isabel was a creature of her time and did what women
were expected to do. More important, she and her husband shared a
commitment to intellectual matters, most especially the idea that Canada
was an independent nation no longer in need of British tutelage. It was
a true marriage of minds.

To make his case, Crowley has relied on an impressive array of
secondary and primary sources, and in particular on the Skelton papers,
which came into the public domain in the early 1990s. As a result, his
book refines earlier interpretations of Skelton’s contributions at the
Department of External Affairs, and his information about Isabel is
completely new (she may have died in obscurity, but thanks to Marriage
of Minds, she is no longer forgotten).

Crowley, a distinguished historian at the University of Guelph, has
produced a book that can take its proud place in the splendid Studies in
Gender and History series.