Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post–1945 Halifax

Margaret Conrad is Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at
the University of New Brunswick. She is the author of Atlantic Canada: A
Region in the Making, and co-author of Intimate Relations: Family and
Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–

This collection of essays makes a major contribution to our
understanding of social welfare, women’s activism, and community
development in Canada in the three decades following World War II.
Taking Halifax as a case study, the authors demonstrate that women,
working through gender-specific organizations, volunteer activities, and
individual campaigns, were instrumental in developing services for
themselves and others. Despite being largely excluded from elected
office in this period, women thus became “mothers of the
municipality” and helped to give birth to the new wave of the
women’s movement that took root in the 1970s.

Focusing on individuals, organizations, and policies specific to
Halifax, the 10 essays contribute substantially to an understanding of
larger trends in postwar Canada: the expansion of the state, the
secularization of social services, Cold War militarization, the changing
roles of women in and outside the home, and women’s agency in the face
of tremendous social change. Essays describe the processes by which
organizations such as the Local Council of Women and Business and
Professional Women were supplemented by the Voice of Women and the Nova
Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, and policies such as the
Nova Scotia Poor Law gave way to the Canada Assistance Plan. Several
essays explore the impact of these changes on older social service
organizations such as the Children’s Aid Society, various maternity
homes, and the St. John Ambulance Association, which were forced to
adapt or disappear. Halifax’s black community, which in this period
represented 20 percent of the entire African-Canadian population, also
produced municipal mothers who struggled to change laws and practices
that confined them largely to domestic work and who encouraged their
daughters to use education as a vehicle for a better life.

The outcome of a five-year collaborative research project, this book
is extensively researched (including oral interviews and participant
observation), accessibly written, and edited to make the whole greater
than the sum of its parts. While focused on Halifax, the essays shed
light on provincial and national social service programs and women’s
activism in the postwar period, and should be required reading for
anyone interested in these topics.