Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History

Margaret Conrad is the Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair of Women’s Studies
at Mount Saint Vincent University, editor of Intimate Relations: Family
and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800, and co-author of The
Joy of Ginger.

Creating Historical Memory makes a major contribution to the field of
Canadian historiography by exploring the work of anglophone female
historians over the past century and a half. As the editors point out in
their introduction, they are not content simply to explore the
structures by which women were excluded from the ranks of universities,
(although the lengths to which “the establishment” was prepared to
go to exclude women make fascinating, if depressing, reading). They also
reveal the contribution made by “amateur” female historians who
worked as curators of local history, ghost writers for men, and
chroniclers of social and cultural history at a time when
“professional” history was narrowly preoccupied with political and
military matters.

As with most anthologies, the essays vary in quality, but together they
provide a coherent sense of the challenges facing women who dared to
approach the throne of historical inquiry. The biographical studies of
Agnes Maule Machar, Sarah Curzon, Constance Lindsay Skinner, Isabel
Skelton, Esther Clark Wright, and Kathleen Wood-Legh highlight the
circuitous route by which many women came to the field of history, and
raise the profiles of women who are neglected in the current canon. The
essays on the Tweedsmuir History Books sponsored by the Ontario
Women’s Institutes, the historical writing of women in Roman Catholic
religious institutions, and the experience of the first female academic
historians document the range of women’s historical practices and the
depth of their commitment to preserving and promoting historical memory.


In the final essay of the collection, Deborah Gorham surveys the birth
and development of women’s history, a field that underpins the very
conceptualization of this anthology. By raising questions about how
gender has influenced historical consciousness and how the past has been
reflected through women’s eyes, the contributors to this volume have
done more than simply add women to the historiographical canon; they
have helped to redefine the canon itself. They have also produced a very
readable volume, a testimony to the historiographical shift toward a
narrative style that makes this book accessible to more than just a few
“scientific” historians.