Diary of a European Tour, 1900

Patricia Whitney, former coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at
the University of Prince Edward Island, is the Bank of Montreal Visiting
Scholar in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Jean O’Grady’s credentials for editing and presenting the diary of
Margaret Addison are impeccable: O’Grady is the associate editor of
The Collected Works of Northrop Frye at the Northrop Frye Centre at
Victoria College, University of Toronto.

The daughter of a Methodist minister, Margaret Addison was born in a
log cabin in rural Ontario in 1868 to a family grounded not in wealth
but in the values of religion and education. Her parents were devout
Christians, and indeed her father began his ministry as a circuit rider
or “saddlebag preacher,” traveling through the bush on horseback to
bring the Gospel to scattered settlers. Margaret’s mother, Mary, was a
scholarly, deeply spiritual woman who maintained her home and brought up
her children in daily adherence to Christian practice.

In 1885, Margaret enrolled at Victoria College to pursue a degree in
modern languages, becoming the first woman to publish in Acta
Victoriana, the college magazine that would nurture the young
undergraduate Margaret Atwood in the late 1950s. After a stint of school
teaching, in May 1900 Margaret and her younger sister Charlotte left for
the grand tour, Canadian Methodist style. The young women visited Paris
and the World Exposition before focusing on educational institutions,
including the Pestalozzianum in Zurich, girls’ schools in Berlin, and,
on their return to London, university settlements. Margaret found much
to inspire her in European education for women—a view reinforced by
her time at the Oxford and Cambridge women’s colleges. Methodists
believed in education for women and Margaret was ready to absorb all she
could of foreign accomplishments and use that knowledge for the benefit
of Canadian girls and women. Indeed, becoming known as “an icon of
educated womanhood,” she would devote her career to women’s
education in this country, becoming the founding Dean of Annesley Hall,
the first “Vic” residence for women, which opened in 1903.

O’Grady contextualizes the events of Margaret Addison’s life with a
light but scholarly touch. Her work, nicely illustrated with historical
plates, is a distinguished contribution to the recovery work of Canadian
women’s texts.