Branching Out Canadian magazine for women Volume V Numbers 1978 $1.25

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Gift Specials: for $1.00 extra your gift card will also include a Branch Out! button with our tree logo on it. Please send: ..... 6 issues ($6.00)* Please send: ..... 6 issues ($6.00)* ..... 12 issues ($11.00)* ..... 12 issues ($11.00)* of Branching Out to: of Branching Out to: Name ...... Name ...... Address ...... Address ...... City ...... City ...... Province ...... Postal Code . Province ...... Postal Code . Payment enclosed ...... Please bill me Payment enclosed ...... Please bill me Include a Branch Out! button: ..... Include a Branch Out! button: ..... Make cheque or money order payable to Branching Out Box 4098, Edmonton, Alberta T6E 4S8 *Add $1.00 per year for U.S.A., $2.00 per year overseas. Branching Out Columns 2 editorial Linda Duncan Editor Sharon Batt 3 letters Business Manager 4 printed matter Elaine Butler Environment Theme Editor 30 law Linda Duncan The Forgotten Offenders Mary Ellen Gillan Contributing Editors and Brenda J. Thomas Helen Corbett, Diana Palling 38 books Editorial Departments Books: Aritha van Herk Some Thoughtful Tales Rebecca Smith Fiction: Anne O'Grady, Helen Rosta, New Arrivals, Old Problems Julia Berry Joanne Ellison, Marion Thorn Bitterness and Regret Aritha van Herk Film: Margaret Cooper Photography: Diana Palling Livesay Distorted Mary Lee Morton Printed Matter: Sharon K. Smith Oh Julia! Sharon Ban Design Changing Lives Joanne Hedenstrom Brenda Phleger, Diana Palling, Romantic Conventions Catherine McQuaid Irene Klar More Books Other Staff This Issue Thora Cartlidge, Sharon Domier, 46 film Joanne Hatton, Diane Walton Outrageous! Joanne Hatton Board of Directors An Unmarried Woman Jane Dick Dallas Cullen, Halyna Freeland, Kris Purdy, Sharon Batt, Elaine Butler, Annetle Henderson, Mary Lee Morton Features: Women and Environment 8 Ecological Decision Making Janet Dunbrack 12 Urban Sprawl: The Price Gerda R. Wekerle and Women Pay Novia Carter 'Copyright 1978 by the New Women's Magazine Society. 15 One Woman's Journey Edmonton. Alberta. All rights reserved. Unless used in a Sylvia Porter review, the reproduction of this work in any form, by any 16 The Castle Revisited Lynn Hannley and means, including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, et cetera, is forbidden without Marsha Mitchell the express permission of the publisher. 26 Trial Balloon Gerda Wekerle, Rebecca Branching Out is published every two months by the New Women's Magazine Society, a Canadian Charitable Peterson and DavidMorley Organization. Editorial office located at 8631 - 109 Street. 35 The People's Republic Wendy Danson and Edmonton. Alberta. Phone (403| 433-4021. Published with assistance from Alberta Culture, the Alberta Linda Duncan Law Foundation and Canada Councij. Send all correspondence to Box 4098. Edmonton. Alberta. T6E 4S8. Submissions should be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. We review unsolicited manuscripts from Canadian women only. Fiction, Poetry and Art Subscription rates in Canada. $6.00 per year. $11.00 for two years for individuals: S10.00 per year. $20.00 for two years 7 Poetry Afternoon Epiphany Darlene Quaife for institutions. Add $1.00 per year for U.S. rates. S2.00 per 18 Fiction The Fat Lady Anne Porter Paris year for overseas rales. Advertising rates available on request. 22 Poetry Audrey Canard Back issues of Branching Out are available on microfilm from Micromedia Ltd.. Box 34. Station S. Toronto 23 Art Thelma Manarey M5M 4L6. The magazine is on file with the International 34 Poetry Isabel Huggan Women's History Archive housed at the Special Collection Library. Northwestern University. Evanston. (L 60201. Branching Out is a member of the Canadian Periodical by Cathy Hobart Publishers' Association. The magazine is indexed in the cover: "Matinee" Canadian Periodical Index. serigraph, 20" x 20".. 1976. Typesetting by Superior Typesetting Ltd. Printed by Alpine Press. Edmonton. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3517. Volume V. Numbers. 1978. ISSN 0382 - 5264

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 editorial

Environment and ecology are for disappeared. People are now simply Few women hold positions of authority most people words from the 60's when looking in different directions. Many and thus as a group we have no direct affinity for the land, the sea and wildlife groups, whether their concern is input into decisions about construction was "in." The prolific "Ban the Bomb" construction of highrises or battering of of nuclear power plants, expropriation and "Let it be" posters, buttons and women, are becoming conscious of deep of housing for expansion of roadways or bumper stickers have long since had rooted but subtle underlying reasons for development of land without provision their slogans replaced by other, trendier the planning and development decisions of social services or amenities. Women sayings. Now unless you subscribe to in their neighbourhoods and on a clearly are not only suffering the Mother EarthCatalogue, Nature Canada national scale. One factor becoming consequences of bad planning decisions or Harrowsmith chances are unlikely you clear is the role of women. but have few voices speaking on their will encounter any stories of back to the Why the emphasis on women and behalf. The response to letters we sent earth or cleaning up the environment. the environment? It is true, all people to people working on a professional and One could readily surmise that any suffer from pollution, overcrowding, volunteer basis in all parts of Canada public interest in nature and poor public transit and high housing tells us they have discovered special surroundings had disappeared along costs. But women are especially heavy needs and talents in women. They are with Haight Ashbury. losers. Falling at the bottom of the finding that women have unique While I confess these topics are no economic ladder women are left with information and experiences which must longer popular, interest and concern few choices of shelter, particularly be explored. about our surroundings has not when they are single parents or widows. International Women's Year has come and gone. The ecology movement has lost some of its bite. But just because governments have cut off their token support for shelters for battered women and people are tired of hearing about the Berger Commission does not make the problems go away. I hope the articles published here will encourage you to participate in the search for new solutions. by Linda Duncan

New Column In this issue we introduce a new column, "printed matter" which will include news stories of national importance and other short items. We invite your comments and suggestions on this and other features in the magazine.

Margaret Bremner, whose illustration appears at left, was a "founding parent" of the Saskatoon Environmental Society and did graphics for the environment magazine Probe. She also designed the covers for the 1977, 1978 and 1979 "Herstory" calendars. She now lives in Rimouski, Quebec.

Branching Out letters

Swell Review Diary Begun results static. The danger is that others will come along and see the art from the The review in Branching Out of my I thought Barbara Martineau's arti­ outside aspects without any sense of book Right Hand, Left Hand has given cle about some of us who are women Sarah Jackson, Halifax me that good warm feeling a sitting by animators was very good and very fair. I the fire over glowing embers feeling. It like Barbara's conclusion about the was good of the editor to give the book solitary nature of our work, that it is an Softening Needed to Joyce Marshall, a participant. A adaptation in part to the system of I had two intense reactions to the number of the reviews have been by production of animation which isn't last issue, both positive. One was to half-baked, youngish smart alecks who geared to giving many people control. I Barbara Martineau's animation article, know nothing of the period. This review enjoyed reading other articles in the which I found excellent. I think the film could teach them how to approach a magazine. After reading about diary department is consistently the best I book: "What is the author's intention?" keeping I have begun to keep a diary of should really say my favourite part of (Not what they think it should be) and visual impressions, little sketches of Branching Out. My second reaction was "How well does she fulfill her aim?" sights to remember. to the letter from the woman who (Not, she should have done this and Caroline Leaf, Montreal criticized you for ignoring motherhood. that.) Joyce Marshall understood the Her comment about how biological roles book beautifully; its strengths and endure while "changing roles" are just weaknesses. Classification a Danger surface, was very eloquent. Not wishing to quibble, I think it Sometimes Branching Out's tone is as a amusing that not only Joyce Marshall, After twenty-nine years determinedly unemotional, and I think artist. I believe there is a but friends whose letters I quoted exactly professional that's a mistake. You don't often talk approach now want to wash their hands of the grave danger in the sociological about sex, love, and marriage in positive works by women artists are "lingo" of the time. We all said "Swell"! in which the ways and that goes against a lot of No. 2). Why not record it? We were all classified (Branching Out, Vol. 5, women's ingrained feelings. I think you involves struggling in a culturally barren, deprived I find my own creativity could soften and make an attempt to my intuition, in country to see literature in the context of research and searching touch those women's lives and hearts social change ... So our judgements depth, to find my own imagery and style. without disgracing yourselves in any were often confused. The 'form-giving' act of creating art is ever fluid and classification makes the wav- Anne McLean, Montreal Dorothy Live say, Winnipeg

Hype Not Appreciated The photography and layout (in the last issue) are stunning, the drawings in "Ports of Call" the film animation piece are beautifully appropriate. The sketches reveal the care watercolours by and respect women artists can have Thelma Manarey toward each other. The article is a demonstration of what collective effort October 8 - October 14 and individual achievement can mean 1978 without being boring or competitive. There were some things in the issue I didn't like, such as wonky lines in the printing which I suppose were an Lefebvre Galleries Ltd. accident. More seriously, I found the interviews of Marian Engel and Aritha 10238 - 123 Street van Herk reminiscent of the kind of Edmonton, Alberta media hype these two writers, I am sure, (403) 488-1521 wish to avoid when they don't have to be "on" the air. Surely these two wonderful artists deserve some more unconven­ tional celebration. Brig Anderson, Vancouver

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 Special Delivery Expres

news about women edited by Sharon K. Smith allot extra funds and land to band IRIW councils to meet increases in enrollment when the status question is resolved. A matrimonial properties contract to RELIEF CENTRE Demands be endorsed by the band councils was another proposal made by IRIW. The Changes contract would specify that a non-Indian FUNDS DENIED spouse has the right to live on the by Lorraine Hughes reserve but would not acquire Indian by Mary Anne Erkkson status nor rights such as owning or Section 12(l)(b) of the Indian Act inheriting band property, voting in band Women in Victoria expressed shock states that a treaty Indian woman, upon elections, registering as a band member when Saanich Mayor Mel Couvelier her marriage to a non-treaty man, is not or receiving annuities or royalties that voted against a fund request from the entitled to be registered as an Indian. other band members get. Victoria Rape Relief Centre because he She loses her right to own or inherit Another resolution was that a status objected to the clothing worn by Centre property on her reserve, her children are Indian woman who marries an Indian spokeswoman Trisha MaryMoon. not recognized as being Indian, and she from another reserve should be allowed Couvelier voted to turn down the is prevented from returning home even if to stay on her reserve if she wishes and request for $16,500 claiming "I'm not so ill, widowed, divorced or separated. She that the children of that marriage be sure I want some woman in a low-slung loses the right to free medical and dental given a choice of membership in either blouse standing in front of a bunch of care, free education, and exemption from band at age 21. Grade 12 students giving a long taxes guaranteed to Indians by treaties Finally, IRIW ask that a personal dissertation on rape. I'm not even sure signed in the early 1800's. The ultimate letter of apology from the Prime Minister they're going about this the right way wrong is that she is not allowed to be be sent to all those status Indians who . . . talking to boys about it." buried on the reserve of her ancestors. had involuntarily lost their status. Speaking after the Greater Victoria If a treaty man marries a non-treaty Jenny Margetts feels that the Indian Intermunicipal Committee meeting on woman, she and her children become Rights for Indian Women is a united May 9 Couvelier told Victoria Times and Indian and gain all these benefits lost by group working for a common goal and Daily Colonist reporters "Did you see the Indian woman. any success they have is because of the her blouse for God's sake! The thing was Incredibly the government has strength they have as women. Margetts down to here," gesturing to his chest. excluded the Indian Act from the reaches has personally experienced the alienation "Nobody else seemed to notice it," he of the new Human Rights Act. So the of family and friends from her reserve. added, "Maybe I'm just a dirty old Indian woman who has lost her status in She feels that the families of IRIW man." this manner is also denied recourse on members suffer at times at the hands of Trisha MaryMoon attended the meet­ the basis of sex discrimination. Band Council because of their efforts to ing to answer questions regarding the regain status. request. MaryMoon wore what she This discriminatory clause is the "Any success we have is because considered conservative clothes, a sun­ basis for the continuing efforts of Indian we fight as one body, not against our dress covered by a belted jacket with a Rights for Indian Women (IRIW), who brothers and sisters" she concludes. scarf in the V-neckline. are determined to change this law that Faulkner said he will introduce a Quoted in Victoria papers, Mary- has oppressed Indian women for 109 Moon called Couvelier's attitude incredi­ years. proposal in Parliament this fall to amend Section 12(l)(b) of the Indian Act. ble. She commented that the overall In a recent trip to Ottawa Jenny position of the local municipalities Margetts, national head of IRIW. pre­ Readers wanting to know more toward the centre's fund requests is sented Minister of Indian Affairs Hugh about the status of Indian women in intolerable. About Couvelier's remarks Faulkner with 15 resolutions outlining Canada can send for a free copy of Indian Women and the Law in Canada: she said, "They're giving us such changes to the Indian Act. ridiculous reasons for turning us down. IRIW's resolution that one-quarter Citizens Minus. Write to the Advisory He seems to have a lot of fantasies." blood line be used as a criterion for Council on the Status of Women, Box determining Indian status was met with 1541, Station B, Ottawa KIP 5R5. Shirley Nordstrom, Status of Wo­ surprise by Faulkner who said he doubts men Action Group spokeswoman that existing bands have enough land to expressed shock ana anger that cope with this demand. Couvelier would base his negative vote The IRIW resolution paper suggests Special Delivery Expres on his perception of Mary Moon's that the Department of Indian Affairs clothing. Various other individuals and

Branching Out women's groups also sharply criticized sence at the Fleck plant, and it is this Couvelier's statements in letters to the presence that has put the strike on the press and in the community. front pages a number of times. The week Rowena Hunnisett of the Victoria before the strike began, three members Rape Relief Centre claims that CHEAP LABOUR of the OPP went to the plant to outline Couvelier's remarks "perpetuate the strikers' "rights and obligations". The myth that the victim asks to be raped." by Maureen Hynes women were warned that improper The centre criticized the Mayor's at­ On March 6 of this year, 81 women behaviour on the picket line could put titudes about rape prevention education employees of the Fleck Manufacturing them in jail. for boys. "That's the ultimate in Company in Centralia, Ontario went out According to its own figures re­ short-sightedness," Hunnisett remarked, on a legal strike that has become a leased at the beginning of June, the OPP "taking preventive measures is crucial." symbol to both the labour movement and had spent $1.2 million on policing costs Hunnisett feels the Committee does not the women's movement in Ontario. for the strike. Although they send at seriously listen to their requests. She Of 131 employees, 125 are women. least 40 officers to the picket line, there says one member asked "What is the The plant manufactures small automotive have been mornings when 10% of the need for your service anyway?" wiring parts, and is 50% owned by the force of over 500 men have appeared. The Rape Relief Centre in Victoria family of Ontario Deputy Minister of On some occasions, the entire female has been shuttled back and forth Industry and Tourism, James Fleck. police staff from all over the province" between individual municipalities and The building has rats, and the has been present. On the morning of Intermunicipal Committee in a bureau­ women are frequently forced to wear May 24, 140 policemen, including a cratic two-step shuffle familiar to most coats and boots while working in the 46-man crowd control squad arrived in women's community service groups. winter because of the cold and water on the vicinity of the picket line. When the They are caught in a funding search the floor. There are complaints that the entry gate to the plant was not cleared, which saps energy from their work with workers are repeatedly burned by police forcibly removed picketers to rape victims and community education. spitting moulds, that overhead wire racks assure safe entry of the non-striking Hunnisett stated that the "whole of Rape fall on them, and that dust levels in the workers into the plant. Relief energy went into responding to plant cause sinus problems and On July 21, CBC radio's As It Hap­ Mel Couvelier for a whole week time headaches. There are usually only three pens reported that the Ontario Labour we cannot afford." working toilets. (The Industrial Safety Relations Board has ruled that the Un­ Rape Relief presently operates with Act in Ontario requires six toilets for the ited Auto Workers Union can launch 2 full time staff and 12 volunteers. In number of employees in the factory.) four court actions. The UAW will be 1977 they handled 102 cases, plus And the wages? $2.85 an hour to able to sue the Fleck Manufacturing educational work, counselling, and crisis start, $3.24 after ten years of service. Company, its vice-president, and a pro­ intervention. Earlier grant requests to the There is no company pension plan, and vincial police constable. The Board rules Victoria Municipalities in 1976 and 1977 few other fringe benefits. the union could argue a case that both were also rejected. Ms. Hunnisett said However, the basic issue of the the police and the member of provincial funds applied for in 1978 are needed strike does not concern working condi­ parliament acted outside their jurisdic­ not tb expand the service but to cover tions. The members of Local 1620 of the tion during the dispute. operational costs, and a third full time United Auto Workers at Fleck have gone UAW Canadian director Robert salary. out on strike because of the manage­ White says this ruling does not settle the When the funding committee re­ ment's refusal to negotiate on a crucial strike, and he does not see any early end jected the 1978 request they did not union security clause for their first in sight for the 80 striking women at the notify Rape Relief of their decision, nor contract. The clause involves the appli­ Fleck Manufacturing Company. cation of the Rand Formula, which of the May 9th appeal requested by Oak Months drag by, and the women provides for compulsory union dues Bay Aid. Shirley Dowell. Rape Relief continue to draw their $45 a week strike check-off in the employee's paycheques. inadvertently found out about the appeal pay. It appears to be management's In Quebec and British Columbia, the meeting one hour before it happened and intention to prolong the strike as long as implementation of the Rand Formula is sent Trisha Mary Moon. possible in order to break the strength of automatic in first contracts; in Ontario, it Victoria Rape Reliefs next step was the local. There has been a remarkable has to be won in bargaining. The Ontario to push for another appeal of the massing of opposition to the formation of Minister of Labour, Dr. Bette Stephen- committee decision. Nancy Goldsberry, this local the direct tactics of the OPP, son, has publicly stated that tfie local Research Officer with the B.C. Attorney the rigid bargaining position of manage­ should be guaranteed this union security General's Department was asked by the ment, the lack of just le£,station in the Committee to advise them with an clause. area of first contract disputes and, of From the beginning, the strike at evaluation of the Rape Relief Centre. course, the opposition the women Fleck has been viewed as "a women's When they received Goldsberry's report, confront daily, the scabs who keep the strike." There seems to be unanimous the committee again turned down the plant open. The support Fleck workers agreement among the strikers that "if we funding request. have been receiving from other locals were men out on strike, they'd be and trade unions, from women's groups, Meanwhile, the staff members at listening to us all right." Glenda Lewis, and Members of the Provincial Parlia­ Rape Relief will continue to work, as one of the strikers, was quoted in the ment has been growing. It is clear that a Trisha MaryMoon says, up to 100 hours Toronto Sunday Star as saying. "There great deal is at stake in the areas of per week each. are four or five men who work at Fleck, labour relations and the economic status and not one of them came out on strike. of women workers. We were paid so little because we were women cheap labour so this is our PRINTED MATTER |i fight alone." The Ontario Provincial Police has -. mm HITTER consistently maintained a strong pre­

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 mailbagmailbagmailbagmailbagmailbag Quote from the Fredericton Daily Athletic Council Gives In Gleaner, New Brunswick Title: Women's Duty to Stay Home U. OF T. WOMEN WIN SOCCER RULING "I think women were brought into the world to bear children . . . any by Maureen Hynes go as far as the Human Rights Commis­ woman who decides somewhere The legality of excluding women sion. At the end of April, the Athletic along the line that she wants to from traditionally male sports has again Council made a new regulation determin­ make a life's career, that's all right, been tested. In a recent case at the Uni­ ing three categories of intramural sports but let her forget the marriage versity of Toronto, Sheila Lewis (an contact, non-contact, and co-ed. Wo­ ceremony and go out and do kef. Actuarial Science student) and Barbara men and men would be allowed to play bit." MacKay (English and History) won the in all three categories. The statement was made by Dr. J. Abby Hoffman, a consultant to the right to play intramural soccer, after a Everett Chalmers, Minister in charge of year-long struggle with the University's Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recrea­ the New Brunswick Alcohol and Drug Athletic Council. tion and a four-time member of the Dependency Commission. Because of Despite a ruling preventing women Canadian Olympic Track and Field team, the statement several unions in the from joining intramural soccer teams, spoke at the university meeting or­ province have voted to have Dr. MacKay and Lewis started playing with ganized to support women's right to play Chalmers removed from office. He has the University College soccer team. intramural soccer. She pointed out that made great efforts to correct this They played three games illegally, and in books and articles on contact sports, unforgivable attitude, but the damage because of this, the team was required to the only reference made to women stres­ has been done. Unfortunately he has forfeit the games, two of which it had ses the danger and possibility of injury. received considerable public support won. Members of the team voted to keep In fact, the University Athletic Council from some women who, perhaps defen­ them on in defiance of the Council's rul­ had offered the feeble argument that the sively, applauded his statement. ing. At this point, the Athletic Council injury rate to women would be higher acceded by changing the rule to allow than for men, but this could not be statis­ submitted by Marie Patrick them to finish the season. MacKay and tically proven. Lewis thought the battle had been won. Don Harron, host of CBC-AM's na­ First prize in the poetry category of However, in January, the Athletic tional radio programme "Morningside", the National Magazine Awards was Council again reversed its rule, putting interviewed Sheila Lewis and Barbara given to Victoria poet Marilyn Bowering women back into the position of playing MacKay in April. One of his first ques­ for a poem published in Branching Out intramural soccer illegally or not at all. tions to them concerned how they pro­ i/i 7977. The cash prize of $1,000 was With the support of Bruce Kidd on the U tected themselves so that in future life presented at the awards dinner in of T Athletic Council. Lewis and Mac­ they would be able to nurse their babies. Toronto on May 11. Kay took the issue to the Student Advis­ "We were just floored by that," said The poem, "Rose Harbour Whaling ory Council's Women's Commission, the Ms. MacKay. "It was such a silly ques­ Station 1910", depicts the guilt of a University of Toronto Ombudsman, and tion. That sort of protection is not neces­ whaler over the daily killing of the whale the Human Rights Commission. They sary. He either doesn't know anything hunt. Unable to still his nightmares he were advised by the Human Rights about women in sports, or he doesn't turns on his wife who, in his dreams, Commission that they did indeed have a know anything about soccer." becomes a whale. case of discrimination on their hands, but The two women will of course sign to work through the university bodies be­ up for the University College soccer fore formally bringing the case to the team in September, and they expect that Our next issue, due October 15, will Commission. soccer will be the sport most affected by concern women in sports and fitness. MacKay and Lewis did not need to this new ruling. After several unsuccessful attempts, issue co-ordinator Elaine Butler received a press pass for one reporter to attend a conference the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton this August. According to a Games TheCriminalCodetRapeandProstitution official, our appeal occupied discussion September 30 - October 1 at three consecutive meetings of the press committee. The official em­ Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto phasized that our reporter should not attempt to sit in a seat in the press gallery unless it was empty. (The gallery? The seat?) sponsored by the Osgoode Women's Caucus From her head-above-the-crowd 'iewpoint our reporter will be bringing us for further information contact: the Women's Caucus, ome interesting observations on women Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Downsview, athletes in the Commonwealth Games. Ontario.

If you wish to contribute news from your area, please write to Printed Matter for guidelines. We request that (416) 667-3391 or (416) 667-3141 clippings from other publications be sent on the entire page on which they appear. Include the name and date of the publication, and your name and address.

Branching Out AFTERNOON EPIPHANY

Feet on the rattan matted stairs thud secretively hands not holding mouths whispering not sure why the house is empty the house is ours silence seeping everywhere outside the poplar leaves trembling together Truant afternoon one to savour remote here the world is working bees fly from the hive queen in honey warm wax-lit chamber The room smells quiet carpet dust undisturbed human smells hiding under the blankets we are still dressed falling on the bed like discarded clothes the motes jump up startled the impact explodes musky thigh-scents from virgin wool Your jeans drop and my skirt leave the socks to last hair shaping down body in graceful animal patterns trapped by grey fleecy socks genitals exposed feet covered gallant genitals swaying free cocksure the feet are the obscenity the ocular offense in the socks I snort feathers you leap on laugh-burst sides to avenge socks rubbing my skin like a whisker burn fingers tickling chest pressing fighting to release taut lungs burnt tissue my laughter in your mouth my tongue teasing yours Hands turned to small animals searching for burrows five-legged creatures roaming probing with blind instinct a night animal's senses wet nudging sightless searching blunt nose beast sensitive and flesh pink as a truffle-pig's snout knows how to discover treasure in the warm dark earth Open earth touched by the pulsing sun expands son throbbing for sons need and knowledge fear the seed turned whole want them don't want them straining cry breaks against the silence like a wave against a seawall mind escaping on the moan from the mouth cave Hand creatures turned ferocious diggers gouging the passion welted homes in black flesh under closed lids vision stained with pulsing blood leaking in cut glass tears leaking away left hollow shuddering with a sudden glimpse of death.

Darlene Quaife

Darlene Quaife is completing a Master's degree in English at the University of Calgary. She teaches creative writing work­ shops at Mount Royal College.

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 Ecological Decision Making where politics, morality and technology meet, who makes the rules?

interview with Susan Mayo and Susan Holtz by Janet Dunbrack The firs! thing that struck me about tion of the group was 50/50 men and the Ecology Action Centre was its logo. women. They could just as well have Its essence is feminine. If the tree sym­ said, 'these people are irate geologists'. bol is pulled out and down you have the This is sort of dirty pool really. symbol of woman. Compare this with For a long time I just discounted this any of the hundreds of current logos part of the argument. I thought it was using arrows which are decidedly mas­ just so much bunk but, when I began culine and intended to convey the impre­ sorting out different strands of the issue I ssion of drive or agressiveness. The began to realize that maybe it was sig­ Ecology Action Centre's logo invokes in nificant. It's a very complex issue, be­ me feelings of wholeness, self- cause it involves both technical and containedness, growth. non-technical aspects. I think it's really The logo reflects many aspects of Ecology Action Centre logo important to delineate whether an issue my conversation with Susan Mayo and is purely technical or whether it's a Susan Holtz, two coordinators of should be using nuclear power political issue. If it's a political issue, Halifax's Ecology Action Centre. Susan whether it's politically, socially and en­ then, according to my political Mayo has been general co-ordinator of vironmentally desireable. Various studies philosophy, a lot of people should have the Centre since 1975. During this time, done in Canada have shown that more input into the decisions about it. If it's a projects undertaken at the Centre have women are opposed to nuclear power purely technical issue then the people included paper and glass recycling prog­ than one would expect, given the level of who have the most technical qualifica­ rams, a car pooling project for Halifax involvement of women in politics or tions should be making the decisions. It and Dartmouth communities, a success­ women in the nuclear industry. For a became fairly important to sort this out ful campaign against spruce budworm while most of my anti-nuclear power for myself because I came in on the spraying in Cape Breton, a lobby before colleagues were women. Now the male/ technical end. the Nova Scotia Utilities Board against female ratio at meetings is about 50/50. Did you believe at that time the use electricity rate increases and in favour of This is atypical of political life where at of nuclear power was more or less a energy conservation policy, and strong most meetings there is only one woman technical issue? informed stands against the building of present. Holtz: I never believed it was a nuclear plants. The last issue is one You are saying then, from your purely technical issue. I thought some of which has particularly concerned Susan experience there are a lot of women the things I was concerned about for Holtz, the Centre's energy policy coor­ involved in environmental issues. Are example, the longevity of radioactive life dinator and a nationally respected these women who are also active in other which extends down into the future for spokesperson on nuclear energy. She has issues or political groups? about a quarter of a million years been associated with the Ecology Action Holtz: Some are, as with men and almost excluded it from being purely a Centre for seven years as a part-time as with any citizen's movement. There technical issue. There is no way of worker on a grant from the Halifax are key organizers who have a lot of talking technically about events that far Society of Friends. I talked to Susan experience in organizing and are not into the future, so I thought on those Mayo and Susan Holtz about their work. one-issue people. There are an awful lot grounds it moved into the political realm. How do you feel about your role as of people who have become involved for But there's more to it than that. There's a woman in the ecology movement? the first time because of the nuclear the question of sorting out assessment of What do you feel your organization has issue. For a long time, nuclear propo­ risk from reactor accidents and who contributed? nents, such as the Canadian Nuclear should make those decisions. In sorting Holtz: In a very global sense the Association, and the Atomic Energy As­ out what was technical and what wasn't, Ecology Action Centre is a social change sociation looked down on citizen's I became aware that virtually all of my organization. What I mean by social groups because so many women were opponents who were associated with change is bringing a new value system to involved. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited were bear on certain kinds of political deci­ How do you know that? men. This affected the sort of values sions with an environmental perspective. Holtz: Oh, they said it. They said, they held and the fact that they were so But we're also dedicated to broadening 'these are a bunch of housewives who extraordinarily technically oriented and the role of citizen participation in these don't know anything!' It was quite out so obtuse when it came to political issues decisions. In a very broad way we're front. Their attack was directed at the and moral dimensions. I began to realize dedicated to public education and public question of technical qualifications of the that there was something about this involvement the development of a people opposing them but it was particu­ debate that was being shaped by which new consciousness, a new ethic. larly argued as 'these people are irate sex was on which side. Mind you, I'm Take the debate about whether we housewives' even though the composi­ not saying men are morally obtuse or

Branching Out Susan Holtz (left), Susan Mayo photo by Christoper Majka incapable of subjective thought. I'm the kind of thinking that they are not forth from AECL go to it. They have a talking about the value system that goes comfortable with, namely the evaluation parallel convention for the wives, not into contemporary ideas about masculini­ of their own emotions, the identification even the spouses, which involves antique ty- of the whole subjective realm of experi­ shows and other entertainment. I find Do you feel the problem also lies in ence. that quite extraordinary and it relates to the attitude that decisions such as use of what I said about having to win my spurs nuclear power should be decided on so because any group that habitually does that sort of thing is not used to listening called logical, technical information? in Holtz: Exactly. People tend to take "People tend to take pride to women. pride in divorcing themselves from any­ divorcing themselves from anything Do you find you have to come thing remotely connected with emotions remotely connected with emotions and armed with all sorts of technical infor­ and politics, so these people could not politics. But when you talk about mation? see the other dimensions of the debate. radiological risk of considerable Holtz: I have to know twice as They couldn't see that when you're talk­ magnitude, you move altogether out much as they know. But basically what I ing about radiological risk of considera­ of the dimension of technical decisions have been trying to do is change the ble magnitude you move altogether out into the dimension of morality." rulebook overall. I am willing to talk of the dimension of technical decisions about technical issues and I think it's and into the dimension of morality crucial women or men in my position what do we owe future generations? I have this grasp of technical facts so that realized that when I was talking on this What sort of reactions were you we can conduct arguments at that level. level about the social and political impli­ confronted with when you tried to broach But at the same time that I'm doing that, cations of 'going down the nuclear road', this discussion of moral and political I'm fighting very hard to change the rules and I think they are considerable, the implications? about what the issues are. I'm trying engineers I was talking to could not see Holtz: Well, I've talked to many very hard to get into the whole that certain technologies implied certain senior people on different occasions. It's decision-making process a much greater events, structures and institutions. They varied. I first of all, inevitably, have to awareness of the role of the subjective, were just oblivious to this aspect. This is 'win my spurs' in any discussion just intuitive, or moral, implications that have not something that is particularly mas­ because I'm going in there as a woman. been associated with women's values culine, but it has to do with the kind of The Canadian Nuclear Association, only. The fact that ah engineer in the thinking that men are channelled into, which is the lobbying arm of the Cana­ nuclear industry who has committed 25 the kind of thinking they are made to feel dian nuclear industry, has a convention years of his life to the development of a comfortable with. Conversely, there is every year and all the suppliers and so nuclear reactor quite honestly believes

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 was their tactic, because they had the "It's crucial for men or women in my position to have a grasp of money and the lawyers and they could technical facts, but at the same time I want to change the rules about just wait out citizen groups, or environ­ what the issues are. I'm trying very hard to get into the whole mentalists. Ironically, when environmen­ decision-making process a much greater awareness of the role of talists become sufficiently well-organized subjective, the intuitive, the moral." to use similar tactics, the corporations began crying dirty pool. In what other ways do you feel you that he is more objective about nuclear way you can completely alter the out­ operate differently than other organiza­ power than I am and does not even see come, because you sometimes just forget tions? the implications of this attitude, is bad for about the things you disagree about and Mayo: One of the things I think everybody. -So I'm trying to change the they never come up again. within our own groups that makes it rule book about what considerations are Can you give some specific exam­ different from a typical male-dominated recognized in decision making. ples of successes you have had with your citizen group is that we are much more In what way are you changing the cooperation tactics? consciously aware of the need to support rules? Holtz: An example that comes to each other on the same side. As well as Holtz: We are changing the rules by mind is our lobby with the Nova Scotia having an awareness of the emotional being more honest and by challenging Energy Council on energy conservation. aspect of our opponents, we are aware of people on a personal level. When we started talking it was about our needs, too. It makes a tremendous Mayo: Yes, I would agree with 1975. The differences between the Nova difference. that. Not only do I sense with these Scotia Energy Council and the Ecology How does this manifest itself in the people in positions of authority an in­ Action Centre were so great it was very way you run the centre, then, or the way credible degree of dishonesty but imper­ hard to think of any common ground. you relate to it? sonality as well. This whole business of We could meet periodically with the Holtz: For one thing we always tell rationality being the basis for decision- Director of the Energy Council and talk, each other when someone's done a good making and the implied perspective men for the most part, about the role of energy job. My male colleagues hardly ever do have about human nature is false to me. conservation rather than about nuclear this. People are not basically motivated by power. We thought energy conservation rational considerations. There are a was the most important thing and it was whole cluster of things of which rational­ also the least controversial thing. I think ity is one small component. An awful lot some of the results that are starting to of these so called rational decisions are show are based on the information that "Our reasoning is that the longer simply rationalized decisions. This is we provided the provincial government. anybody looks at an issue the more where we begin to introduce other val­ There's no doubt that they are beginning ues. As women I think it is easier for us to do more about energy conservation. likely it is that they're going to land to realize how fragile human beings are. Do you feel these tactics can work on our side. If I didn't believe that They must be nurtured to feel safe where you are faced with a political about an issue, I wouldn't be working enough to change their minds. We realize deadline? For example if someone is on it." this is true about our opposition as well pushing a nuclear power project and you as ourselves. feel it will not be very effective for you to Holtz: If there's going to be change come in and pound your fists on the it's got to be so slow, you can hardly table, but on the other hand you have a perceive it. You have to make it safe to deadline in the back of your mind that What about in the thick of the con­ change, in a lot of ways, and of course at you are working against, do you still feel flict when somebody really does need a political level, I think this goes back to these co-operative tactics can work? support? political change. We're interested in Holtz: It depends on the issue. For Holtz: Well, we give support all the changing the whole idea about what goes one thing, I work very hard to change time, it's not a question of waiting till into politics beyond changing who is in the deadlines. You do that by trying to there is a time of conflict, or when there power, or putting an environmental party buy time by reducing demand. That has is a gap. I think we're also more tuned up for office and winning an election and been our overall strategy. But sometimes in, as far as conferences, and workshops running the government. There is more there are deadlines. The Cabinet, last in the various things we do, events that to significant social change than this. It is year, had to decide one way or the other we sponsor to provide for a wider range important that we make it easier for all about spruce budworm spraying, and of people's needs. By and large, male- people to make good decisions. indeed they had to decide by a particular dominated groups have very little regard I think the whole radical paradigm time we couldn't stretch even though we for the social needs that people have to of the sixties was probably based on persuaded them to defer it many times. get together, for the physical needs for confrontation. It was based on a zero- Basically our reasoning is that the longer getting up and stretching, or for people's sum game, 'what I win, you lose'. I think anybody looks at an issue the more likely need to participate. Most conferences we're moving into a paradigm, at least I it is that they're going to land on our are structured from the top down with am, of believing that radical change can side. If I didn't believe that about any someone talking at you all day. This is at also come about in other ways. Instead given issue. I wouldn't be working on it. a very pragmatic level. I think that of saying, "we disagree, I'm here and We're very hard-nosed politically. I overall we try to bring a more holistic you're there," we say, "ok, we disagree would not say we would never use delay concern for people's needs, including the about a lot of things, what are some of as a tactic although we've been falsely emotional. the things we agree about?" One of the accused of using delay tactics. But cer­ But this idea of men consistently things that comes from working on this tainly we're not above that. Delay is a acting on the basis of logical, reasonable basis is a whole process of trust, of tactic that has been well used in the ideas is a common image. I ran into it finding out what assumptions we share States. It's ironic because corporations frequently in my work with the scientific and not just what we differ about. In this could afford to delay and prolong. That establishment. Do vou see anv merit in

10 Branching Out this argument of rational versus the rams. and it's very difficult to come up with emotional? Holtz: That's a good point. I some­ genuine indicators. I don't really have Holtz: The ideas these men hold times lose sight when it comes to the the answer. are well thought out, crystallized and dollars and cents game. I sometimes put As far as the present pace, it's there is another adjective somewhere myself into those nice little square boxes. always hard to tell what's happening in they're egotistic. The ideas belong to You have to do this, this and this and your era when you're living through it. I them. I heard a very good comment once you'll get this much return dollar value know change happens a lot more rapidly that you can do anything if you don't back. now than it did in the past. Because of care who gets the credit for it. I think communications, and travel it's possible that to a great degree characterizes how for ideas to become global within a very Susan and I work. I am a writer by short period of time. Witness for in­ training and I have been brainwashed stance the Club of Rome's Limits to from a very early age that writing is a "There is a greater potential for Growth and how quickly that has be­ very individual act, and that you can't do cooperative endeavor than most come a part of thinking in many people's it by committee. I have done an awful lot people realize. Part of being able to minds. I look at what our provincial for my own of writing by committee and I realize work this way is not being totally premier says as an indicator for work, in the level of changing energy now that there's a greater potential attached to your ideas in particular.' cooperative endeavor than most people policy. realize. Part of being able to do that is Can you think of any notable exam­ not being totally attached to your ideas in ples where people have altered their particular. outlook to include moral or social impli­ issue be­ I'm aware that the previous coor­ How do you go about raising funds cations of an environmental of citizen based environmental dinator of the centre was a man - do you for the Ecology Action Centre particu­ cause feel that when you took over the focus larly in light of the way you choose to groups? I can think of one I wasn't changed or you recruited different kinds operate? Holtz: but which is a well known of people? Mayo: It's very difficult fund- involved in incident. It involved Sir Brian Fowles, Mayo: Overall I did, but this had raising in the corporate world which is the nuclear section of the British more to do with personality differences. totally dominated by the program think­ head of Royal Commission on environmental pol­ I think I have just had a lot more ing. For instance, our intervention at the determination and a lot more persistence Utilities Board was just a mas­ lution. Public Most environmentalists were not than the predecessor, and that's not a sive effort, one of our really fine efforts, hoping for much from this Royal Com­ male or female trait. Overall people as­ and yet it was not a planned program we mission because of the fact that Sir Brian sociated with the centre have grown in could apply for funds for. It was more or Fowles had been Associated with the their understanding of what an environ­ error. less trial and nuclear establishment in Britain for such mental perspective is all about but that's Holtz: I suspect this is true with a a long time, but in fact the report "The a process that takes place and will con­ of citizen action groups in general. lot Sixth Report on Nuclear Power and the tinue, we hope, and go on in general. It's common knowledge that the most Environment" which was published in I think that there's been a more difficult thing to raise is core funding September 1976 had some remarkable overt emphasis on the centre as a re­ in other words the funding we need to which came as a real sponsive body rather than planned prog­ run the office and pay salaries. You can recommendations rams. A lot of management strategy much more easily raise large amounts of changed. In a lot of organizations you sit money to run specific programs that down and decide what you want to do. funders can see and evaluate than you is spontaneous. how you want to get there and then A lot of the Centre's work can to exist as an organization. This is a as much as develop a program to achieve them. You This is legitimate work, perennial problem and I do think it's planned programs. put blinders on everything else so that related to the kind of managerial thinking you can focus on what you previously that dominates most corporations, that is decided you wanted to do. you run a program than you evaluate that shock to the nuclear establishment. He Sort of a flow chart. program. This certainly is the way gov­ Mayo: The nature of thinking is to commented that his own perspective ernment offices approach funding. of hearing a different exclude rather than be open, because shifted, as a result I'd like to ask you about what you who came you don't want to be distracted from point of view from the public see as the potential for changing values the what you're doing. My approach is in­ in and presented briefs on what towards the environment. What do you of the nuclear stead of closing things off, you open moral dimension think is the present pace and what stage reiterated over and yourself up. You have to be very clear 1 debate was, who are we at now in Canada? for public involvement think and aware of your ultimate goals over the necessity Holtz: That's a really fascinating of risks and the taking values, the kinds of things you are in the assessment and question it's one I've been thinking a very interesting. and the kinds of things of risks. I found that happy about lot about what are the true indicators a little bit of you're not happy about. Instead of shut­ // must have given you of social change? Until fairly recently my encouragement. ting down you open yourself to anything opinion was heavily coloured by typical Holtz: It did indeed. that happens and then you build on left thinking. Namely, you have a revolu­ things that happen. tion, of one sort or another, cultural or at Janet Dunbrack is a freelance consultant So a lot of your action is spontane­ the point of a gun, or you have an living in Halifax. Recent projects include ous? election such as in Chile. These are organizing a cultural festival and Mayo: It is ingrained in us. I think highly visible external symbols of social Canada Week activities in Nova Scotia. as a result the centre has had a tremend­ change and of course that's very impor­ She studied economics and ous amount of outreach that you can't tant. But at the level I'm working at oceanography and has worked in labour this legiti­ achieve otherwise. I consider which is value change it's very subtle, relations and as a marine biologist. mate work, as much as planned prog­

11 Volume V, Number 3, 1978 Urban Sprawl the price women pay

by Gerda R. Wekerle and Novia Carter photo by Doris Friedrick Until 1976 there was no bus system in Whitehorse, a city of of working women, and the inaccessibility of those which are 13,000 sprawled over 164 square miles. Now more than 700 available." In contrast, higher density Swedish suburbs are passengers per day ride the 16-seat minibuses operated by the exceptionally well designed from the point of view of working Yukon Women's Minibus Society. It is significant that the bus women. They are relatively compact clusters of low rise system was initiated by women. The idea arose after the Yukon apartments, with close public transit links to the city centre and Status of Women Council studied the effects of isolation on public facilities. The woman's dual role is supported by access women and children in Whitehorse. The Council found that day to a large job market, public transportation, a range of local to day life was claustrophobic for the women who had no access daycare options, and a low maintenance dwelling. to stores, schools and businesses. Long, cold winters further Women in North America become the captives of the aggravated the strain. The minibus system was designed to inadequate public transit systems of the suburbs, a situation make the city centre accessible to women and to provide them which is aggravated by the low density of the housing and the with high-paying part-time jobs. The buses are now widely used time and cost of getting from one place to another. Reliance of by commuters and children as well as women and the Society suburban women on public transit affects their participation in has added another bus to the initial fleet of four. the labour force. Those women with a double commitment to an One of the prevailing myths about suburbs is that they are outside job plus home and children are very conscious of time good places for women and children to live. Until recently, the and distance. More than men, they have to find jobs closer to many books, articles and research studies on suburbia neglected home, near the transit service and with ready access to day care to examine women's lives in the suburbs. The study by the and shopping facilities. For many women this means the Yukon Status of Women Council is part of a growing body of location of a job may be just as important as pay and evidence that suburbs are not designed to suit women. The opportunities for advancement. conclusions of the research now being done are devastating. Women tend to be more inconvenienced than are men living in planners have a stereotypic and narrow image of psychologically. North American such an environment and they are less satisfied limited to the traditional housebound wife and mother. In David Popenoe, an urban planner who compared women's women, suburb concludes that, contrast, Swedish suburbs are exceptionally well designed from lives in a Swedish and an American the point of view of working women. "urban sprawl is an urban development form designed for and by men, especially middle class men." Suburbia functions best for those with an automobile at their disposal and those people A woman s journey to work is both more complicated and tend to be men. American women in Popenoe's study experi­ time-consuming than the typical male worker's. Women with enced the isolation and boredom associated with the "trapped children routinely make two trips every morning and two more housewife" and some had feelings of incredible loneliness. in the evening. They travel from their home to the day care Women who did not drive were highly dependent on others for facility and make a second trip from that location to their job. all the basic necessities. Popenoe argues that the inadequacy of Often the day care centre is not close to either home or work the suburban environment for women's needs is largely a design but is in a different location entirely. There is a considerable problem. North American planners have a stereotypic and expenditure of time, money and energy before the workday has narrow image of women, limited to the traditional housebound even begun. New jobs being created in industrial parks in the wife and mother. According to Popenoe, the major flaw of suburbs are off limits to many women. These industrial parks American suburbs is "the lack of facilities essential in the lives are difficult to serve by public transit because they are spread

12 Branching Out out, and therefore less accessible to women whether they live in services to women at night and prevent rapes. Women's Transit suburbs or in the central city. Services in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin were organized Given these drawbacks it is not suprising that women are by women, are run by women and provide rides only for often the catalyst for moves from suburbs to older inner city women. The Madison Transit Authority was founded in 1973 neighbourhoods which are being renovated by middle class and now operates two cars seven nights a week. It operates families. After such a move women report shorter commuting within a four-mile radius of the campus and provides about 750 times, more time for leisure activities outside the home, and a rides a month. Both programs are dependent on volunteers and higher level of general satisfaction with the house and seriously underfunded. neighbourhood. In fact, research on attitudes that men and The minibus service run by the Yukon Women's Minibus women have towards the home show that their environmental Society is another example of a women's self-help project. It is preferences are antithetical. Men tend to view the home as a extremely unusual to have a bus system in the North on a fixed retreat from urban stress and a source of status. They often route and opposition to the idea by city hall included the prefer a marked separation between work and home life. argument that northerners were "too tough" to ride a bus system. In addition to diligent lobbying at city hall the Minibus to the federal Ministry of Transport which Men tend to view the home as a retreat from urban stress and a Society appealed provided the funds for capital costs. source of status. They often prefer a marked separation between Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) the federal work and home life. Women tend to view the home more as an agency responsible for housing, is one government office that expression of self, a place to raise children and a location which has collected and analyzed information from a women's perspec­ provides them access to jobs, services and friends. tive. It has set up a women's bureau to monitor internal hiring and promotion and looks at the effects of the National Housing Women on the other hand tend to view the home more as an Act on women through mortgage-lending practices. But the expression of self, a place to raise children and a location which women's bureau js merely advisory and has limited input to provides them access to jobs, services and friends. decision-making at the highest levels of the CMHC. Its exis­ Even in the seventies, however, there is no evidence that tence has had little apparent impact on mortgage-lending suburban design is changing. Builders, architects and urban planners have not yet realized that as women's roles and aspirations change, so must their urban environments. There is some hope that planning for women will become part of urban planning. A few professional associations and schools are encouraging women to enter architecture, planning and engineering because of the low numbers of women in those fields and in the hope that women will bring their own experiences to bear in the solution of problems. Important though this is in terms of general equality, it is a long-term solution and no guarantee that new perspectives will enter planning. A second promising approach is to focus on planning with and for specific populations. At present, planning is often based on geographical boundaries such as neighbourhoods or regions, or it is organized along functional lines such as planning for housing or transportation. People who are going to live in the neighbourhoods and use the services should be involved and their needs considered whether those people are men, women, the elderly, children or handicapped. This approach to planning is illustrated by the Lebreton Flats Project in which women associated with the Ottawa Tenants Council joined in planning for a federal demonstration housing project. A group of single parent mothers living in public housing drew on their own experiences to design a housing model. The model would support the housing needs of women at various stages in the transition from being part of a two-parent family to heading up a single-parent family. The design provides for crisis housing, a small apartment complex which supports co-operative sharing of work and childcare as .\Uii\l". well as family privacy, and a women's centre. This proposal would place mother-led families squarely in the downtown area where there is good access to transit, community facilities and social services. The proposal has received extensive media exposure and interest among women's groups and non­ illustration by Sheila Luck governmental organizations. Unfortunately, the design was practices in Canada, although access to mortgages is critical if rejected by several federal agencies as too expensive, but an women are to have a broad range of choice in residential attempt is underway to form a non-profit co-operative to get the location. Women are triply discriminated against when they single parent housing built. seek mortgages: because they have low earning power, because Women's self-help groups have begun to address more they are women and because they are often heads of single- directly the issue of women's mobility in the city. Rape Crisis parent families. Sex-discrimination has often forced women to Centres, for example, have found that women's fear for security rent even when they could afford to own, or they have been and safety greatly limits their freedom. Women's transit au­ forced to live in city locations where houses are cheaper. In the thorities have been set up in various American cities to provide United States an Equal Opportunity Credit Act makes mortgage

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 13 THE CANADK COUNCIL OFFERS TO PROFESSIONALS IN THE /IRIS

(formerly Senior Arts Grants) For artists who have made a significant contribution over a number' of years and are still active in their profession. Up to $17,000, to cover living expenses, project costs and travel costs related to a proposed program requiring 4 to 12 months to complete. Deadlines: October 15, 1978, for all disciplines. April 1, 1979, for the visual arts and writing only.

discrimination by sex illegal but women in Canada are not (formerly Arts Grants) afforded this protection. Creating a women's bureau within a arts For artists who have completed basic federal agency does not safeguard women's rights unless it is training or are recognized as given power to impose sanctions, budgets and access to grants professionals. \\ i // decision-makers. Up to $10,100, to cover living expenses Women should not be forced to choose between their own b and production costs for a program environmental needs and those of husbands and children. requiring 4 to 12 months to complete, Neighbourhoods, instead, should move away from the model of plus travel allowance for the award the child-centred, homogeneous community centred on the holder only. school. Alternative suburban plans that have been suggested by Deadlines: Popenoe and others involve enrichment of the local environ­ October 15, 1978, for all disciplines, ment, decentralization of services and jobs, increased densities except for singers and instrumentalists and better public transportation links to all parts of the urban in "classical" music. system. Most of the innovation in dealing with women's needs December 15, 1978, for singers and in the urban environment is occurring outside the government instrumentalists in "classical" music. sector as women themselves create solutions to problems that April 1, 1979, for all disciplines except have not been met by traditional institutions. Urban decision music. makers must be encouraged by these activities to acknowledge Applications are also accepted at any that women are a distinct group with legitimate environmental time for: requirements otherwise the present inequalities will become much worse. Short Term Grants Project Cost Grants Gerda R. Wekerle is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Travel Grants Environmental Studies, York University. Novia Carter is an Associate Professor in the School of Urban and Regional For a brochure, Aid to Artists, write to:y Planning, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. They are presently editing a book on women and environment from which Arts Awards Service, some of the material in this article is drawn. The Canada Council, P.O. Box 1047, Doris Friedrick is a student in Fine Arts at the University of Alberta. Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 5V8 Sheila Luck will be entering the Fine Arts program at the 613/237-3400 University of Alberta in the fall.

14 Branching Out One Woman's Journey by Sylvia Porter illustration by Margaret Bremner For me it began innocently enough. against the nuclear monster. group's effort was helping to bring the I was a young Roman Catholic mother of In Richmond, a Vancouver suburb world-renowned scientist and winner of two small children, teaching school by where I lived and worked, I joined a two Nobel prizes, Linus Pauling, to day and caring for my husband and group called "The Committee For Vancouver. Since we operated on a babies at night. Then I became involved Nuclear Disarmament". It was com­ shoestring budget it was agreed that one in the nuclear protest movement. Before posed of men and women of various of the methods used to advertise long, I had left the Church, become a political persuasions who formed a Pauling's visit would be to contact all feminist and started on a journey of coalition to lobby politicians both in church ministers in the Greater Van­ independence. Canada and the United States. We met couver area and ask to have the visit The time was the 1950's and several times a month to exchange listed in the Sunday bulletin. Who would woman's place was in the home, not out information and plan strategy. At the end have though that such a small request to marching and lobbying and protesting. of each meeting we wrote letters men of God would result in both my Political action was for men, so was letters to every major world leader and friend and me forsaking organized building atom bombs, testing them, federal and local politicans. We became religion? We had agreed to visit the sending a cloud of radioactive dust experts on the issue and seized every ministers in Richmond, asking them to across the wind paths of the world that opportunity to bring the facts before the take a stand on nuclear weapons, to would rain death down on unsuspecting public. Once, when a guest speaker preach sermons on the issue and to list residents. failed to appear at the P.T.A. meeting in Pauling's visit. Naively, we anticipated In the age of Greenpeace it's my school, I hasjily became the no problems an error of judgement we relevant to look back twenty years to an substitute who spoke at length on the never again made. When we got to my environmental struggle that roused wo­ "Ban the Bomb" issue. Catholic parish, my family priest refused men and university students across this At the time, John Diefenbaker was to consider our request and suggested we country in a united effort to put an end to the prime minister and Howard Greene, would both be better off in the kitchen nuclear testing, and the stockpiling of the Minister of External Affairs. Not so baking cookies. When we tried to discuss nuclear weapons. long ago I read an article about Howard Pauling's visit, he told us we were I was ten years old when President Greene. When asked what memories of "well-meaning but misguided." To this Truman ordered the atom bomb dropped his long political career he would like to day I remember his advice: "Go home to on Hiroshima. I remember the headlines share with the readers, he referred to the your children, don't interfere with men's and the pictures especially the thousands of letters he received from work." We went home and I never again pictures of the mushroom cloud. Watch­ ordinary citizens protesting nuclear stepped inside the door of his church. ing a news reel in a theatre, I was weapon testing. Both he and Diefenbaker The night of Pauling's visit, the fascinated as the cloud eerily took shape, were most receptive to citizen groups. It Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver glowing and glimmering as it engulfed the was the Diefenbaker government that was packed. Finally we were going to screen. I don't recall being horrified by would not allow the United States see and listen to a scientist with the death and destruction caused at military to store Bomarc missiles on impeccable credentials, who would in­ Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bomb Canadian military bases. This policy was spire us and frighten us with his tales of had ended the Second World War and later changed by Pearson. horror of increased leukemia in children, brought my older brother home from One of the highlights of our small continued on page 48 Europe. It would be thirteen years before I again thought about the bomb. By the 1950's more and more criticism was being levelled against nuclear weapons. In Canada, various disarmament groups were being formed and the slogan "better red than dead" was stated by Lester B. Pearson, our future prime minister, as he discussed disarmament on nation-wide television. Pearson's wife belonged to the Voice of Women, a peace organization, as did a number of prominent Canadian women. In the universities students were uniting in a common cause and in small towns from the Pacific Coast to the shores of Newfoundland voices were being raised

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 15 The Castle Revisited by Lynn Hannley and Marsha Mitchell Annie Jones pounded her fist on the desk in frustration. "I The presumptions that women are less capable of maintaining was so angry at that guy I kicked his garbage can over on the property, unable to cope with fatherless children, sexually sidewalk. I couldn't help myself. Then I felt embarrassed." indiscreet, or have a higher vulnerability to crime are Annie had just looked at her nineteenth apartment in five days, commonplace in the rental market. Even the presumption that and had just been turned down, this time because she was a women have more parties was mentioned in our hearings. single mother and "wouldn't be able to maintain the Renting in the private market may not even be cheaper than apartment." Her fulltime job as a bank teller, her university home ownership. Often rental payments are as high as monthly education, and her good credit rating didn't help with the task of mortgage payments, but lack of savings prevents the women finding housing for herself and three children now that she was from making a down payment. For those fortunate enough to separated. have an adequate income, there are other barriers to full Many women living alone or with children can testify that participation in the housing market. Stereotypes remain with us Annie's case is typical. Single women pursuing careers, single as we go to banks for mortgages. Women, still believed by some mothers, women who are separated or divorced, and widows all bankers to be uncommitted to their careers, or incapable of share in the difficulties of finding housing adequate to their budgeting or maintaining property, are often asked for greater needs at a price they can afford. It is not just economics that put security than their male counterparts or for male co-signers. women at a disadvantage when they try to compete in the Some women who do achieve the status of homeowners do so housing market. Annie's experience illustrates that while she through the variety of programs offered by government could pay for the apartment, she was not considered capable of mortgage corporations. All of these programs, which provide looking after it. The problem is one of stereotyping of masculine subsidies to enable people with lower incomes to buy housing, and feminine roles and capabilities. And, merely getting housing require that they have children to be eligilble. While such is only half the battle. Many women today, whether living in programs are helpful, they obviously do not tackle the suburban single-detached housing or in highrise apartments, underlying economic and stereotyping problems. would argue that their housing is not designed to meet their As women, we must develop our own solutions to these needs and, further, that the very physical design of the house barriers. However, if we regard housing as primarily a market limits their opportunities to participate in society. commodity something to be bought and sold at a How did these problems arise? The economic and profit the present situation will be perpetuated. A few more stereotypic aspects have complemented each other throughout women might gain access to a house as their economic status the history of Canadian settlement. At the turn of the century rises but many of our low income sisters will be left out. We the government encouraged boatloads of single women to must insist that housing be seen as a non-market emigrate to the Canadian west to marry male homesteaders. At commodity a social right regardless of income. the same time, women were viewed as frail creatures so The problem of obtaining housing designed to meet incapable of farm work that they were legally excluded from women's present day needs will demand a much broader change homesteading themselves. This stereotype is refuted in an in the whole housing process. Housing as it is now built does excerpt from the Grain Grower's Guide, 1909: not reflect women in the 1970's. As the Report on the Women's Resource Group for LeBreton Flats states: I know of two women myself who do as much work outdoors as Sociological, psychological and medical evidence indicates that any three men. These women have horses and cattle of their own the present urban environment is not allowing women to adapt and work the land themselves; but they cannot afford to buy it well in their fast-changing roles. The large number of women no and the law forbids them to homestead and so they have to rent. longers fitting the planners' poorly constructed stereotype of the 'average family' is a growing cause of concern. Most women remained dependent on husbands, employers This problem of design is really a problem of adapting the or families to provide their housing. physical facilities of older cultures to the social and emotional Urbanization did not improve women's ability to obtain needs of the new. Standards of good design may reflect the housing. In urban areas housing has been placed almost solutions to problems found by other generations. While we completely in the hands of the private entrepreneurial market. would not consider wearing grandmother's corset, we often turn According to 1975 figures, the average female head of a family to housing designed by her contemporaries. earned only 47.2% of the income earned by an average male Kitchen design offers an example of the difficulties head. In many major Canadian cities an income of over $25,000 encountered by designers in adapting to cultural changes. is required to qualify for a mortgage for most new housing. This Women in the 1950's, wishing to free themselves from the long eliminates over 75% of the population, male or female, and hours spent in the kitchen by their mothers, welcomed the small allows very few women the possibility of home ownership. 'step-saver' or bar kichen with its electronic gadgetry. The alternative is renting, but the same problems apply. Unfortunately, the technological dream did not come true; Stereotypes about women being undesireable tenants still much time is still spent in the kitchen. However, because of the abound in the private rental market. One American report small size of these kichens, women now work in isolation. states: Today, at housing design meetings of self-help groups, we hear

16 Branching Out evidence of a desire to return to the large "country" kitchen. A solutions. Wall panels, already containing the complexities of woman will often ask for a kitchen big enough for children to wiring, insulation and plumbing are available in manageablbe play in, or for friends to visit in while she works. Clearly, this sizes which people without specialized training can use to nostalgia for grandmother's large kitchen is not a desire to design their own housing. More alternatives of this type should return to a life dominated by cooking and cleaning, but rather an be developed. attempt to increase opportunities for meaningful contact within New solutions should give individuals or small groups the the home. Using the old model, developed when family size, possibility of direct control of over all aspects of housing. For wealth and stability were quite different, to solve today's women, the economic aspect, the old stereotypes and new problems of isolation, is not likely to be satisfactory. designs must all be worked on concurrently to bring about a The complication of housing technology has affected realistic solution to the housing problem. women particularly since so many of their creative contributions Our challenge as women is to become the creators of new were associated with the home. The hand-dipped candle is not concepts in housing which will reflect not only our need for only a beautifully crafted object, but was also the only light for protection from the elements but our potential as creative social the evening meal. While such activities are still used for creative human beings. self-expression, they no longer serve a survival function. The current interest in log cabin building suggests a wish to regain Lynn Hannley is the director of Communitas, Inc., an control over the home environment. Today's housing Edmonton-based community consulting group specializing in technology of steel and concrete, complicated wiring and cooperative housing. plumbing, effectively reduces the average individual to a mere consumer of housing. The log cabin, with its reasonably simple Marsha Mitchell is employed by Communities Inc. and is techology, answers a desire to understand and control one's coordinator of the Shelter for Battered Women Project. living space. Women must become more involved in the housing process if we are to cease to be limited by our surroundings. A short-term solution is for more women to become specialists in the current housing technology. Women as a group will not believe themselves really capable of affecting the design of housing until many more of us become competent members of the building trades. And it is not enough that more women become architects, designers and engineers. Some women will have to become bricklayers, electricians and plumbers before women's comments about housing design are taken seriously. If we wish women to be consulted about anything besides interior design and kitchens, some of us will have to break through that stereotype by gaining practical skills. A second method of involving ourselves in the housing process is through community planning and self-help housing groups. In such groups, residents of a neighbourhood, or potential residents of a proposed housing project, come together and pool their talents and ideas to develop unique and affordable housing which reflects their specific needs. The results can be innovative. Normally these groups will engage specialists to translate their ideas into the physical reality. Although at the present time we know of no completed projects designed exclusively by a group of women, many women have been able to contribute significantly over the past ten years to the design of their houses and communities. There are also examples of women's planning groups developing designs for particular types of housing. Both the Women's Resource Group for LeBreton Flats in Ottawa and the Women's Design Centre in Vancouver, have designed apartments specifically geared to single parent families. Both groups suggested making hallways and laundry areas into play and social areas with comfortable seating and play equipment, indicating the importance women attach to increased social contact within their housing. The Women's Design Centre makes special mention of the importance of these co-operative solutions: From our interviews with women regarding housing we noticed that the solutions offered to alleviate their housing problem revolved around forms of co-operative living, whether it was a housing development to be built, a group of existing houses that formed a community network or an apartment building where the tenants have taken over self-management. These women saw not just the economic benefits of sharing faciltiies but the social rewards generated by a 'sense of community.' Whether as average citizens or specialists, as individuals or in groups, women must take the lead in demanding that our technology develop toward simplicity. Housing is a common human need; housing technology should provide human-scale

Volume V. Number 3. 1978 17 the fcil lady

by Anne Porter Paris illustrations by Sylvia Luck Patterson She lolled on the sand, wiggling her toes which resembled before him. She always poked down whatever meat or dessert two clusters of small pears. Her eyes which seemed hidden by he left on his plate with her back to the table if Laurie's flesh, like slits in a Hallowe'en sheet, peeked through watchful eyes were present. She had even managed to cram it in sunglasses at the largely indifferent masks on the faces passing when leaning over the garbage-bucket as though in the act of by. Occasionally someone stared at her in disgust or scraping the plates. She hated dinner-guests who tried to help amusement, then turned to address some comment to his her with the clean-up. She preferred to stuff herself on the companions. It made her boil when she noted complacency. leftovers as she washed and wiped and listened excitedly to the Seen in some man or woman who was already immoderately banal conversation coming from the dining-room. plump, it made her seethe. Presently, she felt nervous and At last her husband led the children down to the water and sulky, almost depressed. She wished that it were time for lunch, she was free of their vigilance. Furtively, her hand slid into the not that the prospect particularly cheered her today. She had plastic beach-bag near her, squeezed open the catch on her been obliged to keep up the pretense of dieting by bringing only purse, felt around inside, grasped and removed a crisply one sandwich for herself and each of the children and two for wrapped chocolate bar and smuggled it under the head of her her husband. But at least it was food and would serve to keep towel. Covertly, she eased back the two layers of paper and her unpleasant thoughts at bay for a little while. snapped off one row. Cocking her sun-hat to hide her face from "You wanto eat now?" she asked the smallest child who the water, just in case Tom should be looking, Elna brought her was idly pouring handfuls of sand into his hair. hand, closed in a loose fist, to rest lightly against her mouth so "Mmmmmm-okay," responded the child with less that she would appear to be meditating. She had cunningly enthusiasm than his mother could have wished. made this an habitual gesture. Then slowly, as though pondering "Go call Tommy and Laurie then." some inner question, she shifted one section of the chocolate 'F'crissake, Elna," Tom Senior raised his head from the from fist to mouth, her lips and tongue sucking the morsel in as towel. "Don't make them have lunch at eleven o'clock again. though they composed some sort of moving assembly line. Go ahead and stuff yourself if you want to, but let the kids get Ah, the pleasure of clandestinely munching a forbidden bar up an appetite so they can enjoy the picnic!" She winced at the while in constant peril of detection. She was soon ready for the hatchet accusation in her husband's voice, and shielded herself second row and the third. It was surprising how quickly she with the thought that he might not want the last half of his found herself picking up the last piece of that jumbo bar. She second sandwich and she could sneak it later. thought of the nutty one which she had been intending to save "Put your leftovers in the bag, here. Don't strew them for the afternoon. She craved it now. Yes, but what would she across the beach," she admonished the children righteously as do later? She scanned the blue-grey shoreline for her husband. she doled out the food. There he was, pretending to be a whale with the children draped "You don't need to make such a big point of it," her over his back. She could risk it then. This time, she held each husband snapped. But she was so anxious to get their scraps section in her mouth until it melted, coating her teeth and collected before they hit the sand, that she repeated her lecture tongue and palate with plush sweetness. Vague pictorial images each time a crust seemed about to drop, glancing toward her swarmed up of womb-like interiors whose walls were layers of husband in a kind of involuntary reflex that brought her his melted chocolate. Finally, she crunched the toasted almonds contemptuous stare. She then took to carefully prying the crusts and swallowed lazily. At moments like this, she wished that she from the children's fingers before they could have the thought could go on doing this one thing forever. That to her would be of dropping them, until Laurie, the one whose greedy eyes heaven. Where you could go on and on devouring chocolate followed every bite into Elna's mouth, shrieked in protest, "I'm without becoming nauseous. Of course, she had tried to attain not finished!" heaven often. After her many diets. She would resist all sweets Elna immediately flashed a guilty look at Tom who. but for and starches, restricting herself to an egg. a piece of dry toast that, would have been unaware of the situation. and half a grapefruit for breakfast; a slice of liver and an apple "Ch-rist!" he muttered, giving her a murderous glance. would be her lunch; a sliver of chicken breast and string beans, "Will ya leave the children alone. They fight enough as it is. I her supper. She would feel miserable the first day, elated the don't want the whole beach staring at us!" Maybe not, she second, then down the third day and up the fourth. thought, but you're certainly staring at that woman in the blue That fourth day she would be feeling so good and sure of bikini. In all likelihood he was also making bitter comparisons herself that she would be endlessly calculating: I've lost three between her figure and those of most of the other women. pounds in four days. That means I can lose twelve pounds in Somehow it was reassuring to notice that blue bikini's husband sixteen days. That's about twenty pounds a month, anyway. had a great shelf of stomach overhanging his khaki bathing That means that in only five months, I'll be down to a decent trunks. Elna was extremely envious of her husband who was weight. Of course, I'll keep going and get back to my old weight slim and wiry and who ate slowly, sighing with satisfaction of one hundred and six. Then, I'll be so gorgeous! I'll wear a when he had eaten only three-quarters of what was placed bikini and lace underwear and tight slacks. I'll look a lot better

18 Branching Out Volume V, Number 3, 1978 19 eyes boldly scoured the newcomer for an explanation. Perhaps his slight inclination toward plumpness made him indulgent of her weakness. She had once glued a photograph of her own head to the body of a fat nude and presented the result to Tom who had been titillated. Georgina from her counselling group had lost fifty-six pounds with an extramarital affair. Of course, she had lost her marriage too and her sixteen-year-old son was an alcoholic. At least she wasn't bored to death; each week she had a fresh new calamity to report. Elna checked to see if the young man was looking toward her. He was staring straight ahead now, but she had felt eyes on her. Furtively, she spat on a kleenex and dug all traces of chocolate from the furrows around her mouth. Fool! she told herself afterward. You'd love, just once, to have someone attracted to you. Having it actually happen, however, is out of the question. Tilting her head to look off in the distance, she then assessed the stranger through lowered eyes. That's the purpose of sunglasses, though catch anyone admitting it, she assured herself. The nostrils were strong, the forehead high and the eyebrows emphatic. He vaguely reminded her of her counsellor, a young man who seemed to have the power of penetrating beneath the fatty deposits to the woman she would be, given a happier marriage and a more convivial sex life. Turning suddenly, the young man caught her staring. "In case you're worried about me moving in so close," she imagined him saying, "I'm not trying to pick you up. I'm feeling „--*•• lonely and thought maybe you'd like to talk a while or throw the «/Jy'«."'v' ' Frisbie around and then we'd both continue our own ways, you ..-::>J>i-.-3--.- know?" •\ .->jv •••'••'.'. ••*.; i . ...to&W''.' {v£: "I'm not sure what to say," Elna would reply, astounded .••:: . .---C--:'•:••' ": ' -•«'.'•• by his self-assurance. .::vV"'->Kv.»:i--^-:•.•*£:#••• ••••%': "Just say whatever comes into your head. I do," he would :-.f:.-...-;:--. •• >v-.-?---v!-.-•.•:•«&••' ' "•>::• •:•'•.- - Sfs-'-.r.Vvj.'";sv•';'•'•.?•" '. ''-'•':• encourage. '•^;^.\.^;;$-i "I'm thinking that you sound so sure of yourself. I don't •"••'::?;>: •'j.' mean glib and insincere, of course. I'm not so self-possessed as • _*__.« •'.<• you." "Why don't we just toss the Frisbie around for a while then?" •'•&:: "I'd love to, but I'm afraid my husband wouldn't understand." "You should do whatyow want. It's your life." than the women who sneer at me now. I'll go back to college It would never happen that way, she decided, plunging and take an M.A. and then a Ph.D. in drama. I'll direct and herself back into the unseasonably cold waters of the present. If teach. I'll have the confidence for it, once I'm back to my right she didn't take the initiative, they would never speak and she size. would feel disappointed afterwards. It would be that very night that, sure of her resistance, she "Hi, there. Wanta play Frisbie?" Elna called out cheerily. would serve ice cream sundaes to the family for dessert. He didn't look towards her. He either hadn't heard or didn't "Where'syowr sundae, Elna?" Tom would smirk when he want to. She hesitated to risk humiliation again. That was what caught Elna eyeing his dessert above the jagged terrain of her had happened with the counsellor. After dissolving the gelatin of apple saved from lunch. "Ohh yes!" pretending amused distrust with which she surrounded herself by his encouraging, recollection as Elna glared. "Children, be prepared. We're "/ would feel angry if someone did that to me", when she really going to have Megalon living with us again." Rising with a began to open up, he had turned cold, distant and appraising. dangerous smile, Elna would retire to the kitchen where only He never actually supported her husband against her, but his the refrigerator door stood between her and the sugary rush chilly little hm's came right next to disapproval. When she provided by a chocolate sundae. Within seconds, the battle shared this observation with him, feeling utterly naked with all would be over. the group looking on, he had denied feeling any disapproval. Seeing her habits in this perspective turned Elna's stomach Instead, he did acknowledge having to protect himself from a little sour. The last eight squares were devoured joylessly. Elna who was becoming too dependent on him. This seemed so Once out of the way, their presence would not irritate her. She cruel that Elna had burst into tears and snivelled out her feelings now thought with derision of the sluggish brown ooze that of rejection, while he sat silently watching her, his only bagged out the protesting gastric walls. Yuk! the insipidness of comment being, "Does anyone else want to give Elna chocolate! She would never be induced to indulge herself that feedback?" No one did. way again. What a fool she was to waste her life cramming food Was it something wrong with her that caused harshness to into her mouth, when there were so many other enjoyable be so keenly felt? The question blocked her like an obdurate pursuits. turnstile that wouldn't budge until she had deposited an answer. A young man with a fluorescent pink Frisbie was Tom's puny shins briskly crossing the sand, intervened. She felt smoothing a large purple towel into position not three yards a kind of relief at seeing them decisively approach her as though away. Why out of all the spots he might have chosen was he knowing where they belonged. They squatted down on the other installing himself so close to her? Behind their sunshields her side of her as Tom whispered, "Who's that guy? Ever seen him

20 Branching Out before?" which to launch her new career. "No." Her mind was racing with the possibilities open to her the United Appeal, the Women's "Why's he sitting so close to you?" Elna, stroking Tom's Service Centre (she was very concerned about battered wives), shins, suggested that perhaps he'd lost his mommy. Tom didn't the Cancer Foundation, the SPCA, the Red Cross (or would one smile. have to be a nurse for that?), the Ballet oh, so many avenues "Has he said anything to you?" there were to explore! She could be out each evening once the "No." children were in bed. "Where's my other sandwich?" Where had her family gotten to while she schemed? In "Here." order to leave guiltlessly tomorrow, she should be playing with "It's okay. I don't want it. I was just checking up on you." them right now. Sliding her sunglasses up to her forehead, she "Were you feeling jealous?" allowed the sun to spear her eyes while she sorted through the "No, I'd just like to know why he's practically sitting in my clusters of swimmers. Tom would oppose her. Like some sort wife's lap. I feel like asking him to move." of hobble, he had the children strapped to her ankles. She She was spared the need to protest by the arrival of a would spare him the news of her breakthrough for now. That long-legged young woman, strikingly mahoganied by the sun, would leave finding a complimentary outfit as the first hurdle. varnished with suntan lotion and festooned with a purple bikini. Repeatedly, those minuscule try-on rooms with their merciless She was scooped out and polished in the very places where triptych mirrors, had snatched away her self-esteem. In Elna looked like overly risen dough. Appreciative, Tom simplifying her down to a bulging container, they cancelled out appeared to be making the same observation. Elna wished she her unique inner complexity. She became a terrified blob could prance out of her fat and leave it lying on the beach like billowing out the skimpy curtain. an abandoned Galapagos tortoise shell. Far down the beach she spotted Tom and the children "There you are, Turkey!" The newcomer pounced on the thrashing about in the water, all four of them oblivious to life's young man, snatched up the Frisbie and began shovelling sand pressures. Why was she the only one with this awful need to at him. distinguish herself? Feeling the exhilaration beginning to curdle "Knock it off will ya?" she wondered was this brilliant plan to collapse by the wayside "Thought you'd get away from me, eh? Found yourself a like all the others? She took up her purse and removed a dollar wall to hide behind." She glanced guiltily toward Elna who was bill. She would just run up to the snackstand and back before caught with an expression of dismay. Tom, seeing it too, put his joining them. If they returned first, she could hide the chocolate arm protectively about Elna and glared at the woman. bars (she was already picturing the ones she would choose) in "C'mon," she tugged at her friend petulantly. "Everyone her sun-hat and say that she had been to the toilet. wants to eat, now." The young man seemed rather sullen as they plodded away, the purple towel trailing in the sand. Was that a wistful glance he had thrown Elna as he passed? "Not a very nice remark," commented Tom soothingly. "It was calculated to make me rush out and buy Ayds." Together they stared at their children who were protecting an elaborate fortress from thoughtless treaders. "I guess I'll take the kids for another swim," said Tom after a while. "Want to come?" "Sure." she began, her only thought to please him. Then remembering the wrappers under her towel and fearing their exposure, she relapsed into a lazy attitude and said, "But what I'd really like is to just lie here feeling that I'm not responsible for anyone but me." As soon as Tom had blended with the other beach figures, she raised the corner of her towel, dug a hole and buried the evidence. She had erected a little mound over the wrappers intending to mash it down, but instead lay watching the loose grains on the top shiver slightly under her breath. Occasionally a glassy facet caught the sun and tossed it toward her, a brilliant whizzing disc. She kept staring at the grains until they became a cluster of individuals, each one standing out as singular and independent with its own configuration; each owing its force and its position to the presence of its fellow grains. A surge of revelation came to her. She knew now that her destiny was to remain as she was. She enjoyed eating; so she would eat. She would be successful at it. She would use her commanding presence to its best advantage in the community. She thought of the organizations she had considered heading up. Well, she would see about the Profile Theatre and the Philharmonic, tomorrow. She knew that she had both leadership and persuasive gifts. People would respect her for her ability to secure big donations. She would be the portly matron in pink satin presiding over the Benefit Ball. The dapper gentleman at her dimpled elbow (she was seeing the photo in the morning Chronical) would be none other than awe-stricken Tom. Deeply her nails sank into her palms in response to the excitement she was feeling. Tomorrow, she would leave the children with Mrs. Moore while she went out to purchase the appropriate outfit in

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 21 Two Poems by Audrey Conard

FROM THE HILL Mist washes through alfalfa, crosses the roadway, and then winds past splintered barns and corncribs, climbing up the fetlocks of the cows out early in the far fields. The little, dark, tailed dots appear to float by the farm pond's dime reflection. The trees on the horizon blur, peripherally, and up, brush smudges leak into a bluing sky where clouds swell cumulus and splay out over the shiny balding poles, STANDING BY then rush, and thin, and drift upward and out into the blackness thick Tucked under salt hay, the bulbs are singing pink with grains of stars and stellar grit, with next spring's tulips. I go softly over the nursery, the infinite unbroken black, out close the shed, moved by the marvel of small life to the gristle edge which is the mind's ready on the heels of the dead. beyond which words are not, where miniscule digits of formulae fail, The rich expanse of lawn in its last green and even the imagination works on me like tides, like phases of the moon. stops. I would mother this wide, wild garden, take it in, hold its branches from the sick/ing wind.

Clouds lower, pile in grey chilled smoke. Behind my collar, in pocketed fists, winter begins. Dust to dust and bloom between; no parable, we are kin. I listen for some stir of green within. * Nothing to hear, no more to be done. Hedges close ranks against impartial wind. Shut out of the garden again I do as much and go, quiescent, in, and shut my house.

Audrey Conard is a closet poet. She came out in Storm Warning 2 and has appeared in Fiddlehead, Dalhousie Review and Branching Out. Between appearances she returns to her disguise as an Oakville matron.

22 Branching Out Thelma Manarey

The work of Edmonton artist Thelma Manarey has appeared in many solo and group shows. She is represented in the permanent collections of the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Art Foundation of Alberta, and others. Her miniature etchings are well known. This fall, a showing of her watercolours will be held at the Lefebvre Gallery in Edmonton

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 23 Branching Out Volume V, Number 3, 1978 25 Trial Balloon the story of a course

by Gerda Wekerle, Rebecca Peterson and David Morley photos by Janice Newson

A course on women and environ­ handicapped, and various ethnic groups either too political or too personal, and ment had never been suggested at York were all perceived as having special not worthy of academic credit at the University before. The idea for it grew environmental needs. For some reason graduate level. Having a male colleague out of discussions among three col­ women were not, despite the popularity as co-director of the course helped to leagues and, despite scepticism, the and influence of Women's Studies in "run interference" and made acceptance course materialized. other disciplines. a little easier, however, he had to deal Three of us, Gerde Wekerle, an In the Faculty of Environmental with jokes and jibes from colleagues urban sociologist, Rebecca Peterson, an Studies no course dealt explicitly with about what he was "doing with the environmental psychologist, and David women, although one third of our 200 girls." Morley, an urban geographer prop­ graduate students were women. Most of Even the students looked askance at osed the course for the Faculty of the teaching faculty came from discip­ the course. Many women students did Environmental Studies in the fall of 1975. lines such as geography, urban studies, not want to be singled out as "radical We had worked together for several urban planning, engineering and the feminists"; they wanted to learn market­ years planning courses and research natural sciences, fields which tradition­ able skills and did not see such a course projects on the relationship between ally have fewer than ten per cent women as relevant to their future professions. environment and behavior. Our focus participants. Not surprisingly, only two Moreover, they did not see why there was on how rooms, buildings, of the 24 faculty members were women. should be a woman's perspective on the neighbourhoods and cities could be Our proposal for a new course did environment or in planning. Most male designed to meet the needs of specific not meet with favour from the others on students saw the course exclusively as a groups of people. The elderly, poor, the faculty. The course was seen as consciousness-raising exercise for

YWCA Women's Resource Centre, Toronto: Meeting Room.

26 Branching Out women only. In the end, we managed to the YWCA Resource Centre and 21 women can control an environment and attract six students five women and McGill, a private club for women. will ask, "where is the boss (man) of this one man two of them from outside the The sharp contrast between the house?" The women there had to adapt University. spare Resource Centre and opulence of creatively to a house originally designed We had no models of similar courses the private club made us realize that few for a single family, which housed to follow when we began to design the multiple families only with difficulty. course. Women's courses and women's We visited the obstetrical unit of the literature tend to ignore the environment McMaster University Medical Centre in and how it supports or hinders women's Women are often "clients" who occupy Hamilton, Ontario. The unit was de­ activities and aspirations. We took our spaces but rarely control or design them. signed to provide a homelike atmosphere own interests in urban planning, housing, with wall paper and lots of colour in neighbourhoods, natural environments waiting areas, open-ended visiting hours, and social change as a starting point. We rooming-in for mothers and new-borns. decided to observe and talk to women in women ever gain access to social, The policy was to provide a supportive specific environments to see how they recreational and work spaces designed atmosphere in which to give birth. As we used and managed the spaces that had for them. We were struck by the fact that toured the unit we noticed that the public supposedly been designed for them. women's groups, because of their areas, such as waiting rooms, were very We met with four women living in a precarious financing, often have to make bright and non-institutional in design. In new condominium townhouse project in do with left-over spaces that no one else the backstage areas, however the a Toronto suburb. They talked about the wants, spaces which are dark, unattrac­ labour rooms, delivery rooms, and design of their homes: the "tight" spaces tive, non-nurturing and inaccessible. It incubator room for premature babies which resulted in tiny kitchens, the was a shock to enter a women's where the real drama of life is played shortage of cupboard and storage space, environment which was bright, attrac­ out, we found a typical hospital decor: the problems of walking from the parking tive, and designed with care specifically white, stark walls, no windows, harsh garage to the unit through a series of for the women who would be using it. florescent lighting, hard surfaces and locked doors laden with groceries. We held another session at Women chrome machinery. This high-technology Although many working women lived in in Transition, a house for women in environment, where machines were most the project, no day care facilities had marital crisis and their children. There prominent, contrasted greatly with the been planned. Because there were no we discussed the importance of photographs we had seen of neighbour­ convenience stores nearby, all of them emergency shelter and refuge to women hood birth centres and with the were forced to use shopping facilities who have fled a husband's home. comfortable surroundings of home near work. Although the shelter was created and is births. Two sessions were held in spaces run by women, we were told that These visits confirmed our impres­ planned for women outside the home: children often do not understand that sions that women are rarely seen as a

Twenty-one McGill Street, Toronto: licensed lounge.

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 27 group with distinct environmental needs. They are often "clients" who occupy the spaces but rarely control or design them. They are most prominently involved at the smallest scales the house, the planning of neighbourhoods but not on larger ones. We felt that women's environmental needs had to be documented first, in order to raise consciousness about this aspect of Twenty-One McGill women's lives. We also hoped to find examples of actions by women which text by Gerda Wekerle would serve as models for a feminist photos by Janice Newson consciousness of the environment. Our course had a number of results: I felt ambivalent about 21 McGill, per year). It would be easy to criticize the students did original reserach on the private club for women. It is posh from a feminist perspective it women and kitchen design, the privacy and elitist (fees are $700 to join and $400 certainly doesn't reflect much concern needs of home day care workers, women for social change. Some rooms, like the in transition and the travel patterns of billiard room and library, are so typical suburban women. We prepared a paper of similar rooms in a men's club they for the Habitat Forum of the United almost seemed like parodies. On the Nations Conference on Human Settle­ other hand, the club made me realize ments. At Habitat, we met hundreds of how few public spaces there are that women from around the world who were women can call their own. concerned about the effects of planning and urban settlement on women's lives. One outcome of that conference was the creation of a Newsletter on women and environment. Three issues of the news­ letter have been published and an international network of 250 people interested in this subject has been created. Interest in women and environment has been accelerating, particularly in the United States. Four conferences in 1974 and 1975 focussed attention on women's roles in the environmental design profes­ sions. Several projects resulted, includ­ ing exhibits on the work of women architects and Susanna Torre's book Women in American Architecture. New courses on women in architecture and planning have been introduced at Col­ umbia University, University of Oregon, City University of New York, and the University of Waterloo. In the United States, new professional organizations have been formed, such as "Women in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning," "The Alliance of Women in Architecture" and "Sisters for a Humane Environment." Alternatives to design education are provided through the Women's Building in Los Angeles which was founded in 1973 and the Woman's School of Planning and Ar­ chitecture founded in 1975. Special issues of journals have been produced to focus attention on women's environmen­ tal needs and new books have been written or are in preparation. Our original course on Women and Environment had a short but glorious life. Although it gained greater institu­ tional acceptance the second year, it still could not attract students and had to be cancelled for lack of enrolment in 1976-77 and 1977-78.

28 Branching Out YWCA

The sparsely furnished and often tal Studies, York University. They are cramped quarters of the YWCA resource co-editors of the Women and Environ­ centre in Toronto offered striking ments International Newsletter and of a contrasts to the private club. The forthcoming book on women and envi­ Resource Centre is used by a variety of ronments. Toronto Women's organizations. Gerda R. Wekerle, Rebecca Peterson Janice Newson is an associate professor and David Morley are all faculty in the Department of Sociology at members in the Faculty of Environmen­ Glendon College, York University.

top. Women's Resource Centre, Library above, Women's Resource Centre Women's Information Centre and Referral Service above, right, Women's Credit Union in the Resource Centre Building right, Toronto Women's Fundraising Coalition

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 29 law The Forgotten Offenders by MaryEllen Gillan and Brenda J. Thomas illustrations by Barbara Hartmann Prompted by complaints from used to enable the offender to return to Female offenders are generally female prisoners, the British Columbia her family and community as soon as young, usually under thirty-five, government passed an order-in-council possible. More innovative programs, and in­ volved primarily in non-violent on December 5, 1977 for a Royal Com­ where they exist, frequently involve offences. These include property offences (shop­ mission on the Incarceration of Female some sort of restitution, that is, lifting, theft, fraud) and Offenders. Madam Justice Patricia community service work orders drug offences requiring (possession, trafficking, Proudfoot was appointed to the chair and the offender to importing). The pay back society in National Advisory lawyer Ann Rounthwaite was chosen as volunteer work. Innovative Committee reports that there has been a significant one of the commission members. The community-oriented programs are increase in the number of women charged with report was released in March. One of the available in a limited number of criminal and drug offences during the main recommendations, the replacement communities and they are not always 1970s and the most obvious trends have of the director of corrections, has already available for women. The usual plan is to been increases in theft and drug been implemented. start programs for men first then adapt of­ fences. Reasons for the increases include This report, with its strong recom­ them or extend them for women. The awareness of the equality of sexes mendations, is one of the few bright National Advisory Committee indicated with an attendant reduction in paternalistic signs for female offenders in Canada. that there are still not enough community attitudes in the criminal justice system. The only other noteworthy report is that alternatives for women, although female The suggestion is that we are of the National Advisory Committee on offenders are jailed less no longer frequently than hesitant to arrest women; the Female Offender, a committee ap­ males. they are no longer viewed as being only "pawns pointed by the federal government in Treatments specifically for women in the hands of 1976 for six months. Its report should be developed and they should be men." With increasing was egalitarianism, released in 1977 but the recommenda­ based on an understanding of the female more women enter and remain in the labour force tions are still being debated at the offender in her own right. and are there­ two fore exposed to opportunities levels of government. for in­ A twenty-seven year old bank teller, volvement in the wider range of offences Female offenders command less single parent of two young children, particularly theft-related crimes. attention than male offenders because appears in court for the first time. She is Social scientists have always consi­ they are fewer in number and their confused, frightened and cannot believe dered shoplifting to be a feminine crime. crimes are of a less threatening nature. that this is really happening The traditional shoplifter Policies and training programs for to her. She is believed to is fairly well-educated, has had a good be a middle-aged housewife women are spotty. Only about 500-600 suffering job for the past six years and has thrown from either sexual frustration or women are in prison in Canada at any it all away. Her charge: menopause. A 1973 one time compared to 16,000-18,000 defrauding the study entitled "Who bank offive thousand dollars Shoplifts" examined the men. In a system so dominated by men, over an 18 phenomenon in month period. On a limited income and Toronto. It studies tend to be conducted on male found that shoplifters were receiving no support from the children's equally offenders and programs are represented by males and based on father, she sought means to supplement females. male needs. Where treatment of women her income. Her sentence is not unusual Statistics indicate a dramatic does differ from that accorded men, the rise in - it is suspended for a period of two shoplifting over the past few difference usually reflects an assumption years. Exp­ years during which time she will report lanations of this that the female offender will return increase must consider to the to a probation officer on a monthly basis the socio-economic protective bosom of her family rather status of the offen­ and "seek whatever counselling is ders and the larger than entering the work force. This is problem of inflation necessary.'' This latter condition will rather than the psychological ironic when crimes by women and biolog­ probably not be followed. The offender ical traits of offenders, shoplifting, prostitution, theft, fraud, particularly will be busy looking for work female offenders. drug offences are usually without Female shoplifters in­ committed benefit of references for financial reasons. and she will be on clude women of lower income brackets, partial social assistance for some time. women on social Figures from 1972-1973 show that assistance, and profes­ In combination with caring for two chil­ sional women. The classic approximately forty percent of the men kleptomaniac dren, she will be occupied to such an is rarely seen. Women with found guilty in Canadian courts are few dollars extent that the probation officer will are increasingly turning to shoplifting imprisoned, while for women the figure as probably not pursue the counselling con­ a method of supplementing is about seven percent. Typical the house­ dition - the woman is simply in need of hold budget, or as a means to obtain sentences for women, particularly first more money. Her employment prospects goods which are so attractively adver­ offenders, are ones which allow the cannot involve positions of trust as she tised and temptingly displayed. Items offender to remain in the community. A can no longer be bonded. And stolen range from childrens clothing to suspended sentence is frequently it will be given. five years after her two groceries as well as personal When there is a term of imprisonment, years' probation cosmetics expires before she can apply for a par­ or clothing. temporary absence passes are commonly don. Although research indicates that

30 Branching Out shoplifting is mainly an economic crime, Ontario the two leading provinces in under the Narcotic Control Act for traf­ correctional personnel still tend to treat correctional innovations. ficking or importing. Most convictions female shoplifters as though they have An attractive nineteen year old wo­ for these offences in the past few years committed this offence in order to satisfy man stands before the provincial judge have occurred in British Columbia and psychological or biological needs. Why to reserve her plea in order to seek legal Ontario areas of greatest opportunity else would they "throw away" respecta­ counsel. She appears bored and acts as and availability of illicit drugs. There is a bility? Sentences for shoplifting include though the whole situation is a big joke. problem of inconsistency. Either the fines, probation or imprisonment. During Her friends sit at the back of the court sentence is inadequate and there is no the past ten years most shoplifters, par­ room awaiting the assignment of her opportunity for treatment or the sentence ticularly women, have been given proba­ next court date. The night before, her in harsh with several years in jail. tion. This sentence will frequently in­ friends had arrived at her place with two The province of British Columbia clude the stipulation that the offender ounces of cocaine. Later, when the has become concerned with the increas­ obtain psychiatric or psychological coun­ police arrive, having been tipped off by ing number of heroin addicts and has selling. an unnamed informant, she was arrested devised a compulsory and controversial The new panacea for correctional for possession of a narcotic for the heroin treatment program that is now treatment in the community is "diver­ purpose of trafficking. The amount and under review. Inmates in B.C. made sion." Diversion programs such as the the type of drug were sufficient to submissions to Justice Proudfoot con­ Adult Diversion Project in Delta, B.C. charge her with trafficking rather than cerning the proposed program. They are usually at the pre-trial level after the possession for personal use. As she was claim that compulsory treatment cannot accused has admitted guilt. The accused the tenant of the apartment and no one succeed. Citizen groups fear that there person is dealt with by community rep­ else was willing to claim the substance will be an infringement on civil rights in resentatives rather than being taken to as theirs, this young woman was such programs where suspected drug court and receiving a legal sanction for charged. Unless her lawyer can have the addicts can be hospitalized for six the offence. Shoplifters are presently charge reduced to simple possession she months and longer by a panel of five. being used as target groups for diversion will probably do some time. Sentence Referrals to this system of corrections projects. Generally, store personnel will length or type will likely he based on the can be made by police who suspect drug make private referrals to agencies which judge's particular bias, community pres­ dependency in accused persons. are on call for consultation and assis­ sure, the persuasiveness of legal counsel Attractive, young, well dressed, tance in the private disposition of ar­ and the prior record of the accused. poised - she doesn't at all resemble the rested shoplifters. These agencies usually In Canada the second largest in­ television portrayals of "ladies of the see that the shoplifter makes restitution crease in female offenders charged in the night". A plea of guilty is entered and a of some kind. Again it is assumed that 1970s has been for drug related offences. trial date set for two months from the the offender will be in need of psycholog­ When a sentence of federal imprison­ appearance date. The court accepts the ical counselling. Most of these projects ment (over 2 years) is imposed on a argument that she has residential stabili­ are in operation in British Columbia and female it is primarily for a conviction ty, since she has lived at the same address for six months, and releases her on $500 cash bail. This money will be forfeited if she fails to appear. The most renowned of the female offences is soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. Besides being one of the oldest professions, prostitution has tradi­ tionally served as a financial support system for heroin addicts. As a result of a recent Supreme Court of Canada deci­ sion which has made convictions difficult without strong evidence of open solicit­ ing including harassment and stating a fee few prostitutes are being charged. When prostitutes are charged and convicted they generally receive a fine as a penalty. If the woman charged is a member of an organized group of prosti­ tutes she has little financial worry. She can be back on the streets within twenty-four hours, supporting her habit by means of her lucrative profession. And if a prostitute is imprisoned, how can one "treat" her? Convince her that retraining as a typist or secretary will provide more meaningful or rewarding work? A twenty-one year old women, charged with possession of stolen prop­ erty, has been diverted from the court system. Her apartment was used as a storage spot for stolen items - stolen by her sometime common-law husband. He

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 31 has long since departed from the scene. unlikely to conform to norms set by risk and nuisance potential (such as ag­ But the stolen property was traced and people who despise and fear them. Who, gressiveness, lesbianism, militancy). she has been charged with her second then, will the female offender identify Needless to say there are a number of criminal offence (the first offence occur­ with? problems in housing women serving ser- red I */2 years previously - a charge of Both the 1976 Report to Parliament veral years with women imprisoned for a simple possession of marijuana or one on Penitentiaries and the 1978 British few days or a few months. The latter "joint"). She would be facing a possible Columbia report on female prisoners en­ group will be eligible for community re­ jail term but for the intervention of a courage citizen participation in correc­ lease almost immediately. They will community agency. Members of the tions. The Elizabeth Fry Societies are probably not be involved or interested in Elizabeth Fry Society found her literally the most active Canadian group involved institutional programs due to their im­ wandering aimlessly in the court house with female offenders. They participate pending release into a larger resource hall. They directed her to legal aid, in programs from the pre-trial stage centre. This mixture of federal and pro­ offered her community assistance and through the court system and imprison­ vincial prisoners could contribute to have accompanied her to court -she is ment as well as the post-trial stage morale problems for those serving longer given a suspended sentence. Under through the court system and imprison­ terms. It may also contribute to internal supervision she will reside in half-way ment as well as the post-release and re- security problems as those permitted house for females, some of whom have integration phases. But the number of temporary absences are pressured into been in prison. From this residence she groups interested in female offenders is bringing contraband when they return to can find full-time work, now that she can disproportionately small. Again it would the jail. no longer depend on the occasional appear that publicity has favoured the Women sentenced to less than two hand-out from her common-law hus­ males. years are imprisoned provincially. band, and she will eventually move out We're all aware of hire-a-con prog­ Females usually have only the one facil­ into her own apartment, possibly sharing rams but the assumption is that it will be ity in each province while males may it with one of the women she lives with in a male. Females who have "done time" have two or more, thereby increasing the the community residence. She will main­ are all too frequently regarded as unsta­ likelihood for men of being closer to their tain contact with the Elizabeth Fry Soci­ ble and unreliable. They suffer all the families and community resources. ety which will be able to direct her to traditional female stereotyping and then During the past few years commis­ upgrading classes, life-skills courses and some: time off work (for court or parole sions and studies have recommended the availability of subsidization for courses. reporting), emotional instability ("she's closing of Kingston Penitentiary for These classes may improve the self- done time!") and unrealiability (who are Women. It is still open, and despite the image that led her to such dependence her friends?). Employment opportunities 1974 agreement between the federal and on another person and ultimately to in unskilled occupations, as waitres­ provincial governments, women still do criminal activities. ses, chambermaids, dishwashers and car pen time (2 years or longer) in Kingston Improvements in the treatment of wash attendants, are the most readily rather than in their home province. Some women have been recommended. How available. provinces do attempt to keep as many soon and how thoroughly they will be What is it like for the woman who is women in their home community as implemented is another question. sentenced to a term in prison? Once in­ logistics allow. But the subtle selection The opportunities for socially ap­ side the jail she has all her personal pos­ processes force many females to be im­ proved behavior are in the community. sessions taken from her. She is subjected prisoned thousands of miles from their There the women will find jobs, educa­ to questioning by guards and social families. Some women, however, usually tion and their families what workers, and is given an embarrassing seasoned or professional criminals, sociologists call ties to society. A return but necessary physical examination for choose to do time in Kingston rather to the community is inevitable for nearly contraband. Frequently drugs and some­ than provincially. One reason for this is all female offenders. What is presently times weapons are smuggled in by wo­ greater availability of programs and there being advocated, albeit slowly, is com­ men. Once inside the jail she spends a lot is pride in being a "pro" or in "drawing munity involvement and responsibility in of time waiting. She waits for her sec­ pen time" for an offence. the treatment process as soon as possible urity classification (maximum, medium The National Advisory Committee in the woman's sentence. The Report to or minimum) then waits for assignment on the Female Offender recommends es­ Parliament on the Penitentiary System to work details or programs. The inmate tablishing either regional federal facilities (1976) states: waits to be assigned to a counsellor who for females or contracting to individual Much of the fear in the minds of the in turn instructs her to wait set periods of provinces providing programs are availa­ public comes from not knowing what is time before applying for various passes ble which would meet federal peniten­ going on behind the high wall. That wall and programs according to eligibility tiary standards. A combination of federal keeps offenders confined, but it also dates. She has the agony of waiting for and provincial inmates in regional discourages citizen participation in the parole board decisions. This is much facilities, despite the many problems of a institution and inmate involvement in worse than the two or three months she mixed population, could be conducive to outside activities. may have waited for her trial, for then better programming because more The report suggests that community in­ she was on the outside. females would be involved. This would volvement can encourage better attitudes Unlike males who have peniten­ justify the time and money involved al­ in public as well as re-integrate inmates tiaries in each province, females sen­ though the small number of female of­ into society in a more meaningful man­ tenced to 2 years or longer have one fenders should dictate opportunities for ner. To date it would appear that the facility located in Kingston, Ontario. reform and innovation rather than the public's image of the imprisoned is based Since 1974, however, a federal-provincial second-class status presently accorded to on the sensational happenings the agreement provides for provincial in- imprisoned females in Canada. The riots and hostage-takings and these stitutionalization of females if/when they Royal Commission on the Status of Wo­ incidents are notably restricted to male are accepted by their home province. men recommended that prisoners. Yet the female inmates suffer Space available and individual suitability No matter how small the female jail the same stigma. What of their reputa­ determine prisoner placement. Suitability population, adequate treatment prog­ tion in the community? Offenders are is sometimes defined in terms of security rams and services should be organized

32 Branching Out for women. In fact, the small numbers ing or technical courses which can be female prisoners. This report was in­ involved provide an opportunity to try accredited on the outside. out new methods If inmates had itiated, then, by a threat of scandal in the of correction. the incentive of Planning and certification, they would B.C. corrections branch. But the report programming will deter­ be encouraged to participate mine in programs was made before any violence erupted. the success of the programs as will and perhaps in life. Service-oriented the selection and Although Canada has yet to see the Patty of provincial inmates. The home-making programs are not applica­ latter group should Hearst or violent political types of crime, be those who are ble to females who will be required to serving the longest provincial female involvement in serious, non- sentences support themselves and in many cases, and who would a violent offences (fraud, drug trafficking benefit from internal family, upon their release. Nearly all courses and programs. and importing) is increasing. Female of­ female offenders will need to work at An example of fenders will become more visible with poor planning for least part-time for most of their lives. females is the For increasing egalitarianism in Canadian co-educational or co- these women, it is not a case of returning correctional institution society. at Prince George. to a well-ordered traditional family with B.C. This a Two alternatives for programming attempt to stimulate the "real" male as the main wage earner. world suggested by the National Advisory of men and women was a quick If little attention is given to female copy of American Committee on the Female Offender are experiments. As offenders it may be because they have pointed out by still being discussed by both levels of Madam Justice Proud- called little attention to themselves. Un­ foot, however, "there government. Individual provinces are were rarely more fortunately prison reforms only seem to than 13 and sometimes eager to have a regional facility estab­ as few as six occur once disruptions and violence oc­ lished in their female inmates . . area so that they might be­ . (while) ... the male cur and female offenders have not been nefit population fluctuated from federal financing; the federal between 120 and involved in publicity campaigns. There is government 140." Jealousy and is concerned about treat­ associated problems also a possibility of a "divide and con­ ment arose. The feasibility of females jailed for two years or of such a program quer" tactic as federal inmates, serving longer. for provincial prisoners Both governments do seem to serving short longer terms and having more of a vested appreciate sentences must be the necessity of community questioned. The B.C. interest in changing the system, are im­ contact. Report recommended It would be refreshing indeed if it be discontinued prisoned separately from the majority of changes immediately. were instituted promptly. We provincial inmates. should not have to wait for threats of The official programs, many of Females are now becoming more as­ scandal or violence before reforms are which exist on paper only, include the sertive and are establishing programs for made. usual stereotyped female occupations of themselves. Despite occasional subtle in­ laundering, sewing, housework, bead- ternal opposition, inmate newspapers are work, busy-work. One never ceases to operating. In addition, inmate commit­ be amazed at the many arts and crafts tees, where .they exist, are occasionally techniques applied to disguising kleenex requested to provide input into the for­ boxes or toilet paper rolls in stuffed ani­ mal administration. mals or knitted or crocheted covers. Im­ The use of innovative programs agine the employment possibilities upon need not be directed by economics. An release when one attempts to apply these informed and concerned administration skills. The prison philosophy appears to can implement programs oriented to­ be centered around turning female pris­ wards community-based sentences ft, oners into acceptable middle-class tradi­ whether a few females are involved or , tional females. Certainly the employees large numbers and serious offences must of institutions are drawn from the con­ be dealt with. Given that provincial im­ servative conformists. prisonment means short sentences, why What really takes place inside, un­ bother with incarceration? The female fortunately, is a process of defeatism. offender will be on the street in a matter The B.C. report suggests that boredom of weeks or months. And given the rela­ and a lack of challenge pervade the day- tively fewer female offenders, why not Mary Ellen Gillan received to-day life. Efforts by concerned correc­ concentrate on innovative her M.A. in programs for Sociology from the University tions workers as well as private citizens' women? When they of Alber­ are successful they ta. Her Master's thesis was based on her groups are frequently hampered by the can be adapted for the male offenders in­ research in B.C. and Alberta correc­ prison administration. Establishing a lib­ stead of employing the usual reverse tional centres. She is a member of rary for inmates can become a major procedure the task of studying males first. board of directors of the Elizabeth as can toe implementation of innovative The male-dominated Fry prison system Society which is presently establishing programs or the promotion of is as suceptible^s in educa­ any other to token Edmonton. Ms. Gillan has worked tional resources. The school teacher government appointments inside at and programs. a provincial Oakalla Woman'e Correctional Centre The appointments correctional institution and il­ of Justice Proudfoot is presently lustrated this when he testified that sixty and Ann Rounthwaite employed in the corrections in B.C. seem to go field in Alberta. per cent of his time was spent dealing beyond such tokenism. Their report de­ with bureaucratic red tape. monstrates a readiness to listen to con­ Brenda Thomas received her Masters in These problems are outlined in in­ cerned citizens and corrections personnel Applied Criminology degree from the mate newspapers, the B.C. report and by as well as offenders. Implementation of University of Ottawa in 1977. While Elizabeth Fry Societies across Canada. their recommendations has already be­ completing her degree, she did various The B.C. report indicated, for example, gun. The entire procedure did not take field placements including work for the that of the five so-called programs several years but only a few months from National Consultant on Diversion in Ot­ laundry, kitchen, sewing, beauty parlor the time the order in council was passed. tawa. She is presently a correctional and education three are for the The B.C. commission was precipitated at practitioner in Alberta and has done re­ maintenance of the building. The official least in part by allegations of misconduct search on both juvenile and female of­ programs usually do not include upgrad­ by prison officials allegations made by fenders.

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 33 JOURNEY Leaving Toronto for the west No babies, no babies, no babies. he packs our bags My womb weeps out its rusty blood and I tuck in supplies and maybe, who knows, for my period, two days late. some miniscule being. We board the train Sterile pads and wads turn red with a sense of embarkation. in witness of my barren curse, By Winnipeg I begin to grow and all this bloated flesh offends. with the stretch and reach of land. The milky swell of breast and belly Filled with expanding hope was only fat, was only dreams. I am in the hands of God. I am in the hands of God, Tissue to crotch, I said, tissue to crotch, I am in the hands of God. I test and test again, Then we cross the Great Divide but there's no spot, no stain. and I flow down to the sea. Edmonton, Calgary, then to the mountains. I ask for signs, for clues. But there are no omens, only silence, unpunctuate faces of rock. In Lake Louise I feel so bloated Two Poems by I seem to float and then like clouds catching on peaks Isabel Huggan stop, wondering if I will flow without the tidal pull. Tissue to crotch, CHICORY LOVER tissue to crotch, I feel very small in the mountains, Jesus, when I was ten or so sure that the moon can't find me. I had a dream of you. More than a week now You had a long white dress on, we are both on edge, and we walked hand in hand cliff-hanging cycle counters, across a weedy vacant lot waiting. picking blue chicory flowers. We don't dare ask Chicory Jesus, you were my friend what we'll do if it's true. when I really needed one. Dream lover, you believed in me In Banff my breasts blossom and ache. and I was a true believer, The mirror gives back my image a true blue chicory picker, glowing with joy. buddy of the Lord, amen. The mountains loom outside our Rimrock room Now I've been looking since then and in my abdomen for another vacant place, do cells divide and redivide another sweet face in the sunshine in their plushy uterine bed? and all the good feelings of faith. But chicory root is bitter, But in Banff I bleed. its blue petals fall and fade, After a dinner of trout, and I've been made and I've been laid in a blue enamel cubicle but the dream just won't come true. of the restaurant ladies' room, Christ, you're a chicory cheater, the paper turns pink. you led me on, you son of a bitch! I bleed, I bleed, I wring my hands and moan. The mountains heave their bulk against the cloudless sky, the heft and weight of rock Isabel Huggan lives near Belleville, Ontario. She has had no longer the labor of earth, fiction published in Quarry and Grain and has recently won a but only walls of granite contest for women scriptwriters sponsored by the National Film echoing back my cries. Board. She gave birth to a daughter in June 1977.

34 Branching Out The People's Republic

text by Wendy Danson and Linda Duncan photos by Linda Duncan In April, 1978, Wendy Danson and Linda Duncan On our daily excursions we came across city women travelled for two weeks through the People's Republic of laboring at every conceivable task housing construction, China. Their visits to cities and rural communes brought them street maintenance, railroad crews and demolition projects. It into contact with women in their working, domestic and leisure was refreshing to witness women so capably participating in a environments. They share here seme of their impressions of working environment foreign to Canadian women. One of our the life of Chinese women. first insights into the Chinese perspective on working women was the night we came across a crowd of Chinese watching a woman maneuver an enormous crane through a narrow opening at a construction sight. It was not until later that we realized that while our attention was drawn to the female operator, the Chinese spectators were engrossed in the machine. The sight of women working in factories side by side with male workers was the norm in China. We saw them at work in a tractor factory, glass factory, oil refinery and open pit coal mine. Women did not appear to be restricted to assembly line work. We met women members of revolutionary committees managing workers' communes and factories. Among the most dynamic and impressive Chinese we met was the female Director of Darien Harbour, one of the major international ports in the country. We met women working within the "professions" at a Shanghai University, Shanghai Hospital and Rural Clinic, the Darien Deaf-Mute School, and many of the interpreters were

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 35 women. The hospital briefing session revealed the Chinese, by their own admission, to be slow in reaching the level of expertise and mechanization we know in the west. We were fortunate to visit a rural clinic of one of the noted "barefoot doctors" who are minimally trained to tend to common ailments allowing the more skilled to give time to the seriously ill. Yet with so few Chinese working in specialized fields, we noted that one of the Shanghai hospital staff introduced was a female heart specialist. With agricultural production their most crucial industry, rural communes arise as the backbone of modern China. Women seem to be playing a key role in these communes. They were not isolated in farm kitchens cooking for male crews nor limited to farm house chores. We saw women planting crops, managing greenhouses, preparing poultry for export and laboring along-side men in a commune tractor factory. The extended family remains one of the mainstrays of Chinese life. But with most women now expected to work outside the home, institutional child care has become equally common place. Work places provide at no cost round-the-clock care for workers' children; additional time away from their jobs is permitted for nursing mothers. Special

36 Branching Out bus service delivers mothers and their children to the work place. Yet the provision of child care outside the family fold did not seem to be replacing the parenting role. We saw fathers, mothers, grandparents, neighbors and other children caring for the young. One sensed that time spent with children was an enjoyable task and children very much a treasure. Children continue to live with their family until their late twenties due both to a scarcity of housing and a stringent policy of planned parenthood. It is common even after marriage for in-laws to share their home, normally one room, with the newly-weds. One Chinese home visited housed fourteen members a grandmother, son, wife, children and grandchildren. Those who wish to hold out for their own home must patiently endure their single status until their name surfaces on the work place housing list. Our brief China tour could provide us with only a superficial view of life for women in a communistic country. But by the trip's end, we felt we had experienced fleeting glances at a life not radically different from our own, at least on a personal scale. Women shared with us many of the same desires more living space, better consumer goods and increased leisure time. Their crowded, unprivate, sparse existence was dismal compared to our soft, comfortable life; yet China emanates a feeling of happiness, direction and joy. Linda Duncan works at the Edmonton Social Planning Council. Wendy Danson is a union organizer for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 37 books

blond hair pulled sleekly back from pale SOME THOUGHTFUL TALES forehead, her face dramatically moulded around deep blue eyes ... all planes and review by Rebecca Smith angles, light and shadow") and her reluctant, also nameless, Knight ("a tall, A Casual Affair: A Modern Fairytale, by elegant man with gaunt cheeks and McClelland & Stewart, Sylvia Fraser. hollow eyes ... a distinguished ruin of a 1978. $12.95 cloth. man, face and body fudged by age and The German poet Schiller wrote, dissipation, his pewter hair clipped close "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy and polished like a helmet"). Naive and tales told to me in my childhood than in vulnerable, the Princess initiates the the truth that is taught by life." In A affair because she is tired of Paradise; Casual Affair: A Modern Fairytale, she resents being "pampered at a level Sylvia Fraser continues her search for a below my growth." Cynical and insensi­ literary form, a stylistic structure, a tive her Knight longs for a "dream girl" fictional mode that will allow one but admits that all his current fantasies accurately to express extremely complex are about making money, not love. Their ideas. In this novel that both uses and "modern fairytale" love story is a analyzes fables, myths, and fairytales, miasma of misunderstanding, guilt, dis­ Fraser explains her choice of this form appointment, pain, and finally violence. via the words of her unnamed heroine, Their private neuroses allow no mutually herself a creater of fairytale stories and redeeming acts of compassion that could tapestries. Fantasy allows one more of bring them together; each is trapped Sylvia Fraser the necessary simplicity as in a inside his or her own pain. Princesses biblical parable or an Eastern sutra so and Knights can no longer expect reader. one can escape ordinary patterns of miracles, and the two do not live happily While using fairytales, Fraser also thought and absorb ideas and percep­ ever after. Indeed, as the ending of the critically examines the genre. She tions that go beyond the ordinary. tale suggests, they are lucky even to live implicitly attacks those who live by Fraser's heroine creates fairytales be­ "haply ever after." adherence to unexamined "fairytale" cause she sees them as psychic shor­ Between most of the sections of plot models: the manipulative, dependent thand: "a distillation of the secret development are the stories that consti­ wife; the cool, macho male, successful in yearnings that pull on us from the inside, tute the second level of fairytales exploiting other men in business and like invisible cords, controlling our lives, "real" fairytales that take the already women in bed; or the intelligent, upturning, re-routing, just when we want reduced story of human inter-action and beautiful woman who seeks her man to to be most reasonable. She believed all reduce it still further, if "reduce" is the save her from the pitfalls of an of us in our dreams in our appropriate word for distillation, crys- independent life. Fraser attacks unconscious lives write our own talization. These tales cut away the "fairytale" morality, where one's life fairytales, and that if we could discover killing day-to-dayness of reality, of becomes "an accident of fate," and these we could understand our own past, obligations, forms, and formalities, of insists that people must take responsibili­ our own present ... get glimpses of our stereotypes. They also are stripped of ty. There are no automatic heroes, future." At the end of the novel, as she the simultaneously helpful and entrap­ villains, and victims. And she attacks the rows across a lake and toward a new ping sociological jargon, popularized demand for "fairytale" endings to real kind of life based on new understanding, psychological buzz-words, and quasi- life stories. At the end of A Casual the heroine again describes the simplicity metaphysical speculations. They are Affair, neither the Princess nor the of fairytales, which "comes from having eerie, sometimes macabre, and always Knight has found that a love affair experienced great complexity . . . the evocative, demanding creative and im­ conquers all, that a kiss from the right simplicity of distillation." aginative reading like parables and person will give life meaning and After warning the reader, again via fables: Eskimo Tales #11, Why There Are happiness. The man returns to his the heroine, against "the Hollywood trap So Few Unicorns, and The Enchanted self-imposed and self-perpetuated traps of judging every story by its ending," Forest are three of Eraser's modern of marriage and business, after having hit Fraser tells a love story with a decidedly fairytales that work with amazing power, the Princess over the head with a unpleasant beginning, middle, and end­ saying things that simply cannot be said fireplace poker. She, after an unsuccess­ ing: She creates a silver and white because of their complexity in any ful suicide attempt, comes through pain fairytale world inhabited by a nameless more effective way, simultaneously to awareness, losing what she thought Princess ("a slender woman with pale disconcerting and enlightening the she wanted a miracle, a pewter-haired

38 Branching Out Prince who will impose happiness upon doing a book on immigrant women and goes to school and does a bit of work in her but gaining something better. At somehow men got added along the way. her spare time . . . She's fillin' up her the end of the novel, the ex-Princess Equally refreshing is the fact that she head ... I don't know what's happened rows away in a boat, on a quest like considers Americans, Scots and En­ to her. She's not the same anymore . . ." Ulysses, a new female journey-maker glishmen as immigrants. Men brought up to play a traditional rowing away from the sure self- For people who have little contact "macho" role in their marriage can find destruction of belief in old myths and with recent immigrants this book is Canadian ways very threatening, while fairytales that no longer fit, and into the particularly revealing. We learn of the their wives tend to appreciate the more unknown of "the universe inside her multitude of problems facing new liberal attitudes. skin." There are no White Knights to do arrivals from the minute they step off the Women on their own in Canada the dirty work of making meaning for her plane, with Customs and Immigration, sometimes find themselves forced to life, yet "she would live." with language and discrimination, with a have sex in return for "favours". This is not a pleasant book, but, change in values, with education and Angela, a kitchen worker, was raped by then, neither was Pandora or The Candy- employment difficulties. In compiling her her boss who said he would tell Factory. Persumably, Fraser is not book, Gloria Montero interviewed over Immigration and have her sent home if aiming for pleasantness; more likely, she 400 people. Getting them to speak out on she reported him. A Jamaican woman is aiming for dissonance, that unpleasant the problems they had experienced must spoke of having sex with a man at the sense of disharmony that compels one to have taken incredible patience and immigration office in order to get help seek mitigation. A reader can relieve the persistence on her part. Not many with her papers. Another woman work­ sense of dissonance by rejecting the people will open up to an interviewer on ing as a domestic was raped by the man book as distasteful, the heroine as their first meeting, and recent immigrants in the household. She reasons, "I did it neurotic, the plot as unsatisfying. Or the often feel they should be polite and not and I did it because I wanted somethin' reader can begin to analyze the causes of criticize Canada to Canadians. . . . It's up to the girl. When she gets her the disharmony the wide discrepancy The attitude of many immigrants paper or whatnot, she doesn't have to between what we expect and want in seems to be: "We had to come." Despite see him again." Lack of knowledge fiction and what we get in A Casual the difficulties they found in Canada, about legal rights in Canada and the Affair. Perhaps, I think Fraser suggests, they had left countries where there were threat of deportation (real or imagined) our wants and expectations need recon­ serious political problems, few jobs, little keep a strangle hold over immigrants. sideration, forcing readers to examine food, little hope for the future for Almost every immigrant interviewed the "fairytale" patterns that implicitly themselves and particularly for their mentions employment problems. The mold our behaviour and attitudes toward children. Canada often becomes the majority of them are slotted into ourselves and others. lesser of two evils. For recent arrivals low-level jobs such as working in a I think A Casual Affair is better than there is constant doubt as to whether garment factory or meat-packing plant, some reviews suggest. But do not expect they have done the right thing. Is the picking crops on farms in general, to read the book intellectually and struggle to live a good life in Canada minimum wage, non-skilled, non-union emotionally unmolested. worth it? The immigrants who have been work. Even people with good educations in the country longer feel it is. "It's like in their own countries find their Rebecca Smith teaches English at the documents are of no value here and they University of Prince Edward Island. the war. After you live through the bloody horror and the hard times you must often begin their studies again. Not look back and all you can think about is knowing the language can keep many the good times," says an Italian people in low-level jobs for most of their construction worker after 18 years in lives. The thought of immigrants coming Canada. A housewife named Isabel in and taking jobs away from Canadians comments, "But with all the problems I is a well-worn myth. On the whole they NEW ARRIVALS, OLD PROBLEMS have had here, I like Canada. I like it end up doing jobs Canadians wouldn't very much. There is a future here that deign to do. There is resentment on both we never knew in the Azores." If only sides. "Being an immigrant in Canada is review by Julia Berry newcomers themselves could draw en­ being a second-class citizen. We have to The Immigrants, by Gloria Montero, James couragement from these philosophical work twice as hard and be twice as good Lorimer & Co., Toronto, 1977. remarks, it might help them get through for the same job." If you do succeed in $12.95. the initial hard times. rising above the masses, people may Immigrating to a new country puts resent the fact "that you have come to Lately there's been a flood of books abnormal stress on a marriage or family. enjoy what someone else sweated for on ethnic groups searching for their For many, it can mean years of ..." Racial discrimination on the job is roots. There are ethnic histories and separation. Often the husband will come frequently mentioned. A Filipino security ethnic song and dance groups, but little to Canada first with the thought of guard comments, "The money I earned has been said about recent immigrants to sending for his wife and family once he didn't make the way I was treated any Canada. The tendency is to think that has made some money. Many times this easier to take." Charles, an unemployed only immigrants in the old days had a never comes about. Jobs are hard to find immigrant tells his story: "We are not hard time. In The Immigrants Gloria or even non-existent if you don't speak given the opportunity to improve or to Montero gives us interview s with immig­ the language. Frequently, couples sepa­ demonstrate what we can do ... I have rants of all ages, from 4 to 84, from rated for a length of time will have my honours in economics . . . There are recent arrivals to those who have been troubles adjusting to the new-found jobs. Many times. I'd phone companies here for decades. She does not identify independence or Canadian ways one of and they couldn't distinguish who you them by ethnic group and we are given them has adopted. With a new culture were. They'd say, 'Come on right away only the first name and occupation of often comes a questioning of old roles, and apply for the job.' You'd go and each person. It is refreshing to note that for women especially. As one Jamaican they'd see you were black and they'd say the majority of the people interviewed says about his wife, "So she comes and it was filled two hours before. That are women. In fact, Montero started out starts to get fancy ideas here. Now she happened many times."

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 39 Children experience discrimination in school because of their looks, because of their dress or accent. ". . . Life for a child in a family of immigrants is quite a bit more difficult than for a Canadian child. The immigrant child must cope with the fact that at home his parents speak to him in one way and teach him certain things, while at school he learns something that is often quite different. The children resent this. They are young and don't want to be different. They don't even like their friends to know that their parents are Spanish, because in fights or disagreements it is often used to insult them." Even the old in Canada feel discriminated against. For immigrants who come to Canada when they are already old, this is especially hard. "I am too old for this country. This is a land for young people. Life for them is good . . . I am just an old woman who cannot find a job because she speaks such poor Ukrainian immigrants arriving at Quebec photo from Greater Than Kings English ... I have learned that old people should stay in their own countries opposed to the romanticized version of Given her anger and emotional where they know people and are Easter eggspf embroidery, sheepskin perspective, it is necessary to question known", says Ludwiga who came from coats and pyrohys. whether the author is recounting history Poland to be with her daughter. Although Kostash, Potrebenko and or using history as a lever for her own Gloria Montero pulls no punches. Keywan approach their subject ideology. At times she is thought She shows that Canada often gains more differently, the prevailing tone of All of provoking: "assimilation is a false issue. from its immigrants than it offers. From Baba's Children, Greater Than Kings Culture grows out of the history and the immigrant's point of view, our and No Streets of Gold is similar economic realities of a nation." At society is not as multicultural as the bitterness tinged with regret. As all other times she is unreasonable: "it is government would have us think. three of these books makes clear, obvious that the purpose of the schools Montero's Barry Broadfoot approach is a Ukrainian immigrants did not have an was cultural and hence, political great stimulus but it leaves the reader easy time of it. Canadian streets were annihilation." hungry for more analysis and hard facts. not paved with gold. The people were Although! Potrebenko's political The Immigrants stops us from feeling poor, exploited, and often treated with negativism is annoying, some of the smug, but it doesn't provide us with any prejudice and intolerance stories she recounts are terrifying, vivid ammunition to push for improvements. "bohunks". Indeed, it was even a major in detail. It is these stories of the struggle for them to be recognized as Ukrainian people, rather than bitter Julia Berry teaches English as a Second Ukrainians instead of Russians or facts and figures, that hook the reader Language and is managing editor of the Austrians. The courage of people who and make the book worth reading. NeWest Re View in Edmonton. uproot themselves from a feudal society If Potrebenko pretends to be to suffer incredible privation in a new objective, Kostash is unashamedly and hostile land is sobering; there can subjective. All ofBaba's Children be no doubt that these books are meant suffers from the same rhetoric and to provoke a twinge of guilt in the more polemicism that No Streets of Gold BITTERNESS AND REGRET privileged Anglo-Saxon Canadian. does, but for some reason, it is more No Streets of Gold and All of palatable. Kostash hits us over the head review by Aritha van Herk Baba's Children are unmitigatedly with just as many ugly facts and figures, All ofBaba's Children, by Myrna political. Although No Streets of Gold but her writing style is far superior and Kostash. Hurtig, 1977. $12.95, cloth. masquerades as a history, it is only her tone even manages a Greater Than Kings, by Zonia Keywan historical in that it is a chronological self-depreciating humour. The recounting of Ukrainians and Martin Coles. Harvest House, 1977. in Alberta. immigrant stories that Kostash $16.95, cloth. Both tone and approach deal with the transcribes are moving and powerful; No Streets of Gold, by Helen settlement, work, education, religion they serve as a voice that unites the Potrebenko. New Star Books, 1977. and identity of the Ukrainian immigrant book. Although All ofBaba's Children $5.95, paper. from a political standpoint. The is too long and repetitious, it is an Ukrainian is represented as the interesting exploration of the ethnic The recent, almost simultaneous exploited worker. Although Potrebenko consciousness and it thus suceeds in a publication of three books on cities numerous facts and figures to particular way that No Streets of Gold Ukrainians in the West should mean support her analysis, she neglects to does not. Kostash exhibits a definite something. Is it an indication of a give adequate documentation for those political awareness too. but her anger suddenly burgeoning and sentimental facts and figures. This failure, along seems to be rooted in a cultural rather interest in our ethnic origins. Or is it a with Potrebenko's obviously subjective than a political ideology. long-overdue recognition of the true interpretation of historical events does Kostash's implication that only story of Ukrainian immigrants as not add to the credibility of the text. Ukrainian immigrants suffered is

4O Branching Out irritating. It is true that Anglo-Saxons sections: 1926-1971, 1971-1975, 1975- were privileged, but many immigrants 1977, and five poems for her former experienced much the same kind of LIVESAY DISTORTED editor, Alan Crawley. The chronological treatment as the Ukrainians. An divisions show the growing uniqueness immigrant is an immigrant. of Livesay's voice, from the naive, What is most impressive about All review by Mary Lee Morton occasionally gushing girl to the spare, ofBaba's Children is Kostash's strong old woman. The most unified and The Woman I Am, by Dorothy Livesay. perspective. Rhetoric and bitterness lively section of the book is 1971-1975, Press Porcepic, 1977. $3.95, notwithstanding, Kostash does not paper. which includes several poems from pretend to be objective. This is as much The Woman I Am is deceptively Plainsongs. "Why We Are Here" a book about Myrna Kostash as it is a titled it represents only a fraction of summarizes Livesay's sexual and book about Ukrainian immigrants and Dorothy Livesay. My first impression spiritual ideas in classically simple we see clearly her attempt to come to was that the book presents a much more imagery. terms with her cultural roots. She is limited range of talent and subject matter Some of us are here concerned with defining her own this is usual in Livesay's work. All the because we were visited identity. It is this present awareness of poems seem to be about sex, menstrua­ at dawn the past that makes All ofBaba's tion, babies (having them and bringing were given a third Children exciting. them up), and more sex. There is a cluster ear of poems on widowhood and aging, but the Some of us especially If there's any way at all that I carry claustrophobically personal tone of the are women . . . on from where (Baba) left off, it won't book pervades. One extremely important Some of us are here be with her language, because I never aspect of Livesay's personality her knew as messages it, nor with her habits, because involvement in social issues and her they make no sense, nor with her faith, because in the small womb because I have lost it, nor with her devotion to justice is almost com­ Lies all the lightning. pletely missing from this selection. satisfaction, because my needs have The middle section Where did the political Livesay go? of the poem refers to changed. It will be perhaps with the Irving Layton's phrase: "The womb is thing Into another book, apparently. Read The she had no choice in bequeathing such a diminutive room in which her otherness. As the alien, the bohunk, Woman I Am in conjunction with Right to lie". the second-class citizen, and the ethnic, The contrast between the two poets is she passed on to me the gift of instructive. Layton's poetry about sex is consciousness of one who stands uneasy, focusses on power, and is outside the hegemonistic centre, and The dichotomy between the ultimately fearful of women. Livesay sees where the real world ends and the political-male and the personal-female leaves one with the impression that she phantasma of propaganda begins. loves men, including what poles is one which Livesay she refers to has in another poem as "the seven-inch As feminists, both Kostash and consistently rejected. It is surprising reach". Potrebenko closely examine the role of to find it so perfectly embodied in two Other sections of the book are not immigrant women. What they reveal of her books. quite as convincing as the 1971-1975. The about the role of women is both terrible first part, 1926-1971. has been redone in and impressive; these books are worth other books by Livesay, notably and reading if only for that. most completely in the Collected Poems. Greater Then King is the least Hand Left Hand and a more accurate It is difficult to rationalize the appear­ political of the three books. In portrait of Dorothy Livesay emerges. ance of the same poems for the fourth or comparison it is far less powerful. Right Hand Left Hand gains by the fifth time in yet another book. Collecting Keywan reveals little personal bias, but political and social commentary in poems the five poems for Alan Crawley in one neither does she offer any new insights. like "Day and Night" and "The place sheds an interesting light on She concerns herself primarily with Outrider"; the selection of "best loved Livesay's relationship with her editor, tradition and makes no evaluative poems" in The Woman I Am is but the section is out of balance with the statements, restricting herself to a correspondingly diminished. Oddly rest of the book. Sadly, the final section, relatively simple account of the enough, the social documentary/?/^? 1975-1977, shows a noticeable diminution Ukrainian immigrant's history and Hand Left Hand is dedicated to of poetic inventiveness. Poems like "Life lifestyle. Livesay's son, Peter Macnair; The Styles", "Still Life" and "A Certain After the fiery brandishings of Woman I Am is dedicated to her Dark" seem flaccid by comparison with Kostash and Potrebenko, Greater than daugher, Marcia Hays. The dichotomy Livesay's earlier work. Kings is tame reading. What does make between the political-male and personal- Altogether, The Woman I Am does the book interesting are Martin Coles' female poles of human nature is one not show Dorothy Livesay at her best. photographs. They are primarily which Livesay herself has consistently The book is sloppily produced and is a photographs of people the immigrants rejected. It is surprising to find it so partial and inaccurate sampling of her themselves. Most of them are posing, perfectly embodied in these two books. work. The serious reader would do facing and camera self-consciously. But One can only guess that the publisher better to invest in the Collected Poems, despite their careful expressions, one assumed the books were aiming at two and the casual reader would find the best sees in their eyes what Potrebenko, and different markets; an assumption both of this collection in the chapbook especially Kostash depict so well. crass and inaccurate. Plainsongs. Perhaps it is the fanaticism of every Although The Woman I Am is immigrant in search of a promised land. flawed, in my opinion, by its omission of Perhaps it is a hopeless hope. Livesay's powerful writing on social Mary Lee Morton has a Master's degree Aritha van Herk is a Canadian with issues, it does offer what any selection of in Canadian Literature from the Univer­ Dutch ' 'roots.'' Her novel Judith will be her work is bound to include: compelling sity of Calgary. published in the fall. and readable poetry. The book is in four

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 41 scenes of staff meetings at which she is friend" there would be evidence of a OH JULIA! OH HILARY! the only woman present dramatize the special warmth and rapport between power dynamics documented the books them the sort of closeness that women OH DORIS . . . like Men and Women of the Corpora­ now realize is possible and important in review by Sharon Batt tion. Presumably Anderson has also their relationships with one another. drawn from her own experience. She Instead, they seem to have continued to Two Women, by Doris Anderson. takes aim at such institutions of the see one another over the years out of MacMillan Co. of Canada, 1978. Cloth, business world as the Old Boy System, mere habit. As for the little matter of $9.95. but she does not question the extreme Julia's fling with Howard, we are told The publisher's blurb gives the first division of the business world into that she "agonized" over the pain it could cause Hilary, clues that Two Women is aimed at the executives and support staff. Her but once Howard is out of bestseller list, not literary posterity: "a irritation at custom-furnished offices and the picture she decides to have the big popular novel . . . full of event. . . generous expense accounts is not child and makes up an amusing story to some very explicit sex." Each chapter founded in a belief that these frills may keep Hilary from probing into the number is adorned with a cute graphic be unnecessary, but in a resentment that question of paternity. She needn't have symbol, something I hadn't seen since I they are reserved primarily for men. worried. Hilary immediately insists on gave away my fairytale books. Fair Hilary is first presented as so buying a pram and gushes, "Oh Julia, this is enough. Canadians need to escape too, self-centred and shallow that she is going to be such fun." Scenes like this illustrate the and the bestseller lists tell us that a good hardly credible as a person, let alone a ultimate pointlessness number are doing it with Doris Ander- friend of hard-working Julia. In later in trying to divorce the content of the son's first novel. chapters, drinking heavily and fantasiz­ book from its style. It may be Anderson does A significant reason for the book's ing about the good old days when recognize that women can have sales is undoubtedly the fact that Howard loved her, she is merely pitiful. extraordinary friendships but lacks the Only skill as a fiction writer Anderson was editor of Chatelaine for in a few scenes with her daughter to develop one. It eighteen years, stepping down less than a does she elicit sympathy from the reader. would take an inordinate amount of skill year ago to write this book. Chatelaine I was surprised by the portrayal because to raise this friendship above the readers, numbering well over a million, it suggested that Anderson lacks em­ pedestrian, and if that's what Anderson provide a large potential audience, and pathy for the woman who is, literally, a was aiming for she missed the mark by miles. the book has been heavily promoted in chatelaine or mistress of her home. There As a vehicle the magazine. As the woman who lent are sardonic descriptions involving for ideas, a popular book some gray matter to Canada's oldest Hilary that read like take-offs of stock has the same limitations as a fashion and recipes publication, Ander­ women's magazine articles: her make-up popular magazine. It's not meant to be son should be a few leaps ahead of the routine, the commentary of a fashion taken too seriously, but neither can it be rest of us in her understanding of facts show she helps to organize, her earnest dismissed when so many people are and ideas that concern women. I was attempts to follow the "correct" proce­ reading it. Are thousands of Canadian curious to see to what extent she would dure for being a wife and mother. The women searching Two Women to find include lessons of the women's move­ housewife role is still with us and its answers to the problems of love, ment in her book. They aren't hard to crippling effects are worth yet another marriage and making it in the working find, but the emphasis is on feminism in look. Unfortunately, the reader can feel world? Absurd or is it? After all, the conservative tradition, namely, no compassion for this caricature or see Hilary did read all the books and equality for women within the existing any hope for her future. magazine articles that told her how to structure. In a few scenes Julia explicitly keep her marriage alive . . . expresses her ambivalence about radical The two women of the title are Julia, Sharon Batt is editor of Branching Out. a divorced career woman, and Hilary, feminism. At a meeting of college women her friend of over twenty years. Most of who are discussing the formation of a Julia's energy goes into her work and feminist magazine she is impatient with raising her model son, but she manages a the group's lack of direction. "They're deus ex machina pregnancy during a talking to each other too much", she brief romance with Hilary's husband, says "Totally female groups were Howard. Hilary's life revolves around probably a great psychological boost a looking after her appearance, organizing few years ago. Now the problem is to be CHANGING LIVES little social functions and accomplishing effective working with men." Totally various errands not carried out by the female feminist groups are set up partly review by Joanne Hedenstrom hired help. Both women's lives take a as a tool to avoid traditional structures in melodramatic turn when Howard jumps which men dominate women, not simply The Women's Room by Marilyn French. unsuspectingly into a bathtub death trap to provide a "psychological boost." Summit Books, 1977, hardcover, $13.50. that Hilary has set for herself. The rather Julia's lack of sympathy for this goal "Women's literature" improbable complications of plot and seems particularly strange given her own is a term one cannot yet use with critical certainty, emotional conflict are inability to get ahead by the route of hard resolved too although books are now beginning to conveniently to give the reader much work and communicating with men. Her delineate what is unique about women's pause for thought. The book ends ultimate success in getting promoted writing. Such books have had a historical happily with Julia pregnant, and Hilary occurs when her incompetent superior bias and have been limited to examining widowed, vacationing develops a heart murmur, not because of together at a who wrote, when, and about what tropical resort. significant changes in the attitudes of the themes and concerns. Often, the The most carefully men with whom she works. books developed theme seem giant and cumbersome because is Julia's struggle to get the promotion I was dismayed by Andersen's they have so much to telt the attempt she deserves at the book publishing portrayal of the 'friendship' between to fill in the company where she is an editor. The Hilary and Julia. I took for granted that if unwritten literary history of Hilary was Julia's "oldest and best centuries of women writers is a massive

42 Branching Out job. But if you read several examples, ences with another woman was very This novel is an experience that such as A Literature of Their Own by likely a necessity in the past it is clear must be lived as well as read because it Elaine Showalter, and Literary Women in The Women's Room that it is no less a is not a fairy-tale or a bedtime story. It is by Ellen Moers, you begin to understand necessity now. The need of women, as a a lengthy book and progress from cover how women write and think, the repressed majority, to gain comfort and to cover is slow, but unforgettable. For problems and concerns which inform solace by bringing their joys and once you can believe the blurb on the their themes, and the distinctive charac­ concerns to friends is emphasized and book jacket The Women's Room is "the teristics in their use of language and dramatized in The Women's Room. In a kind of book that changes lives" and it is metaphor. way, the talk of the main circle of friends "a classic of the woman's movement". I Such an understanding is all the tells the story, and the development of would only add that it is also a classic of more difficult to achieve because women that circle of women reflects the growth women's literature. of women over the centuries as well have always been subject to male Joanne Hedenstrom teaches English at editorship and male readership. What as the growth of women from the 1950's to 1970's. the University of Alberta. She specializes would women write if they were free of in women's literature. these influences? Since male editorship, criticism and publishers are still facts in a woman writer's life, the real woman's Event is a literary and visual arts magazine which is voice may not be known for some time; published twice a year by Douglas College. Short but The Women's Room by Marilyn event stories, poetry, drama, reviews, essays, photography French is the first convincing sign such a Journal of the and graphics are included in the 130 page issues. voice will be heard. Regardless of what contemporary arts Event has published several special issues which else is said of this novel, the reader must include: International Women's Year issue (4/3), prose admit it is profoundly a woman's book, fiction of Howard O'Hagan (5/3), and new writer's and that this can now be said with issue (6/1). admiration rather than condescension. Event has included contributions from Alden Nowlan, Pat Lowther, Cynthia Ozick, Gordon Pmsent, George verbally share intimate Bowering, George Woodcock, Charles Bukowski, The ability to Denes Devenyi, and Howard O'Hagan. experiences with another women was very likely a necessity in the past — it Event magazine is available by subscription. If you wish to subscribe fill out the attached card and return to is clear in The Women's Room that it Douglas College with your cheque or money order. is no less a necessity now. Single copies are available at your local campus or community bookstore.

The Women's Room is not perfect (thank goodness). It is sometimes cumbersome, too long, and too much like a catalogue of women's lives. Yet it is also very involving and at its climax all the currents which the book has established coalesce. It is difficult to imagine a woman reader who will not be changed by this most forceful experi­ ence. The style of the novel is curious. There is an epic quality to the story, and it is told in an almost choric or collective manner, despite the first person narrator Subscription/Order lorm remittance to: and heroine. The book chronicles the Complete, tear-off and mail with event Douglas College, P.O. Box 2503 story of many other women whose Journal of the New Westminster, B.C. Canada, V3L 5B2. voices seem to speak for themselves. contemporary arts The story of Mira (the heroine) is Single copy and subscription rates: check appropriate box. punctuated by the first-person rumina­ Single copy: individual $2.50___ library $3.00 ___ tions of the feminist narrator, and Four issues/two years: supplemented by the discussions Mira individuals $9.00 __libraries $11.00 ___ has with a group of friends who share their concerns and convictions and give Bookstores (20 percent discount on orders of 10 or more). each other moral support. At first, these intrusions are annoying to the reader, I enclose $_ .cheque__Money Order. until one remarkable fact becomes clear, a fact often overlooked by male editors and readers. It is simply, that the woman's tradition is oral, not written. Renewal. Name. Women learned to teach one another and comfort one another through talk. The Address . stories we told (condescendingly labelled Old Wives' Tales) were the reassuring . Postal code_ expressions of a fellow traveller. The ability to verbally share intimate experi­

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 43 Pocket Crumbs also suffers from which has not been ordered into poetic ROMANTIC CONVENTIONS unmotivated changes within a single convention. image. Feminine experience ranges from i was a soldier and you nursed my girlhood to ninety in Ghost House, a hideous mind series of short stories about ordinary review by Catherine McQuaid i was a child until you aborted my women, told in a plain style, with mother humour and fondness. The only excep­ d'Amboise, Jacqueline, Mother Myths. Is this "you" a psychiatrist or a tional character among these women is Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, gynecologist? Throughout Pocket Belle, a tough alcoholic who frees herself 1978. Crumbs, this colloquial speaking voice is from a lifetime of "digging goddam McCracken, Kathleen, Reflections. Fre­ used; it could have been used very potatoes" by taking off in her husband's dericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, successfully, but unfortunately it mum­ truck with the grain check in her hand. 1978. bles on, contributing to a passive tone. Reading tastes may perpetuate Oulton, Bawnie, Pocket Crumbs. Fre­ Water Book makes use of some Romantic conventions in poetry, placing dericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, Anglo Saxon diction, the kind one reads restrictions upon the poet which are not 1978. in Tolkein, "maunder", "thrum" and placed upon the prose writer. Almost all Rolyn, Sarah, Shadowplay. Fredericton: "thralldom". They do not help sustain the poetic stances of this poetry may be Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1978. the earnest water imagery upon which a result of the type of poetry being writ­ the verse is built. Drawings by the sisters ten, rather than the content, the female Simmie, Lois, Ghost House. Moose Jaw: of the poets in Water Book, as well as in condition. Only two collections were not Thunder Creek Publishing Co-operative Under this World's Green Arches are as limited by conventional images of wo­ Ltd., 1976. decorative as the poetry. men, one from a very young poet and the West, Ann J., The Water Book. other from a prose writer who is working Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, on a novel. 1978. Catherine McQuaid is a graduate stu­ Willie, Mary, Under this World's Green Are all poets introverted, isolated dent in Comparative Literature at the Arches. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry from a female collectivity, eternally University of Alberta. Books, 1978. adressing a male "you" who never Reading six volumes of poetry responds? where one encounters the conventional solitary and suffering poet can be demoralizing. Are all poets introverted, isolated from a female collectivity, There are three poems addressed to MORE BOOKS eternally addressing a male "you" who Marion in Shadow Play, but Marion's never responds? Few women appear in relationship to the speaker is elusive and these poems, except, in one case, a ambivalent. Marion, it seems, is suffering poem dedicated to a mother, "Gift in nature. The other woman in this SHADD, The Life and Times of Mary Winter", where the mother becomes a collection is "Blue Girl", Modigliani's Shadd Cary by Jim Bearden and Linda shelter for suffering animals in winter! lover, an orphan who committed suicide Jean Butler. NC Press Ltd. Toronto, Not only do the majority of these while pregnant with his child. Is it any 1977, cloth $16.00, paper $7.95. poets portray themselves as isolated wonder the poet "wait(s) here for the from other woman and suffering at male cold coming"? Mary Shadd Cary was one of those hands, but the images which convey this Reflections is the only volume of trailblazers who establish numerous firsts sentiment are those traditionally assigned poetry in this group which deals with (first black woman in North America to to women by male poets- water/cycles, something other than unhappy love edit a weekly newspaper, one of the first earth/seasons. In the best manner of affairs. Written by a sixteen year old black women to lecture in public sentimental poetry, sexual acts are high school student, it is poetry freed indeed one of the first women to lecture coquettishly disguised: from the cliches of post-Romantic verse: in public in the Southern U.S., Howard Her fingers deep upon his blackness the suffering, isolated poet with no sense University's first woman law student, Palms together of a female collectivity, and images of etc.) and then sink into undeserved rolling over trees women as earth or water. Each poem in obscurity. This biography spans her life that he grows to be Reflections is an episode, a confronta­ (1823-1893) from her birth in Delaware in Mother Myths, despite its promising tion with the "facts of life": death, a home that was a station for the title, is the best example of male-directed cruelty and loneliness. Realizations and underground railway, to her sojourn in sentiment. Medusa and Oedipus are the observations are gently arrived at, such Windsor. Ontario where she established only myths in the volume, unless one can as "Memory": and taught a school for refugee blacks, reduce earth/woman tree/man to a myth. How like a man her newspaper work in Toronto and In any case, Medusa is hardly a female your silent Chatham, and later (during and after the model. Mother Myths exemplifies con­ sun-up Civil War) her return to the United temporary poetic formulae: evocative leaving States where she finally established her imagery rather than logical progression From a tombstone inscription describing law practice in Washington (at the age of through a poem. In "Pomegranate a wife as a "lamb of God", the poet 60!). It was a remarkable life, all the Dream" a lover is a forest, then rain in a reconstructs a personality who may have more remarkable when the odds against torn bronze bed, which becomes a read drugstore novels her are considered. "smoky bedpost". The lovers end up as on Sunday afternoon Authors Bearden and Butler are to seeds of a talisman. This may be had four lovers be commended for giving this determined evocative imagery but one might ask and felt no guilt. woman some long overdue recognition. how they are related to each other. This is the poetry of feminine experience The research and documentation are

44 Branching Out admirable since much of the information excerpts from her correspondence and In One Child by Choice Hawke and had to be gleaned from private corres­ newspaper articles in the rest of the book Knox explore the myths and facts, pondence, newspaper files, and archives. display a wit and acuity that make this advantages and disadvantages of the one If there is a problem with this book it is book a pleasure to read. child family. Emphasis on the advan­ the incongruity of style, perhaps because by Cora Taytor tages is heavy: a one child family has of the joint authorship. The majority of more money, more time, more energy, the book is written in a lively, almost Cora Taylor is an Edmonton writer. closer relationships, and more career lyrical style which makes enjoyable options for the adults, they claim. A reading although it occasionally gets out good deal of energy is devoted to of hand: exploding the myths about lonely only Windsor, Canada West? Some place children. According to Hawke and Knox, single children are more mature, west of the Rockies, right? One Child by Choice,by Sharryl Hawke self-confident and well-adjusted socially Wrong. Follow this closely. and David Knox.Prentice-Hall Inc.. most Canada West, now Ontario, was 1977. $4.50, paper. than those from large families. The formerly Upper Canada. encouraging aspect of their discussion of Upper Canada was below Lower I have always been prejudiced the family is their assumption one Canada (geographically, that is). against one-child families. As the rarely made by people who write on the Although not very far west, Canada youngest of five children I was only too subject that parents, and particularly West was west of Canada East aware that if my parents had decided to mothers, have the right to consider their (parts of it at least). limit their family, I was the one who own needs and life plans when deciding The difference in style is most noticeable would have been limited right out of how many children to have. in the last chapters. Perhaps the authors existence. However, with apologies to were labouring under the difficulty of John. Norma. Allan and Robert, growing The mother of a single child is treated up in a large family is not the less solid information to go on, for. apart like a faulty cigarette machine; she is from her activities in the Women's unadulterated paradise that some defen­ Suffrage Association (with Emancipa­ ders of the lifestyle would have us figuratively kicked in the ankles and tion, black men received the vote so that believe. knocked in the back to see if women like Shadd who had worked for I never questioned the desirability of somehow, someone can't knock the cause of rights for Blacks, were now multiple-child families until my own son another baby package out of her. starting all over for rights for Women) was two, and became independent there seems to be little data on her law enough to allow me to pursue other Hawke and Knox argue the obvious: practice or her personal life during the interests besides parenting. At that stage, that having one child is a perfect Washington years. Whatever the cause it became obvious to me that the more compromise between having none and the writing is much less interesting. children a woman has, the fewer her having a large family. That this fact is Perhaps it is the lack of quotations from chances to freely determine her own obvious has not made it socially Shadd's own writing for the many lifestyle. acceptable. Social pressure to produce brothers and sisters (or at least a brother or sister) for one's child is unremitting. The mother of a single child is treated like a faulty cigarette machine; she is figuratively kicked in the ankles and knocked in the back to see if somehow someone can't knock another baby CANADIAN FICTION MAGAZINE #28 package out of her. The fact that the sibling relationship is possible seems to produce the supposition that it is THE SPECIAL ISSUE necessary. Reproductive freedom has long been FEATURING MAVIS GALLANT recognized as one of the most fundamen­ tal aspects of women's liberation. Such freedom presupposes a continuum of including new fiction, worksheets, photos, an exclusive interview choices, from having no children, to at her home in Paris with editor GEOFF HANCOCK, art by JOE having one. to having two or more. As long as the overwhelming social pre­ PLASKETT, bibliography, and further contributions by RONALD judice against single-child families domi­ HATCH, PETER STEVENS, ROBERTSON DAVIES, and GEORGE nates our thinking, women will be unable WOODCOCK. to choose a family size freely. One Child by Choice leans toward By subscription: 4 issues $9/year, $10/U.S.A. Single copy $3.75 promoting the single child family, but it does attempt to present some of the (inc. postage) Available March 1978 from: disadvantages encountered by single children and their parents. On the whole CANADIAN FICTION MAGAZINE it is a balanced exploration of one option for families. P.O. BOX 46422 STATION G by Mary Lee Morton VANCOUVER, B.C., CANADA V6R 4G7 Mary Lee Morton is a field officer in the Edmonton office of the Secretary of State Department.

Volume V. Number 3. 1978 45 films

OUTRAGEOUS! review by Joanne Hatton Written and directed by Richard Benner. Starring Craig Russell, Hollis McLaren, Alan Moyle. Canada, 1977. A more cunning title for this film could not have been chosen. The characters and plot are undeniably outrageous yet even more outrageous is the effect the film has on the audience. One leaves the theatre not entirely secure in the belief that "normal" people lead happier lives, or indeed that a distinction can be made between normal and abnormal. Without a doubt one feels that conventional lives are less exciting and, most likely, dull. "No dazzle," as Robin says at the beginning of the film. Twinges of envy for the excitement and intensity of the major characters swell as the plot progresses; for Liza's imagina­ tive writing, her secret language and people from "the other place," for Robin's remarkable impersonations of famous women he admires and even for Allan Moyle, Craig Russell, Hollis McLaren courtesy of New Cinema Martin's resolute plans to end the Sino-Soviet border disputes by enticing Noteworthy for several reasons, crazy way, I wonder when they'll come the soldiers into massive gardens which Outrageous! is that rare phenomenon: a to take us away." Robin and Liza have are actually prison camps. Canadian enterprise. Producers William been friends for years and are quite open How can such an absurd-sounding Marshall and Hendrick van der Kolk are in expressing their love for each other. plot elicit such a response? A young Canadians, as is most of the cast. The They talk, laugh and cry together as they woman, played by Hollis McLaren, talented Richard Benner (a Kentuckian share their thoughts, fears and dreams. escapes from a mental institution and with extensive credits at the CBC) The only thing they don't do is sleep moves in with an old friend, Robin (Craig conceived the project and wrote the together. It is at this point that one Russell) who is a gay hairdresser and script, for this his debut as a feature begins to wonder whether this is just a budding female impersonator. The story director. Shot on location in Toronto and very tantalizing and unique twist of plot (adapted from Margaret Gibson's "But­ New York, Outrageous! reflects Benner's or if there is a lesson here in the art of terfly Ward"), concerns Liza's attempt schizophrenic affections for that loving. Although individually, Robin and to function outside of the institution "Toronto the good" which can be as Liza are undergoing some very serious against the advice of her doctor, family boring as it is pleasant. But Outrageous! personal crises, their relationship seems and friends. Robin supports and encour­ is one film that will not be patronized for remarkably free of tensions and prob­ ages her, helping her to fight off the its Canadian content alone. Its appeal lems. They do not question, moralize "bone crusher" and making her laugh at stems from the portrayal of a rather about or judge each other's actions, and herself and her situation. At the same bizarre life-style which, despite they defend each other against outsiders' time, Liza encourages Robin, who is everyone's better judgement, has a very criticism and judgement. Although they dissatisfied with his job and his life in healing effect on the characters involved. both pursue sexual relationships general, to strike out in the nightclub Probably the most fascinating aspect elsewhere, they seek emotional satisfac­ scene doing his impersonations of of the film, the relationship between tion and fulfillment from each other. One women like Mae West, Bette Davis, Robin and Liza is quite aptly described wonders if they are able to maintain their Carol Channing and Barbra Streisand in the line from a song which Robin (as relationship because they are both women he has admired and imitated all Peggy Lee) sings for Liza at the end of "crazies", to use Robin's word, or if it is his life. the film: "We love each other in our the nature of their love, without

46 Branching Out expectations and jealousies, which sus­ As for Craig Russell, he is a delight The story is telescoped. In the space tains them and assists them in overcom­ to watch. His Robin is almost upstaged of one year (the film takes us from ing their problems. The important point by his exceptional impersonations summer to summer) Erica, our heroine, is that it works: Liza finally banishes the audiences gasp with disbelief! Yet for all played with remarkable wit and sensitiv­ notion that she is the "one born dead" that, the character is sensitive, funny, ity by Jill Clayburgh, recovers from the and although she may never conquer and very appealing in a film which is as trauma of the unexpected breakup of a schizophrenia, she no longer feels thought-provoking as it is wistful and sixteen year marriage and meets the compelled to conform to society's warmly comic. most wonderful man who very quickly definition of normality. Robin sheds his and irrevocably falls deeply and passion­ somewhat respectable image as a hair­ Joanne Hatton is a freelance writer from Sarnia. Now residing in Edmonton, she ately in love with her. (We should all be dresser and pursues his new career, first so lucky.) And it has a built-in in gay clubs in Toronto and then in a works for the magazine Edmonton Report. guaranteed happy ending, evident from straight New York nightclub. the opening shot onwards. Erica is after all a healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted woman with a sense of humour, a healthy attitude towards sex, a happy rapport with friends and daughter, and is able to both AN UNMARRIED WOMAN give and receive love, generously. Needless to say, she is also attractive. A positive role model if there review by Jane Dick ever was one. Can a woman like this Written and directed by Paul Mazursky. lose? Not on your life! And if all this Starring Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates and isn't enough for you, she has a strong Michael Murphy. U.S.A. 1978. support system of an understanding daughter, an excruciatingly calm yet Not since I was twelve years old surprising female therapist, three close and free to spend my time as I chose women friends with whom she meets for have I spent an entire afternoon in a weekly "encounter" sessions, and her darkened cinema, watching the same marriage was a happy and loving one, to movie twice through. the last. (Yes Virginia, it can happen.) In this case, Paul Mazursky's latest Her ex-husband, Martin, a pleasant film. Had not hunger pangs, a sore but lost man, suffers considerable Craig Russell courtesy of New Cinema backside, and the joyous life-celebrating personal trauma throughout the film and The unconventional nature of the philosophy of the film so inspired me, I under the circumstances is a little too relationship does tend to obscure the fact might be sitting there yet. acquiescent in his ready support of her that they adopt fairly conventional An Unmarried Woman is an intelli­ new single life. A very important part of male-female roles. Liza is very depen­ gent, engaging, marvellous film, which Erica's life and development, Mazursky dent on Robin to calm her fears and to follows a woman in her late thirties too easily dispenses with Martin even convince her that she is capable of through the various stages of transition though Erica outgrows him. However, functioning outside of the hospital. Her from happily married to divorced to the essential factor in the saga of Erica schizophrenia cannot be ignored and her happily unmarried. vs. Martin is not the lack of depth in stay in the hospital has undoubtedly weakened her confidence, yet she does Jill Clayburgh not reject the tasks of housework and child-rearing as Phyllis Chester suggests is characteristic of the schizophrenic female. She seems quite content to keep house for herself and Robin and is delighted when she learns of her pregnancy. Robin, on the other hand, is quite ambitious in his career and although he appreciates Liza's encour­ agement, one does have the impression that he is much less dependent on her and could function quite well without Liza's support. The interesting aspect of their living arrangement is that it seems to have worked itself out, unaccom­ panied by demands or expectations. Rather than being debilitating for Liza, her role provides a very positive and necessary function in her life. She becomes less frightened and more independent to the point where she can manage on her own when Robin goes off to New York. In making a difficult character quite believable, Hollis McLaren, an accomplished actress, is extremely good.

Volume V, Number 3, 1978 47 which it is explored, but that it is a strata, are a varied and interesting JOURNEY divorce without bitterness. They suffer sampling of personalities. continued from page 15 hurt, guilt, loneliness, frustration, de­ Every character in An Unmarried of mother's milk too contaminated for spair, anger, and outright hatred, but yet the Woman has experienced divorce babies to drink and of a world bent on never fall into the miserably comfortable film, on this point, is not cliched. destroying itself. trap of blaming each other or anyone else Divorce is treated as a fact, not an issue. After Pauling's visit, the tempo for circumstances for which they are It is treated as likely but not inevitable picked up. Weekly we wrote letters, responsible. Theirs is a maturing experi­ and is looked at as a stage in a progress, sometimes to the editorial pages, some­ ence, not a destructive one. a lesson learned; like falling down as a times to the politicians. We organized An Unmarried Woman is an affirma­ child, it becomes one more reason to marches and we kept the issue alive. tive film. It does not deny pain or learn to walk. Learning to walk, for Across the country demonstrations were weakness, neither does it dwell on them. Erica, is the discovery that in coupledom Redgrave Surely we can fill in our own blanks. held and in England Vanessa she is not the other half of a similarly was arrested for civil disobedience. In a particularly moving scene, incomplete person, but that she is a President Kennedy was now in power in Erica, one sleepless night, assembles all whole individual, and when added to the United States. He put a partial end to that is left of her marriage sports another whole person they can create the issue by signing an agreement with equipment and toiletries Martin has left any number of wonderful sums. Russia not to test nuclear weapons in the behind, some photographs, her wedding That An Unmarried Woman was atmosphere. France refused to partici­ ring and dumps them all on the dining both written and directed by a man is pate and continued testing. Later, China as her daughter watches room table scarcely evident, if at all. Early on in her became involved in the arms race. silently. The effect is heart-rending, relationship with Saul, Erica asks if he is Today, world leaders are still trying to devastating, draining, cleansing. disappointed in her (gritting of teeth on resolve the problems of disarmament. At one of Erica's lowest points her my part) because she once had sex with But since the early 1960's, all nuclear her, "Do you feel like this therapist asks her friendly neighbourhood jerk. But a testing by the United States and Russia last forever?" There is a is going to few scenes later when he expresses has been underground. significant pause. Of course that's how favour with one of her decisions she Ten years later, in 1971, when the but she also knows it won't, she feels, wheels around at him, "Approve? What Americans planned to denotate a nuclear and furthermore, she is not about to let do you mean you approve? I'm not doing device at Amchitka in the Bering Sea, it. it for your approval!" She changes, as another cry of horror went up, only this Mazursky has chosen to locate we all do, as her needs dictate. Erica against backgrounds which reflect time the leaders of the Vancouver The script is rich in female man­ establishment participated. The Van­ her emotional state. Making her first nerisms, shared intimacies, and that uneasy step into a new social life we find couver Sun, The Province, the Van­ unique feminine raunch to which few couver Board of Trade all raised their her in a bustling Chinese restaurant, men are privy. It explores female surrounded by chattering people, strange voices against the Amchitka blast. No camaraderie, strong, indispensible longer were the activists labelled foods, and casual friends who appear out friendships among women the kind of nowhere. The camera is constantly "pinkos" and "fellow travellers" the movies, until late, would have had us their ranks were now filled with moving in this scene, not allowing us or believe only existed among men. But I Erica to focus, to find a stable resting respectable businessmen. Thousands of to call it a "women's film". It is place. Having rediscovered love, self- hesitate residents of B.C. signed petitions and who happen to be esteem, and sexual pleasure, Mazursky about people wrote letters trying to stop a nuclear and who happen to be vitally takes her skating, hand in hand with her women blast from taking place virtually on their in living full and happy lives. three friends. The scene opens with a interested doorstep. It was to no avail. The not a perfect film. The music is close-up on her face, radiant, floating It is Americans went ahead with their blast, gracefully across the blue sky of the too present, the editing wants polishing, Vancouver was not destroyed by a tidal screen flying. Her affair with Saul and we could legitimately beg more wave, and today when Amchitka is on many points, but within the (Alan Bates) is heralded by a multi­ subtlety mentioned, few remember the cause. the film sets for itself I think coloured splash of paint across a white parameters Today, more Canadians are ready to canvas, a happily ever-present image for we have to accept it, and doing so, find it take a stand on environmental issues. a pleasureable and uplifting experience. the rest of her screen life. When a Newfoundlander clubs a baby Mazursky has given us a specific An Unmarried Woman is a unique seal over the head on an ice-floe in the particular people in a film. It is peopled with women, in a two story about Atlantic, when a smelter in Sudbury singular city who are financially and to one ratio over men. The men range pours arsenic into the air, when 2-4-D emotionally equipped for survival but his from crass to weak to damn near perfect chemicals are used to combat weeds in overall philosophy is for everyone to (Saul) but are all portrayed with some British Columbia lakes, voices share: 'celebrate!' It is summed up, but sympathy. After all, being a wonderful everywhere are raised in outrage. not defined, in the final scene (which I person ain't all that easy in the And what of me the young naive won't reveal) in an unparallelled glorious high-pressure urban world (N.Y., N.Y. school teacher? I'm no longer teaching. I image of a single woman holding love to be exact, but familiar nonetheless). am in the process of organizing a and freedom in her outstretched arms, But the women ah! they are all coalition of citizens in the Greater with all the responsibility, awkwardness, positive characters, each and every one. Victoria area who will work toward the and dizzying joy they both imply. This is not to say they don't have tneir elimination of all sewage outfalls in the weak sides they do — but they know Jane Dick is a Montreal screenwriter and province. When you see the slogan where they are and where they'd like to assistant director of a repertory cinema "Follow the birds to Victoria" re­ be and are not afraid to ask for help in in that city. member that daily the city of Victoria their struggle towards a positive future pours millions of gallons of raw sewage for themselves. They're resilient women, into the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Then and though they have all been extracted think of me, and my journey from a from the same comfortable economic tranquil domestic life.

48 Branching Out Announcing the new society notes conserver Notes was started in 1975 by the Science society Council of Canada, as part of its Conserver Society notes project. It quickly became widely known among pro­ fessionals and citizens interested in the concept of the conserver society, publishing such articles as Arthur Cordell's critique of marketing and advertising, and Amory Levins' scenarios of energy-efficient futures for Canada. But the heart of Notes, in many ways, was its coverage of new literature, current events, and trends in public policy relevant to the conserver society. The Science Council's project has now com­ pleted its work, with the publication of Report No. 27, Canada as a Conserver Society. But Notes, now published by Alternatives, Inc., is still making a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about a conserver society for Canada. In the first issue of the new Notes: a special report on energy, jobs, and the economy. In the second: Charles Caccia, MP, on solar energy for Canada; Hazel Henderson on the Carter administration and the in­ adequacy of economics; the statement of a special Science Council workshop on the conserver society. Upcoming: special reports on recycling and re­ source recovery; women in the conserver society; cooperative institutions and social change; the state of Yes, it's a bargain. ..please enter my the solar energy art; equity in the conserver society. subscription to Conserver Society Notes Plus, in every issue, literally dozens of abstracts ($5.00 a year; students $3.00) of recent books and articles from around the world; re­ Name ports on current and upcoming conferences; news Address items on technological developments, business and public policy trends. Topics like Quality-of-Life indica­ tors; business and the Conserver Society; nuclear Code power; sun rights; transportation. "Canada's leading magazine in the War on Conserver Society Notes, P.O. Box 2097, Waste". That's how the Science Council describes Station C, Downsview, Ontario MSN 2S8 the new Notes, At just $5.00 a year, it's also one of I Canada's leading bargains. 5^ You'll never know, Eve, ""you ask... so ask us! at the Alberta women's Bureau If Eve had been able to ask Information sheets on the following subjects someone about her rights and are presently available — free of charge. responsibilities Check those of interest to you and mail within the law, this coupon or phone 427-2470. perhaps she would have decided against the apple. TO: ALBERTA WOMEN'S BUREAU It's hard to make the right decision 1 402 CENTENNIAL BUILDING without all the facts, especially 10015 - 103 AVENUE EDMONTON, ALBERTA T5J OH1 on issues that affect you as a Please send me. free of charge, the information sheets woman. Knowing the particulars I have checked below. and procedures D Changing Your Name DA Woman's Rights might not get you D Wills and Estates DThe Illegitimate Child into paradise, but at least for Albertans D Establishing a Good QChildren: Custody Credit Record you won't unwittingly invite the and Access D Alberta Labour punishment D How to Prepare a Legislation of Interest Eve did. So ask us — Meaningful Resume to Women in the Paid about any topic you're interested DHelping You Cope Work Force with Widowhood dProbate Procedure in. We can probably help.

NAME .

ADDRESS

CITY . ___ _ POSTAL CODE /dlberra WOMEN'S BUREAU