Of course one keeps a Diary with a vague consciousness that at some time or another, some person or another, will read some part or another of that Diary. Now, in my case, that is rather an important consideration. Living as I do—in the atmosphere of 'headquarters'—visiting as I do . . . with the men who are now making part of the History of their country, I am always afraid of putting anything in these pages, which, in time to come, I may find ought not to have been written.

There is no denying [that] Journal writing ... is somewhat of a responsibility & circumstances make it decidedly so in mine.

(Agnes Macdonald's Diary, 17 November 1867) PEACE, ORDER, AND 'GOOD HOUSEKEEPING': FEMININE AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE IN LADY AGNES MACDONALD'S CANADA

by

Robin Sutherland

B.A., Wilfrid Laurier University, 1990 M.A., Acadia University, 1995

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Ph.D.

in the Graduate Academic Unit of English

Supervisor: Wendy J. Robbins, Ph.D., Department of English

Examining Board: Gail Campbell, Ph.D., Department of History, Chair Margaret Conrad, Ph.D., Department of History Mary Rimmer, Ph.D., Department of English

External Examiner: Janice Fiamengo, Ph.D., Department of English, University of Ottawa

This dissertation is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK

January, 2010

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••I Canada For Don, who saw me through. ABSTRACT

After she married John A. Macdonald on the eve of Confederation, Agnes

Macdonald witnessed the ways in which a country came into being, and did so from a unique perspective: that of the wife of Canada's first prime minister. Committed to her husband's vision of nation building, Lady Macdonald soon found herself helping to build a civil society in the new Dominion. While she could not contribute to this undertaking through the formal politics of her world (she could neither vote nor run for office, for example), she contributed nonetheless. As a "Mother of Confederation" or a

"citizen-mother," Agnes Macdonald worked through her church and other philanthropic organizations to promote those social ideals and institutions integral to a functioning civil society. She also contributed to the cultural imagining of the new nation through her private and published writing. Drawing upon the images associated with the order, security, and prosperity of a civil society (such as home, church, military, and economic activity), Lady Macdonald preserved representations of the ideal nation.

If her literary contribution is modest, it is wide-ranging in its diversity. In addition to keeping a diary in the earlier years of her marriage, Lady Macdonald published a small number of travel and political sketches during the late 1880s and early

1890s. In these works, we encounter the various geographic and social landscapes of her world, from the most private confines of her home in Ottawa (Eamscliffe), to the public

Parliament buildings, to the farthest reaches west of the growing Dominion (in British

Columbia). In these works, we encounter Lady Agnes Macdonald's "Canada," a gendered literary representation of her vision of the new Dominion.

iii PREFACE: A Journey to Eastbourne

In the spring of 2003, on a very hot day, I made a pilgrimage to Eastbourne,

England, where I visited the grave of Lady Agnes Macdonald, the Baroness of

Earnscliffe.

I remember the heat. I remember the wilted marigolds and impatiens at the foot of her grave, and the good feeling I had when I weeded and watered them. But most of all, I remember thinking how out-of-place Agnes Macdonald's grave seemed, right next to one of the main roads through the cemetery, and crowded by the other headstones. It seemed impossible to me that a woman who had travelled across and through such incredible distances and geographies should come to rest in these cramped quarters, and so far away from where I believed her home truly was, back in Canada.

With intelligence, wit, and a strong religious faith, Agnes Macdonald pioneered the social-political world of early Ottawa. Over a century ago, she wrote about the excitement of being the prime minister's wife on the very first Dominion Day, her impressions of the political proceedings in Parliament, and the exhilarating experience of travelling across a new nation. As one of our Canadian foremothers, she importantly informs our sense of who we are—as women, as Canadians, and as writers—and how our nation has evolved. I consider her writing, in all its diversity, "narratives of nation," the stories she wished to preserve of her life and her world. Stories she wished to preserve for us.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people took this journey with me. I particularly wish to acknowledge and to thank ~

Don, for believing in "Another Sort of Life. " Mom and Dad, for who I am. Nikki, for being my best friend, and not just my sister. Gloria, for reminding me what resilience and individuality are all about. Lee Ellen and Kathleen, for solidarity and sleep-overs. Catherine and Daniel, for their love of family and of friends. Joanna, for saying it could be done (but could also not be done), and Michelene, for doing it. And, of course, Bronte, for putting everything into proper canine perspective.

I would also like to thank Wendy Robbins for her support and mentorship, and the members of my examining committee for all their help.

v PEACE, ORDER, AND 'GOOD HOUSEKEEPING': FEMININE AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE IN LADY AGNES MACDONALD'S CANADA

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

DEDICATION ii

ABSTRACT iii

PREFACE iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE: The Diarist, her Diary, and the Diary Dialogic 15

CHAPTER TWO: In Dialogue with the Citizen-Mother 43

CHAPTER THREE: Responding to the Citizen-Mother 103

CHAPTER FOUR: "A Builder of the Empire" 121

CHAPTER FIVE: Introduction to Travel Writing 156

CHAPTER SIX: The Citizen-Mother as Travel Narrator 170

CHAPTER SEVEN: Travel Architectures, the Symbols of Civility 189

CONCLUSION 248

WORKS CITED 256

APPENDIX A 278

CURRICULUM VITAE 1

INTRODUCTION

Hours after the death of her husband—and Canada's first prime minister1—Lady

Agnes Macdonald momentarily set aside her personal grief, and, thinking of the nation's loss, settled at her writing desk to compose a letter to Governor General Lord Stanley. In it, she "begg[ed] His Excellency, in the interests of Canada and of the Conservative party, to send for Sir Charles Tupper to form the new administration" (Pope, Public

Servant 79). While her advice passed unheeded (Stanley chose to approach Sir John

Sparrow Thompson instead),2 her political acumen apparently did not. Joseph Pope, Sir

John A. Macdonald's personal secretary at the time, later acknowledged that "[wjhatever may be thought of the propriety of Lady Macdonald's course in thus volunteering her advice to the Crown upon a matter of this kind, there exists no doubt in my mind that her counsel in itself was sound and should have been followed" {Public Servant 79).

This historic episode illustrates the level of public confidence and political participation that a woman like Lady Macdonald managed to acquire. Agnes clearly believed that she was, however indirectly, part of the political dialogue of her country: her opinion mattered, and a definite (and pre-determined) audience was interested in hearing what she had to say. Even Pope, a seasoned political "right hand," acknowledged the value of a woman's presence and voice in discussions about nation, even if it was not her place to direct political policy. Agnes Macdonald's gesture and Joseph Pope's reaction to it offer a glimpse into the dynamics of gender roles in the political world of nineteenth-century Canada, a glimpse that problematizes an application of the separate 2 spheres ideology, in which public and private spaces were polarized as being either exclusively masculine or feminine. The separation of masculine and feminine, public and private, and assertive and passive may be predicated on stereotyped assumptions about behaviour patterns, rather than the actual lived experiences3 of them, as some scholars have argued.4 Mary Kelley, for example, explores this "false binary" (15) in her proposal that we reconsider the core of what a functioning public entails. Kelley envisions a public space as a "civil society in which women and men engaged in individual action and critical thought" (15), regardless of the gendered nature of participation in this civil society: for example, men through their involvement with the state (e.g., government), and women through their involvement with civic organizations

(e.g., philanthropic and voluntary associations).

Post-Confederation Canada offers an interesting environment in which to consider the production of a civil society, because the process of creating a political, social, and cultural identity for the Dominion landscape drew upon both the masculine enterprises of settlement, industry, government, and a mobile police force, as well as the feminine enterprises of domesticity and efforts to support the moral welfare of families and public citizens. And, while there was no such legal entity as a "Canadian citizen" until well into the twentieth century, efforts involving franchise restrictions in the nineteenth century contributed to the evolution of a national sense of belonging (through a conceptualized ideal of citizenship),5 and who was qualified to belong to it.

Agnes Macdonald's appeal to Lord Stanley in June of 1891 was not the first time she had put pen to paper on subjects involving "the interests of Canada," her adopted 3 country.6 She sporadically kept a diary from 1867 to 1883, and later published three political sketches and three travel sketches in the years from 1887 to 1897. Agnes also maintained correspondence with Macdonald family members and Joseph Pope, which I refer to only briefly in this dissertation. Little has survived of the correspondence that was exchanged between Agnes and her husband's family, and the more extensive body of letters she wrote to Joseph Pope fall beyond the time period of this dissertation's focus. The latter group of letters was generated after Sir John A. Macdonald's death, when Agnes lived almost exclusively out of Canada, and these letters therefore lack the immediacy and concern with the subject of nation building that characterizes her earlier writing.

The writing strategies evident in Agnes Macdonald's diary and published sketches qualify them to be read as narratives about the natural and cultural landscapes of early Canada, and as such, she contributes to our understanding of Canada's historic and literary past. If Sir John A. Macdonald is popularly known as one of the "Fathers of

Confederation" for his efforts in creating the political infrastructure of a new nation, then the maternal equivalent may well be applied to Lady Agnes Macdonald, "Mother of

Confederation," for her participation in promoting and preserving the new nation in a distinctively feminine way.

A number of scholars have explored the influence of gender on the conception and construction of national identities. Nira Yuval-Davis, Daiva Stasiulis, Floya Anthias, and Jill Vickers,7 in particular, have theorized the relationships between women and nation, and women and civil society, in ways that help us to read the significance of the 4 symbols and the content that appear in Agnes Macdonald's writing. In her discussion about the philosophic underpinnings of nation building in British North America, for example, Vickers explains that the nineteenth-century concept of motherhood, as influenced by John Locke's theory about rational citizens, was a "potent tradition [that] made white citizen-mothers of the dominant, Anglo-American culture allies of the men building new nations" ("In Search of the Citizen-Mother" 2). Jill Vickers "understand[s] nationalism as involving both political and cultural aspects and projects" ("In Search of the Citizen-Mother" 1), and therefore extends the concept of "citizen" beyond the political or legal definition of the term. Thus, if a pre-twentieth century woman could not participate in nation building through her vote, she could participate in nation building through creative works (so through writing), or through the creation of institutions that would help establish a civil society in that nation ("In Search of the Citizen-Mother" 4).

Like "Mother of Confederation," the term "citizen-mother" evokes an identity that functions in both public and private worlds, and it is a particularly well-suited term to apply to Lady Agnes Macdonald, a woman (and mother) who by marriage and by her own actions was implicated in the project of nation building in nineteenth-century

Canada. Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias define the ways in which women may participate in national enterprises:

(a) as biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities;

(b) as reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national groups;

(c) as participating centrally in the ideological reproduction of the

collectivity and as transmitters of its culture; 5

(d) as signifiers of ethnic/national differences - as a focus and symbol in

ideological discourses used in the construction, reproduction and

transformation of ethnic/national categories;

(e) as participants in national, economic, political and military struggles. (7)

Thus, women contribute to the enterprise of creating a "nationalist mythology" physically and metaphorically: as mothers who give birth to new generations of citizens, as writers who contribute to the cultural preservation of their time and place, and as symbols of cultural norms, hopes, and ideals. Lady Agnes Macdonald attempted to make such contributions through her roles of wife, mother, social role model, and writer.

Jeanne Kay explores the gendered nature of nationalist mythology as a cultural production. In her article "Landscapes of women and men," she wonders: "If the cultural landscape is a male creation, then the exclusion of women from economic and landscape development should be made explicit. If the cultural landscape is not a uniquely male creation, then is there [a]8 distinct subtext of women modifying the land?" (439). In choosing to read the cultural landscape of Canada's past as a combined undertaking of both women and men, I read Agnes Macdonald's corpus of writing as a "distinct subtext" about a nation, or as a gendered form of national narrative. Her "subtext" is a narrative about the domestic influence of women in the private and public spaces of nineteenth-century Canada, a subtext in which Lady Agnes Macdonald, citizen-mother, engages us in a dialogue about gender and nation. It is also the voice that draws together all sections of this dissertation: as Agnes Macdonald attempted to dialogue with Lord

Stanley through her letter, so does she attempt to dialogue with the readers of her diary 6 and published writings, readers that include academics, researchers, and artists. In

Chapter 2,1 discuss the diarist's consciousness of outside readers in detail.

As a writer, Lady Agnes Macdonald occupies a singular and relatively unexplored position in Canadian diary scholarship, travel literature, and postcolonial studies. She lived during a time of profound political change, when British North

America began the process of becoming the Dominion of Canada, and she witnessed this new country grow geographically—and psychologically—westward, all the way to the

Pacific Ocean. Perhaps most importantly, she witnessed and experienced all of this from the unique, but quite isolated, position of being married to the man who first governed this new Dominion as its prime minister. An ideal scope for this dissertation research would involve published texts written by all Canadian prime ministers' wives, which would offer a broader context for comparing the content and narrative strategies that I explore in Agnes Macdonald's writing. The unfortunate reality, however, is that such texts do not exist, particularly texts written during the nineteenth century. Even if we expand the discussion to consider all the writing by Canadian prime ministers' wives (to date, eighteen women), archived personal papers appear to exist for only three of them

(Agnes Macdonald, Annie Thompson, and Frances Tupper), and published texts for another three (the travel sketches of Agnes Macdonald, and the autobiographies written by Margaret Trudeau9 and Maureen McTeer10).

The two women who could best be compared to Agnes by virtue of their being prime ministers' wives during the nineteenth century—Frances Tupper and Annie

Thompson—did not leave behind their impressions of the Canadian political world from 7 the perspective of living in Ottawa. While Frances Tupper's unpublished travel diary reveals a strong domestic preoccupation with family (particularly her children, who remained at home),11 it records her travels through Italy in 1890, and does not include any Canadian content.12 Of greater relevance is the prolific collection of letters exchanged between Annie Thompson and her husband, John Sparrow Thompson, when he served in Sir John A. Macdonald's Conservative cabinet; however, instead of joining her husband in Ottawa, Annie remained with their children at the Thompsons' family home in Nova Scotia. The two prime ministers' wives who offer interesting comparisons, although they lack a shared nineteenth-century context, are Margaret

Trudeau and Maureen McTeer. These two women are relevant because they add an element of continuity to my study of Agnes Macdonald, and they provide a number of insights into the evolving role of the Canadian prime minister's wife, particularly during a time when gender roles were undergoing great change. Trudeau and McTeer also use their biographies, in part, to answer the many criticisms and charges that the media levelled against them when their husbands held the office of prime minister, thus emphasizing the public status of the prime minister's wife, and the obligations that the position carried. While the media and public were very different in Agnes Macdonald's time, I show that it was still evident that she was conscious of her public image, and that she used her diary, in part, to craft an image of herself for public posterity.

Given these aspects of Agnes Macdonald's life, and of the material available to work with, I have chosen to discuss her writing within a "pioneering" context of other nineteenth-century women writers, despite the vast differences among them regarding 8 their travel agendas and their reasons for writing. I have also restricted my contextual focus to British or English-speaking Canadian writers, because I am interested in placing

Agnes Macdonald's writing within the context of nation building as endorsed by—or as an extension of—an Imperial or Euro-centric authority. The traditions of francophone women's writing and Aboriginal women's writing involve different cultural authorities and parameters that lie beyond the scope of this discussion. If English-Canadian women have been restricted in many ways from social power, Vickers suggests that "[t]heir cultures are official, and others are expected to assimilate; their languages are official, and others must learn to speak them. The idea that all women are oppressed by men ignores the benefits enjoyed by women who are part of secure cultural majorities"

("Feminisms and Nationalisms" 134).

In many ways, then, Agnes Macdonald, the Dominion's first-ever prime minister's wife can be considered no less a pioneer than, for example, sisters Frances

Simpson and Isobel Finlayson (married to high-ranking officials with the Hudson's Bay

Company, and generally acknowledged to be among the first European women to venture into Rupert's Land),13 or sisters Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr-Traill

(immigrants who "roughed it" as early settlers in Upper Canada).14 This group of women pioneered in remarkably diverse ways during different times in early Canada, but all were confronted at some point with issues involving a European civil society, or the lack of one, and their roles as women within these environments. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira

Yuval-Davis argue that men and women living in settler societies15 were confronted with a number of challenges in creating a "civil society," which they define as "a social space, 9 networks, institutions and social relations, including families, households, voluntary associations, [and] the production of signs and symbols" (17). The authors also propose that "nation" is a deliberately imagined and constructed entity, and that "[a]ny analysis of 'nations' in the context of settler societies can only define them as constructed rather than as essential phenomena" (19). Her narrative posturing and the use of devices like symbol, metaphor, and allusion, show evidence that Agnes Macdonald actively and consciously participated in a process of "imagining and constructing" a narrative about nation.

Overall, this thesis contributes to, and expands upon, the work that has already been done to recover the literary women of Canada's past. Since Carole Gerson's 1990 study on the selective and anti-female focus of Canadian canon formation, much has been done to address the processes and politics of exclusion that have produced the traditionally accepted canons of early Canadian writing.16 Carole Gerson's A Purer

Taste, and the two anthologies edited by Lorraine McMullen and Sandra Campbell,

Pioneering Women: Short Stories by Canadian Women. Beginnings to 1880, and

Aspiring Women: Short Stories by Canadian Women 1880-1900, have helped to recover early periodical literature and their writers. While W.J. Keith raises valid concerns about the "decline in cultural memory" (par. 11) that efforts to dismantle the traditional canon can entail, there must surely be ways for academic inquiry to preserve an existing literary heritage while at the same time acknowledging the other voices that have articulated their own "cultural memories."

In reclaiming a proper place and authority for Canada's early women writers 10 within a national literary canon, however, Gerson suggests that we conduct our search beyond traditional genres "by considering journalists and diarists along with the explorers, by including temperance and suffragist writers with the political writers . . .

[a]s well as valorizing the literary spheres favoured by women, such as juvenile literature" ("Anthologies and the Canon" 63). I argue that Agnes Macdonald's writing fits well within such a reconceptualization of "literature," and that her diary and political and travel sketches should be recognized for their contributions to our sense of how the writing within and about our country has evolved.

While the overall page count of her textual contribution may be considered modest, it is wide-ranging. Lady Agnes Macdonald documented her experiences of the new Dominion in diverse genres and contexts. Her writing takes us from the most private confines of her home in Ottawa (Earnscliffe), slowly outward to the public

Parliament buildings, and then to the farthest reaches west of the growing Dominion (in

British Columbia) by means of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Yet the further we move with Lady Macdonald from Earnscliffe, the more we realize that she never fully leaves home behind. Instead, home becomes a type of metaphorical "baggage" that Agnes takes with her when she travels. In her writing, the images associated with home (such as children or family) help her interpret the exterior landscapes of the Dominion (public spaces traditionally aligned with masculine energies and enterprises) in a distinctively feminine way. Nor are these homey images simple or benign. Rather, because they were presided over by the citizen-mother, a literary type or metaphor that incorporated the nineteenth-century ideal of matronly behaviour of women as the acknowledged "head" 11 of the household's moral and spiritual character, along with her influence in forming the basis of a number of public institutions that marked civil society, the presence of such images in an otherwise-masculine and outside environment bring her influence with them.17 The domestic and public authorities of the "citizen-mother" worked in her home

(as a wife and mother) and in public (through good works) to become, along with other citizen-mothers, their own type of "nation-makers as re/producers of good citizens and, in North America at least, as creators of key institutions in civil society" (Vickers, "In

Search of the Citizen-Mother" l).18 In this sense, Lady Agnes Macdonald's influence as a woman, wife, mother, and writer is both private and public, though fully neither. Lady

Agnes Macdonald was a woman of privilege, a position that was empowered in different ways by her race, education, marriage, and even her gender. Such privilege allowed her a certain degree of access to influential people and to the geographical spaces they were defining, both inside the House of Commons, and throughout the physical landscape of the Dominion itself. In addition, such privilege provided Agnes Macdonald with the time to reflect upon what she saw, and the intellectual skills to write about her experiences.

The layout of this thesis is fairly straightforward: I have organized my analysis of

Agnes Macdonald's writing by genre (diary writing, political writing, and travel writing), which permits me to acknowledge, where relevant, the existing scholarship in these areas. In each section, I consider how the image and the voice of Agnes Macdonald, as a proto-typical citizen-mother, shapes the narratives that she crafts about her home (as documented in her diary), the House of Commons (as documented in her political sketches), and the physical (exterior) geography of the early Dominion of Canada (as 12 documented in her travel writing). My close textual analysis of the narrative structures or strategies in these primary sources situates this research in literature studies.

In the early months of 1867, the Dominion of Canada and "Mrs. Agnes

Macdonald" both came into being because of the same man. Thus, it is easy to see how

Agnes Macdonald's responsibility for mothering at home extended to her responsibility for mothering the Dominion. Prevented from voting or holding public office, Agnes found that she could physically participate in public activities that advanced a civil society in the new Dominion, which "for privileged wives consisted largely of attending church and visiting friends . . . [or] philanthropy, which became increasingly diverse as the century progressed . . . [including] such charities as schools, reformatories, and

'benevolent' societies" (Yalom 181). Agnes Macdonald's motivation to write to Lord

Stanley was undoubtedly predicated on the kind of maternal desire to maintain peace, order, and a general sense of "good housekeeping," which is the key theme in her narratives about Canada. 13

Notes

1. Sir John A. Macdonald died on June 6, 1891 at his home in Ottawa.

2. While Thompson declined this offer, he found himself at the helm of the Conservative party a year and a half later, after a succession of short-term leaders.

3. My analysis of Agnes Macdonald's writing addresses the ways in which she re-creates narratives about the people and places of her historical time. I therefore perceive a distinction between "lived experiences" and "imaginative stories": I read the former as the biographical and factual evidence of a person's life, and the latter as the creative attempt to represent such evidence in a deliberate way and for a specific purpose.

4. For a good historical overview of the evolution of the separate spheres metaphor, as well as an analysis of the contributions and drawbacks of those who have theorized about it, see Kerber. Also see Sharistanian for a discussion about the debate surrounding the tradition of public and private spheres, and Ryan for evidence of how women's history shows the interrelationship of the two spheres.

5. See Strong-Boag's "The Citizenship Debates" for a good overview of provincial and federal efforts to determine franchise requirements and legislation that helped determine what a Canadian citizen was. Also see Menzies, Adamoski, and Chunn for a discussion of the maternal basis of women's citizenship (27-28).

6. [Susan] Agnes Bernard Macdonald was born in Jamaica in 1836 to a family of landowners. She first emigrated to England in 1851, and then to Canada West in 1854.

7. See also Eva Mackey.

8. There is a typo in the original text: "a" actually reads "is." I have included the correction to maintain the integrity of Kay's argument.

9. Margaret Trudeau published two autobiographies: Beyond Reason and Consequences. Since the second volume depicts her life after her divorce from Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, it is the first volume I am referring to here.

10. In addition to her autobiography, Maureen McTeer published Residences: Homes of Canada's Leaders, which documented the histories of Canada's official residences.

11. For example, the following entries in Frances Tupper's journal either refer explicitly to her concern for the Tupper children, or make reference to letters received by, or written to, the children: March 4, March 8, March 15, March 30, April 2, April 4, April 5, April 8, April 15, April 17, and April 20. Note that Sir Charles and Lady Tupper were travelling from March 4 to April 22. 14

12. The diary was written while her husband, Sir Charles Tupper, was Canada's High Commissioner in Britain.

13. In her travel diary, Frances Simpson writes that "I must observe that [my journey] was regarded as a wonder, was the constant subject of conversation, and seemed to excite a general interest being the first ever undertaken by Ladies, and one which has always been considered fraught with danger." Because Frances Simpson does not use precise dates to record the travels leading up to her canoe journey, see page 27 of her journal for the above quotation.

14. Upper and Lower Canada were established by the Canada Act of 1791; The Act of Union, passed by British Parliament in 1840, merged these areas into one province, while renaming them Canada West and Canada East, respectively.

15. See Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis for more on the features and functions of settler societies (3-4).

16. To illustrate her argument, Gerson examines a number of popular literary periodicals that were circulated in nineteenth-century Canada, and provides strong quantitative data (involving actual page counts) of the extensive amount of writing that was produced by women, versus the amount that appears in later anthologies, which have been accepted as representative of the evolving literary scene in early Canada. For more details, see Table 1 ("Anthologies and the Canon of Early Canadian Women Writers" 71-73).

17. See Vickers ("Feminisms and Nationalisms") for more on how "British-Canadian women shaped the character of [Canadian] nationalism by creating and disseminating its symbols" (136).

18. Also see Menzies, Adamoski, and Chunn on the role of the family, and the argument that "in keeping with developments elsewhere, one of the most crucial targets for emerging forms of social regulation in Canada was the family" (27). 15

CHAPTER 1: The Diarist, her Diary, and the Diary Dialogic

The Diarist: Susan Agnes (Bernard) Macdonald

In his biography of Sir John A. Macdonald, Donald Creighton describes Lady

Agnes Macdonald as a woman with a divided sense of self, referring to the "two

Agneses" that Sir John A. Macdonald found himself married to, and who consistently emerge throughout various historical accounts: "one Agnes, a girlishly excitable and pleasure-loving Agnes . .. [and] a second Agnes, a devout, repentant, and serious

Agnes" {Old Chieftain 7). Well into the twenty-first century, prime ministers' wives such as Maureen McTeer articulate this divided sense of being. As McTeer explains in her autobiography, "[like] everyone, I have a personal life-who I am, what I feel, what I think-and a public life-what I do and how I am seen" (299).' Here, McTeer implicates public expectation and reception in how a private self imagines or constructs a public persona. This divided self not only invites a closer reading of McTeer's life as recorded by herself and by others, but it also provides a degree of continuity in placing a reading of Agnes Macdonald within a larger context of the public cultural role and significance of the wives of Canada's prime ministers.

Who, then, was Agnes Macdonald? Louise Reynolds attempts to answer this question in her biography, Agnes: The Biography of Lady Macdonald,2 to date the only published biography of Agnes Macdonald, the Mother of Confederation. Reynolds bases much of the biography on Agnes's diary, published political and travel sketches, and the letters she wrote to Sir Joseph Pope during her widowhood. While Reynolds crafts an 16 interesting and readable life story, the integrity of her text has been questioned by historian Donald Swainson,3 who reasonably faults the work for factual inaccuracies

(448), but then dismisses Agnes Macdonald's diaries and letters as "largely useless [as s]he does not seem to have known much about Canadian public affairs, or even about her husbands's [sic] activities" (448). Yet such criticism assumes that the value of a woman's diary, particularly one written by a woman who was married to a key political figure in nineteenth-century Canada, only existed insofar as it openly re-articulated her husband's political agenda and policy. While Agnes did identify herself through her husband, admitting, for example, that "I do so like to identify myself with all my

Husband's pursuits & occupations^] he is so busy & so much older than I that I would soon fall out of his life if I went my own ways—as I might do—disregarding him" (7 July

1867), she identified herself as a leader in her own right. Agnes Macdonald depicts herself as the moral leader in her home, and her various appointments in the community, usually as a prominent member of religious or philanthropic organizations, reveal that the role of prime minister's wife, or that of any nineteenth-century woman of privilege for that matter, was her own type of public office. And, if it is true that Agnes

Macdonald adopted her "Husband's pursuits & occupations," then these influences likely shaped her contributions and the type of leadership she brought to her public commitments. Enough evidence in her writing certainly appears to support the argument that Agnes Macdonald was indeed a politically minded and politically engaged individual.

Politics seems always to have been a part of Agnes Macdonald's life, particularly 17 as it informed her sense of home. Born in Jamaica to the plantation-owning Bernard family on August 24, 1836, Susan Agnes spent her childhood years surrounded by the racial unrest and conflict generated by the Slavery Abolition Act, which was passed and implemented by British Parliament during 1833 and 1834. The conflict between slaves and plantation owners had previously prompted Agnes's father, Thomas Bernard, to seek his fortunes elsewhere, which he did, entering local politics at some point before Agnes was born, and then launching a successful legal and political career in Spanish Town.4

After Thomas Bernard died during a cholera epidemic in 1850, the two eldest Bernard sons, Hewitt and Richard, decided that the family's future lay in British North America.5

Thus began Agnes's immigration to Canada, and an adulthood of extensive travel.

While Hewitt and Richard6 travelled to Upper Canada to establish livelihoods for themselves and to secure a home for their mother and sister (Theodora and Agnes), the two women temporarily relocated to England, where they stayed with relatives.

Eventually, the Bernard sons settled in Barrie, and Theodora and Agnes joined them there in 1854. A few years later, Hewitt, a lawyer by training, became private secretary to

John A. Macdonald,7 then attorney general for Canada West, and the Bernards moved once again. The "perambulatory"8 system of government of the United Canadas meant that the capital alternated every five years between Toronto and Quebec. Therefore, after first moving to Toronto for a few years, the Bernards found themselves re-packing in

1859, to move to Quebec City, and then again in 1865, after Ottawa had been established as the official and permanent capital. While Hewitt made arrangements to relocate to

Ottawa with his employer, however, the Bernard women decided to return to England.9 It 18 was there, in the late autumn of 1866, when John A. Macdonald was taking a break from

Confederation discussions at the London Conference, that he and Agnes Bernard crossed paths for the last time as widower and spinster, respectively.

After a whirlwind courtship, the couple wed on 16 February 1867, at St.

George's Church, Hanover Square, in London, England, just as the BNA Act was making its way through the House of Lords.10 Taking time only for a brief honeymoon in

Oxford, the Macdonalds celebrated their marriage while the Dominion of Canada became a legal reality. Neatly summarizing his change in marital status with his usual wit and panache, John A. "alluded to the plan of confederation, whereby all the provinces of Canada were united under one female sovereign, and that perfection of the idea of union had so occupied his mind that he had sought to apply it to himself (Smith

& MacLeod 38). While anecdote fails to record whether John A. Macdonald accepted

Agnes as his "domestic sovereign," he most certainly loved and respected his new wife's intelligence and humour, and seems to have prospered under her watchful eye. Even

Richard Cartwright," one of Macdonald's fiercest critics, grudgingly remarked that "the period from 1867 to 1870 was by far the most creditable portion of [Macdonald's] whole career. ... I think he was desirous of standing well. For one thing he reformed his personal habits to a great extent" (66).

Thus, Mrs. Agnes Macdonald12 and the Dominion of Canada found themselves officially launched (almost simultaneously) into being, an image that effectively encapsulates one of the key themes in this dissertation: the two public entities of the country and Agnes Macdonald, were products of domestic and public geographies and 19 politics, particularly through their shared relationship with one man—Prime Minister Sir

John A. Macdonald. The Dominion of Canada and Lady Macdonald also represented and embodied the experiences of the quintessential pioneer: while the Dominion acquired political structures and physical boundaries that defined it as a nation, Agnes broke brand-new ground in establishing the identity and role of the Canadian prime minister's wife. She occupied this position twice: from 1867 to 1873, and from 1878 to 1891.

When this second period came to an abrupt end with her husband's death in June of

1891, Agnes Macdonald found herself once again re-defining who she was, and her place in Ottawa society. As a fifty-five year old widow, she first accepted a peerage from

Queen Victoria, which recognized her role as Lady Macdonald, and helped memorialize the Dominion of Canada's first prime minister. This appointment, however, did little to mitigate her dwindling social status in Ottawa. Despite a grand new title, the Baroness of

Earnscliffe (or "Macdonald of Earnscliffe," as she was more commonly known) soon found herself shunted to the periphery of Ottawa's political world,13 where she then witnessed the collapse of her husband's political party. After a succession of four fairly short-lived leadership appointments in the Conservative party (Sir John Abbott, Sir John

Thompson, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and Sir Charles Tupper),14 Wilfrid Laurier and the

Liberals won the general election in 1896, bringing with them an ideological shift in the political landscape of Canada, and heralding the twilight years of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps reading these changes as a sign that her time in Canada had come to a conclusive end, Agnes Macdonald permanently returned to England in autumn of that year.15 Settling in Eastbourne, Agnes and her daughter, Mary, spent the next two decades 20 wintering in popular European tourist destinations (Sicily, Italy, Switzerland), at one point finding themselves stranded in Switzerland when WWI broke out in 1914. While politicians and military men engaged in this international conflict, women suffragists in the Dominion continued their efforts to achieve equality. Not long after Canadian women gained the right to vote federally (in 1918),'6 Agnes Macdonald died in

Eastbourne on 5 September, 1920. It is unlikely that Lady Macdonald would have supported this kind of public politicizing of women:17 she once confessed that she was

"not very anxious to become too political in style" because "[s]o few women are clever, consistent, & intriguing enough to make any useful use of political knowledge & bias"

(27 August 1868). However, her writing, in all its diversity (her diary and her published political and travel sketches) clearly indicates that Agnes was, to some extent, "political in style" in her efforts to contribute to the political discourse of her day. Her participation in various female-organized social initiatives and her involvement with her church place her among those whose earliest efforts to create a civil society in the new

Dominion eventually led to an entrenched political presence of women in that society.

From Biographical Subject to Citizen-Mother

As one of the most socially prominent women in the Dominion, Lady Macdonald was an ideal role model for other women. She was a type of "citizen-mother" whose presence in her home and in public was activated by the responsibility of caring for the physical, religious, and moral well-being of those in both spheres (Ross 230). Both editions of Canada's Patriot Statesman: The Life and Career of the Right Honourable 21

Sir John A. Macdonald18 evoke this idealized image of mother figure:

[i]n domestic life, Lady Macdonald is a model woman, lavishing her

tenderness upon an invalid daughter, [and] keeping a household that might

well be the envy of any circle; attending to Sir John at late sittings of the

House, and, as Mrs. Disraeli used to do, and as Mrs. Gladstone does,

wrapping up her husband after he has made a speech, and zealously guarding

his health at home or while travelling. (Adam 516)19

If Britain set the standard by which the new Dominion evaluated its cultural progress, then according to Adam's tribute, Lady Macdonald had achieved it, and joined a global and elite sisterhood of political wives. Pat Jalland and Esther Simon Shkolnik discuss how domestic influence was used by the nineteenth-century British political wife.

Jalland's focus on what she terms the "passive majority" (17) of women, particularly their active roles of care-taker, confidante, and political hostess, provides a good general context for reading the domestic activity in Agnes Macdonald's diary, and the ways in which she based her individual identity upon that of her husband. And Shkolnik's research, while it focuses exclusively on prominent British political wives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provides relevant insight into the context, or business, of the political couple in nineteenth-century Canada: in helping launch or sustain her husband's political career, a political wife was socially recognized as an important part of his success. Yet a woman like Agnes Macdonald extended this maternal ideal from her home and into the public realm through her work with her church and with other philanthropic undertakings. Jill Vickers reads this kind of 22 woman's work and influence as a tangible contribution to a civil society, arguing that it formed the basis of"a gender-differentiatedform of citizenship" ("In Search of the

Citizen-Mother" 15).

In her written accounts, we first encounter Lady Agnes Macdonald as diarist- narrator, a thirty-year-old woman who has just become "a great Premier's20 wife & Lady

Macdonald" (5 July 1867). In addition to launching an interesting life at the centre of the political world of nineteenth-century Canada, Agnes Macdonald's marriage set a creative process in motion, because, as Phyllis Rose argues, many of the key events in human lives involve culturally recognizable rites of passage or symbols that we then incorporate into "the story of our own lives" (6). These symbols typically represent shared cultural beliefs or values, which means that the story of an individual's life can be accessed by other members of that culture, and so fit within a recognizable type of meta-narrative of that time, place, and people. For example, Rose cites marriage and parenthood as events that indicate maturity (6), which she argues represent "certain imaginative patterns . . . mythologies or ideologies . .. [that] determine the shape of a writer's life as well as his or her work" (6). The citizen-mother, as a literary prototype involved in creating a mythology (and ideology) of civil society, accommodates Rose's theory about the narrative process, because Lady Macdonald's contemporaries would have recognized the social ideals that she represented: a maternal yet social figure, the citizen-mother encapsulated the authority implicit in nineteenth-century ideals of womanhood. These images included both traditional and progressive models of womanly behaviour, popularly known as the "Old (traditionalist) Woman [who] defended the ideals of 23 marriage" (Heilmann xi), and the "New Woman [who] emphasized female independence within and outside marriage" (Heilmann xi). In her discussion of both models, writer

Sarah Grand argues that while both models were characterized by "home-loving proclivities" (466), the New Woman conceived of her identity, in part, as one that had a role to play in the improvement of society (467).

In their discussion of the origins and evolution of Canadian social citizenship, particularly its formative years during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

Robert Menzies, Robert Adamoski, and Dorothy Chunn acknowledge the citizen-mother as a key figure who worked within a network of other women and men to uphold an ideal of'"normality"' or culturally desired behaviours. For Menzies, Adamoski, and

Chunn, the home represented the basis for this undertaking, because

governance within and through 'the family' was about the (re)production of

'normality.' Parents, teachers, scientific professionals, and experts . . . social

reformers, politicians and others were involved in the same enterprise of

creating 'normal' citizens-that is to say, women and men who fulfilled their

gender-specific roles and responsibilities within the context of heterosexual

marriage and the nuclear family. (29)

Menzies et al. situate the basis for the "(re)production of 'normality'" in the family, a point reinforced by Phyllis Rose and her theory about the narrative patterns that emerge from traditional marriages and how family relationships affect our ability to negotiate power structures and relationships. These critics all draw attention to the theories of

Jiirgen Habermas, in which, as Christopher Loobey summarizes, "the intimate sphere of 24 the family incubated a historically specific new form of audience-oriented subjectivity, a kind of personhood that was preformed for its role in the political public sphere that was emerging in the eighteenth century" (par. 3). Habermas's work proposes that the roots of public activism originated with the conjugal family. While he links the evolving public role of the family to the evolving economics of the marketplace (which is not directly applicable to my own research), he acknowledges the role of the family as a means of promoting socially desirable behaviours (47). Habermas argued that the home represented a space in which family members conceived of themselves as independent individuals, and that the popular forms of communications in the eighteenth century

(specifically the letter and the diary) helped them develop the thinking and speaking skills needed to participate in "critical public debate . . . [and] the regulation of civil society" (Habermas 52).21 Some critics of the original Habermas model22 argue that it excluded a number of groups in society (marginalized by sex or race), and have proposed that we include counter or multiple publics in definitions of the "public sphere" subsequent to Habermas. Mary Kelley, however, addresses the issue differently, suggesting that

[r]ather than conceptualizing the public sphere either as a public with

counter-publics or as multiple publics, I have adopted the term 'civil society'

to include any and all publics except those dedicated to the organized politics

constituted in political parties and elections to local, state, and national

office. A term already in circulation in the eighteenth century, 'civil' as an

adjective distinguished those with the rights and obligations of citizenship 25

from the rest of the nation's inhabitants. (5)23

Kelley goes on to explain that "members of voluntary associations aligned themselves with social and cultural values they insisted were required for 'remaining]' a 'civilized' people" (13).

Soon after her marriage to John A. Macdonald, Agnes realizes that for her, home and the House of Commons have become, in many ways, the same place. In a lighthearted tone during the early summer of 1867, Agnes jokes that "[h]ere--in this house—the atmosphere is so awfully political—that sometimes I think the very flies hold

Parliaments on the Kitchen Table cloths!" (5 July 1867).24 A year later, she realizes that her husband's political career intrudes in more disruptive ways. Her entry for September

19, 1868, for example, more contemplatively records "a trying & rather Invalid week.. .

. Storms in the Privy Council atmosphere always agitate home air & living so completely as I do—in my Husband's circle of Interests, I cannot help being influenced by the

Political Barometer." The less poetic reality of Lady Macdonald's situation was that her home was frequently occupied by politicians and their wives: in her diary, Agnes records numerous luncheons that she hosts, as well as formal dinners that would often include up to twelve people.25 She also appears to have held regular "at home" days when sixty to ninety people would call or leave cards (1 January 1868; 10 May 1868), and the

Macdonalds were in the habit of hosting an annual New Year's open house, where

Agnes would welcome from ninety to two hundred callers to her home.26

Being so enveloped in Sir John A.'s "circle of Interests" and "influenced by the

Political Barometer" would have honed Agnes's already well-formed political interests, 26 and would have influenced the domestic role she performed at home as wife and mother, political hostess, and her women's reading club hostess; it would also have had an impact on the public role that she performed among the St. Alban's congregation, the women on the Orphans' Home Committee, or other individuals Agnes encountered in public.

It certainly does not appear to have made life easy at times, as Agnes confesses early in her marriage: "it is extremely painful, being asked to beg John to interfere, in getting places for my friends ... he is so just that I know it is distressing to him to be asked for what he does not think it right to give, & yet I cannot refuse to do all in my power for my good old friends" (Advent Sunday 1867). Agnes clearly felt that her role, while it was to support her husband, also meant she was responsible for helping advance her male friends' political aspirations by exercising her own influence. In this example, politics and power and negotiating has become part of a domestic discourse. This dynamic between husband and wife assumes on some level that Agnes believed she had something worth saying, and that Sir John A. was interested in hearing her say it. Gerda

Lerner discusses this kind of gendered political authority, that although women have been excluded from political power for centuries, "as members of families, as daughters and wives, they often were closer to actual power than many a man" (351). That Sir John

A. finds his wife's intervention "distressing" may be another way of suggesting that he did not allow Agnes to dictate his political decisions, a detail that would enhance his image as strong political leader. 27

The Diary

Agnes Macdonald's diary consists of some 112 individual entries for the years from 1867 to 1872, 1875, and 1883.27 While the diary has yet to be published as an independent text, Donald Creighton has drawn extensively upon it to provide the backbone of Sir John A. Macdonald's private life in The Old Chieftain, as do Lena

Newman and Sandra Gwyn in writing their social histories about the prime minister and his nineteenth-century world.

Agnes Macdonald's sporadic entries can at times be frustrating to read. For example, it would have been fascinating to know in her own words what she felt and thought about the political fall-out of the Pacific Scandal. The omission of such details, however, lends itself to a very different reading of the diary as text (and as narrative).

While the hectic pace of her life would have made obvious demands on her time and thus affect her ability to write,281 argue that Agnes used omission and silence as a way to control information, or more particularly, to control (through writing) those events that had a profound impact on her life, but which she was otherwise powerless to influence.

This is a narrative strategy that Suzanne Bunkers, among others, addresses in her research. In her article "Midwestern Diaries and Journals: What Women Were (Not)

Saying in the Late 1800s," Bunkers discusses the element of the "unsaid" (191) in a sampling of nineteenth-century American women's diaries, and the related process of self-editing or the "encoding" (194) of information that women may engage in, although

Bunkers argues that this practice is typically used to limit what the writer says, or how she can break through silences. 28

Agnes also wrote few entries in her diary for the later years, which is unfortunate, as this is the time when she came into her own as prime minister's wife; rumour held that her confidence during this time became so strong that a rift developed between herself and the Princess Louise, consort of the then-Governor General, the Marquis of

Lome, who was in Canada from 1878-83.29 What is unique about the reportedly strained relationship between the Princess Louise and Lady Macdonald is that Louise, as one of

Queen Victoria's daughters, tangibly represented the close governing relationship between England and Canada: she was, in a real yet metaphoric sense, Britannia on

Canadian soil. In mapping the Dominion's evolving sense of individuality, it is worth noting that Louise spent very little time in Canada during her husband's tenure as

Governor General,30 and was absent during the same time that Lady Macdonald hit her stride as prime minister's wife. Agnes Macdonald's nineteenth-century contemporaries may not have perceived the visual metaphor of this situation: despite the fact that the

Marquis of Lome remained in Canada during his wife's absence, the missing princess evokes the image of a distant and maternal British head of state. The implication of this image is significant, given its place in the Dominion's early years, when the country was on the way to becoming a more independent nation. That the vice-regal couple was also childless, attributes a non-maternal identity to the royal and feminine image of Britain, a symbolic point of contrast to "Queen Victoria herself [who] embodied for the masses the apotheosis of wife-and-motherhood. With Prince Albert at her side and surrounded by her nine children, Victoria became a regal icon of domesticity throughout Britain and the world" (Yalom 183). It is possible that Lady Agnes Macdonald, however 29 subconsciously, or however motivated by pride or ambition, may have considered

Louise's absence as an empty and available space for a female "icon of domesticity" to occupy in the new Dominion of Canada.

The Diary Dialogic

In her diary, Agnes arguably activates what Kathryn Carter refers to as a dialogic mode, or a dialogic space between writer and reader. In her dissertation "A Contingency of Words: Diaries in English by Women in Canada 1830-1915," Carter argues "that diary writing is situated in communities, real or imagined,31 and cannot be understood without taking into account the intended audience. The researcher becomes part of that audience when he or she undertakes to become part of the diary's community" (13). In agreeing with Carter that "diaries are like one side of a conversation imagined to be underway at the moment of writing" (23), I choose to read Agnes Macdonald's diary as a dialogue between herself and her nineteenth-century contemporaries, and ultimately between herself and much later readers (in this particular instance, me), in which she essentially attempts to justify her purpose and perhaps success as Lady Macdonald, and to leave behind some evidence of who this person was. To some degree, the much later autobiographies by Margaret Trudeau and Maureen McTeer make similar attempts to answer charges of impropriety, redress the social criticism that each woman endured from the Canadian public and press, and reassure us that they did fulfil their obligations as best they could.32

In engaging with Agnes Macdonald's diary in such a way, one obvious question 30 to ask of ourselves and of the text is this: what kind of conversation was Lady Agnes

Macdonald trying to initiate with us, and why? I argue that hers is the citizen-mother's story about nation building: while her husband worked on the political policies that determined the boundaries and governing structures of a new nation, Agnes Macdonald, through her public actions and through her writing, worked to promote these boundaries and governing structures. In her discussion of pre-Confederation Canada, Louise

Reynolds acknowledges the contributions of both Agnes Bernard and John A.

Macdonald in helping to define a sense of this space: Reynolds writes that, while Agnes attempted to capture a sense of the then-capital, Quebec City, in watercolour paintings,

John A. Macdonald focussed on a "much more ambitious 'canvas'" (31) of initial

Confederation talks. While Reynolds's choice of wording is somewhat unfortunate in privileging a masculine, political enterprise over a feminine, artistic one, the connections evoked between artistic and political vision and expression reinforce the value of art as a means of depicting political spaces and events.

If diary reading implicates diarist and reader in a conversation, it seems reasonable that I first situate my own position as conversationalist; that is, discuss the subjectivities that I bring to this dialogue between nineteenth-century woman writer and twenty-first-century academic reader. This approach appears to be a common practice among those academics who study women's diaries,33 and it recognizes the dynamic and subjective nature of such informed discussions about diaries. Helen Buss and Marlene

Kadar, in particular, address this issue in their introduction to Working in Women's

Archives: Researching Women's Private Literature and Archival Documents, in which 31 they argue that the process of selection and representation is in itself neither an accidental nor benign activity. They conclude that "archives are not neutral sites of primary research materials but collections developed from specific social assumptions that construct priorities that often exclude women's documents," and thus, the researcher needs to consider his or her "own ability to distort the female subject in the archive and to advocate a more self-conscious and complex exploration of. . . [his/her own] position

. . . assumptions, biases and desires, as part of archival research" (2). Suzanne Bunkers is another researcher who clearly summarizes the key issues or "ethical responsibilities"

(16) involved in the researcher-diarist relationship; I quote Bunkers at length in the next few pages of this chapter, because her article "Reading and Interpreting Unpublished

Diaries by Nineteenth-Century Women" establishes a number of useful guidelines for discussing women's diary writing. As Bunkers puts it:

First, as I have noted, I must be constantly aware that I approach each text

from a point of view that is not value-free and that I must take responsibility

for my interpretation of the text, just as any reader must do. Second, I must

be conscientious about placing a given text, and a given writer's life, into a

well-rounded historical and cultural perspective. To do so, I must

acknowledge that the form and content of the text are shaped by the diarist's

experience of race, ethnicity, class, age, and geography, as well as by her

perceptions of purpose and intended audience... . When I interpret a

diarist's text, then, I have an ethical responsibility not only to recognize the

biases inherent in myself as a reader but also to consider carefully the ways 32

in which a particular writer's historical and cultural context may have

influenced the creation of her text. (16)

Suzanne Bunkers approaches diaries with a different analytical purpose than my own, one that considers the qualitative implications of reading such texts, compared to my own focus on the literary implications that a close textual analysis of Agnes

Macdonald's diary offers. However, her analytical approach identifies the existence of narrative strategizing, or a deliberate, textual representation of self, which supports my discussion of Agnes Macdonald's diary as a public text, and the citizen-mother as a narrative type. For example, Bunkers explains that

[t]he value of such unpublished diaries as autobiography does not rest on

their designations as literary texts; it rests on each diarist's expression of the

inner or symbolic truth of her experiences. If we are mindful of the ways in

which a diarist's subjective perceptions are woven into the fabric of her

diary, we can respect the integrity of the text and appreciate the myriad of

factors that have contributed to both its creation and its interpretation.

("Reading and Interpreting" 17)

Finally, Bunkers acknowledges the agency of researcher or reader in re-presenting both diarist and diary as an inherent, and not necessarily negative, aspect of diary research.

Rather than promote a research process that seeks or emphasizes objectivity, Bunkers delineates a much more interactive approach to reading, interpreting, and re-presenting the people and events that have been recorded in diaries, an approach that complements the dialogic relationship that Kathryn Carter theorizes about in her own work. 33

Bunkers invites us to consider the researcher's subjectivities as they influence the

"narrative" and "narrator" of diaries, suggesting that

[w]hen I engage myself with the text and its writer, I need to develop a sense

of the personality that emerges from the diary's pages; yet I must recognize

that, in my interaction with the text, in my interpretation of the significance

of what the writer said and didn't say, in my analysis of how the diary

functions as a form of autobiography, I am creating my own construct of the

diarist, one influenced as much by who I am as by who I perceive the diarist

to be. ("Reading and Interpreting" 16)

In acknowledging the uniquenesses or biases of each woman diarist, each text, each reader, and each critic, Bunkers reminds us of the complexity of the roles and the relationships that each element of diary "conversation" entails. It is such subjectivity, supposedly or traditionally eschewed in academic literary studies, which ironically provides a fundamentally "literary" (albeit a small-1 'literary') exercise: subjectivity by definition involves a focus on the self, an awareness of the self that affects both an individual's presentation of herself (as writer), and a second individual's perception or reception of that self (as reader). Regardless of who accesses a diary's text, both diarist and, in this instance, academic reader, approach the diary as a literary exercise, in which the text is used as a tool to express or elide a representation of self.34 Both reader and writer then participate in a unique narrative process of selection, presentation, reception, and re-articulation of people and events, or perhaps more accurately, the perception of an individual writer's, or individual reader's, assessment of people and events. This is why I 34 have included sketches of how Agnes Macdonald has been received and represented by other readers after her time: while "the facts" exist, it is how they have been translated into popular memory that most interests me, because that is the point at which dialogue- or a dialogic moment—occurs: the point at which the dynamics of temporal, cultural, and sexual difference (or similarity) become a part of the bridge between past and present.

For Agnes Macdonald to have accomplished such communication through time suggests that she has succeeded in her narrative project. A look at the ways in which she has been remembered, while lying slightly beyond the scope of this dissertation, are indicative of social and cultural trends and values, and a full examination of them would be a worthwhile research project in the future.

My Half of the Diary Dialogic

The academic narrative that I construct in this dissertation is as much a narrative about my own subjectivities as it is a narrative about Agnes Macdonald and her writing.

As a Canadian woman, I read Agnes Macdonald's writing through a nationalist and gendered lens that reveals the roles and experiences of women in Canada's past. As a writer, academic, and secular individual of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, I read her work from a literary perspective that focusses on narrative symbols and structures and how we might read them. I also consider the presence of women in

Canadian literary studies: their roles, their responsibilities, their identities, and their stories, no matter how obliquely they allow their voices to be represented within the material constraints of a text.35 Unlike Kathryn Carter, I am inclined to seek out diaries 35 kept by educated or literate women; in her doctoral research, Carter argues that this approach applies an exclusive set of standards to diary writing, since those diaries written by women who lacked the time or ability to construct artistically pleasing or narratively complex accounts of their daily lives (19-20) would be excluded from literary studies that rely upon such principles for selecting these texts. However, because I believe that Agnes Macdonald used her writing to create a specific image of herself, as well as to best represent her political husband, I read her diary for the narrative strategies it employs that help articulate or manipulate the images of people or events. I am therefore drawn to Agnes Macdonald and women writers who were well-educated, or who would at least have been familiar with narrative techniques, and how they could effectively use them.

In addition, I consider other source materials (visual, aural, and textual), which may not be literature, but can be treated as narratives because of the symbols or metaphors they contain or suggest. If Kathryn Carter and I may disagree about the application of literary approaches to reading diaries, we appear to be in agreement in advocating an interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary approach to reading diaries, in which we may find ourselves inclined "to borrow interpretive tools from folklore, anthropology, and material culture to make our readings of diaries more perspicacious"

("A Contingency of Words" 11-12). By approaching diarist and diary from different perspectives, we gain a greater appreciation of both writer and text as they existed in their own cultural time and place, and how this relationship becomes an integral part of our history, our literature, and even our own individual identities. An interdisciplinary 36 language seems the most appropriate way to discuss women's diary writing (existing as published volumes or archival documents), because the process of locating and identifying such writing lends itself to the language and metaphor of the anthropologist, archaeologist, and geographer: the vocabulary of those academics who study archival manuscripts is oriented towards the actions of mapping, unearthing, and excavating.

Helen Buss, for example, in her introduction to Mapping Our Selves: Canadian

Women's Autobiography in English, a key text in the field of Canadian women's diary writing, rejects the traditional feminist metaphors of mirror and speculum in favour of cartography and maps to adequately represent the process of determining "a psycho- political portrait of women's experience in culture" (8). In borrowing from such disciplines as archaeology and anthropology, I have attempted to frame my discussion of

Agnes Macdonald's diary in such a way as to both respect and preserve a sense of the social and cultural context in which it was created.

Another feature of this dissertation that comes from my subjectivity as a reader, is my decision to refer to Lady Agnes Macdonald as simply "Agnes." This decision acknowledges the individual woman who existed behind the social construct of Lady

Macdonald, and later Baroness of Earnscliffe, perhaps best illustrated by the fact that

"Agnes" was what Susan Agnes Bernard chose to call herself shortly after she immigrated to British North America (Reynolds 18).36 In such a simple, yet metaphoric way, "Agnes" emphasizes the feminine as it exists within a traditionally male history; this single name is what caught my eye as I was perusing the Confederation history section in the library one afternoon. Surrounded by history texts largely authored by 37 men, and written about men, the name "Agnes" as it appeared on the spine of Louise

Reynolds's biography stood out instantly.

This issue of naming also symbolizes my earliest experiences with the research for this project. In the preliminary stages of my work, one of the tasks I set for myself was to determine the scope of writing by nineteenth-century women who were related in some way to politicians of that time. Yet nineteenth-century women occupy a tenuous position in history: to have survived in the historical record is to have surmounted a number of odds. Nineteenth-century marriage not only renamed women, but their physical survival was then often endangered by childbirth;37 Agnes Macdonald herself recalls the difficult delivery of her daughter, Mary, during which time she found herself

"face to face with death" (1 April 1869).

To have survived in a different context involves the survival of fragile paper evidence that women do leave behind about themselves (their diaries) and the odds that it has endured the forces of "natural selection," such as time, weather, and the editorial decisions of both family and archivists.38 My decision to refer to Lady Agnes Macdonald as "Agnes" is a way of acknowledging her attempt to survive in our collective cultural memory. Part of her attempt to survive in our cultural memory, however fractured or incomplete it may be, is the story of self that Agnes Macdonald recorded in her diary, and that we will now turn to in greater detail. 38

Notes

1. As Margaret Trudeau tried to find her place in official Ottawa (struggling with her youth, inexperience, and rebellious tendencies, as well as the media and public's reception of her behaviour), she also described herself as a divided self: "I became two different people. In the background at 24 Sussex and up at the lake I was Mrs. Trudeau, an ordinary suburban Canadian housewife who liked to bake bread and cross-country ski. The moment officialdom struck I was transformed into the wife of the Prime Minister; it was all rather like Cinderella and her pumpkin" (128).

2. Louise Reynolds's text was originally published in 1979, and reprinted in 1990 as part of Carleton University's series on women; I have used the original edition for all references and quotations in this dissertation. The later version includes additional information about Mary Macdonald, as well as information provided by some of Agnes's contemporaries. In addition to Reynolds's biography, I have referred to P.B. Waite's entry for Agnes in Volume XIV of the Dictionary of National Biography. Another great source, mainly for its photographs, but also because it emphasizes the presence and role Agnes played in her husband's life, is Lena Newman's The John A. Macdonald Album, in particular, part four of the book.

3. Donald Swainson reviewed both editions of Reynolds's biography on Agnes: the first review appeared in a 1980 issue of Ontario History, and the second appeared in a 1993 issue of the Canadian Historical Review. I draw my references from the latter review. Both reviews share an overall critical framework, which focuses on the number of factual errors (that Swainson says are not corrected in the second edition of the biography), and what Swainson dismisses as Agnes Macdonald's unimportance as an observer and recorder of her time and place.

4. The Bernard sugar plantation ("Dirty Pit") had been burned down by slaves in 1832. For specific details of Thomas Bernard's professional life, see Reynolds (6).

5. The two younger Bernard brothers, Philip and Walter (at the time, aged 20 and 16, respectively), did not join the rest of their family in the emigration to Canada. While Louise Reynolds suggests that they planned to come to Canada at a later date, this never occurred, and Agnes did not see these two brothers again in her lifetime: Philip moved to Mexico, and Walter remained in Jamaica, working on a sugar plantation (Reynolds 10- 11).

6. Hewitt Bernard's future soon became connected with that of Sir John A. Macdonald's. For more biographical details, see Waite ("Bernard, Hewitt"). Richard Bernard established his own law practice in Barrie, but moved to Windsor with his wife, Agnes Lally, in 1859. He died two years later, at the age of 32 For more information, see Reynolds (26, 29). 39

7.1 refer to the former prime minister as "John A. Macdonald" in discussing his life prior to 1867, and then refer to him as "Sir John A. Macdonald" in discussing his life after July 1867, when he received a knighthood from Queen Victoria.

8.1 am borrowing this term from J.K. Johnson (27).

9. It is not clear why Agnes and Theodora chose England over Ottawa. While the new capital was rather rustic at that time, evidence suggests that Hewitt encouraged Agnes's return to England because he was aware of his employer's interest in her, and worried about the impact John A. Macdonald's drinking would have on her happiness. See Gwyn (198), and Martin (172).

10. Three of Agnes's bridal attendants were the daughters of conference delegates: Emma Tupper (Charles Tupper), Jessie McDougall (William McDougall), and Joanna Archibald (Adams Archibald).

11. A one-time member of the Conservative Party, and elected to the first Canadian House of Commons in 1867 as a Tory, Richard Cartwright slowly defected to the Liberals following a disagreement involving Macdonald's appointment of Sir Francis Hincks to Minister of Finance in 1869, a breach further and irreparably widened by the Pacific Scandal in 1873. For his detailed biography, see Morgan and Brown.

12. As part of the first Dominion Day celebrations, John A. Macdonald received the honour of a KCB from Queen Victoria, and was subsequently known as Sir John A. Macdonald. The Reverend Bedford-Jones recalls that he "stood beside Sir John Macdonald in front of the Parliament buildings at noon and heard the Proclamation that announced the birth of the Dominion of Canada .. . [and] saw the messenger despatched with a note to the great Premier's wife addressed for the first time as 'Lady Macdonald.' Her husband had kept the title a profound secret, and in this way made her acquainted with her new rank" (12-13).

13. Sara Jeanette Duncan once depicted the complexities of Ottawa's social hierarchy, writing that: "Official position rules. Young ladies, unless they are at the head of their fathers' households, are not asked [to dinner parties or other social functions], nor are widows as a rule, or other irresponsible and disconnected individuals, whatever their social position in Ottawa, who are without the claim constituted by a husband's position" (qtd. in Tausky, 78).

14. These four appointed men all suffered from poor health and did not remain long in office. For more information, refer to the "Profiles: First Among Equals" web site hosted by Libraries and Archives Canada.

15. Louise Reynolds provides a sympathetic portrait of Agnes's eventual departure from Canada, suggesting that after her husband's death, Agnes experienced a profound loss of self-identity and focus (146-160). Heather Robertson, however, presents a much less 40

sympathetic portrait, suggesting that it was Agnes Macdonald's ego that drove her to England (65-72). Despite its factual inaccuracies, Robertson's book is worth reading, because it is one of the few books written about Canadian political wives, and her interpretation may represent a much wider public perception of the roles and identities of this group of women.

16. See Elections Canada for details about the evolution of federal voting laws in Canada. A federal act was passed in 1918 that conferred the right to vote (federally) to women, although they did have to meet the following eligibility requirements: "age 21 or older, not alien-born, and meet[ing] property requirements in provinces where they exist" (63).

17. While his motives have been questioned, Sir John A. Macdonald, however, introduced the Electoral Franchise Act in 1885 that not only proposed to give control over all voting (on both provincial and federal levels) to the federal government, but included a clause that would extend the franchise to unmarried women who owned property. For a good discussion of the Franchise Bill of 1885, see Strong-Boag ("Citizenship Debates").

18. J.E. Collins's original text was later revised by G. Mercer Adam, and published as Canada's Patriot Statesman: The Life and Career of the Right Honourable Sir John A. Macdonald (1891). This later version included some additional information, as well as a letter written by Agnes and addressed to "the Chairman of the Ministerialist Committee" in which she expresses her thanks for the support she received at her husband's death. I use the Adam text for my citations here.

19. E.B. Biggar also draws parallels between Agnes Macdonald and Mary Anne Disraeli, the Countess of Beaconsfield (103).

20. In Britain, the terms Premier (First Minister) and Prime Minister are often used interchangeably to refer to the elected head of government, a practice that was originally adopted by the Dominion of Canada. Because the term Premier is also used to refer to individual provincial leaders in Canada, we now reserve the term Prime Minister for elected head of government, and reserve the term Premier for the elected head of a province.

21. For more information, see pages 48-49.

22. Habermas's original theories on the public sphere (published in 1962; translated into English in 1989) were revised by a number of scholars throughout the 1990s. See Bloch (pars. 3-6).

23. See also Senese for a discussion about the exclusive nature of "civic nationalism," which she sees as "ethnic nationalism in disguise" (118). 41

24. Agnes often capitalizes common nouns in her diary, a practice that I have not altered in my transcription.

25. See, for example, entries for January 8, 9, 13, 15, and 22, 1869, all days on which Agnes held a luncheon for visitors.

26. See, for example, entries for 1 January 1869 (90 callers); 1 January 1870 (130 callers); 1 January 1871 (130 callers); and 1 January 1883 (200 callers).

27. The silences in Agnes's diary have been attributed to a couple of obvious details, such as her busy social schedule as Lady Macdonald (see following endnote). The silences that follow the birth of her daughter have been attributed to Agnes's fears about Mary's obvious physical disability (she was born hydrocephalic), and the fact that the difficult labour was followed by a lengthy recovery. See Buss {Mapping Our Selves 43- 44) for an analysis of how silence in Elizabeth Simcoe's diary can be read.

28. Agnes herself comments on her time-consuming social schedule. For example, see her entries for 29 September 1867; 17 November 1867; and 10 May 1868.

29. Two writers who document this rift as fact include Sandra Gwyn, who suggests "there [was] little doubt that these two strong-willed women detested each other" (190) and Robert Stamp, who writes that "[wjhatever happened at the Rideau Hall ball on 19 February 1879, whatever relationship subsequently existed between Louise and Sir John, and between Louise and Lady Macdonald-many people came to believe that all was not as it should be between Ottawa's two leading couples" (138). While the following passage from Agnes's diary refers to a dinner party at Rideau Hall during Lord Monck's tenure as Governor General, it does draw attention to political protocol and the allure of social status, which may have contributed to the later tension between herself and the Princess Louise. Agnes writes: "How strange it still is to be taken in by the Governor, first Lady there. I try hard that these things should not be a temptation or occasion of failing to me" (11 January 1868).

30. Robert Stamp speculates on a range of reasons why Louise did not warm up to Canada: Fenian unrest, a neuralgic condition, her husband's suspected homosexuality, etc. See Chapters 12 through 16 for fuller details about the viceregal couple's time in Canada.

31. Here, Carter provides a link between her discussion of a diarist's intention to write, and Benedict Anderson's well-known theories on the formation of nation, specifically that geography and community are as much about intellectual (and psychological) spaces, as they are about tangible, material spaces.

32. Beyond Reason was poorly received by critics: Henry Champ faulted the work for being a ghost-written and dishonest account (43). Also see Michael Smith's book review. 42

I fault the book for its insincere tone in some statements that, to me, carried back­ handed compliments, like Trudeau's comment that "Maureen McTeer is emancipated in a way I never shall be. I may laugh at her wash-and-wear shoes and her polyester drip- dry clothes, but the very fact that she is so politically attuned keeps her sane" (155). The chapters titled "On Becoming Chatelaine," "Official Residences," and "Saved by Protocol," do, however, reveal a sense of the conflict between Trudeau's inexperience and the public expectations of the role of prime minister's wife. Conversely, Maureen McTeer's In My Own Name involves more intellectual and mature reflections. McTeer discusses the "name issue" that dogged Joe Clark after he became leader of the opposition (74-78), the negative reaction of the press when she and Clark chose Canadian food and drink to serve at their receptions (81; also see Trudeau's impression of this, 155), and her renovation issues with 24 Sussex Drive (115). McTeer demonstrates a much more compassionate and mature perspective in her reflections on Margaret Trudeau (46-48); she also rises above partisan differences in a moving passage that acknowledges the tragic accident that took Michel Trudeau's life (280-281).

33. See, for example, Kathryn Carter, "A Contingency of Words."

34. For more on the complex relationship between the genres of diary and fiction, see Podnieks, particularly Chapter I - "Blurring Boundaries: Mapping the Diary and Autobiography and Fiction" (13-44).

35. See Carter's discussion about the "material culture" of diary studies, starting on p. 30 of her dissertation.

36. Agnes had been christened Susan Agnes Bernard at birth, and was known as "Susy" as a child.

37. For a history of medical practices and women and childbirth in nineteenth-century Canada, see Mitchinson, particularly Chapter Six: "The Emergence of Medical Obstetrics." This chapter includes estimated statistics for maternal mortality rates for the latter half of the century (227-229). Also see Loudon for information about childbirth complications such as puerperal fever, toxaemia, and haemorrhage. The "ubiquitous literary theme" of infant and/or maternal mortality in poetry written by pre-twentieth century Canadian women has been discussed by Wendy Robbins. In particular, see pars. 8-9, 12, and 25-29.

38. Many women's documents from the past have been destroyed because they were believed worthless. Documents that have been preserved have traditionally been stored in the fonds of a male relative. Agnes Macdonald's diary and Annie Thompson's letters, for example, are stored in their respective husbands' archival fonds, and Frances Tupper's travel diary is located in her son's archival fonds. 43

CHAPTER TWO: In Dialogue with the Citizen-Mother

Diary as Public Narrative

An engaging record of current events, Agnes Macdonald's diary is a self­ consciously constructed narrative in which its author will speak—and edit—from a domestic position of privilege and of political liability. Agnes confides that

[o]f course one keeps a Diary with a vague consciousness that at some time

or another, some person or another, will read some part or another of that

Diary. Now, in my case, that is rather an important consideration. Living as I

do—in the atmosphere of 'headquarters'—visiting as I do . . . with the men

who are now making part of the History of their country, I am always afraid

of putting anything in these pages, which, in time to come, I may find ought

not to have been written. It is not that I should ever insert anything that I had

accidentally heard or anything that had been told to me . .. but still I fear that

my impressions & remarks may be erroneous & lead me to false conclusions.

There is no denying [that] Journal writing ... is somewhat of a responsibility

& circumstances make it decidedly so in mine. (17 November 1867)

Agnes Macdonald's disclaimer about her ability to make appropriate political observations, as well as the fact that she kept her diary under lock and key (1 January

1871)1 suggest that she was conscious of creating a dialogue between herself (as diarist) and an outside reader, and that she might potentially be judged by this reader. And if

Agnes expressed only a "vague consciousness" of such an outside readership, her efforts 44 to preserve the diary suggest otherwise: her diary managed to survive the lengthy years

(and travels) of her widowhood, a challenge that she once alluded to in a letter to Joseph

Pope, that '"[m]y only fear is that letters, papers and diaries of mine should get astray.

Any of these . . . must, when possible, be sent to me'" (qtd. in Waite "Rev. of Agnes"

524). Agnes's anxiety may have reflected a desire to keep her personal life private

(although one suspects if she was really concerned, she would have simply destroyed the manuscript). Yet it may also have reflected the "eye on history" (Gass par. 40)2 that she developed soon after her marriage to John A. Macdonald, and that she took such care in preserving her diary, "one presumes under her nihil obstaf [roughly translated:

"Nothing stands in the way of its being printed"] (Waite "Bernard, Susan Agnes" 67). It is this combined awareness of reader and posterity that allows us to reconsider the narrative structure and function of the diary, since "the presence of an audience, whether near or remote, requires accommodation through the same textual features that in all cases transform private diaries into public documents" (Bloom 24).

In her essay '"I Write for Myself and Strangers': Private Diaries as Public

Documents," Lynn Bloom establishes a structural rubric that enables us to read Agnes

Macdonald's diary as a literary, rather than as a solely biographical, narrative. Bloom identifies the following features that appear in diaries that are crafted as public, rather than private, texts: characters (central and subordinate); structural elements (scope, form, structure, and literary techniques); contextualization; and the contemporary value of the diary. We can identify certain aspects of "contextualization" and "contemporary value" in Agnes Macdonald's diary, although they do not present the same opportunity for close 45 textual analysis as do the other elements. Bloom argues that "contextualization" or the

"self-contained" (30) nature of public diaries mean that they can be read as "coherent, free-standing texts that are more or less self-explanatory if the entries are read in to to"

(30), which I find somewhat applicable to the fractured, yet coherent overall narrative that emerges in Agnes Macdonald's diary. In assessing the "contemporary value" of her diary as a public text, we can also argue that the diary has value in twenty-first century feminist and Canadian studies because it is the narrative of an early woman political pioneer whose participation in women's social organizations contributed to the foundation of later suffrage and activist initiatives. In addition, Agnes Macdonald's diary account of D'Arcy McGee's assassination has already been published in First Drafts:

Eyewitness Accounts from Canada's Past, a compilation of "the first drafts of

[Canadian] history" (3). Editorial biases aside,3 the decision to include an excerpt from

Agnes's diary attests to the contribution of such private accounts to a historical (and public) "literary legacy for the world" (Bloom 35), or at the very least, it acknowledges the diary as having value and interest to an outside readership.

Bloom's remaining two narrative features—characters and structural elements

(including scope, form, structure, and literary techniques)—however, present a greater opportunity for sustained textual analysis that is more directly relevant to my dissertation's focus on the construct of the citizen-mother and the story she crafts about the key people, places, and activities that were part of her daily routine in the new

Dominion of Canada. 46

The "main character" of the Citizen-Mother

According to Bloom, "[i]n public private diaries, the author creates and presents a central character, herself, as seen through a central consciousness, also herself. When the writer is skilled, both are sophisticated, artistic constructs with a persona analogous to that of the heroine of a drama, who speaks in a distinctive voice" (31). Agnes

Macdonald's perception and presentation of her individual "self in her diary is complex. First, she was a real person, living in a particular time and place, and we read these factual details as she recorded them. Yet Lady Agnes Macdonald was also, as

Bloom suggests, a "sophisticated, artistic construct" that symbolized the social and cultural ideals and expectations of her time, as Agnes and her contemporaries may have perceived them, lived them, or even challenged them. The "distinctive voice" of this construct is arguably that of the citizen-mother, who speaks to us about her efforts to preserve the moral and ethical integrity of her family, as well as the moral and ethical integrity of others elsewhere in the Dominion.

A diary entry written almost one year (to the day) after her marriage depicts such public efforts as they appear in the daily routine of Lady Macdonald: "after morning service I dressed for my 'day' & belonged to the Public until six o'clock. First came Mrs.

Bronson on Orphans' Home Matters, & then my luncheon party and callers afterwards"

(5 February 1868). This passage encapsulates a number of key themes that characterized the type of relationship that Lady Macdonald developed with "the Public." While Agnes may have been personally motivated to contribute to society through a benevolent

(female) and public leadership role, there was also the social expectation that she was 47 obliged to do so because of her position as Lady Macdonald. Her appointment as First

Directress of the Ottawa Orphans' Home, for example, reflects both sides of this social relationship: in her history of the Orphans' Home, Maria Thorburn reports that "At a preliminary meeting for making arrangements for the annual, Mrs. Bronson stated that she had felt that the success of the institution required the most influential name that could be procured in Ottawa, and it afforded her much pleasure to state to the ladies present that the consent of Lady Macdonald to fill that office had been obtained" (43).

From Lady Macdonald, we learn that she accepted the position "from a conviction that it was right & from a desire to do some good to my suffering & destitute fellow creatures"

(19 January 1868).

Cathy Ross maps the integrated relationship of maternal, religious, and public elements that made up this nineteenth-century ideal of womanly behaviour, explaining that

it was clear that women were supposed to be subordinate and that home and

children were their sphere, yet they still had influence. In fact many women

argued that if they were the upholders of Christian values they should be able

to use their influence outside the home in philanthropic activities and in

social reform. . .. Female reformers hailed Christianity as an emancipating

influence which could give enormous scope to woman as wife and mother

and by extension, to society. This philanthropic impulse was readily linked

with an evangelistic motive. (229)

Ruth Compton Brouwer explores such an "evangelistic motive" in her work on 48 the presence and pervasiveness of religion in a woman's daily life in Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Brouwer's particular focus on the growth and impact of foreign missions organized by the Presbyterian church reveals an entrenched and well-organized religious network of missionary associations, training, and communications throughout the country.4 Brouwer discusses the general attraction of church service to women as a means of acquiring social prestige (73-77), and how women's involvement in the administration of missionary services provided the groundwork for their later involvement in the suffrage movement (189-191); these particular aspects of Brouwer's work are most relevant in contextualizing the place and role of religion in Agnes Macdonald's life. In her theoretical discussion about the social ideal of the nineteenth-century "True Womanhood," Barbara Welter also argues that

"[r]eligion or piety was the core of woman's virtue, the source of her strength" (152).5

The central character (the biographical narrator) in Agnes's diary continually seeks in prayer and good works for the strength to be a better wife and mother at home, and to more generally help fulfill her conscious desire to be more "'affectual' in [her] every-day life" (5 December 1867). To Agnes, being '"affectual"' undoubtedly included her ability to influence those around her (both family and social peers and especially social inferiors) to lead more enlightened and Christian lives. To accomplish this goal,

Agnes adopts the language and mantle of the missionary: while she did not participate in any formally organized missions through her church, she is inspired by those who did, and draws upon these exemplars in crafting the public image of Lady Macdonald. On one occasion, she draws inspiration from the Life of Bishop Mackenzie by the Anglican 49 missionary Charles Frederick Mackenzie, a biography that she says "is very interesting, telling of the young man's mission work in Natal & Central Africa—such a cheerful devoted Christian as he must have been. A life full of wholesome happy work is so much to be envied, of all toil is the toil of pleasure!" (30 August 1868). Agnes also merges

"evangelistic motive" with philanthropic good works. Her reading of Elizabeth Fry, for example, the early nineteenth-century philanthropist and prison reform advocate, prompts her to draw comparisons and reflect that "I feel that under God's blessing, I too have a sacred & Holy Mission & I too am praying His good help to fulfil it" (12 January

1868); it is not clear to what explicit mission Agnes refers to here, but we can speculate that she meant her mission as both wife and public role model (signified through her

"round of duty").

In the day-to-day reality of her life as Lady Macdonald, however, Agnes confronted the less romantic aspect of the missionary and missionary service when she faced her own humanity. Unlike the positive energy and lighthearted wit that characterize Agnes's travel and political sketches, religious fervour and self-abasement create a more thoughtful aspect to the prose and general tone in her diary, especially when Lady Macdonald tries to explain or expunge what she sees as human weakness from her home. She confesses that she "feel[s] discouraged and incapable" (22 February

1868) if her other commitments prevent her from starting the day with early morning service, and she evokes a sense of her own humility by referring to the "unworthy

Prayers" that accompany her inability

to lose sight of my great unworthiness—my want of steadfastness... . That I 50

may be able to set my Face against worldliness & forgetfulness of God! That

his Holy Spirit may ever be present with me—in all my goings out & comings

in. I need judgement, discretion, humility, forbearance, much very much. In

short the 'New Heart.' I want to do more for his Holy Name, & in His Holy

Name. I want Boldness & fearlessness & an unworldly temper. (12 January

1868)

Throughout her diary, Agnes struggles with her efforts to "walk more closely with Him— be more entirely His—spend & be spent in his service—die to Him & live unto righteousness" (12 January 1868), which become evident through her attempts to influence members of her household (through example), and through her attempts to influence the government through prayer, to become "a just, faithful and useful one" (25

March 1868).

On a purely quantitative level, a word count emphasizes the extent to which religion pervades, and thus informs, the content and structure of Agnes Macdonald's diary. For example, in a diary comprising some 130 individual entries,6 an average of two religiously-oriented terms appears in each entry. Such terms include (with the corresponding number of times they appear indicated in parentheses):7 Church ( 63); prayer/praying (59); blessings (49); God (34) & Father (usually referred to as "my heavenly Father": 16); religion/religious (25); faith (22); and Christian (14). Religion structures Lady Macdonald's daily routine. Along with reports of her attendance at church service (for early morning communion, as well as regular sermons), Agnes records special services that are given by well-known religious speakers of the time, such 51 as Dr. Lewis Bishop8 (26 April 1868) or Lord Adelbert Cecil9 (6 April 1868), and a

Bible class that she attends.10 In addition, about a dozen diary entries are acknowledged as religious days; for example, in the year 1868, Agnes includes "Ash Wednesday" as part of the date for 26 February, followed by "Sunday—1st in Lent" (undated entry), and

29 March as "Sunday—5th in Lent." Such terms anchor the experiences in the diary, and a reader's impression of those experiences, to the diarist's strong religious sensibilities, and help to foreground the Christian life that is the subject of the diary.

Although Lady Agnes Macdonald uses her diary to reflect upon her faith, her self worth, and her abilities, it is mainly her interactions with others that offer the clearest sense of this biographical individual. A close reading of Lady Macdonald's depiction of secondary characters in her diary, including that of her husband, can therefore offer as much detail about Agnes Macdonald as they do about the individuals themselves. In particular, such secondary characters reveal much about Agnes's attempt to provide a good moral and religious (and thus civilizing and '"affectual"') influence.

Portrait of a Prime Minister

As wife of the prime minister, one of Lady Macdonald's main roles, as she identified it, was "[t]o make [her husband's] home cheery & pleasant, [and] to know that he is happy & at ease" (11 January 1868). This task, however, was complicated by inconveniences (and horrors) that included "[f]lies, rats, blocked drains, extremes of temperature, and mosquitoes" (Gwyn 59);" it was also complicated by the fact that

Ottawa was a city "only just beginning to live down a reputation for being one of the 52 roughest, booziest, least law-abiding towns in all of British North America" (Gwyn 40), which provided a somewhat permissive environment for the prime minister's alcoholism.12

Sir John A. Macdonald has been remembered by his contemporaries, and portrayed by later historians, as a hard drinker. T.C. Patteson records a conversation with

Hewitt, who "told [me] that when Sir. J. spoke to him about marrying his sister he said there could be only one objection: and he had promised reformation in that respect. I said, 'Don't you believe it!'" (41).'3 Hewitt's concerns were justified because of the pressure that conventional nineteenth-century marriages placed on wives, "to set the standard for goodness in her family" (Yalom 182). Would a woman then believe she was a failure as a wife if she was unable to influence her husband's behaviour, for example, his overindulgence in alcohol? In his overview of the place and impact of drinking in the life and politics of Sir John A. Macdonald, Ged Martin argues that during "[Sir John

A.'s] lifetime, critics usually attributed Macdonald's drinking to moral weakness" (163), which would appear to implicate Agnes Macdonald to some degree in bearing the responsibility of her husband's behaviour.

Some of Agnes Macdonald's contemporaries help illuminate the tensions caused by her husband's drinking. For example, in The Day of Sir John Macdonald, Joseph

Pope diplomatically explains that "in an age when almost everybody drank wine freely-he was no exception to the general rule . . . [this was] particularly true of the period of his widowerhood, between 1857 and 1867, when his lapses were such as occasionally to interfere with his public duties" (166).14 Public servant and newspaper 53 editor T.C. Patteson, and MP Robert Harrison, however, provide more poignant insights into how such lapses interfered with the prime minister's personal relationships. In his memoirs, Patteson records a dinner party in (or around) 1875, during which "Sir John got very drunk at dinner, and afterwards in the drawingroom was most insulting to

Tupper. Lady M. went out of the front door shortly after he had gone upstairs and I saw her sitting on the gate of the front field at 6 a.m.! She had a good deal to put up with [in] those days" (41). While Sir John A.'s behaviour precipitates this particular memory,

Patteson empathetically situates Agnes as a historical subject within it. In this episode, she is subject to scrutiny and assessment in terms of how masculine behaviour affected her, and how she responded to such behaviour. Within the context of this thesis, which explores a woman's marital and maternal identity as a source of feminine and civilizing authority, Patteson provides a useful metaphor in this brief, but telling, excerpt: when

Lady Agnes Macdonald could not intervene and modulate her husband's intemperate behaviour in a domestic space, she physically withdrew herself from it. In leaving the home, Agnes effectively distanced herself from her husband's outburst.

On other occasions, Lady Macdonald was compelled to leave her own home to attend to her husband in public: in his diary entry for 16 December 1868, Robert

Harrison records: "Sir John drinking. Took cab and called on Lady Macdonald. Told her what was going on. She came to the door herself with her shawl about her shoulders and at once promised to return in the cab and bring Sir John home" (Oliver 319). The following day, we learn that Agnes thanked Harrison, in person, for his help (Oliver

320).15 Patteson and Harrison preserve memorable accounts of what must have been 54 some of the most challenging moments in Lady Macdonald's married life. Yet if

Patteson's account draws attention to her vulnerability and helplessness, Harrison's account draws attention to her dignity and the authoritative influence that she was apparently associated with, where "[ojfficial Ottawa looked to [Macdonald's] young bride to curb [his] weakness" (Martin 172).16

When Prime Minister John A. Macdonald's infamous drinking extravaganzas proved impossible to physically censor or repress, either by himself or by his wife, Lady

Macdonald possibly sought other ways to effect such influence. Writing (particularly in the text of her diary) empowered her in a number of ways. First, by casting her husband as a "character" within her diary, Agnes Macdonald effectively controlled a portrayal of him, and thus influenced the ways in which his life could be remembered; this narrative strategy also influences the way in which we can read her own life. Writing allowed

Agnes to create what I perceive to be a Christian "gloss"17 to her husband's image. While this may or may not have had any effect on Sir John A.'s spiritual salvation during his own lifetime, it affirmed two things in print, and for posterity: that Sir John A.

Macdonald led a "useful, kindly, Christian life, [that] it will ever be our high privilege to remember" (qtd. in Adam 548),18 and that Agnes, Lady Macdonald, was indeed doing her job.19

Because Prime Minister John A. Macdonald worked—and played—quite hard,

Agnes would despair when political business preempted Sunday worship,20 or when he indulged in the convivial good cheer for which he was famous. However, her religious faith bolstered her spirits, and her diary enabled her to evoke a particular image of her 55 husband by using images of spiritual virtue as a means of filtering undesirable behaviour from the image she wished to preserve of Sir John A. Macdonald, Christian man and prime minister of Canada. In his retrospective piece on St. Alban's Church, the Reverend

Thomas Bedford-Jones approvingly noted that "[w]hen Mr. Macdonald brought his bride to Ottawa, her influence was at once seen in them becoming regular attendants at the

Court House Services ... the beginning of sixteen years' ministerial relationship" (20).

Indeed, the final five pages of Bedford-Jones's article focuses on the portrayal of Sir

John A. as a devout Christian, and his concluding remarks that after the prime minister's conversion from Presbyterianism to Anglicanism, "[frequently afterwards, and especially at the New Year Midnight Services, Sir John was a communicant; and if any evidence were wanting of the blessed help to a Godly life and a triumph over old infirmities which the Divine Means of Grace supplies, it was to be seen in the subsequent character and consistency of the illustrious Premier" (21-22).21

As a character in his wife's diary, Sir John A. Macdonald becomes the object of her active care and guidance. As a self-identified "Instrument of so much improvement"

(24 March 1868), Agnes not only makes it her wifely mission to safeguard her husband's general health and well-being "by being cheery, & smiling" (14 July, 1867), and by discussing the strain of politics on his health with the family physician (7&8 February

186822; 22 February 1868), but she also takes on the role of his spiritual keeper and guide. For example, Lady Macdonald might take the lead in promoting desired behaviours, relinquishing a number of activities "as if she were paying a forfeit by surrendering those pleasures which might be seen as sinful" (Reynolds 54). In response 56 to her husband's drinking, Agnes reports: "I have given up Wine—this is for example's sake, & because I think it is unnecessary, therefore wasteful" (7&8 February 1968). In the same diary entry, she also informs us of her conscious decision to avoid reading those novels that are "frivolous & numerous," and that eventually, she "hope[s] to be able to take a right stand about Balls & to set [her] face against Theatricals." Such was

Lady Macdonald's resolve to avoid the immoral effects of such distractions and amusements. It is only grudgingly that she accepted her husband's interest in "Patience," because it was a game that '"Albert the Good'23 was fond of (7&8 February 1868);

Agnes would have preferred to ban outright any card-playing in her home. In setting her behaviour as the example to follow, however, Agnes essentially sets herself up to bear the responsibility for her husband's inability to follow it. When such failures inevitably happened, Lady Macdonald found herself reflecting on her own human shortcomings, and turned to God for the strength and guidance to be a better wife: her concept of

"domestic sunshine" was a combined product of her faith and of God's good will. As

Agnes explains:

Nothing can be greater than the glad content of my heart & life in these days.

... Our heavenly Father prospers us indeed, beyond all words to tell. I see

His Hand every day & hour in my home[,] happiness in the memory of the

Shadow, which he has lifted from my Life, in my Husband's political

successes, in his large majorities, his brilliant powers, his proud position, his

increasing Health. . . .

These Sundays with their sweet [word unclear] & their ringing of Sabbath 57

Bells, for instance how golden their hours are.

John & I to church—how glad I am as we sit side by side—there. A special

Providence seems to be with us. (10 May 1868)

Writers such as Sandra Gwyn have suggested that Lady Macdonald's oblique reference to "the Shadow" (198) is code for one of Sir John A.'s drinking relapses.24 Attributing fault to her husband, however, is not the way of a committed wife, so Lady Macdonald redirects the blame for weak or unacceptable behaviour (or perceived moral failings) from her husband and typically associates it with the failings of others, or the weakness of her female devoutness. In two consecutive diary entries written in January of 1868,

Agnes clarifies these two strategies. She implicates her own piety with her husband's ability to receive spiritual strength from God when she writes that "One earnest Prayer I daily offer—may the all wise Disposer, see fit to give my Darling the strength needed— that will answer my Prayer" (January 11, 1868). The next day, she reiterates her belief in the power of prayer, as well as the power of others to undermine family piety. She explains:

[p]eople had the habit of making Sunday a day of Visiting & business with

my Husband, & he, albeit, not liking the arrangement, yielded to it &

accepted it. ... I prayed for Guidance, & ... it was granted. My Husband

almost never sees anyone except on very pressing business. . .. All go to

Church, & the Sunday is at least outwardly sanctified. (12 January 1868)

From a literary perspective, this passage contains clever and nuanced prose. Here, Lady

Macdonald implies that her husband's natural inclination to attend Sunday service has 58 been compromised by others, most likely other politicians, thus emphasizing the negative influence of this public, political, and masculine realm. Her concluding sentence is also revealing. If "Sunday is at least outwardly sanctified" because "[a]ll go to church," then Agnes acknowledges the presence of an external audience, and the importance of public appearances, particularly those appearances that attested to one's faith.

On other occasions, when her husband does not attend church service, Agnes reverts from spiritual to corporeal caretaker, excusing his absence by suggesting that

Sunday morning "is his only quiet time, his only time of rest—he could not—ought not to forgo it" (12 January 1868). The rigorous reality of Sir John A. Macdonald's political schedule is evident in numerous diary entries for 1867 and 1868, where Agnes mentions waiting up for her husband until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, after late-night sittings in the House.25 In the early part of 1868, she provides insight into the effects of a gruelling political schedule, albeit the effects of this schedule on her own health (we can imagine that such long days and nights at the House would have a similar effect on her husband's health, too). Agnes explains: "After a struggle this morning I resolved on giving up early service for the present, as during the session I sit up for my Husband so late, and as I am not well" (24 March 1868). Elsewhere, she seems to use poor health as a valid reason for not attending church. For example, on one occasion, she reports that "[yjesterday my darling was not well enough to go out, so—sadly enough I went to morning service without him, after Early Communion" (6 April 1868); on another, she herself takes the blame for a missed service, confiding that "[t]o my sorrow we—John and I, had to stay 59 from church. I was not well enough-this grieved me" (1 March 1868).

Yet Agnes Macdonald's religious influence extended well beyond her home to affect those who lived in her community. St. Alban's Church may have substantiated

Lady Macdonald's individual faith, but, because the church had been constructed specifically to accommodate the spiritual needs of those political families resettling in

Ottawa when the city became the permanent seat of the Dominion government (70), it was, at its inception, an inherently political space. Such was the case for the Meredith family, who numbered among "[t]he creme de la creme of official society [who] subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. As a senior bureaucrat, and the son and grandson of distinguished clergymen, Edmund Meredith took pride of place in this inner circle, outdistanced only (and only because of her official position) by

Lady Macdonald" (68). As a public space occupied by individuals who were aware of the politics of seeing and being seen (a point I address in Chapter Four), St. Alban's presented, for some, a stage for moral theatre. Agnes Macdonald's public church activities would therefore have been witnessed by other politicians and their wives, a peer group that included members of Parliament, as well as members of the opposition.

Sandra Gwyn argues that, while women may have been held responsible for maintaining religious faith in the home, they engaged in the masculine, political authority of the church when they took on church-based good works in public. Gwyn's discussion of the political place of religion, along with the Reverend Thomas Bedford-

Jones's26 historical account of St. Alban's Church, presents religion as a realm in which women could—and did—exert influence, and a place of considerable political importance. 60

Drawing extensively upon the diaries of Edmund Meredith and Agnes Macdonald, Gwyn indicates that the church represented a public space in which both men and women participated: "In Meredith's diary and in Lady Macdonald's, the amount of space given over to Sturm undDrang at St. Alban's takes second place only to his accounts of

Fanny's incessant illnesses, and to [Agnes's] of those frequent 'rather trying weeks,' when Sir John got too friendly with the bottle" (70). Sandra Gwyn parallels the political shenanigans surrounding the building of St. Alban's Church to the political negotiations that surrounded the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (70), and suggests that the construction of the new church represented more than just a source of spiritual salvation for its flock. It was also a place in which men and women took leadership roles through their participation on church committees.

While she includes many references to her attendance at church services at St.

Alban's, Agnes Macdonald unfortunately makes scant reference to the role she played as a key member on various church committees. She did, however, write a few diary entries that give some insight into the politics of the congregation of St. Alban's, and her role as one of its leading members. On one occasion, for instance, Agnes reports on the financial situation of St. Alban's, that "[tjhis first Sunday after Easter does not seem to find the congregation of St. Alban's in particularly good temper. The Building committee want to pay off the debt of the church by pew rents—and Dr. Jones who is zealously opposed to any but the [word unclear] pew system, is quite unhappy about it"

(19 April 1868). A few weeks later, she mentions a church concert fundraiser that she is helping to organize; it is likely that the two references are related, although Agnes does 61 not explicitly make this connection for us. Her only other reference to the fundraiser is to her individual efforts, and not to a committee meeting or any discussion of how to raise the funds. Instead, Agnes merely reports that "My selling of Tickets increases & I am busy about it. I hope the concert will go off well & that from the church assisted by its proceeds a right sound May go forth" (1 May 1868). While these references are slight, we can conclude that when Lady Macdonald participated in such public fundraisers, she was committed to their success: a week after we read of her promising ticket sales, we learn that "[the concert] went off so well, & [she] never had a happier evening" (10 May

1868).

The Reverend Bedford-Jones helps contextualize the greater influence of Lady

Macdonald's church fundraising. In his account of St. Alban's Church, he addresses the problem of how the church construction was financed, and he portrays Agnes Macdonald as an influential player in this drama. And, as Bedford-Jones further relates, he experienced this influence first-hand and in direct opposition to his own priorities and plans. When the building of St. Alban's unexpectedly incurred considerable debt (the original plans did not take into account the sandy soils in the area, and therefore needed to be redesigned), Bedford-Jones found himself denouncing suggestions from his congregation that a fundraising scheme be adopted in order to raise money. He claimed that "such ways of raising money for God were inevitably inculcating and directly sanctioning low and unworthy motives" (15). However, when the Reverend Bedford-

Jones was at one point compelled to leave Ottawa for health reasons, he returned to find

(one suspects secretly relieved) his pious objections over-ruled. 62

He recalls

that some of the leading members of the congregation had in my absence,

decided to hold a bazaar on behalf of the Church debt, and that all the

arrangements had actually been made. At the head of the business was Lady

Macdonald, Mrs. Grant Powell,27 Mrs. Langton,28 Mrs. H.A. Wicksteed,29 in

fact all the chief supporters of St. Alban's. ... In the early part of 1873,

during the Session of Parliament, the bazaar was held. It was an immense

success. Under the patronage of Lady Macdonald then at the height of her

own and her husband's political popularity, and owing to her zeal and

efforts, Senators and Members vied in opening their purses. I never went to

the bazaar, but the debt of $5,000 was paid! (15-16)

While the quiet struggle between Lady Macdonald and the Reverend Bedford-Jones represents a classically subversive moment in sexual power relations (we can so easily and vividly imagine how a determined Agnes quietly proceeded with her plan of action), it is the public, political macrocosm in the background of this church drama that is the most interesting, particularly regarding the timing of the bazaar.

Agnes Macdonald's successful bazaar was held during the same time that the events leading up to the Pacific Scandal occurred. It is worth noting that this period is characterized by very few entries in Agnes's diary: she wrote next to nothing from mid-

March of 1872, to around the same time in March of 1875.30 Yet the Pacific Scandal represented a crucial time in Sir John A. Macdonald's political career, the outcome of which prompted his formal resignation on November 5, 1873. On April 2, 1873, 63 opposition member Lucius Seth Huntington, the MP for Shefford, Quebec, officially accused the government of political wrongdoing in its decision to grant the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway to Sir Hugh Allan; he followed these charges with a motion to appoint a committee to investigate the situation.31 A Committee of Inquiry was struck in early April to investigate, but when, a month later, it had not yet drawn any conclusions, the House adjourned until 13 August.32

In organizing the fundraiser-bazaar early in 1873, Agnes actively promoted church work during the same general time that her husband's critics and opponents were working to undermine his political reputation. While Agnes left no record of what she felt about her husband's political resignation, it is an interesting coincidence that Lady

Macdonald was involved with substantial church service in such a visible and economically successful way, while her husband was being publicly discredited. Despite the Reverend Bedford-Jones's disapproval of such money-making schemes, Agnes

Macdonald's fund-raising that rescued St. Alban's Church was a first-class piece of political maneouvring that likely made some kind of persuasive appeal to the politically oriented congregation. As I have suggested, St. Alban's represented a public performative space for both its congregation and for its leader. If Agnes was occasionally critical of the "so very unsatisfactory" delivery style of some of the Reverend Bedford-

Jones's sermons, it was because she was aware of the fact that "in the Session-time many of his congregation - are members of Parliament, & the leading men in Canada and he might do great, solid, lasting good"(29 March 1868). I have not found any evidence that reveals how the congregation of Ottawa's political elite viewed Lady Macdonald's 64 successful church fundraiser, but the fact that the bazaar was held while Parliament was in session (and thus when the congregation was full of politicians) suggests that Agnes's fundraising activity would have been witnessed by many. Consequently, it may have countered the negative publicity surrounding the prime minister at the time. In any event,

Lady Macdonald's good deed likely provided a much-needed public relations "boost" for her husband's sullied reputation both as politician and Christian. That she accomplished this objective all under the guise of proper wifely duty to her family and faith merely endorses the potential authority that the nineteenth-century matron had at her disposal when she exercised her religious piety.

Characters (subordinate)

The other key subordinate (or minor) characters who appear in Agnes

Macdonald's diary include family members Hewitt Bernard and Theodora Bernard.

Agnes makes only brief reference to her infant daughter, Mary, and her step-son, Hugh

John Macdonald, which I acknowledge here, but do not include in the discussion that follows. Two social collectives that represent groups of individuals that I also consider important minor characters include a women's reading group, and the Ottawa Orphans'

Home. The presence of these two organized groups in the Ottawa community, and Agnes

Macdonald's interactions with both, situate her in a larger cultural context and discourse that involves elements of her citizen-mother identity.

Hewitt and Theodora Bernard completed the Macdonald household soon after

Agnes and John A. Macdonald's marriage. Theodora lived with her daughter and son-in- 65 law until her death, and Hewitt appears to have lived with them for a few years, at least.33 The presence of the Bernards in Agnes's life—and her diary—reveals the close relationships they formed with one another, and shows how this supportive family network contributed to the private and public successes of all members of the Macdonald household. Agnes depicts herself and Hewitt as dutiful children: on one occasion, she escorts Theodora "a minutef's] walk" to church "afraid of Mama's falling on the beaten snow if she walks alone" (19 January 1868); years later, Agnes gains some consolation from Theodora's dying in Hewitt's arms when he had "come up to pay his daily visit"

(11 March 1875). One particular diary entry reveals how the Bernards worked together to support Agnes's housekeeping efforts and the work of the prime minister: when Sir

John A.'s downstairs office became unbearable because of the city's old sewage system,34 Theodora and Hewitt changed rooms so that the prime minister could move his study from the first floor to Theodora's room, since, as Agnes explains "we all feel that

[his] health is the most important consideration" (25 February 1868).35 Because the

Bernards were firmly entrenched in the respective worlds of the Macdonald home and the public political world, they were also aware of the private and public impacts of Sir

John A.'s drinking, and of the demands of his gruelling political career upon Agnes. If

Lady Macdonald's attentiveness to her husband's health may arguably have added years to her husband's life, the presence of Hewitt and Theodora in the Macdonald home may have enabled her to do so. 66

Hewitt Bernard

Hewitt Bernard was an important figure in Agnes's life, and in the political world of nineteenth-century Canada. At the age of 25, he became the male head of the Bernard family when his father died, a responsibility he appears to have taken seriously. Hewitt's close adult relationships with his mother and sister in some ways resonate with the close relationships that Sir John A. Macdonald formed with his own mother and two sisters when he, too, found himself suddenly at the head of the Macdonald family after his own father's death. In the Dominion's political world, Hewitt participated in a number of key events: he was recording secretary for all the three main conferences on Confederation

(in Charlottetown, Quebec, and London); he was appointed the Dominion's first deputy minister of justice; and he played a key role in organizing the witnesses and evidence in the murder trial of Patrick Whelan.36 If he is not a prominent character in Agnes's diary, he is an important presence that, like Theodora, nuances the family support system that the Bernards brought to the Macdonald household. Hewitt Bernard is mentioned close to

40 times in his sister's diary.

Like the prime minister, Hewitt was another individual who came under his sister's mandate of physical and spiritual care, hinted at in a few entries in which Agnes records Hewitt's poor health (general ailments, as well as his recurring gout),37 or his church-going activities. Despite the absences she records (he "has not time [for church]" on 12 January 1868, or to Agnes's dismay, he misses service exactly one week later),

Hewitt Bernard appears to have been "a well-informed and zealous churchman" (5), and a good friend and "staunch supporter" (13), according to the Reverend Bedford-Jones. 67

For all the political commitments that took him from the Macdonald residence,38 however, the most interesting aspect of Hewitt's presence, at least in how it features in his sister's diary, is the attention he seems to have paid to her efforts in running that household. If Agnes was not always able to accompany her husband to Parliament (and see him safely home, instead of in the parliamentary basement bar), Hewitt could, and did. We encounter him in his sister's diary as he accompanies Sir John A. to various political and social events, many of which extended into the early hours of dawn.39

While Hewitt was undoubtedly motivated to accompany his employer out of his own professional ambitions and interests, he may also have been motivated out of a desire to support his sister; Agnes herself admits to being reassured when she knows her brother is out with her husband. In the weeks immediately following McGee's assassination, for example, she finds a late night sitting of the House "very exhausting" (15 April 1868)40 when she accompanies her husband. In her next entry, she seems relieved to report "How good it is of Hewitt to go down with & come up with Sir John" (20 April 1868), which her brother then does consistently throughout the rest of that month.41 In his sister's diary, Hewitt Bernard exists as a shadowy but reliable presence that is most often found moving with his employer (and brother-in-law) from the Macdonald home to Parliament, and, perhaps most importantly, back home again.

Theodora Bernard

Theodora Bernard, whom Agnes refers to as a "comfort & darling companion"

(2 September 1868) is, next to Sir John A. Macdonald, the most prominent minor 68 character in the diary. Agnes makes explicit reference to her mother in some 50 separate entries, typically as Theodora accompanies Agnes to church service as well as on social outings, as she reads with (or is read to by) Agnes,42 or as she is cared for by her daughter. Theodora is depicted as her daughter's close confidante and support: if Agnes does not explicitly recall late night conversations she has with her mother, she does give us a sense of their purpose to comfort or support her.43 Theodora's constant presence becomes so ingrained in Agnes's daily routine, that her rare absences make "everything seem strange" (21 June 1868), according to her daughter.

For the most part, Agnes's diary entries depict a comfortable, compatible arrangement among all family members: she records backgammon games played between Sir John A. and Theodora (1 January 1868), and between Theodora and Hewitt

(1 December 1869); later that year, when she was four months pregnant with Mary,

Agnes recalls her husband and her mother together discouraging her from making a trip to Hamilton (21 September 1868). Elsewhere, however, Theodora evokes a more intrusive maternal presence. Agnes describes one late night in the Macdonald home, when she was aware of the simultaneous physical presence of both her husband and her mother: "Sir John is reading 'Nature's Nobleman' in Bed—& I hear Mama brushing out her hair in her own room" (3 February 1869).44 By situating herself so intimately between these two family members, Agnes acknowledges her husband and her mother as key influences and role models in her life, and more generally the influence and role of nineteenth-century husbands and mothers in women's lives. In her own life, Agnes turns to both Sir John A. and Theodora for guidance as she struggles with her own human 69 drives and impulses. She confides:

I know I am very apt to be led astray as to my motives and that analysing

them too much is unhealthy for me, and I also know that my Love of Power

is strong, so strong that sometimes I dread it influences me, when I imagine I

am influenced by a sense of right. John generally explains it all to me~he is

so wise. Sometimes I am sure my wilfulness must try his patience, but he is

habitually the most self controlled person—one can imagine I never met

anyone person except my Mother, whose self restraint was so perfect. (19

April 1868)

Thus, under Theodora's watchful, maternal eye (and ear), and example, Agnes lived the early years of her life as Lady Macdonald, and was then sustained by her mother's "blessed & saintly memory" (14 March 1875) after Theodora's death,45 a great loss that Agnes accepts as "God's will~& I submit as [my mother] had taught me" (11

March 1875). If Agnes found herself frustrated by "[t]he want of Family Prayers" (12

January 1868), which generally referred to the lack of regular church attendance by her husband and her brother (but usually excused because of their hectic political schedules, their health, or the intrusiveness of others), as well as her servants (who were Roman

Catholics), she always found herself supported in her religious devotions by her mother.

Mother and daughter often attended church service together;46 Agnes also notes the times when Theodora attended on her own.47 In addition, Theodora accompanies Lady

Macdonald on a number of other social excursions: mother and daughter take walks together (31 March 1868), and pay visits (23 March 1868), including a visit to Rideau 70

Hall (2 February 1869). During one of the Macdonalds' New Year's open houses,

Theodora is also credited with helping to receive the guests (1 January 1869). Because she was apparently involved in social interactions with Lady Macdonald's peers and acquaintances, Theodora, if she was at all politically inclined, would have been a valuable confidante to her daughter.

While Agnes does not record any of the confidences or conversations that the two women shared with one another, she does tell us when and what the two women read, an important detail in the diary that helps illuminate, in part, the many social or cultural values of her world; it also helps situate the diary in literary discussions about the nineteenth-century practice of reading autobiography and biography as a means of improving the individual self. Whether she read alone, with Theodora, or with the other women in her reading group, Lady Macdonald read often, and she read widely. As a shared intellectual activity within the home, reading represented an important stage in the evolution of civic engagement, whereby individuals acquired both the ideas and the confidence to participate in "the process of enlightenment" (Habermas 51) in their communities. In his discussion of Habermas' theories, Christopher Loobey concludes that

In the intimate sphere of the conjugal family, people read, interpreted, and

discussed novels, poetry, and plays, and this literary pedagogy trained them

to be the sort of people whose habits of reflection and discrimination, and

whose concern to see their genuine humanity well served by public policy,

would be functionally convertible into the necessary skills and habits of 71

public political decision making, (par. 3)

Agnes and Theodora read a range of narratives, including religious texts, histories, biographies, travel accounts, and popular periodicals, such as Pall Mall, Blackwoods, and Helena's Household. Agnes's justification for her choice of reading materials is that

"[m]y life might be so careless & seem more earthly than it is—without some attempt so to order my reading, as to bring my mind into intercourse with better things" (19 April

1868). However, she rarely gives us a sense of what she and Theodora conclude about the ideas in the texts, nor does she provide us with much in terms of her own critical opinion of the works. On only one occasion, after reading aloud a sermon on "the

'Prayers of Mankind,'" does Agnes record the shared conclusion of the two women, who found the piece "very good" (19 January 1868).

Elsewhere, however, Agnes shares her individual opinion of certain texts that she reads with her mother. Given what we know of Agnes, her relationship with Theodora, and the role of women's reading groups in general, it seems likely that Lady

Macdonald's opinions were shaped, in part, by discussions that she and Theodora may have had about the texts. Following their reading of Francis Parkman's The Jesuits in

North America in the Seventeenth Century, for instance, Agnes determines that "[t]ame minded is our religious faith in contrast with that which led [the Jesuits] forth & kept them up thro' all they must have had to encounter! I have an idea that there is much exaggeration, but granting that, there is still much left, which ought to make us, Idlers of the English church really ashamed" (1 January 1868). Samuel Smiles's The Huguenots:

Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland (a book that she 72 says suffers from a weak conclusion), Agnes ultimately approves of as "the kind of reading I think good—of a religious tendency, and contains some stirring lessons of suffering for Christ would we so suffer, we with our selfish narrow hearts, always self seeking, self indulging, self-mentioning!" (22 February 1868). Later that year, the two women study the lives of statesmen by reading John Heneage Jesse's Memoirs of the

Life and Reign of King George the Third, a text that Agnes deems "very light & most amusing—and [that] gives one a great admiration for the Elder Pitts" (27 August 1868).

Agnes Macdonald's Reading Group

Theodora Bernard, however, was not her daughter's only reading companion:

Agnes also met regularly with a women's reading group. Agnes makes reference to her reading class a number of times (including 25 February 1868; 24 March 1868; and 31

March 1868), although she refers to the individual women who belong to the group only once: "Jessie Miss Tilley, Miss Irvine, Miss Langton Annie Tilley" (14 January 1868).

The punctuation between the names makes the identification of these women somewhat difficult. However, it is almost certain that Miss Tilley and Annie Tilley were two of Sir

Samuel Leonard Tilley's five daughters,48 and that "Jessie" was Jessie McDougall, the daughter of politician William McDougall, and who had been one of Agnes's bridesmaids. A Jessie McDougall is mentioned later in the diary, and addressed in the same informal manner. The "Miss Langton" in Agnes's reading class was probably Miss

Ellen Langton, the eldest of Auditor General John Langton's two daughters.491 am less certain of the identity of "Miss Irvine." A Lt. Colonel John G. Irvine was a senior aide at 73

Government House in 1866, and a member of the St. Alban's congregation, but his daughters may have been too young at the time to belong to Agnes's reading group.50 In any event, the women who met regularly with Lady Macdonald appear to have been the young and unmarried women from among the political elite in Ottawa society. As the wife of the Dominion's prime minister, Lady Agnes Macdonald would have played an influential role in the social, intellectual, and political development of these young women. That she was obviously entrusted with this role attests to her social standing in the Ottawa community.

Agnes Macdonald's reading group represents what has been called an all-female

"civil societ[y] writ small" (Kelley 137), in which

members engaged the culturally privileged knowledge European Americans

had defined as the possession of'civilized' peoples . . . [and] dedicating

themselves to reading and writing, they pursued history, biography, poetry,

and fiction. Through conversation and presentation of essays, they

disciplined their minds and sharpened their analytical faculties. Not least,

they applied the knowledge they had garnered to social and political issues.

In all, they laid the basis for women's claim to the public voice and

intellectual authority necessary for the making of public opinion. (Kelley 13-

14)

Agnes, unfortunately, records very little of the women's weekly meetings, particularly what they discussed about the books that they read. Instead, she makes general reference to what works they did or did not like: the women take turns reading 74 aloud from The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, a text that Agnes reports they first find "amusing" (14 January 1868), and a month later concludes that it is

"a melancholy sort of book, full of suffering & disappointment, of stories of high hopes blighted & strong hearts broken, of the unavailing heroism" (22 February 1868). She appears to speak for the group, too, when she explains that "[fjhe Book interests us, as telling of so much of the early History of our country, but many of the records are unnecessarily distressing and seem much exaggerated. Still it is a very readable Book" (4

February 1868). The women also read Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia, a missionary's account, and The life and death of Jeanne d'Arc, called the Maid, which the women "all enjoyed" (24 & 31 March 1868). At times, the women themselves would choose what they would read next; other times, Agnes relies on the advice of her husband, who on one occasion selects "Miss Berry's Journal & correspondence" for the group to read (2 January 1868). Agnes does not say what she and her reading companions thought about this selection; nor do we learn what they thought of The

Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, To the Constitution and Course of Nature, a book loaned to Agnes by a "Mrs. Jones" and that Sir John A. cautions "is the most difficult book in the English language" (20 April 1868). What does seem evident from these slight references is that the women's reading group offered a socially acceptable way for women to gather and discuss a wide range of texts and ideas. We also gain some idea of how structured and well-organized the reading group was, evident in diary entries where Agnes refers to making "arrangements" for the class (1 January 1868), or when she rises early to prepare for it (14 January 1868). 75

Public Implications of Reading

After reading a biography about British abolitionist and parliamentarian William

Wilberforce,51 "a strong tonic ... & good for the soul," Agnes considers the fine line between life and writing, and the presence and role of biographies and other texts in real life. The following passage evokes the visceral connection that often forms between biographical "characters" and their readers. In her diary, Agnes reflects on this relationship:

I feel as if I had parted with so many nice friends tonight, since I have sent

away Wilberforce! I c'ant [sic] go to the 'House' any more with him & see &

still better hear—all the notables of the day & time. The War & Pitt's

brokenheartedness seems all its long way off & the last echo of many

footsteps in the house of Kensington gone—have died away—Muncaster,

Gisborne, Clarkson, Grant, Macaulay—as well as North Grenville Whitbread,

Burke Fox, and a thousand others. (22 March 1868)

In establishing the evolution of the personal diary or journal through the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Elizabeth Podnieks discusses the characteristics and the role of such a "journal of conscience" (19), as a means through which individuals could evaluate their spiritual strengths and weaknesses, thus leaving behind potentially useful information for others on how to lead a good, Christian life (19-20). Agnes often reveals such an intention to us through her frequent analyses of her reading. Her comments about the Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry,52 provide a good example of her purpose in reading such texts: "Whatever one may think of her neglect of home duties—(& 76 something like that peeps thro' even her Daughter's fond admiration & approval) one cannot help acknowledging, I think, that she was specially raised up to do a good work,

& that her influence & example were--& are now-most useful. Many of its passages were most instructive to me" (11 January 1868). What is most interesting about this diary excerpt is the way it privileges a woman's public social or philanthropic contributions over her ability to keep an exemplary home. I draw attention to this excerpt because on a few different occasions in her diary, Agnes informs us that she is a poor housekeeper,53 and her reference to Fry may on some level attempt to justify such a perceived shortcoming.

Agnes Macdonald's interest in biography would have appealed to her contemporary readers because of the nineteenth-century belief in the moral value of such texts. As Agnes recalls, she "read once that everyone should try & do one good action— unselfishly—every day," and is then prompted to "try it, or try to try it rather!" (5

February 1869). Elsewhere, she reveals the impact of specific texts on her life. For example, in evaluating the five-volume biography on William Wilberforce {Life of

Wilberforce), Agnes reports that "[h]is aims were high indeed. I specially like his conscientiousness about the spending of his time. I hope I may learn some useful

Lessons from this, and am trying to read it slowly and carefully so that it may retain its place in my memory" (22 February 1868). A year later, after she reads a sketch of British diplomat Talleyrand in Henry Bulwer's Historical Characters, Agnes explains: "I am interested in the Lives of Statesmen, because of my Husband's tastes & career" (3

February 1869). 77

By including such intertextual references, Agnes pays homage to the Victorian practice of reading biography for personal instruction, while at the same time endorsing her own "life," as rendered through her diary, as potentially instructive reading. Agnes openly admits this as one of her goals when she confesses that "I desire to record these things .. . here—so that, if these poor pages live, some feeble Brother's sister, whose hands hang listless in their trouble—may see that one like themselves—only worse & weaker—found that by Lifting her hands up—she prevailed!" (26 April 1868). It is necessary to prevail, as Agnes shows us, because she played a key role in maintaining moral and spiritual stability as part of a conjugal political team, which helped to promote a properly "prime ministerial" image of her husband. In this respect, Agnes Macdonald's personal example (as recorded in her diary) may be read as having a cultural authority similar to that of the other biographies to which she refers. Her concluding remarks about The Life of William Wilberforce, for example, suggest the power of biographical influence. She writes:

the chief feature in every book about Wilberforce is the Part he took in

Abolition. The poorest, meanest Life would have been gloriously crowned by

that, and now American Slavery has been fought against & blotted out by the

men, whose career[s] must have been strengthened & perhaps suggested by

his example. (25 February 1868)

Agnes also deftly, if indirectly, promotes her diary as a Christian text, and, we assume, one worth reading. On one occasion, she "often wonder[s] in reading some passages in some religious Biographies if the writers were really as good as they say they 78 felt themselves to be. I could never imagine a truly Christian person being anything but filled with a sense of their own unworthy shortcoming!" (19 April 1868). Given her preoccupation with identifying her own shortcomings, here, Agnes clearly promotes herself as a true Christian, and thus, we suspect, a good role model for others. She perhaps documents her daily conduct in an effort to provide a conduct book for others.

The biographical works to which Lady Macdonald makes reference include

"books about good devoted people—men & women with high aims & great capacity for self denial" (27 August 1868), suggesting that she simultaneously sought to learn more about her husband's political role (through male predecessors), and to learn more about her own role. To better appreciate this aspect of her diary, I have included a table

(Appendix A) that includes a list of texts, as well as her assessments of them. Agnes indicates on a number of occasions that her reading provides her with spiritual or moral ideals that she believes are worth striving for. She reveals an effort to emulate both male and female philanthropists and social activists: for example, after reading Mrs. Pauline

Craven's54 Le Recit d'une Soeur (in French), Agnes admits that "My life might be so careless & seem more earthly than it is—without some attempt so to order my reading, as to bring my mind into intercourse with better things" (19 April 1868); of George

Mueller's Life of Trust, "a favorite book of [hers]" (25 February 1868), she writes that

"[i]t has taught me what I never knew before—Prayer is a full & complete sense as a

Power, an Agency, by & thro' Faith" (22 March 1868). To Agnes, good books represent useful or instructional material that can help her lead a more fulfilling life, and so she chooses her reading accordingly, and adhering to the types of material that a respectable 79 woman would choose. "Novel reading," she tells us, "is certainly a folly—if not a vice"

(15 April 1868), while religious biographies and histories receive a higher approval rating. Barbara Welter helps us better appreciate the nineteenth-century context surrounding Agnes Macdonald's diary, particularly the record of her reading that she kept in her diary. Regarding the place and power of reading, Welter explains that the proper nineteenth-century woman

should avoid [novels], since they interfered with 'serious piety.' If she

simply couldn't help herself and read them anyway, she should choose

edifying ones from lists of morally acceptable authors. She should study

history since it 'showed the depravity of the human heart and the evil nature

of sin.' On the whole, 'religious biography was best.' (165-166)

If Agnes Macdonald offered little or no commentary about the discussions that she may have had with Theodora or the members of her reading group about the texts that they read together, she reveals how she is influenced by them in some of the social commentary she includes in her diary. From the many biographies Agnes reads about the lives of prominent prison reformers, philanthropists, and abolutionists, she learns about the complexities of justice, punishment, and social reform. Her reading of John Forney's

Letters from Europe, for example, prompts her to specifically reconsider "[t]he wickedness of the poorer classes & the luxury of the higher," and to conclude that

England "is a delicious country for the rich, but I should hate it for the Poor, and there is no denying, at least I think not, that the Middle Class toady & fawn" (5 February 1868).

Yet Agnes Macdonald's reading also led her to contemplate other examples of 80 social justice more generally and closer to home. Lynn Bloom suggests that "the writer's response to her world, varied and variegated, including not only people and events but her reading and intellectual and philosophical speculations" (28) is another feature of diaries written to be read as public documents. While Agnes does not draw specific parallels between her reading and the "philosophical speculations" that she records in her diary, she shows evidence of great intellectual thought and reasoning that was likely informed by her reading. On one occasion, she finds herself distracted from church service by a scene outside her window, and wonders about the differences between adult and juvenile criminals, and the ways in which they are punished. Agnes writes:

Today from my seat in the courthouse, during Service~(it is held there until

the church is ready)551 could not help watching the Prisoners, sitting close

to the barred windows eating their coarse dinners, & looking out into the

yard. There was one a boy--a brown-haired-child almost, & I pondered over

the strangeness of Prison discipline that could allow that young criminal to

associate with the villanous looking old Blackguard. (7 July 1867)

Clearly, Agnes Macdonald was a thoughtful observer of her world, and she asked some good questions about the rationale behind its institutions and beliefs. Yet it is the

"deeply, fearfully interesting" trial (19 September 1868) of D'Arcy McGee's accused murderer, Patrick Whelan, which offers Agnes the greatest opportunity to consider the principles of justice and capital punishment; it also offers her an opportunity to indulge her talent as a writer. Her comment that "[t]he defence was a skilful one—on the whole, but disappointed me—the Prosecuting counsel had a ready made fluent speech, 81 convincing as much or more from fact than argument" (19 September 1868) and her subsequent consideration of Whelan's sentence suggest that Lady Agnes Macdonald was not entirely convinced of the merits of the trial process and the sentences it passed and carried out. After a guilty verdict is delivered, and most of the observers have cleared the courtroom, Agnes then crafts some of her most powerful prose in which she articulates the waste, despondency, and spiritual emptiness that she sees at the conclusion of the trial. Her portrait of the convicted murderer, Patrick Whelan, compels us to reconsider the purpose of capital punishment, and the humanity of the criminal. In the following (if lengthy) excerpt from her diary, Agnes preserves a memorable account of the event in which she methodically processes her thoughts and observations:

The people, finding the excitement over, the Trial virtually at an end, the

man's doom fixed, had gone—as the People always go their thousand

different ways. To dinner—to eat, drink & make merry—to walk to gossip to

lounge—to chat to sleep—who knows—leaving the wretched human thing they

had so long gazed at—to its lonely misery.

The poor Walls of the Court house looked horribly blank & bare—some

few late stayers, rough-looking men, half asleep were doubled up on the

common wooden benches of the gallery, the chairs which the ladies had

occupied were empty & thrust aside—scraps of paper, torn envelopes,

crumpled journals lay about the dusty floor, the two great staring windows

made great white blanks in the darkening room—twilight filled it—the corners

were already Night—two lights glared steadily one over the Judges [sic] desk 82

& the Barrister's] semi-circular table the other a large gaslight-just

opposite over the Prisoner's chair.

There [Whelan] sat—a living pallid face against the dull background—he

in the full light, a solitary figure—his guards mere masses in the gloom—with

wide-opened, unwinking eyes, a set face, the lines hardened by intense

restraint, motionless, yet fearfully active—silent, yet passionately speaking.

They tell me he cannot feel! Cannot feel!! Perhaps not in the refined sense of

our word, not perhaps with the detail of cultivated suffering, but if you raise

a stick to a cur, does he not cower? Can a living, healthy man—young &

active in whose veins the blood bounds quick & strong, can he know he shall

be sentenced to hang 'by [the] neck, till his Body be dead' and not feel! If men then do not feel, then capital punishment is useless murder. It cannot do

any good, as an example, because when ruffians are sentenced & hanged, other ruffians knowing they do not feel are in no way deterred from crime.

Whelan felt—the man found guilty of a cold-blooded, crafty midnight murder—the man who—for months—must have tracked a fellow creature, who had never harmed him by word thought or deed, and deliberately shot him dead—as crippled & sick—he was opening his House door—yes, even that ruffian felt. I saw & marked him well, all those weary hours & tho' he was wonderfully resolute & perhaps at times callous, still at that supreme moment when he must have read his Fate in every face—the agony of that criminal was terrible to behold—the restrained, helpless agony—mute and 83

bound. (19 September 1868)

By telling us that "[she] saw & marked him well," Agnes reveals the active, intellectual nature of her presence in the courtroom, and, as she debates the efficacy of capital punishment and the functioning of the criminal mind, it is impossible not to admire her intelligence, and to be moved by her logic and passion. By demonstrating a sensitivity to the "restrained, helpless agony," even as it exists within a publicly despised criminal,

Agnes indicates that she detects some element of humanity within him. Thus, we might deduce that she detects his ability to be spiritually redeemed, despite her use of an animal allusion to depict his level of feeling when she writes: "They tell me he cannot feel! Cannot feel!! Perhaps not in the refined sense of our word, not perhaps with the detail of cultivated suffering, but if you raise a stick to a cur, does he not cower?"

Regardless, Whelan's assumed inability to feel, as Agnes reasons, undermines the purpose and value of his death sentence, her argument being that "[i]f men then do not feel, then capital punishment is useless murder. It cannot do any good, as an example, because when ruffians are sentenced & hanged, other ruffians knowing they do not feel are in no way deterred from crime." If the outcome of Patrick Whelan, however, lay beyond Agnes's sphere of influence, her position as Lady Macdonald and the "round of duty" (26 April 1868) that it involved, enabled her to improve the lives (and "feelings") of many other socially (or sometimes spiritually) disadvantaged individuals living in her community. 84

Socially Disadvantaged Individuals and the Ottawa Orphans' Home

In attempting to fulfill her desire to "do more for my religion with others" (30

August 1868), Agnes Macdonald spent a great deal of her time ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of her social inferiors, both in her home (her servants) and in the Ottawa community (disadvantaged women, and the children at the Orphans'

Home). As the moral and spiritual leader in the Macdonald home, Lady Macdonald seems pleased to report on the apparent success of her influence, confessing that: "I am so glad to find my servants going regularly to church—at first they would not" (10

January 1869). And she makes it a personal project, "praying for teaching to teach her"

(23 March 1868) to reform the spiritual fibre of Ellen Connell, a woman who seems to have been one of Agnes Macdonald's domestics at one time.56 Agnes records a number of bible reading sessions she conducts with Ellen (2 January 1868; 23 March 1868),57 which she hopes—and trusts—will help to bring Ellen "to better things" (26 March

1868),58 including Ellen's upcoming confirmation (26 March 1868).

In the greater Ottawa community, Lady Macdonald attempted to bring similar such enlightenment and comfort to those who were less fortunate, a common practice of socially prominent or wealthy women (Luella Creighton 117-118). Mary Kelley explains that

[w]omen in organized benevolence embarked on the project that Tocqueville

had considered as critical as remaining 'civilized' - schooling others in

becoming 'civilized,' which they identified as the basis for citizenship.

Those whom they marked as the other, or the yet-to-be elevated 85

intellectually and morally, were expected to yield their principles to the

values of reformers who claimed the right to define what it meant to be

'civilized.' (14)

A number of Agnes's diary entries describe home visits where she is involved in helping some unfortunate, suffering woman; I argue that we can read the purpose behind many these visits as Agnes Macdonald's effort to "school others" by bringing her influence (of devoutness and moral integrity) into the homes of those less fortunate. While Agnes compassionately portrays the women whom she visits (nobly struggling with their various health or marital issues), she does associate some of them with environments or relationships of questionable social integrity. As such, we can read these visits, in part, as potentially "instructive" visits, where Agnes can be seen as bringing a sense of civility or morality into the homes and the lives of women and men in need of such support and guidance. Lady Macdonald sees the ailing Betsy Hynes out of social kindness "to take her a few small comforts. Poor girl, she is patiently waiting her end, now, certainly not far off (2 September 1868), and likely to offer the woman religious support or instruction in her final days. Other visits appear to have a more intrusive social purpose.

On one occasion, for example, Lady Macdonald accompanies a Mrs. Eaton59 to visit "a consumptive girl [who] seems to belong to a family of gipsies[~]a 'bad clan' as Mrs.

Eaton, with her strong way of putting things—says. They all seem poor, & worthless, idle and unthrifty. We are going to do something for the sick girl by removing her from this

Hovel to begin with. The atmosphere in all respects is dreadful" (25 April 1868). Later that year, Lady Macdonald records a visit with an elderly widow (3 September 1868); in 86 the new year, her social round of duty includes a visit with a woman named "Mrs.

Edwards" who appears to be struggling with an ill or unstable husband (1 February

1869), followed a few days later with a visit to see the wife of a prisoner named

"Buckley," a "wretched woman, & yet what a true faithful wife. They say he used to beat her & she sorrows so much for him now. I tried to show kindness to the poor woman" (5

February 1869). If we read Agnes Macdonald as a committed citizen-mother, then these last two visits to homes associated with elements of instability (possibly physical, emotional, or financial) or criminal behaviour can be read, in part, as social interventions.

Yet it is Agnes's reference to the Orphans' Home that emphasizes the extent to which Lady Macdonald took her citizen-mother influence into the community. The

Ottawa Orphans' Home is referred to on a regular basis in the diary entries for 1868 following Agnes's election as its First Directress on 15 January of that year (Thorburn

43), a position she held for the next seven years.60 With little time to enjoy the social prestige of her appointment, however, Lady Macdonald immediately found herself embroiled in the complex politics of committee work: she describes the situation as

"anything but a 'bed of roses.' The old Committee seem to have quarrelled, & parted & now I find the Debt on the new Building is nearly 3500 dollars—besides there is

Smallpox in one part of the Building & no water in the well!" (19 January 1868). While

Agnes does not say what led to the conflict that divided ranks on the administrative committee, Maria Thorburn has identified it as a disagreement over the purchase of a property on Albert Street (38-41). 87

The Orphans' Home appears to have been one of the earliest public charitable institutions in Ottawa at the time (Thorburn 11), and its inception and administrative design provide a good illustration of how women's philanthropic organizations helped to politicize women. Conceived of in the private space of the home, or more specifically, in

"the drawing-room of Mrs. W. F. Coffin" (Thorburn 15), the administrative body that was eventually formed to oversee the operation of the Orphans' Home reflected both male and female authorities and interests: an Advisory Committee of prominent men was established to assist the women on the Board of Management (Thorburn 18), and as the Orphans' Home grew in size and administrative complexity, women on the Board became more explicitly involved in formal politics. The petition circulated by the women for an act in 1865 that would incorporate the Home (Thorburn 24) was one of the earliest examples where women in Ottawa became involved, however indirectly, in public policy making. The women's success in this endeavour implicated them in political participation, despite any disclaimer: "[although many women insisted that these activities conformed to feminine constraints, a few recognized that the means that they employed to accomplish their goals were essentially political-and that women could be effective" (Ginzberg 72). So too did the administrative structure of philanthropic organizations further enable women to perform in the public sphere: with administration came the various responsibilities of governance, such as voting on a mandate, voting on other policies, and generally providing the public leadership of public organizations. When women became involved in such governing bodies, they became equipped to engage in more public roles of administration. Ruth Compton 88

Brouwer cites an example from the 1880s where people publicly speculated that if women were capable of administrative duties in their churches, then they were likely capable of voting responsibly (189-190).

The women who held positions on the administrative board of the Orphans'

Home were chosen based on their church affiliation. Each year, thirty women from the community were selected to sit on the Board, but only up to ten for each Protestant denomination in Ottawa: St. Andrew's Church, Knox Church, Wesleyan Methodist,

Congregationalist, Baptist, Episcopal Methodist, and the Church of England (Thorbum

16). The women who held the key administrative positions were from some of the elite founding families of Ottawa: Mrs. Editha Eliza Bronson,61 for example, whom Agnes

Macdonald mentions by name in her diary (5 February 1868; 25 March 1868) was the wife of American businessman, Henry Franklin Bronson, who made his name and fortune from the lumber business.62 Bronson helped found the Ottawa Ladies' College in

1869, and he and his wife were active members of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

Agnes unfortunately does not report on the specifics of her Orphans' committee meetings, so we do not learn much about the ways in which women interacted with one another in this philanthropic (and feminine) and administrative (and masculine) environment.63 We learn that Lady Macdonald often felt that she simply did not have the time to do more for the Orphans' Home, because of her many other social obligations as prime minister's wife,64 but the few comments that she does make about her involvement with the Home offer some insight into the new world of female administration. We learn, for example, that the regular monthly meetings are well 89 attended,65 even if Agnes finds them somewhat unproductive, with "too much talking & too little acting" (31 March 1868), or "rather trying in vulgar opposition for opposition's sake, & talkative" (31 August 1868).66 Despite the brevity and critical nature of Lady

Macdonald's comments about these meetings, they nonetheless provide a glimpse into how and when women began to engage in civic undertakings. If the meetings evoke the image of an ineffective administrative body, they also evoke the image of a publicly organized group of women who had a lot to say, and who obviously felt comfortable expressing their opinions or dissent. Agnes implies that the Orphans' Home meetings and the administrative roles they offered to women represented opportunities for female action and ability. For example, while Agnes did not seem pleased with the way that meetings were run, she saw her role as 1st Directress as an obligation where she "must try & improve these things--as far as I may" (31 March 1868); later that year, and following another unproductive meeting, she concludes that despite the disorder, she believed the environment was "[a] good school for the Temper & as such so good for me" (31 August 1868). Despite the disorder of the meetings, therefore, it appears that they offered a few different opportunities for women to develop new skills.

Yet Lady Macdonald's influence with the Orphans' Home was not solely administrative; on occasion, she would pay a visit to the "ill managed" Orphans' Home

(26 March 1868).67 While she privately questions the effectiveness of these visits, once reporting that "it was a discouraging visit, as I fear I do not go with good motives & so am easily, very easily discouraged" (6 April 1868), Agnes provides a sense of the more positive impact that she had when she was there. During one visit, she observes the daily 90 operation of the home, and "saw the children questioned & taught them" (25 February

1868), a reference that is suggestive of the tangible ways in which Lady Macdonald brought her citizen-mother influence into the Orphans' Home and the lives of the children who lived there.

Structural Elements

Lady Macdonald's influence was not restricted just to her interactions with others in her nineteenth-century community; she extended her influence into the twenty- first century with the help of certain structural elements or narrative devices that diarists have used to make their personal accounts more accessible or interesting to outside readers. These elements may include: "foreshadowing and flashbacks; emphasis on topics rather than chronology; repetition of philosophical themes and pervasive issues; character depiction; scene setting; and the use of integrative metaphors, symbols, and other stylistic devices" (Bloom 29). I have already discussed the philosophical aspect of

Agnes Macdonald's diary, as well as her portrayal of primary and subordinate characters. Numerous examples of literary devices can also be found in Agnes

Macdonald's diary, such as her use of pathetic fallacy or allusion that helps her to establish the atmosphere surrounding certain events. Thus she shrouds a funeral day68 in a natural blanket, "a gloomy day as the few dark sleigh's [sic] crept over the white white

Earth, dimly seen thro' the heavy falling snow" (1 January 1868), and later uses an ominous weather report as a means of foreshadowing her confession of personal heartbreak that follows (the realization of her daughter Mary's hydrocephalic condition, 91

and possibly of her husband's return to drinking). On an early November day, Agnes

writes:

The wind seems rising to a gale now, & the fine misty snow is blowing

horozontially [sic] across the bleak country. Since we went to church this

morning, the ground is covered with a light coating, & a heavy Fall seems

coming from the threatening, black-grey clouds. . . . Outwardly all is nearly

the same, except that my darling child's smile brightens my Home—but in

my Heart I feel that much is wholly different. I ought to be wiser for I have

suffered keenly in mind, since last I wrote here. Only One who knows all

our Hearts can tell how keenly & painfully or how—for long weeks &

months all was gloom & disappointment. (7 November 1869)

By using common literary techniques to record factual biographical data, Agnes

Macdonald transforms an otherwise personal record of events into a compelling literary text. Therefore, if some readers find themselves unfamiliar with the factual content of her diary narrative, they are still able to engage with the text on a literary level, where recognizable literary devices allow them to access the narrative by different means.

Another time, Agnes refers to herself in the third person, depicting the members of her household as hospital inmates: "Hewitt in bed or on his sofa with rhumatic gout,

Mama with feverish Influenza and Agnes very ailing" (7&8 February 1868). In removing herself from the first-person immediacy of her own experiences, Agnes reveals two things: a consciousness of being observed, and a consciousness of being crafted as a character in her own life story. Agnes Macdonald also casts herself as a 92 distinct narrative subject in her diary text through the use of dialogue (I discuss the significance of dialogue in further detail in Chapter Four). Dialogue emphasizes a degree of self-consciousness in which Agnes steps back and depicts herself as a participant in the drama of her diary. Agnes incorporates two types of dialogue in the diary: one-sided addresses to her, and full dialogues, in which she acts as an equal participant. The former instances permit Agnes to rely on a third party to articulate seemingly objective observations (usually compliments) about her husband or about her life. For example, she is approached on one occasion by a "sturdy old man" who "said a few bluff words and ended with 'good welcome to you, young Lady, your husband is a good man'" (13

July 1867). On another, she happily quotes her husband's judgement of the warm and inviting atmosphere of her dressing room, attesting to her abilities as wife and home- maker (11 January 1868).69

Examples of full dialogues, or occasions where Agnes engages in a shared conversation, are infrequent, but include brief exchanges with John Sandfield

Macdonald and Joseph Howe, two of her husband's political contemporaries, and at one time, his political opponents against Confederation.70 On the eve of Sandfield

Macdonald's appointment as Premier of Ontario, Agnes recalls a short conversation in which he confirms he will accept the position: "I saw his mind was made up—he said

'Well I am going in for it Lady Macdonald' & I answered 'I am heartily glad to hear it & trust & hoped too, it will be all right & for the best'" (10 July 1867). Her recall of a brief encounter with Joseph Howe, however, is more fully developed in a way that emphasizes her husband's role in orchestrating the success of Canadian Confederation. 93

Agnes writes:

Only eight months ago, Mr. Howe was in England in violent opposition to

Sir John—arguing & fighting for repeal. Two years ago, just after my

marriage, my Husband & I met him in Regent Street, the gentlemen saluted

each other, stopped~& Sir John introduced him to me. They had some words

of badinage, they were always on good terms socially—& my Husband said

'Oh! Some day I vow, you will be one of us—' & Mr. Howe answered

"Never, never, you shall hang me first' And now he has 'accepted the

situation,' & side by side with Sir John, he sits at the Council Board. (30

January 1869)

However, it is Agnes Macdonald's narrative about D'Arcy McGee's murder, written almost a week after it occurred,71 where we see evidence of Agnes's most sophisticated use of literary devices. Taking advantage of retrospection and time to craft her account of the event, Agnes's use of premonition creates suspense and foreshadows the murder, and her religious references, even if they were included coincidentally, add a metaphorical significance to the narrative. Her full account of the fateful evening is as follows:

This is how it was that dreadful night. At half past two o'clock on the

Tuesday morning, Tuesday the 7th, my Husband came home—from a late

sitting. It had made me a little uneasy his being away so long. To begin with

I knew he would feel tired & then a sort of dread came upon me as I looked

out into the cold, still bright moonlight, that something might happen to him, at that hour coming home alone. This feeling, however remarkable

then, is one which has often distressed me, when Parliamentary business has

kept Sir John out late--or rather early—as was the case this bad morning.

About V* past 2,1 felt so restless that even my Bible reading failed to

calm me, & I went to Mama's room, & lay down on her Bed. We were

talking in subdued tones, & she was scolding me for sitting up when—I

heard the carriage wheels—& flew down to open the door for my Husband.

We were so cozy—after that—he coming in so cheery—with news of the

Debate—& sitting by my dressing-room fire, with his supper—that, as I knelt

to say a few words of Prayer—before I went to Bed~I could not help,

stopping to think a moment over my many many Blessings, and to wonder

at my peaceful happy Life—its Shadow gone!

Nestling my head on my pillow I was almost half asleep, when I was

roused by a low, rapid knocking at the Front Door—in an instant a great fear

came upon me~& springing up, I threw on a wrapper, & ran into my

dressing-room, just in time to see John throw up the window & to hear him

call out 'Is there anything the matter?' The answer came up fearfully clear &

hard—thro' the cold moonlight morning—'McGee is murdered—lying in the

street—shot thro' the Head' The words fell like the Blow of an [sic] Bar of

iron across my Heart—it was too dreadful. (Easter Sunday. April 12, 1868)

As Agnes remembers, it is a long and late night as she anxiously waits at home for her husband's return from Parliament. She records a strange unease that keeps her awake, 95 and an uncanny "sort of dread [that] came upon me as I looked out into the cold, still bright moonlight, that something might happen to [my husband]." Nothing appears to reassure her: Agnes confides that even her "Bible reading failed to calm me," an admission that is suggestive of a disruption in Christian order and authority elsewhere, specifically the individual who at the time was about to carry out his murderous and unholy scheme.72 That Agnes recalls the murder in a diary entry dated Easter Sunday also represents, to the literary scholar, an interesting (if accidental) metaphor of

"resurrecting" the memory of McGee's final moments. Sir John A. Macdonald's safe return, however, relieves his wife's anxiety, and she then reflects on her many blessings and her "peaceful happy Life," a brief moment of happiness and a false sense of security that permits Agnes to heighten the horror of the murder report that then intrudes into their lives.

The many structural features that we can identify in Agnes Macdonald's diary make it a text worth literary study, and add layers of complexity and nuance to the biographical life that she records on its pages. Committed to the task of caring for the spiritual and moral well-being of her family and of the individuals in her community who lacked an appropriate maternal guide, Agnes Macdonald embodied the ideals of the citizen-mother. This feminine (and domestic) yet civic (and public) image worked alongside the images of male nation-builders to contribute to the project of constructing a respectable home in the new Dominion of Canada. Notes

1. Also see her impression of diary keeping in her first entry, where she writes: "a Locked Diary looks consequential & just now, I am rather in that line myself.--I mean the consequential line" (5 July 1867).

2. Also see Bloom, 23.

3. First Drafts gives readers a good sense of how individuals responded to key historic events, but not the diversity of those writers (for example, women, francophones, and aboriginals are under-represented), and the majority of the excerpts are from the twentieth century. See Conrad's review of the book for more.

4. For more information, see Brouwer, Chapter 3.

5. If Welter establishes a rigid paradigm of womanly behaviour that does not account for the diversity of women's experiences, the connection she draws between the importance of religion and nineteenth-century women is substantiated elsewhere. Nor does this connection appear to be restricted to the nineteenth-century woman. One interesting aspect of Maureen McTeer's memoir is the subtle thread of her Roman Catholic faith that runs throughout (see examples on 25, 29, 93, 99, 184, 227, 279, 281). While her assertive intellect and outspokenness may have rankled the Canadian public in the 1970s and 80s, McTeer's religious faith in her memoir may mitigate the ways in which she is remembered for her stand on abortion, for example, during her own bid for office in the 1988 federal election. She writes that "[wjhile I oppose abortion personally and would not counsel it, I do not believe that the solution lies in forcing pregnant women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or risk their health and safety at the hands of illegal abortionists" (195), and then tells us, first, that the Archbishop of Hull (the head of the diocese in which the McTeer-Clark family was living at the time) accepts this explanation, and second, after her daughter Catherine is accosted by a pro-lifer during the campaign, McTeer explains to her that "I could never have considered an abortion, not just for religious reasons, but because I had so wanted a child" (196).

6. An approximate total word count in the diary is 3, 200.

7.1 obtained these numbers by running a "Word Find" search on my transcribed version of Agnes Macdonald's diary.

8. For a more detailed biography, see Schurman.

9. For more information, see "Lord Adalbert Cecil, 1841-1889."

10. For examples, see entries for 6 December 1868; 6 February 1868; and 26 March 1868. 97

11. These challenges may have been part of the reason for Agnes's description of herself as "a laborious Housekeeper, & still awkward at it" (3 December 1867); "impure" air certainly seemed responsible for some of Sir John A. Macdonald's ailments, prompting a relocation of his home study on one occasion (25 February 1868).

12. Also see Martin for his overview of the "tavern culture" of nineteenth-century Canada (165-166).

13. Also see Biggar, who suggests that Agnes rejected an earlier marriage proposal because of her fears of John A. Macdonald's drinking (101).

14. See Martin (173-176) for impressions of how Sir John A. Macdonald's drinking affected his performance as politician during the years 1870-73.

15.1 would like to credit Ged Martin (or more specifically, his article) for drawing my attention to Peter Oliver's published edition of Harrison's diaries.

16. Also see P.B. Waite, who cites the opinion of another of the Macdonalds' contemporaries: "The only person who could do anything with him, said Charles Belford of the Toronto Mail, was Lady Macdonald, but even she was not capable of handling him" ("Bernard, Susan Agnes" 66).

17. Two readings of the term "gloss" are possible here. I initially (and intentionally) chose this term to refer to the role that Agnes Macdonald's diary plays in offering a narrative explanation or commentary (or "gloss") that helps readers better understand her husband's character. However, the other interpretation of "gloss" as a superficial veneer, may also arguably apply, because of the way that the diary presents the character of Sir John A. Macdonald.

18. This passage appeared in a letter of thanks that Agnes sent to the House, following Sir John's death.

19. While this thesis focuses on the nineteenth century, a comparison can be made between the promotional aspect of Agnes Macdonald's writing and Maureen McTeer's memoir, In My Own Name. In recounting some of Joe Clark's political defeats (as prime minister and leader of the opposition), McTeer portrays her husband as "[a] party person to the core" (163), rather than an individual whose personal ambitions have been thwarted. See additional examples on 166, 176, and 198. McTeer describes Joe Clark (after his defeat as prime minister, and the Conservative party's subsequent defeat as government in 1980), as a modest man who was reluctant to "write and rewrite history to ensure [his] part was portrayed in a positive light" (133).

20. For example, see Agnes's diary entry for 7 July 1867, in which she writes:'! do so wish there [word scratched out] could be a Law passed forbidding Sunday politics!"; 98 also see her entry for 29 March 1868, in which she celebrates herself (and her God) for keeping politics at bay on Sundays: "My heavenly Father who has changed my Husband's life in so many ways, has also put it into his Heart to deny himself on Sunday, & so idle gossip & business & hurry & all the weeks [sic] bustle is kept from my Home. I am so thankful. It may seem a little thing but it is really a great one, & an unspeakable happiness to me."

21. Sir John A. Macdonald took his first Anglican Communion the day after Theodora Bernard's funeral (Bedford-Jones 21).

22. In this diary entry, Agnes turns to prayer after hearing the doctor's report: "As for Sir John the Doctor tells me daily he is working himself to death, & to my anxious wifely heart, it would almost seem so. He is so precious to us all, that we are perhaps over solicitous but his constant attention to close business seems to overtax him now-a-days. I have brought it before My Heavenly Father in my Prayers, & know all will be well."

23. Agnes is referring here to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort.

24. Gwyn suggests that Agnes Macdonald's reference to Sir John A.'s '"headaches'" (25 February 1868) is code for his drinking (198). Also see Reynolds, who writes that Agnes likely found it easier to discuss her husband's health, rather than his drinking problem (54).

25. For examples, see diary entries for 6 December 1867; 24 March 1868; 12 April 1868; 15 April 1868; 16 April 1868; 1 May 1868; and 23 March 1870.

26. Thomas Bedford-Jones was born in Ireland in 1830, immigrated to Canada in 1862, and was appointed to serve as rector of St. Alban the Martyr Anglican Church, Ottawa, in 1865. Refer to his article on the early years of St. Alban's for a fuller biography (1).

27. Mrs. Grant Powell (Elizabeth Mary [Hurd] Powell), was the wife of Grant Powell, who was one-time chief clerk of civil servant Edmund Meredith, and later Under- Secretary of State. For more about Grant Powell, see George Maclean Rose.

28. The "Mrs. Langton" mentioned here is likely Mrs. Lydia (Dunsford) Langton, who was the wife of Auditor General John Langton. The Langton family was Anglican.

29. Mr. H.A. Wicksteed was the Accountant General for the Post Office. In addition, he was on the building committee of St. Alban's Church. See Keshen and St-Onge (95, 103).

30. On one side of this gap, we find a fairly contented Agnes who leaves us with a quick summary: "[m]y Home treasures well & happy, health & prosperity success & satisfaction, still vouchsafed to us~one & all" (16 March 1872). On the other side of the gap, a few years later, we find a devastated Agnes, whose return entry (11 March 1875) 99 dwells on the loss of her mother, who died unexpectedly at the end of February, 1875. Compounding the political situation was the fact that Sir John A. Macdonald was apparently drinking quite heavily at the time, too (Martin 174-175).

31. For a more detailed account of how the Pacific Scandal unfolded, see Chapter V in Creighton's The Old Chieftain.

32. There were two sessions in the 2nd Parliament, which ran from 5 March, 1873 to 2 January, 1874: Session I ran from 5 March to 13 August; Session II ran from 23 October to 7 November. See "Parliament" for more details.

33.1 have been unable to determine how long Hewitt lived with Agnes and Sir John A., although Louise Reynolds suggests that "for some years" prior to 1876-77, Hewitt had been living on his own (87).

34. See Gwyn (54-55) for a description of sewage problems in Ottawa in general.

35. In her discussion of the same episode, Louise Reynolds implies that this was not the only time that Agnes, Theodora, and Hewitt worked together on a matter concerning the prime minister (54). For Sir John A. Macdonald's own account of the episode, see Johnson (107).

36. For more, see Waite ("Bernard, Hewitt").

37. See diary entries for 2 February 1868; 7&8 February 1868; 25 January 1869; 25 April 1869; and 9 January 1871.

38. Prior to his resignation from government in 1876 (due to ill health), Hewitt appears to have been a fairly mobile individual. Agnes records a number of trips that Hewitt made on government business; see her diary entries referring to his trips to Toronto (6 July 1867; 12 January 1869; 17 January 1869), and to Montreal (2 January 1868; 5 January 1869).

39. For example, Agnes records Hewitt and Sir John A. returning "near midnight" one evening (24 March 1868); in another diary entry, she writes that "Hewitt & Sir John dined at Rideau Hall—& then went to a Ball for half an hour—home at 11" (7 January 1869).

40. On this occasion, business finished by midnight, but Agnes's subsequent references to her husband and her brother's late nights at the House indicate that the two men sometimes didn't return home until 3 or 4 a.m. See her diary entry for 10 May 1868.

41. See diary entries for 16 & 23 April, 1868. 100

42. For examples, see the following diary entries for early 1868: 1 January (The Jesuits in North America); 11 January (selections from Pall Mall magazines); 19 January (Paul the Pope & Paul the Friar); 19 January (Home in the Holy Land); and 22 February (The Huguenots).

43. See, for examples, entries for 24 March 1868, where Agnes and Theodora stay up until midnight "chatting & reading" until Sir John A. and Hewitt return from the House; and 12 April 1868, when Agnes records the events of the day after D'Arcy McGee's assassination, when Theodora remained at home with her, keeping her company, and reassuring her of Sir John and Hewitt's safety when they went out to visit the scene of the murder. On the uneasy night of the murder, Agnes also recalls visiting Theodora in her room; this latter passage, however, is more complexly narrated and I discuss it in further detail later in this chapter.

44. Sandra Gwyn suggests that Theodora's close and constant presence may have not been entirely welcomed by Sir John A. Macdonald (194).

45. Theodora Bernard died on 26 February 1875. Agnes was in Toronto at the time.

46. For examples, see diary entries for 1 January 1868; 26 February 1868; 27 September 1868; and 1 January 1869.

47. See diary entries for 19 January 1868, and 1 March 1868.

48. Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley had five daughters by his first wife, Julia Hanford, who died in 1862. Unfortunately, the only reference that I have found to these women is in James Hannay's biography of Tilley, in which they are listed by their married names only: "Mrs. A. F. Street (Fredericton, d. 1894); Mrs. W.H. DeWolfe (Chilliwack, B.C.); Mrs. Thomas Burpee (Winnipeg); Mrs. J.D. Chipman; and Miss Julia Tilley" (398).

49. Ellen Langton is mentioned elsewhere in the diary (see entries dated 3 September 1868, and 5 February 1869). The youngest Langton daughter, (Mary) Agnes, travelled to England with her aunt Anne in 1868 to attend school; Anne Langton is best known for letters of her life in Upper Canada, which were later published by her nephew as A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada. See Langton xxxiii, and 392-94.

50. Lt. Colonel John G. Irvine (1837-1916) had two daughters, Maggie and Katie, who could have been in their late teens during the 1860s; it is possible that Maggie is the "Miss Irvine" referred to in Agnes Macdonald's diary. Both of Irvine's daughters died in a scarlet fever outbreak in 1871. See Gwyn 53, 60.

51. For a biography, see "Wilberforce, William."

52. Elizabeth Fry's biography was edited by her daughter, Katherine, and first published in 1847. For more information, see "Fry, Elizabeth (Gurney)." 101

53. See, for example, Agnes's obvious frustration with the process of housekeeping in her diary entries dated: 3 December 1867; 3 February & 31 March 1868; and 4 February 1869.

54. For more about Pauline Craven, see Rudge.

55. The Anglican church services that Agnes attended under the Reverend Bedford- Jones were held in the court house for two years; St. Alban's Church opened on 8 September 1867 (Bedford-Jones 7).

56. See diary entry for 12 January 1868, where Agnes reflects on Ellen's spiritual progress as well as on the spiritual status of a current servant: "I trust my teaching Ellen did her good, & that the little Book I gave her may be blessed to her. My present servant Bridget is a romanist. I am truly sorry—it was such a link between us that Sunday's Bible reading."

57. See also her entry for 2 February 1868, in which Agnes records a missed bible lesson with Ellen. See, too, the entry in which Agnes seems to take it personally when Ellen fails to appear on confirmation Sunday (26 April 1868).

58. Also see Agnes's diary entry for 12 January 1868.

59.1 have not been able to confirm the identity of "Mrs. Eaton." However, an "Anna J. Eaton" is listed as one of the women involved with the Ottawa Orphans' Home (Thorburn 24).

60. Louise Reynolds suggests that Agnes had originally become involved with the Orphans' Home "to teach Catechism to the children" (52), but as her social standing grew, so did her responsibilities with the Home.

61. It is unclear whether Mrs. Bronson is the 2nd Directress to whom Agnes refers, the "charitable & kind" wife of an American lumberman she meets with (19 January 1868).

62. For his detailed biography, see Gillis.

63. Maria Thorburn provides little information about the Ottawa Orphans' Home for this time period. While she provides a very detailed sketch of the Home's earliest years (from 1864-1868), she collapses the six years from 1869-1874 (basically the entire tenure of Agnes Macdonald's position of 1st Directress) into two short paragraphs beginning: "Nothing requiring special notice occurred during the next six years" (43). It is not clear to what extent Lady Macdonald was responsible for the relative stability of the Orphans' Home during this period.

64. See Agnes Macdonald's diary entry for 26 March 1868, in which she writes that she thinks she should visit the Orphans' Home more often, but has "hardly time to attend 102 properly." Also see Maria Thorburn's history of the Orphans' Home, which acknowledges both the commitment and the many other social obligations that Lady Macdonald managed to balance during her appointment as First Directress (43).

65. In addition to the meetings referenced in my discussion, they are referred to in diary entries for 25 February 1868, and 16 April 1868.

66. Also see entry for 1 May 1868.

67. Also see entry for 20 April 1868.

68. The funeral is for a "Mr. Blair." Agnes is probably referring to Mr. Adam Johnston Fergusson Blair, who died 30 December, 1867. He had supported both a coalition government and Confederation, and Macdonald then later appointed him to the Senate, and made him president of the privy council in the Dominion's first cabinet. For Blair's biography, see Hodgins.

69. Sir John A. Macdonald's exact words were: '"How comfortable this is.'"

70. For biographical information about Sandfield Macdonald, see Hodgins. For biographical information about Howe, see Beck.

71. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was murdered on 7 April 1868; Agnes Macdonald wrote her account of it on 12 April 1868.

72. That Agnes then turns to Theodora for comfort implies, probably unintentionally, that her mother has somehow replaced God's word as the ultimate source of comfort. The implication does enhance the unnatural and unholy atmosphere that Agnes evokes, although it seems unlikely that she would have placed Theodora in such a hierarchy with God. 103

CHAPTER THREE: Responding to the Citizen-Mother

If Lady Agnes Macdonald left behind a deliberate narrative of herself and her life in her diary, engaging us in a dialogue with her citizen-mother identity, then it is interesting to see how others have engaged in this conversation, and the impressions that they have formed. In this chapter, I consider where Agnes Macdonald has been situated in academic and popular discussions about her identity and role as prime minister's wife.

I also include reference to key anthologies about women diarists, in order to identify some of the main issues involved with the study of diaries and diarists.

Most historians and critics who have documented the life (and wife) of Sir John

A. Macdonald, while they acknowledge Agnes Macdonald's intellectual capabilities and political interest, dismiss her as a potential influence on public policy. Unfortunately, no personal correspondence between Sir John A. and Agnes appears to have survived, so we do not have access to any first-hand communication between husband and wife, and therefore no insight into Agnes's role of confidante, her "most vital role" (Jalland 198) as politician's wife.' Nor does Agnes record any such political conversations in her diary; anecdotes, or second-hand excerpts suggest that she tried on occasion to act as an advocate for political favours, but was ultimately unsuccessful. However, within a nineteenth-century context, Agnes Macdonald's domestic identity as wife and mother, along with her social identity as Lady Macdonald, prime minister's wife, situated her in a public community of women who were, however indirectly, affecting the present and future policies of social and philanthropic organizations. Two texts that help situate 104

Agnes Macdonald in Canadian history include Henry James Morgan's Types of

Canadian Women: and of women who are or have been connected with Canada, and

Jean Bannerman's Leading Ladies, Canada, 1639-1967. However, both texts are too general in scope to offer any substantial or analytical discussion about the context or significance of the contributions made by their chosen Canadian women. Bannerman's text, for example, provides an annotated index of women of various social statuses and vocations, with no critical assessments about their contributions. The entry for Agnes

Macdonald (in the literary section of the book: "The Power of the Pen-Writers"), is also incomplete, crediting her as the author of only three sketches, and excluding her diary writing, political sketches, and one of her travel sketches (3 5 5-3 56).2

Three texts that specifically address the lives and roles of Canadian prime ministers' wives include Carol McLeod's Wives of the Canadian Prime Ministers, Susan

Riley's Political Wives: The Lives of the Saints, and Heather Robertson's More Than a

Rose: Prime Ministers, Wives, and Other Women. McLeod's text is the most useful of the three for its introduction to the wives of Canada's prime ministers from

Confederation through 1985. McLeod includes a variety of sources in her work, drawing her information from news reports, diaries, interviews, and other reports, which helps her to explore the complex relationship between politicians' wives and the media. The wives with the higher public approval ratings are always those who are supportive, but not intrusive, and who represent good mothers.3 The other two texts, however, are less helpful. The tongue-in-cheek humour of Susan Riley's work undermines an otherwise insightful discussion about the relationship between political wives and the press. In 105 assessing the news coverage of past prime ministers' wives, Riley illustrates the uneasy cultural status of the political wife, which she herself then struggles to discuss in an honest or meaningful way. In the Preface to the book, for example, we learn that Riley's original choice of title was "TTze Miracle of Hair Spray: A Survival Guide for Political

Wives" (xi). A few lines later, she confides that

there has always been something innately hilarious about the political wife in

full professional flight. Funny in the way that tri-coloured sandwiches cut in

triangles are funny ... in the way that fully robed Supreme Court judges

caught in a windstorm are funny. ... I feel for them the same nostalgic

contempt I feel for beauty pageants and formal weddings, (xi-xii)

Heather Robertson writes an informative and more readable text, but her often acidic treatment of Agnes Macdonald tends to overpower her arguments, and at times does not seem justified. Robertson depicts Agnes as an oppressive mother, a careless traveller, and a cheap-skate baroness (61-72), and she interprets photographs of Agnes with a similar, critical eye (68). For example, Robertson's analysis of a photograph of Agnes and her daughter Mary (then four months old) evokes an unflattering and unmotherly image. Robertson writes: "[Agnes] had her photograph taken kneeling in a tragic pose by

Mary's tiny, twisted form, neither looking at, nor touching, her child" (43). My interpretation of the same photograph is quite different.41 read exhaustion and sadness in

Agnes's face, and note a protective arm that she moves over her smiling baby daughter, while she turns away from the baby to face the camera.5 Do these two conflicting interpretations reflect two individual subjectivities? Or do they reflect the cultural values 106

or expectations from two different decades? Or a combination of both? What does seem

clear is that from her first appearance in 1867, the Canadian prime minister's wife has

occupied an uneasy place in the social and cultural imagination of the nation.

Little has changed over the past century and a half, particularly when it comes to

what the Canadian public expects of its leaders' wives. The "office" of political wife

appears to have always represented a nexus of conflict between traditional and

innovative thinking, perception, and values, particularly where women's roles are

concerned. We need only to consider the media's portrayals and the public reception of three twentieth and twenty-first century political wives: Margaret Trudeau and Maureen

McTeer,6 who were criticised by the media for being too carefree and rebellious, or too

independent and intellectual (respectively), and Laureen (Teskey) Harper, who was quick to adopt her husband's surname soon after his election victory in 2006. In choosing to re­ name herself, Mrs. Harper acknowledges the influence of mainstream cultural values, regardless of the extent to which they may reflect stereotyped ideals rather than the lived realities of many women and men. Harper's decision also acknowledges the history of one of her predecessors. Long after her days as prime minister's (and opposition leader's) wife, Maureen McTeer discusses the infamous "name issue" that often overshadowed her husband's political career, and her struggles to reconcile her individual and public identities.7 McTeer recalls: "I saw that the stereotype of a political wife as a quiet, supportive, well-dressed and smiling helpmate was still the norm and what most Canadians wanted" (48).8 Reference to Canadian political wives from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries offers a good context for understanding how the role 107 and status of the Canadian prime minister's wife has (or has not) evolved.

Academics who have been acknowledged as the key experts on the life and politics of Sir John A. Macdonald have certainly problematized the status of Lady Agnes

Macdonald, particularly when they attempt to establish the boundaries or intersections that characterize Sir John A.'s private and public lives.9 In his biographical sketch of

Agnes Macdonald, historian P.B. Waite describes her as:

an earnest young woman, with a temper and not much ability to laugh when

things went wrong. High-minded and vigorous, she had to learn to share her

husband with his political life, and she cast a critical eye on some of it. 'How

hard it is to know how to do right! I know I am very apt to be led astray by

motives . . .,' she reflected, 'and I also know that my love of power is

strong.' 'Strong' gets Agnes right. She was bold, sometimes imprudent, and

she was intensely curious about the world around her. She was not easily

intimidated, except perhaps by society; she was ill at ease as hostess, and

such social duties as became a prime minister's wife did not come easily to

her. ("Bernard, Susan Agnes" 66)

While we encounter a number of these characteristics throughout Agnes Macdonald's writing (her earnestness, her strength, her curiosity), we also encounter a definite sense of humour, particularly in her travel writing, which Waite does not acknowledge. His references to Agnes Macdonald elsewhere appear to represent an accurate portrait of what were likely her religious sensibilities: the "little tyranny" (56) that Agnes exerted over matters concerning her husband's health, her "slightly starchy fashion" (58), the 108 fact that "[she] could be something of a tartar" (57), and that she was perceived by one of her contemporaries as "Macdonald's good angel,"10 albeit "like some good angels

[who] could be forceful and out-spoken" {Macdonald: His Life and World 57). We see evidence of these characteristics in the narrative selves that Agnes Macdonald depicts in her own writing. Yet in documenting such a "bold, sometimes imprudent character,"

Waite endows Agnes Macdonald with a sense of agency. While Agnes undermines her authority as political observer by suggesting that she may at times improperly understand

(and articulate) what she hears, she simultaneously empowers her domestic situation as an active site of political negotiation and influence. In his other discussions about Sir

John A. Macdonald's home life, Waite writes:

Lady Macdonald remained firmly at home, and was rarely allowed influence

in public decisions. Macdonald on his own hearth was extremely gracious

and kind to his wife; but let Lady Macdonald tell: 'My lord and master who

in his private capacity simply lives to please and gratify me ... is absolutely

tyrannical in his public life as far as I am concerned. When I pressed him on

an appointment Sir John looked very benign, very gracious, very

pleasant-but-answered not one word! He never does!!' Perhaps one reason

was that Macdonald seems never to have been especially attracted to, or

influenced by women. His first marriage was a long and harrowing

experience, for Isabella was never really well and died in 1858, leaving him a

son to look after-Hugh John. His second marriage, in 1867, when he was 52,

was certainly not a triumph of heart over head. Macdonald was a man's man. 109

("Sir John A. Macdonald: The Man" 149-150)

There are a few insightful, if problematic, details in this passage. Waite's claim that Macdonald was neither attracted to nor influenced by women overlooks a few key facts of Macdonald's life. While he certainly appears to have functioned extremely well in the manly arena of rough-and-tumble politics, John A. Macdonald was, by all accounts, very much a "woman's" man: not only was he surrounded by (and at a fairly young age, responsible for) his mother and two sisters," but he appears to have been comfortable and charming in the company of women.12 John A. Macdonald's mother,

Helen, has been credited as a key influence in encouraging her son's political career.

Helped by her two daughters, Louisa and Margaret, Helen Macdonald also raised Sir

John A.'s son, Hugh John, from his first marriage to Isabella Clark. In addition, Waite's discussion actually helps to politicize the image of home: while he suggests that Agnes may have ultimately been powerless to access or influence either political information or agendas, Waite simultaneously endows her with the intelligence, temerity, and ability to approach her husband about the appointment, an action she was apparently accustomed to making.

Donald Creighton has also written biographical accounts of Sir John A.

Macdonald. His interpretations have been criticized by historian Barbara Roberts for depicting the challenges and unhappiness in John A. Macdonald's marital life as directly responsible for political disaster in his public life. The title of Roberts' article perhaps explains her issue with Creighton the best: '"They Drove Him to Drink'..: Donald

Creighton's Macdonald and his Wives." Sir John A. Macdonald was married twice: first, 110 to his cousin Isabella Clark (in 1843),13 and then to Agnes Bernard (in 1867). The two women were polar opposites to one another in almost every way. Isabella Clark spent most of her married life as a reclusive invalid, suffering from a mysterious, undiagnosed illness that was treated with opium, while Agnes Bernard enjoyed a more active role in her husband's political world. Neither did Isabella appear to have had much interest in her husband's developing political career, another point of contrast to Agnes.

What interests me most about this article is Roberts' suggestion that Creighton's position as a highly-respected expert on John A. Macdonald has traditionally led to an uncritical acceptance of his work, particularly his analysis of the domestic side of Sir

John A.'s life, and its influence on his public role as politician. Roberts argues that

Creighton tends to parallel personal and political events in Sir John A.'s life in such a way that

[his] explanation of Sir John's successes and failures, his excesses and his

virtues, rests on Creighton's carefully delineated perceptions of Macdonald's

domestic life, and particularly the roles played by the women in his life. .. .

When they [Isabella and Agnes] fail in this role, so do the hero, the nation,

and the nation's destiny, all synonymous in Creighton's view . . . [because]

the existence of a hero creates the need for a villain, a need which is nicely

filled by Macdonald's personal and family problems. (52)

As Roberts sees it, the women in Macdonald's life are effectively—and perhaps justifiably—punished, according to Creighton:

Both marriages appear to begin with great expectations of success, and both, Ill

after honeymoon periods, were found to be flawed: .. . [the first] because

Clark was too weak to perform what Creighton understands to be her duties;

the second because Bernard was too strong to confine herself to those duties.

Both women are humbled: Clark by her pain, loneliness, sense of being a

burden .. . and Bernard, by her flawed child14 and her husband's return to

drinking. (63-64)

In bringing attention to Creighton's work, Barbara Roberts prompts us to consider two things: the ways in which wives have been depicted in historical accounts and/or how they have been or can be read, and the issue of why Isabella and Agnes needed to be so humbled, one plausible explanation being that these women had their own expectations of what marriage owed to them. While Isabella's illness restricted her to the confines of home, Agnes's more robust health enabled her to function beyond this domestic space.

Roberts's critique is interesting because it draws attention to the constant re-negotiating that occurs between each generation of readers (both academic and public) and primary and secondary historical texts. While Roberts focuses on the limitations of a particular academic interpretation of primary material, the subject matter of her discussion

(Macdonald's two wives), and the fact that she engages us in a partial reconsideration of

Creighton's historical narrative (as woman academic) suggests that the re-construction of national narratives is anything but limiting. Rather, it is an ongoing process to which each generation brings its own concerns, priorities, and interpretive tools, and can therefore be read as an account that reveals as much about the secondary reader as it does about the primary historical subject. 112

More recently, Patricia Phenix has revisited the domestic life of John A.

Macdonald in an attempt to determine the relationship between the personal and political lives of the politician. Her book, Private Demons: The Tragic Personal Life of John A.

Macdonald, seeks to "analyze how John A.'s personal life affected his public policies"

(viii). While the book does not clearly accomplish this goal, it does provide an insightful portrayal of the women in John A. Macdonald's family. In highlighting the strong-willed nature of Sir John A.'s mother, sisters, and two wives, Phenix emphasizes the extent to which the former prime minister was constantly called upon to resolve the domestic battles occurring at home, or the extent to which he was deterred from going home in order to avoid such turmoil. Phenix's sections on Isabella Clark Macdonald, for example, do not simply dismiss John A.'s first wife as a peripheral invalid, but suggest that she often manipulated her illness (if in a passive-aggressive way) in order to control her surroundings, which included her husband and his immediate female relations.15 In reviewing the book, Michael Bliss suggests that the biography is most suitable for "some in the tabloid/history-for-dummies audience" (48) because of the number of historical inaccuracies in the work and an overall lack of insight and analysis of primary materials.

He then concludes that Phenix "adds nothing of any value to our understanding" (48) of

Sir John A. Macdonald's private life. However, the same perhaps cannot be said of what

Phenix may add to our understanding of the role that mainstream audiences play in helping to perpetuate or preserve history. The implicit tensions that Bliss reveals in his review: between historical narrators, and their respective texts and audiences, raise some good, if complicated questions. Has Phenix created a misleading account of an 113 individual and his private life, or has she in some way responded to a twenty-first century need or desire to encounter more women in history texts? Whose agenda drives historical research and historical narratives? And what are the implications of these agendas? At the very least, Phenix's text may be read as part of the greater ongoing narrative between ourselves and our desire to better understand political leaders and the women in their lives.

While many critical or theoretical analyses of women's autobiography exist, discussions specifically about nineteenth-century women diarists writing in Canadian contexts and political contexts represent a largely, if not completely, underexplored and underdocumented area of study. Diary scholars have generally avoided using politics or political history as an organizing principle (directly or indirectly) of diary selection and interpretation, likely because of their deliberate efforts to foreground the historically overlooked domestic lives of women. The under-representation of politically-oriented women diarists may reflect, to some extent, Veronica Strong-Boag's concern that, in studying such women writers, we may find ourselves drawing attention to the public politics that they do—or do not—articulate in their writing, thus highlighting the men who participated in this political world, and the women who were excluded from it.16 This dissertation attempts to foreground the domestic story of a nineteenth-century woman, and its corresponding public narrative, sharing a similar mandate to the following anthologies that focus on women's lives and domestic activities.

Beth Light and Alison Prentice's Pioneer and Gentlewomen of British North

America 1713-1867, as their title suggests, includes women writers "based not on 114 affinities of race or religion, but on the physical condition of being "pioneers . . . who struggled to meet the demands of their new environment" (1). While this work is relevant to my research, its pre-Confederation focus, and its cross-section of women writers does not offer a particularly helpful comparison to the women writers in this dissertation. Light's second anthology with Joy Parr, Canadian Women on the Move

1867-1920 considers how public politics affected the lives of turn-of-the-century women, or more specifically, how politics affected the role and value of biology and reproduction in each life stage of a woman (e.g. childhood, marriage, raising a family, old age, widowhood, and death). While the two elements of public politics and a woman's traditional role of mother and home-maker are contextually relevant to my study, none of the anthologized writers share much in common with Agnes Macdonald's position of politician's wife.

Margaret Conrad, Toni Laidlaw, and Donna Smyth's No Place Like Home:

Diaries and Letters of Nova Scotia Women 1771-1938 focuses on the home and women's lives as important to a greater appreciation of our history, arguing that

"[djiaries and personal letters turn traditional history inside out. Instead of forming a backdrop to 'great events,' ordinary lives here occupy centre stage. So-called 'important events' are reduced to rumours and abstractions" (3). This anthology excerpts texts written by middle-class women who were privileged to some extent by their "literacy, religion, and mobility" (3), the same key characteristics I have identified as key influences in Agnes Macdonald's narratives. Yet the women in this anthology did not enjoy the same freedom and political perspective as Agnes, because they worked for a 115 living and were more distant from their respective political worlds. These women either lived far from Ottawa or they were not involved with political men.

Two texts that come closest to providing a number of useful contextual comparisons with Agnes Macdonald's diary include Marian Fowler's The Embroidered

Text: Five Gentlewomen in Upper Canada, and Carrie MacMillan, Lorraine McMullen, and Elizabeth Waterston's Silenced Sextet: Six Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists. To contextualize her discussion of Elizabeth Simcoe, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna

Moodie, Anna Jameson, and Lady Dufferin, Fowler determines that

[a] 11 five gentlewomen came to Canada from upper-middle-class British

backgrounds, all dutiful wives accompanying their husbands [and]

[confronted with the cold confusion of a new world, they would need the

comfort of their cloaks, particularly those ready-made ones of role-

conditioning ... cut from conventional patterns of female behaviour. (7)

While Fowler's cloak metaphor becomes heavy-handed and obtrusive, her attention to the pervasiveness and influence of courtesy books and novels is a relevant detail that applies to the intertextual aspect of Agnes Macdonald's diary. Fowler's choice of women writers and texts also straddles divisions of private versus published texts (thus touching on the issue of where we draw the line between biographical, travel, and novel writing), and what we would now think of as national identity: Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna

Moodie came to British North America as permanent pioneer-settlers, whereas the

Ladies Simcoe and Dufferin travelled as temporary visitors, and accompanying their husbands who were variously involved in creating or maintaining colonial British 116 governing structures. MacMillan, McMullen, and Waterston's text considers the writing and shared writing strategies in the work of women writers Rosanna Leprohon, Margaret

Robertson, May Agnes Fleming, Susan Frances Harrison (Seranus), Joanna Wood, and

Margaret Marshall Saunders. In their published fiction, these writers explored social issues that involved women, and proposed alternative (non-traditional) identities and roles for nineteenth-century women. By including Canadian elements in their settings, these writers contributed to the development of a Canadian (or national) realism in literature. Because Agnes Macdonald's diary (as well as her published work) incorporates symbols and "real" experiences, her writing can be seen to complement

(and be complemented by) her more obvious literary contemporaries like Leprohon,

Fleming, Harrison, Wood, and Marshall Saunders.

The most recent anthology of Canadian women diarists, the small details of

LIFE: twenty diaries by women in Canada, 1830-1996, edited by Kathryn Carter, makes an important contribution to Canadian literary studies, with its mandate "to add new voices to the corpus of personal writing by women in Canada to enable a critical search for continuities between past and present, and to lead current readers to reflect on how the self is constructed at specific historical moments in particular geographic spaces"

("Introduction" 7). Carter's interest in the diarist's "self as being affected by (and representative of) a particular time and place is relevant to my research, although her project is much broader in terms of the various socio-economic backgrounds of the women diarists she includes. My focus on politically oriented women diarists attempts to fill in a gap that exists in the area of post-Confederation women writers, particularly 117 those who lived in political environments. Such women writers occupy a key place in ongoing discussions (literary and otherwise) about what constitutes a Canadian identity.

Like literary scholar Lisa Laframboise, I hope to contribute to a rubric for studying nineteenth and early twentieth-century women's travel writing, by considering

Agnes Macdonald's writing as a type of "constructed textual authority to describe travels in wilderness and other spaces of frontier adventure" (8). While I have removed this quotation from its original context in Laframboise's analysis of women's travel writing, it encapsulates the "wilderness" and "frontier adventure" that Agnes observed in the emerging political entity of the Dominion of Canada, and metaphorically experienced through her role as the first prime minister's wife in this new space. Like Laframboise, I am interested in reading Agnes Macdonald's texts within the "ideological conditions producing gender" (2), an approach that acknowledges the social and cultural influences of nineteenth-century Canada, and that considers all of Agnes's writing as complex prose.

Keeping a diary, however, was only one way that Agnes preserved a sense of her biographical and creative self. As Lady Macdonald discovered, political sketches provided another way in which she could continue her good works, particularly in helping to justify or preserve her husband's political identity. As we learn from numerous references in her diary, and from her contemporaries' reports, Lady

Macdonald attended the House whenever she could, "the best seat in the Speaker's gallery being always reserved for her, and no important debate takes place that she does not follow it to the final vote, though the daylight may be dimming the electric lights" 118

(Jesoley 3). In her discussion of Anna Jameson's travel account Winter Studies and

Summer Rambles in Canada, Judith Johnston proposes the following spatial paradigm

for reading the personal and public writing of nineteenth-century women, that "[ijndoors

there were biographical tensions and anxieties, outdoors a realm to be charted and

explored" (112). While the latter environment offered women opportunities to

experiment with different ideas and identities, it was often impossible or even

undesirable for a woman to leave home without at least one "biographical tension"

tucked somewhere about her person. We meet this "Agnes" in the following chapter, which considers her presence, role, and contribution when she moved within the public

space of the House of Commons. 119

Notes

1. For example, see Biggar, who writes: "With all her soul [Agnes] entered into his work, and enjoyed his most unreserved confidence" (104).

2. Bannerman omits "An Unconventional Holiday."

3. See, for example, what McLeod writes about Laura Borden, a supportive spouse who regularly listened to parliamentary debates, but who did not '"discuss"' political matters with her husband, according to one biographer (87); Olive Diefenbaker, whom McLeod quotes as once saying that '"The whole direction of my life ... is that I am John's wife" (120); Geills Turner, who allegedly once "stat[ed] her belief that the prime minister's wife has both a right and a responsibility to influence her husband on important issues" (163); and Mila Mulroney, who, despite being criticized by many feminists for "her one ambition ... to be a mother" (168), enjoyed high approval ratings among Canadian voters (166).

4. While I do not believe that it is either possible or desirable to be a truly objective reader, I have based my reading of this photograph on documented evidence about the relationship between Agnes and Mary. By all accounts, Agnes and Sir John A. Macdonald were very supportive parents. Despite her disability, Mary Macdonald was rarely excluded from social activities and events, and appears to have been well-loved by both of her parents. See Reynolds (78; 93; 124-125).

5. See Newman (91) for a 9x12" copy of this photograph.

6. While the web-based reference "Wikipedia" is not a credible academic source, it is a well-used popular source. See entries for "Margaret Trudeau" and "Maureen McTeer," for more information, particularly for the key details that have become associated with them.

7. That the issue of identity continued to haunt McTeer for years to come is evident in her decision to call her memoir In My Own Name.

8. Yet as different cultural ideals evolved regarding the proper image of the twentieth- century Canadian woman, so too did the electorate's expectations of its prime minister's wife. See Riley for impressions of Mila Mulroney, who was first "everything a political wife should be: bright, attractive, well dressed and entirely devoted to her husband's career" (73), but eventually criticised for not being enough of her own person (73-91).

9. Jennifer Blair et al. identify this as a potential problem in studying early Canadian writing. They argue that "with increased access to materials from and scholarly commentary upon Canada's past have come intensified debates about the political implications of the methods by which these materials are made available as well as the interpretations that have been made of them" (xv). They then cite as an example the 120 arguments made by well-known historians Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein, who have expressed concerns that an increased interest in social history has compromised the sense of a unified national history, more specifically a sense of national history as presented by either man (xv-xvi).

10. Here, Waite borrows the term "Macdonald's good angel" from John Charlton, a Liberal M.P. who was critical of Macdonald's social habits (Macdonald: His Life and World 57).

11. John A. Macdonald's father, Hugh Macdonald, experienced numerous business failures after migrating to British North America in 1820 with his wife and four children. Donald Creighton suggests that "[h]e always seemed to believe that he was made for success, and he was in fact invariably susceptible to failure" {Young Politician 5). Hugh Macdonald died in September 1841, when his son was 26.

12. For examples, see Smith and McLeod, particularly the chapter titled "Women" (21- 28). Also see Newman (51).

13. Isabella Clark Macdonald died at the age of 48 on Monday, December 28, 1857.

14. One of the interesting things in reviewing the various portraits of Agnes Macdonald throughout history is noting the change (or continuity) in social attitudes. No one today would refer to a disabled person as being "flawed."

15. See, in particular, chapters IV - "Addicted to Love" and V - "Jumping off the Treadmill" for the nature of Isabella's mysterious illness, and its impact on John A. Macdonald, and his mother and sisters.

16. Veronica Strong-Boag has called Patricia Godsell's introduction to the Letters and Diaries of Lady Durham "especially disappointing" ('"You be sure to tell it like it is'" 217) for its failure to explore Lady Durham's experiences and involvements, and her identity as woman, wife, and mother. Another example of this kind of exclusion can be found elsewhere: in order to compress the original content of Lady Aberdeen's journal to fit into one published volume, editor John Saywell explains that "deletions have been made from sections of the Journal which deal with routine domestic or social events, such as the weekly attendance at church, the frequent state dinners, and substantial routine material on the National Council of Women and the Victorian Order of Nurses" (xi). 121

CHAPTER FOUR: "A Builder of the Empire"

In Agnes Macdonald's diary, the public political space of the House of Commons appears as an element in her daily routine: she mentions "visits daily to the House" (31

March 1868),1 where she would either observe the government and opposition at work, or meet her husband after he was finished working for the day. While she does not use her diary to document her political observations—for instance, we often encounter dismissive comments, where she noted "nothing particular in the debate" (21 November

1867) or reported that there was "nothing going on worth mentioning" (2 December

1867)~Agnes observed a good many things worth mentioning when she attended the

House, and included a number of them in her published political writing.

Three political sketches have been attributed to Agnes Macdonald, although two of these were published anonymously. The sketches "Canadian Topics" and "Men and

Measures in Canada" appeared in two consecutive issues oi Murray's Magazine in 1887, written by an unnamed author; "A Builder of the Empire" was published in Pall Mall

Magazine in 1897 by a "Macdonald of Earnscliffe," a known pseudonym that Agnes used after accepting a peerage shortly after Sir John A. Macdonald's death.2 The two anonymously authored pieces have been accepted by both Louise Reynolds and Lisa

Laframboise3 as having been written by Agnes; Reynolds, in particular, cites a "pungent style" (117) that characterizes Agnes Macdonald's other writing, and suggests that only someone close to the Conservative government would have access to the detailed political knowledge that appears in the two narratives (117). If Agnes Macdonald did indeed write "Canadian Topics" and "Men and

Measures in Canada," it is possible that anonymity increased her confidence to speak openly and often critically about a number of political events that she would have witnessed and that appear in these two sketches. It is also possible that Agnes's role as a public administrator of the Orphans' Home, and her involvement with her reading group helped to develop the "public" voice that emerges in her published writing. While political content may be censored in, or omitted from, Agnes Macdonald's other writings, the narrative voice in these two sketches is assertive and sometimes irreverent in discussing political topics such as the impact of the "Riel Question" and secession in

Nova Scotia during the 1886 federal election (in "Canadian Topics"), or the fisheries issue (including the Treaty of Washington), the disallowance of a Manitoba charter to build a railway from Winnipeg to Pembina, and commercial union with the United

States (in "Men and Measures in Canada").

In addition to being an informed observer, Agnes Macdonald was a talented writer. Thus she was capable of understanding the complexities of her political world, and could form—and express—strong opinions about them. While the overall tone in her political writing is tempered by humour, it reveals strong analytical opinions. Her warning about free trade in "Men and Measures in Canada," for example, combines these two elements. She writes:

Canada cannot, England ought not, to consider the project for a moment. It is

Annexation in thin clothes. It is Separation in the livery of humbug: If

Canada sweeps away her Custom Houses, and is one in all her commercial interests with the United States, she will stand practically on the same

footing as any other State in the Union, and the end-absorption-cannot be

far off. (395-396)

Elsewhere in the same sketch, the anonymous narrator discusses the fractious situation between Manitoba and the federal government regarding railway charters; this narrative occupies nearly three full pages of the sketch, and the level of political detail suggests that its author has followed the situation closely. Its pro-government bias also suggests that its author has followed the situation personally. Here, the narrator justifies the contract signed by the CPR company and Dominion government, which prevented any other railway companies from building their own lines. The message is clear: the narrator dismisses any opposition to this contract, reasoning "that the Government agreed to this suggestion only proves that they were not fools enough to expect people to work for nothing" (392), and she concludes that it was due to "selfish and unpatriotic reasons" (392) that Winnipeg overrode the agreement with legislation that would allow an independent rail system (the Red River Valley Railway) to be built between Canada and the United States.

The narrative in "Canadian Topics" is equally informative. If the overall tone of this sketch is jocular, its content is often poignant. In assessing the social fabric of the young Dominion, for example, the narrator reports:

Of nihilism, landlord shooting, boycotting, riots and evictions we happily

know nothing in Canada. Tenant-right, or rather the necessity of fighting to

maintain it, could hardly be made comprehensible to a Canadian mind. Our 'strikes' have been few and far between, and never very serious. We rarely

have epidemics, do not own a volcano, and have never felt a cyclone. If we

are not blessed with superabundant money, if no one man among us can call

half a county his own estate, or afford to keep up a mile of orchid houses, at

any rate we have no wretched thousands cursing the day of their birth, and

only forcing a just equality in the distribution of money by the tax their rich

neighbours have to pay for keeping them in prison. (680)

The contrast between the social inequity of the old world and the opportunity to succeed in the new Dominion resonates elsewhere in Agnes Macdonald's writing, specifically in

"An Unconventional Holiday," where she promotes emigration to Canada as a panacea for the poverty she once encountered in London, England (II, 2). In addition to promoting Canada as a place to settle, Agnes also draws attention to the tourist attractions of the developing country, citing a short tale about the healing (and fashionable) sulphur baths at Banff, and their accessibility thanks to the Canadian

Pacific Railway ("Canadian Topics" 689-690). These thematic similarities that appear throughout Agnes Macdonald's writing provide additional evidence that the two anonymous political sketches are likely hers.

Because the narrator in the anonymous sketches speaks more directly about political events, and is not associated with traditional feminine (e.g., domestic) imagery or authority, a feature that characterizes Agnes Macdonald's other writing, I have restricted most of my analysis in this chapter to "A Builder of the Empire." This sketch was published five years after Sir John A. Macdonald's death, and it pays tribute to his 125

life and career as Canada's first prime minister. Metaphorically, the title alludes to

Agnes's own project of "building the empire" or at least building the cultural memory of

empire through her writing. Despite the arguably masculine name of its author, this

sketch relies on an overtly feminine narrative authority that affects the construction and

reception of its narrative. In addition to my analysis of "A Builder of the Empire," I

include reference to forewords, introductions, and letter excerpts that have been

published in biographical works on Sir John A. Macdonald, and which were written by

Agnes Macdonald. Since these shorter pieces were specifically written for publication

(and thus were intended for a public, and perhaps, given their publication venues, a

largely masculine audience), their "narrator" and contents were also both deliberately

constructed to contribute to the memory of a political man. I discuss the relationship

between female narrators and memory later in this chapter.

As with my discussion of Agnes Macdonald's diary, I do not read any of her political writing for evidence of how or to what extent she influenced political policy, if indeed she did at all. Rather, I read her work for evidence of the citizen-mother, particularly how this feminine figure may have drawn upon domestic authority to enable her participation in the public sphere, or to influence the behaviour in that sphere. Agnes

Macdonald was charged with the responsibility for influencing change or promoting social ideals through piety and good works, and her published political writing, specifically "A Builder of the Empire," qualifies as one example of such "good works." 126

Contextual Writers

There appear to be no nineteenth-century women writers, particularly those married to prominent politicians, and who wrote political sketches, who can help establish a precise context within which we can place Agnes Macdonald's political writing. Maureen McTeer, writing a century later, is the only Canadian prime minister's wife who has published any political writing that I have been able to identify to date: she briefly contributed a column called the "Ottawa Report" that appeared in three consecutive issues of Chatelaine magazine.4 In her column, McTeer discussed issues such as affirmative action, the Divorce Act, and a report on the 1984 Speech from the

Throne (under Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government), with particular attention to how it would affect women.5

However, there are three nineteenth-century women pioneers and citizen-mother exemplars who help to contextualize the narrative strategies in Agnes Macdonald's writing, or who at least establish useful points of comparison for reading her work. They include Frances Simpson and Letitia Hargrave, two women who travelled through the pre-Confederation fur-trade world of Rupert's Land, and Lady Elizabeth Glover, whose husband, Sir John Hawley Glover, served as Newfoundland's Governor in the latter half of the nineteenth century. By virtue of being married to men who contributed to the social and political development of early Canada, these women, like Agnes Macdonald, participated in this enterprise by bringing a sense of European domestic civility with them. That they left behind written accounts of their experiences means that they contributed in tangible, material ways to narratives of nation building, or, more 127 accurately, since Frances, Letitia, and Lady Glover moved through the pre-Confederation

Canadian landscape, of narratives of "normality," a European cultural ideal that I have discussed previously. Elizabeth Glover's biography of her husband and the account written by Frances Simpson also feature their husbands exclusively or prominently, a feature that the two texts share with Agnes Macdonald's portrayal of her own husband in

"A Builder of the Empire." The existence of such texts, as well as the ways in which all the women constructed their narratives, indicate that they believed they were credible reporters, or that other readers (including the public) were interested in what they had to say. In Frances Simpson's situation, evidence suggests that her husband may have prompted her to record information that discredited his competitors, and that portrayed himself in a more flattering way.6 While we can read this kind of editorial tampering as evidence of a diary that has been called "among the most repressed of exploration documents" (Warkentin 384), we can also read it as an endorsement of the male (and public) value of such "private" and feminine accounts.

Macdonald of Earnscliffe: The Political "I"

An article in The Dominion Illustrated1 once described Lady Agnes Macdonald as

"a remarkable woman, even in this age of remarkable women. Her mind has the masculine qualities of breadth and grasp and accuracy and logic, yet she is capable of the tenderest expression of womanly sympathy, the finest tact and the keenest feminine appreciation" (qtd. in Newman 73). In tempering a woman's intellect with a demure

"womanly sympathy," this article celebrates the moderating or redeeming influence of the nineteenth-century woman. Speaking as "Macdonald of Earnscliffe," whom everyone knew was Lady Macdonald, the narrative "I" that appears in Agnes's published political sketch "A Builder of the Empire" is simultaneously and explicitly male and female, thus combining these two standards of male and female behaviour in a narratively complex way. The content of this sketch reflects this dual and gendered perspective, as it includes both a "breadth and grasp and accuracy and logic" in its level of political detail and the assertiveness of its narrator, as well as "the keenest feminine appreciation" in its references to family and home (Newman 73). I have adopted this nineteenth-century portrayal of Agnes Macdonald in my reading of her life and her writing.

This narrative perspective reflects a similar combination of male and female points-of-view and the subject/object relationships that existed within the public, political space of nineteenth-century Ottawa. Seated as she was in the Ladies' Gallery, Agnes was not only positioned to observe the proceedings of the House, but was also positioned to be the subject8 of observation. In her Master's of Architecture thesis, Vanessa Reid explores the paradoxical subject-object relationships that implicated men and women in the simultaneous positions of seeing and being seen. In mapping the physical and psychological nature of the Ladies's Gallery, Reid explains that

[i]n constructing a small, contained and separate woman's space, the gallery

marginalized women and put them on display. Or, by providing women with

a separate space in public, the gallery gave women the opportunity to

formulate the beginnings of a female public ideology. (61)9

The evolving female public ideology that Reid refers to here included both the domestic and public aspects of the nineteenth-century woman's sense of self. First, the presence of women in the public space of Parliament was believed "to have a refining influence" on politics (Reid 65). However, it also gave women a chance to see and hear political issues being debated, the same types of issues that they likely read about and discussed in their women's reading groups, or encountered in the administration (the funding and functioning) of their public commitments. In describing the atmosphere of this exclusively female space, part-time political reporter Madge Macbeth (writing a few decades later than Lady Macdonald), depicts the Ladies's Gallery as an "eyrie" (62).10 In analysing MacBeth's writing, Vanessa Reid argues that the reporter deliberately chose this "nest" image as a means of foregrounding the domestic characteristics of this sexually segregated viewing space (64). Yet its association with the nesting place of a bird of prey makes the space much more interesting.

If Agnes does not makes these connections explicit, she does draw our attention to an observant female presence in the House. In "Men and Measures in Canada," she presents a humorous version of politicians at work. Agnes notes the following:

four pages asleep at once round the steps of a chair in which the Speaker had

gone to bed. Five members in one row lay back snoring peacefully; and in the

next, one was making a sketch with ink on a reclining sleeper's bald and

shiny crown; while another dropped iced water from a tumbler into his

neighbour's left ear. (386)

While the image of sleeping or doodling parliamentarians that Agnes presents here is benign, E.B. Biggar politicizes it, arguing that Lady Macdonald's observations often 130

added to her husband's own knowledge of his political colleagues and opponents in the

House, because "[n]o one was quicker to note the appearance of a new member, and to

take the measure of his parliamentary figure. She would take in every word uttered in a

new member's 'maiden speech,' and could gauge with an instinct almost equal to Sir

John's the manner of man he was" (104)." Indeed, Sir John A. Macdonald once allegedly

quipped that the worst thing about being in opposition was that he no longer had "a good

view" of his wife (Reynolds 76). Female visitors, seated in the Ladies's Gallery located

above and behind the opposition, evidently provided a kind of visual reward for political

winners who sat across from them (Reid 61), as well as the hoped-for civilizing influence

on the party in power. However, it seems that the then leader of the opposition had a

unique concept of what constituted his ideal view. Lena Newman explains that, when in

government, the wily politician was in the habit of receiving messages that Agnes would transmit to him with sign language used by the deaf (10). Such an arrangement between man and woman/husband and wife in Parliament intellectualizes this public, political space and activates the roles of women in this space.

Nor was her husband the only politician who benefited from Agnes Macdonald's presence (or more specifically, her performance) in the House. While she may have demurred privately in her diary that "[when] a woman gives too much attention to politics

... she becomes too violent a partizan and is apt to ride her Hobby to death" (26 March

1868), Lady Macdonald was not always able to practise what she preached, especially if she happened to attend a session during which the honourable members of the House were themselves not behaving so honourably. Following one particularly heated debate 131 during the 1878 session, for example, then Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie found himself distracted by a rather unladylike outburst when (as he later reported to his daughter) "Lady Macdonald in the gallery, like the Queen of the day, stamped her foot and exclaimed 'Did ever any person see such tactics!!'" (Thompson 322).12 Mackenzie's report functions much like the recollections of T.C. Patteson and Robert Harrison: it depicts a woman (Lady Agnes Macdonald) as an active respondent to masculine behaviour, and by recording what he witnessed, Mackenzie implies that such feminine responses were worth notice. That Lady Macdonald was not behaving in the expected manner (as an example to follow) additionally complicates the relationship of men and women in the House, and humanizes an individual woman who lived alongside the cultural ideal of womanhood.

One of Agnes Macdonald's female contemporaries who was also an active respondent to male political behaviour was Lady Dufferin, who engaged in her own type of feminine "political theatre" in her interpretation of current events. While parliamentary regulations prohibited the Governor General from attending the House of Commons when it was in session, the same rule did not apply to his wife who "ha[d] a seat on the floor of the House, next to the Speaker's" where she was able to see for herself the

'"tricks and .. . manners'" (Dufferin 58) of parliamentarians. Thus, Lady Dufferin was able to witness, first-hand, Sir John A. Macdonald's (in)famous five-hour defence of his role in the Pacific Scandal, and his subsequent resignation, a performance she later re- enacted at home for her husband's benefit.13 In this respect, Lady Dufferin fulfilled an important dual role in "seeing" and then "being seen" in mediating the transmission of 132 parliamentary activity. Her dining room performance is indicative of the subtle ways in which women could affect the presentation of political information; in effect, Lady

Dufferin was creating her own narrative of political events, perhaps contributing to the emerging "female public ideology" proposed by Vanessa Reid (61).

While Lady Dufferin's political re-enactment was designed for her husband's benefit only, unlike Agnes Macdonald's political sketches that were published for a larger audience, both women draw upon the image of home and its association with marital relationships and the power structures in those relationships. Agnes Macdonald's narrative "I" in "A Builder of the Empire" draws much of its speaking authority from domestic relationships, best articulated in a single sentence that appears toward the end of the sketch, where Agnes reflects: "I can remember no single occasion even in his [my husband's] most intimate conversation when he harked back to his discomfiture or railed at his foes" (352). Here, Agnes establishes the key themes of the sketch: female control over memory, and female access to shared confidences through "intimate conversation" between husband and wife. In addition, Agnes's choice of phrasing (specifically, her use of a subjective and active speaking voice) gives her narrator a grammatical authority within the text. If, as Phyllis Rose suggests, marriage launched a narrative as well as a biographical process, then in the instance of Agnes Macdonald's published political writing, it was a narrative process that enabled her to experiment with different rhetorical devices that empowered the voice of her public, narrative persona. 133

Female Narrators & Memory

In her introduction to Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander

Macdonald (the first biography of Sir John A. that was written after his death), Agnes proposes that a biographer's ability depends upon the "special advantages" of "a close personal intercourse" (v) with his or her subject. Thus Agnes positions herself to the greatest advantage: as the wife of the late prime minister, she possesses knowledge that no one else has. As she explains:

Happily my husband anticipated the possibility of this necessity, and, as was

his custom in the regulation of my daily life, had given me in a few slight

words the direction I should need [regarding the eventual choice of a

biographer].

The subject had been brought under his notice, some three or four months

before the time of our parting, by two letters addressed to me. Both these

letters were from literary persons unknown to us, each offering his services as

Sir John's biographer, one of whom was good enough to ask my assistance in

the preparation of his work, (v)

As elsewhere, this passage suggests a great deal about the construction of—and response to—female authority in nineteenth-century Canada. While Agnes is careful to articulate wifely deference in mentioning her husband's "regulation of [her] daily life," she has been entrusted by him to oversee the biographical project of documenting his own life. In addition, Agnes has been similarly identified by outside "literary persons" as a key source of information for this undertaking. Lady Elizabeth Glover, one of Agnes Macdonald's 134

contemporaries, was another wife and writer who drew upon similar such "special

advantages" in crafting her book-length biography about her husband, Life of Sir John

Hawley Glover.

Sir John Hawley Glover was appointed Newfoundland's Governor on two

separate occasions: from 1876-81, and then from 1884-85.14 During Glover's first

appointment, Elizabeth kept a diary of the couple's experiences. While this manuscript

does not appear to have survived,15 at least one section of it has been preserved in what is

considered the only authoritative biography about Glover: the chapter depicting the

Glovers' life in Newfoundland is almost entirely composed of extracts from Elizabeth's

diary (Glover 242-262). Nor has this been received as a frivolous addition to a biography

that focuses almost exclusively upon Glover's military and political career. In his entry

for Sir John Hawley Glover in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Frederic Fraser

Thompson suggests that "[i]n her private diary Glover's wife has provided considerable background detail to his career of a kind not normally included in political histories. She considered the proper role of her husband as paterfamilias to backward and primitive colonies, a view which was condescending but not without truth." Here, Thompson acknowledges the presence and authority of the complementary private and public images of the father-figure politician, as well as the value of female memory.

Agnes Macdonald's narrator in "A Builder of the Empire" suggests that historical truth, as well as biographical truth, lies in the personal realm. As such, Agnes draws attention to the authority represented by the Lady Macdonald half (as opposed to the

Macdonald of Earnscliffe half) of her narrative persona, a persona responsible for the act 135 of remembering. Agnes emphasizes the role that female memory plays in the reconstruction of the histories of public men by including a second female narrator in the sketch. In a brief passage that appears in the introductory paragraph of her sketch, Agnes is assisted in her narrative project by her sister-in-law, Margaret Macdonald. Through

Margaret's memory, we learn about the story of the Macdonald family's immigration to

Canada, "a weary journey, as the eldest daughter told me fifty years afterwards, of many, many weary days" (347).

On other occasions, Agnes openly questions the integrity of the public historical record, or accounts written by men. She discredits her husband's political and public detractors by arguing that a lack of personal perspective may have prevented their accurate understanding of events. She explains:

Whatever were [Sir John A. Macdonald's] faults or failures, however strongly

his methods were criticised and condemned by men who never knew the

inner history of situations, it would be impossible to deny that in the effort to

build up a nation, an effort to which he at last sacrificed his life, he had a

single eye to the good of his country and the consolidation of the empire.

(353)

I read "inner history" here as a combined feminine and masculine concept: feminine because it may reflect shared confidences in the home or between husband and wife; masculine because it may reflect shared confidences in public or between male political colleagues. In any event, this example privileges "inner history" as a narrative that can be used to justify or explain public performance. In her comments regarding the 136 construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Agnes makes additional reference to the presence and value of the personal lives of public men, explaining: "For ten years he fought that railway battle with the skill, perseverance, and ability of which no history can tell - of course, in every way and at all times aided, strengthened and encouraged by the colleagues and friends he trusted" (348). Here, Agnes Macdonald offers an alternative or missing account of the former prime minister's "skill, perseverance, and ability." If, as

Agnes suggests, "no history can tell" the full or real story, then by implication, she suggests that public histories are imperfect texts that rely on imperfect sources. In her sketch, Agnes therefore redirects our reading of written histories, at one point dismissing opposition to Confederation, "The story of those earlier years and their vexed questions

[as] very ancient history now" (349), and replacing it instead with her own memory of this time: "On every page of Canada's history, in the years between 1844, when first elected, and 1867, when Confederation brought him more prominently before the world,

Sir John's name is indelibly written" (349).

More specifically, Agnes prompts what her contemporaries are able to remember.

She associates her narrator with verbs of memory that connect her with specific events in the past, writing, for example: "It was a very hot summer, I remember, in 1872, and a general election added no little to the immense strain of work" (352). Another way that

Agnes directs memory in the sketch is by asserting (and assuming) that her opinion about certain matters is the one that others will naturally (and logically) adopt. On one occasion, she hints that "[t]hose who remember Sir John later as a thorough man of the world . . . must marvel, as I often did, at the mental power and marvellous adaptability which led to 137 such results after so humble a beginning" (348). On other occasions, she guides her readers less aggressively. In the following passage, Agnes is less dictatorial because of her use of a more unspecific pronoun reference: "One can recall him, always apparently unconscious though noticed everywhere, careless, debonnair, full of life and fun, a tall, slight, rather restless figure, which seemed to attract others as it moved about" (350). In both instances, however, Agnes asserts herself as an equal to "those who remember," and her prompts to memory engage readers in a type of complicity with her: surely other people had the same observations as she did. A few pages later, her narrative self appears once more, this time providing the content of a memory. Here, Agnes identifies the specific details that readers should remember, and how they should interpret them, assuming that "[fjhose who remember his five years in opposition will recall with what tact and skill he steered himself and his little band of followers, how graciously and smilingly he helped the Government when approving of their measures, how civil he was and attentive, and how patient!" (352).

If women lacked first-hand participation in politics, their presence in the House still played an important role. In this way, Agnes legitimizes the role of female observation as a means of remembering political events and political lives. Her references to time or specific details best illustrate how this works. Given that she must retrieve specific political examples sometimes from up to twenty years in the past, Agnes's apparent ability to "remember how that line [about an Intercolonial Railway] was debated and fought inch by inch for many long nights till the warm morning sun lit up the

Chamber" (351) gives intellectual content and credibility to her narrative presence. In 138 other places in the sketch, Agnes "collapses" time, moving into the far past, and then through the late 1880s, when she recalls her husband's impressions of a train trip on the

CPR (351). Another time, Agnes shares an episode that revolves around the implications of a single "bad word" that John A. Macdonald uttered when she "first heard him speak in the Legislative Assembly" (350). On this occasion, Agnes goes back in her memory some twenty years to remember the scene:

[i]t was during one of the fierce discussions arising later out of this question16

that I saw Sir John for the second time, and first heard him speak in the

Legislative Assembly. . . . Mr. Macdonald was replying to the oft reiterated

charge that in defiance of distinct pledges the Governor, Sir Edmund Head,

had tendered advice to the Queen which led to her choice of Ottawa. 'You

used a bad word on that occasion,' I told him years afterwards, 'and said —'s

statement was false as hell'! 'So it was,' he promptly answered, 'and so I did;

but I spoke in defence of a friend, you know, and the bad word didn't count!'

(350)

While her husband and her readers alike benefit from an episode that portrays the

"manner of man [Sir John A. Macdonald] was," they also gain a sense of "what manner of woman" the narrator was, too. She was a woman who gained her knowledge from close observation, evident from the passage above, and in sentences in which she explains: "I, who watched him ... know well what work, early and late, what long nights and anxious days [Confederation] cost him" (351). Because the narrator does not situate her watchful presence in a specific environment where she observed the "long nights and 139 anxious days," and because the narrator's identity (as Lady Macdonald and Macdonald of

Earnscliffe) is both female and male, Agnes credits the spaces traditionally associated with either (private/home and public/Parliament) as equal sources of information, and the women and the men who moved in both environments.

The Lady Macdonald part of the narrator establishes herself as the preeminent authority on the subject of her husband by drawing a clear connection between knowledge and authority, and a close personal (or marital) relationship:

None knew better than I with what dogged perseverance, aided by the

colleagues and friends he trusted in, Sir John fought the Canadian Pacific

Railway question from first to last; step by step, here a little and there a little,

in his own peculiar, light good-humoured way, he fought it out to success.

Sometimes as we drove home together by daylight after an all-night sitting,

he, weary and ailing, would say a few words of hope for the future and

confidence in the past. (353)

While we never hear exactly what these "few words of hope" might be, Agnes provides a number of dialogic exchanges between herself and Sir John A. Macdonald that allow her reader to hear his thoughts on other topics, and, perhaps more importantly, that draw attention to Agnes as an active and equal participant in these exchanges. Through the use of short phrases that nuance her points, and the use of dialogue, Agnes

Macdonald continually reminds us of the importance of her position as wife and as confidante. The following passage promotes the image of Sir John A. Macdonald as an honest man motivated by traditional loyalties, while at the same time positioning his wife 140 as his confidante, and therefore a key source of important information. Agnes writes:

"Never an orator, trusting always more to subject than style, he wished, as he told me more than once, to follow the methods of the English House of Commons rather than the more elaborate and oratorical efforts in the American Chambers" (351). In another passage, Agnes once again draws attention to female memory while allowing us to hear

Sir John A. Macdonald speak for himself. She writes "Through this region exactly fifteen years later, Sir John and I travelled sumptuously in a finely equipped railway train with perfect comfort and ease" (351). ... 'I should have been here years ago,' Sir John remarked, as we sped over the rich flower-covered prairies, 'but for the interval of Grit rule'" (351). These inset conversations anchor Agnes's other comments and observations to what might be read as "real" or first-hand accounts of what the former prime minister felt or believed, as the following example shows. Agnes speculates: "Sir John undoubtedly considered that the most important as well as the most arduous section of his life's work lay between his election in 1844 and the year 1867. 'After Confederation,' he said to me, 'it was comparatively smooth sailing'" (349). In this brief excerpt, Agnes's proposal that "Sir John undoubtedly considered" is substantiated by the conversation that follows. This narrative strategy indicates to readers that Agnes's opinions and analyses in the sketch are based on concrete evidence: the conversations between a husband and his wife.

The active, narrative "I"

Structurally, Agnes Macdonald narrates "A Builder of the Empire" from the first 141 person point of view, a strategy that gives her a sense of agency in an otherwise masculine and political account, and that draws attention to the domestic, marital subject and social position of that "I." She empowers her narrative self further through the choice of verbs that she pairs with her "I" (the actions they involve, and the fact they are used in the active voice). Agnes Macdonald's narrator is associated with verbs of memory, verbs of direction, verbs of observation, and verbs of thinking and of knowledge. They also include verbs of questioning, which are associated with Agnes's use of interrogation, and the political dialogue or "political ventriloquism" that it leads to. Finally, even when

Agnes depicts her narrative self in an objective position, that is, as the recipient of information, she does so in a manner that foregrounds the importance of her marital relationship with Sir John A. Macdonald.

The use of active versus passive verb patterns has been discussed in other nineteenth-century women's writing, particularly travel journal letters, where the passive voice strategically distances women from action or behaviour that they do not wish to be associated with. Kathryn Carter presents a convincing argument on how this works in her interpretation of the journal letters of Frances Simpson and Isobel Finlayson;17 it is

Carter's reading of Frances Simpson's travel account in particular18 that is most relevant to my own grammatical analysis of Agnes Macdonald's sketch "A Builder of the

Empire."

In establishing the dialogic mode between the writer and the subsequent readers of Frances Simpson's travel journal, Carter identifies the implicit tension in the writer's attempt to downplay her presence. By doing so, Carter argues, Frances ironically creates "room for a covert presentation of self, and [she] risks drawing attention to the one thing that should remain invisible: herself as subject and not object" ("The Circulating Self

10). In her attempts to abandon a subject position, Frances consistently relies on narrative strategies that suggest the wilderness landscape and travel experience lie beyond a lady's ability to articulate either. Frances Simpson's default, Carter notes, is one of speechlessness or inactivity, which Frances expresses through phrases like: '"my feelings at which time I cannot attempt to describe,' 'I can scarcely trust myself to think,' 'I must now pass over in silence,' or 'I am at a loss'" ("The Circulating Self 23). Even when

Frances does recount an experience or draws attention to herself, her choice of phrasing tends to situate her as a recipient, rather than a performer, of the action. Kathryn Carter thus reads the female presence in Frances Simpson's text as a semantic exercise in disempowerment, explaining that:

When [Frances] Simpson's T does surface in a main clause, the attached

verbs often indicate states of being rather than activity or judgment. In

phrases such as, 'I was surprised...,' [and] 'I was highly entertained... ,' . . .

Simpson shows herself as a passive agent, someone who is acted upon by

external agents. Alternatively, if she does ascribe any action to herself-and

generally this appears in the subordinate clause-it has to do with perception.

("The Circulating Self 23)

Carter reasons that because Frances Simpson avoids using verbs that implicate her in direct action or in making judgements, she depicts her narrative self "as an empty vessel awaiting information or as a transparent eye-witness," and almost always undermines her 143 experiences by using passive verbs ("A Contingency of Words" 90). Helen Buss, who has also studied Frances Simpson's travel journal, suggests that the elusive nature of its narrator requires us to "develop a habit of reading for indirection" ('"The Dear Domestic

Circle'" 12) when we read such texts.

Agnes Macdonald's narrative self in "A Builder of the Empire," however, is neither transparent nor passive. Instead, readers find themselves firmly directed by the female narrator. Often situated as the subjective "I" in the main clauses of her writing, her narrator is to some extent more like the husband figure in Frances Simpson's travel account, who physically and actively directs the action in his wife's travel journal.19 In "A

Builder of the Empire," however, the narrator "speak[s] with something like authority"

(348) in an active intellectual (not physical) manner. Lady Macdonald/Macdonald of

Earnscliffe thinks, speaks, watches, asks, shows, indicates, and remembers, all activities that show evidence of an involved and inquisitive mind, and that again help to politicize the seemingly uninfluential Ladies' Gallery. Unlike Frances Simpson, whose "verbs often indicate states of being rather than activity or judgment" ("The Circulating Self 23),

Agnes Macdonald chooses verbs that signify both activity and judgement.

Throughout the sketch, Agnes articulates (often in declarative terms) her husband's thoughts, beliefs, and even his dreams. Regarding Sir John A. Macdonald's thoughts on Confederation, Agnes claims that "[the] fixed idea of a united empire was his guiding star and inspiration. I, who can speak with something like authority on this point, declare that I do not think any man's mind could be more fully possessed of an overwhelmingly strong principle than was this man's mind of this principle" (348). 144

Regarding his dreams about the Canadian Pacific Railway, she dispenses with any qualifying phrases and simply asserts "From start to finish the realisation of this long- thought-of project was the great desire of Sir John's heart" (351).

Agnes also gives her narrator the power to interpret information. The passage that best illustrates this authority is written in the active voice and also uses verbs that are more speculative in their actions. In her discussion of Sir John A. Macdonald's temperament as a politician, Agnes speaks suggestively:

When he showed anger I believe it was used as a weapon, and very seldom

because he could not help it. At times when I knew he was most anxious and

worried he would sit in parliament listening to the greatest provocation with

an air of placid content; and as years went on, from my constant seat in the

Speaker's Gallery at Ottawa I noticed how still more averse he became to any

display of irritation or impatience. (350)

In this passage, phrases like "When he showed anger I believe," "At times when I knew," and "from my constant seat in the Speaker's Gallery ... I noticed" impose cause-and- effect conditions on the information that Agnes presents to us. By situating herself as interpreter, Agnes engages in an intellectual dialogue with her readers, an exchange in which she appeals to her readers' sense of logic and reason. Phrases like "I have indicated" (347), or "as I have shown" (349), or "only by inference can I judge further of the struggles in those first years" (348) draw attention to the narrator's presence and intervention in the sketch, perhaps suggesting how we might read the sketch; if, as the last example concludes, Agnes's judgement can be made by inference, then so, perhaps, 145 should ours. To some extent, such instances situate Agnes as her husband's conscience, as she interprets historical events, and then shares her interpretation of what Sir John A.

Macdonald then felt or believed about them. In this way, she can recast the story of the

CPR, a story in which her husband did not fare well, at least not in known public accounts. According to Agnes, the former prime minister was out-maneouvred while away from Ottawa:

During Sir John's absence in Washington the Government had pledged itself

to build the road through the agency of an incorporated company

supplemented by Government aid. I think Sir John regretted this, and would

fain have had the railway constructed as a Government work; but his boldness

was not to be communicated, and those in charge of the ship in his absence

had judged the concession best so as not to endanger the union with British

Columbia. (352)

By providing the voice for Sir John A. Macdonald's thoughts and his conscience, Agnes participates in a intellectual dialogue with her readers (in which she interprets otherwise unknown, private information for them), and she participates in a creative process of re- imagining and re-presenting historical people and events.

Political Ventriloquism

At times, Agnes incorporates dialogue excerpts from conversations she has apparently had with her husband on certain political topics. By casting herself in a number of "most intimate conversationfs]" (352) with the former prime minister, Agnes depicts the role of wife as a husband's confidante or peer. In the following excerpt, she situates this domestic position of privilege within a public discourse. She writes: "After

[Confederation in 1867, when [my husband] returned from England and took a fuller responsibility in a more enlarged sphere, no one can testify better than I to the enormous pressure of business he was capable of and managed so effectively and brilliantly to do"

(350). Here, Agnes alludes to the "fuller responsibility" of her husband's new position as the Dominion's prime minister; yet John A. Macdonald returned from England with the additional responsibility as her husband, a paternal image that Agnes connects to his role of governing the people of Canada.20 A second point of interest in this passage is Agnes's decision to cast the information as part of a testimony, which evokes the public language of the courtroom, and as such, the public process of seeking the truth.

An interrogation initiates dialogue, in which the woman writer positions herself in a conversation, and re-articulates something allegedly spoken by another person. As interrogator, Agnes adopts a narrative identity that controls the direction of conversation, thus placing her in a more active role in determining the topics that appear in her sketch.

In "A Builder of the Empire," Agnes prompts her husband eight times to discuss the following topics: the poverty of his childhood (347-348), and his loyalty to Britain (348); she also re-articulates his beliefs on certain topics, like what he thought the average

Canadian expected of the Canadian Pacific Railway (351). In addition, Agnes alludes to dialogues she has had with other male politicians, a strategy that empowers her narrative voice further. In justifying Sir John A. Macdonald's position on the Rebellion Losses

Bill, Agnes draws upon the support of other politicians, support that she has acquired through exchanges with them. Agnes explains that "[Sir John A.] refused to join his political friends in signing the annexation manifesto, some of whom told me years afterwards that [his] course at the time was of the greatest possible public utility" (349-

350). This tactic emphasizes the extent to which Agnes aligns herself with, or interacts with, other authorities, some of whom must surely include her husband's colleagues

(other male politicians), and it has a paradoxical effect on how Agnes positions her femininity in a masculine political and literary environment. On the one hand, asking questions demands that the narrator take control over the direction of a public discourse, surely an unfeminine behaviour. On the other, by asking questions, she displaces the responsibility for providing content (or political discussion) on to a man. Asking questions helps to position her (a female) as confidante, which increases her credibility as someone who was capable of processing political information, and who was a worthy recipient of it.

Kathleen Venema's use of "epistolary ventriloquism" in reading Letitia

Hargrave's letters is helpful to our reading of the interrogative strategies that Agnes

Macdonald uses in "A Builder of the Empire." In the 1840s, the Hargraves (Letitia and her husband, Hudson's Bay Company Chief Trader James Hargrave21) spent several years living at the isolated post at York Factory, followed by a brief relocation to Sault Ste.

Marie. Letitia maintained a sense of her social position despite the domestic realities (or kinship relationships) that threatened this position by using the technique of epistolary ventriloquism in the letters she wrote to her family in Scotland. Venema explains:

Hargrave writes letters that provide an alternate version of fur-trade reality, and she does so at a time of massive social and economic change. Prolific,

and keenly aware of letters' dialogic potential, Hargrave informally and often

inadvertently documents the 'small' and 'insignificant' ways in which

members of a complex, idiosyncratic, and tensely hierarchical social system

negotiated through a world of shifting kinship ties. She employs an unlikely

discursive form to do so, often reconstructing, in her letters, portions of

conversations in their original 'voices.' Like ventriloquism more generally

(Davis 151), 'epistolary ventriloquism' enables Hargrave to explore her own,

legitimate, identity in relation to the often less-secure identities of others and

'Others,' those explicitly marginalized by shifting fur-trade mores.

Hargrave's epistolary ventriloquism, that is, unintentionally records for

posterity voices that would otherwise never be heard in official fur-trade

history. (146)

If Letitia Hargrave and Agnes Macdonald do not employ a humanoid "dummy" through which to ventriloquize, the ways in which they both incorporate dialogue in their letters and personal and published writing, respectively, perform a similar function as a means of distancing themselves from, or controlling, specific experiences for specific reasons. Drawing upon C.B. Davis's research on the ventriloquist's relationship with body and voice, Venema argues that by incorporating segments of "real" conversation into her letters, Letitia Hargrave preserves the identity and experience of a number of marginalized individuals, while at the same time endorsing her own social status: the domestic and social-cultural status embodied in the figure of the citizen-mother (146). In his analysis of performance and identity, Davis explains:

Ventriloquist performance foregrounds 'voice' not as individual expression,

idiolect, or linguistic 'point of view,' but as signification of an identity that is

always under construction in a give-and-take dialogue-not only with other

voices, but with every variety of restraint placed on communication by

language and bodies. (133-134)

Here, Davis identifies a number of key elements that characterize both the art of the ventriloquist, as well as what we might consider the art of the politician's wife (in this case the writing of Lady Agnes Macdonald). Of particular relevance is Davis's notion of identity as a continuous negotiation between the individual and the physical or psychological barriers that impede that individual's ability to communicate. Certainly there is evidence that this was part of the narrative package that involved Lady Agnes

Macdonald (or "Macdonald of Earnscliffe") and her published political and travel writings. As a nineteenth-century Canadian woman, Agnes Macdonald was physically barred from direct participation in politics. However, just as her diary dialogic invites readers to reconsider the authority of its female and domestically-situated narrator, so does the political dialogic or political ventriloquism evident in her published work invite readers to reconsider the relationship between the speakers in those sketches. In casting part of the narrative in "A Builder of the Empire" as a dialogue between herself (as wife, as writer), and Sir John A. Macdonald (as husband, as prime minister), Agnes emphasizes that she is a dynamic part of the political life her husband lived, particularly as this assists in the project of remembering that life. In applying Kathleen Venema's theory that 150 literary ventriloquism can at times preserve otherwise marginalized voices, then here

Agnes succeeds in preserving a marginalized domestic conversation between husband and wife, a conversation that plays an important role in the historical reconstruction and memory of that man. Another marginalized voice that Agnes preserves is that of a sister, which she does by recording Margaret Macdonald's memory of the past. For me, the value of such excerpted conversations is that Agnes made a deliberate editorial decision to include them in her narrative; I am less interested in the verity of the conversations themselves. Even if the husband-wife or wife-sister dialogues were complete fabrications, they would still offer important narratives about women's aspirations or desires to inscribe themselves into historical memory.

Conclusion

A woman's place and influence in nineteenth-century Ottawa was not entirely restricted to the confines of her own home. Nor was her intellect. To the contrary, women could—and did—access public political buildings, and when they did, they proved that the

Ladies' Gallery in the Canadian House of Commons was much more than simply a place where women could passively observe the business of government. Vanessa Reid maps this space for us:

The Parliament Buildings combined public and domestic architecture and

imagery and, like some Victorian houses, did not fit neatly into the

monolithic categories of public and private. .. . [T]he Parliament Buildings

were an example of how these spheres overlapped in their integration of 151

domestic environments into a public institution. The buildings' function was

threefold: a legislative building, open to the public; an office structure used

by employees of various ranks and status; and a residence inhabited by

servants and 'masters' alike. As a result, there were various levels on which

the lines between private and public intersected. (41)

Thus, Agnes Macdonald, by virtue of being recognized as historical subject, occupies the

interesting position of actor in a traditionally male political scene, and a traditionally male

historical record. The Macdonalds' situation suggests that observers did respond to parliamentary activity, and in parliamentary space.

Women actively participated in memorializing efforts to preserve a sense of a political place and its people. Agnes became part of the political drama of her world when she took a seat in the Ladies' gallery: when as a "devoted wife" (Pope The Day of Sir

John A. 179) she witnessed the debates of the day, "watch[ing her] Husband with infinite pride" (Diary 3 December 1867), and when as an intelligent, articulate writer, perhaps with "characteristic imprudence" (Pope Public Servant 56)22 she later sat down and committed these debates and issues to paper. In the rather boisterous arena of the

Dominion's Parliament, Agnes Macdonald found a place for herself and her voice, and an audience to listen to what she had to say; within the political landscape, within a definite historical "national epic" perhaps, Agnes may very well be seen as manipulating a distinctively male image and story. She articulates this intention most directly in her letter to the House, in which she makes an appeal for a "lasting tribute" to be made in Sir

John's memory: "I ask that that tribute shall be a firm and united support of the policy 152 and principles our great leader lived and died to maintain and carry out. I appeal to them with all the power my words can convey to do now and in the future what they and I know would be my husband's wish and desire" ("Introduction" 548).

To speak with authority on such a subject, however, a woman like Lady Agnes

Macdonald returned to her home and the power granted to her by nineteenth-century society. A woman in the House brought certain expectations and signifiers with her, and initiated a different kind of political discussion. Gillian Rose and Miles Ogborn discuss the narratives that feminine symbols bring to the spatial readings of government buildings and the political world of men:

Geographers have long recognised that, in various ways, landscapes are

cultural constructs but have never considered the ways in which gender is

involved in this process. Yet landscapes are usually created through the male

gaze, and women are used for specific symbolic and ideological ends in the

material landscape. Women are especially part of the iconography of the

urban scene; from the Statue of Liberty to the Old Bailey to Parisian drinking

fountains, female figures are carved, moulded and sculpted into the city

fabric, and the power relations implicated in such symbolic meanings have

been explicated by Marina Warner. (408)23

Moving from parliamentary House to the outside landscape of the Dominion of Canada, I will now turn to a discussion of how domestic iconography enabled Agnes Macdonald to write authoritatively about nation in her travel sketches. 153

Notes

1. Also see the following diary entries, which make reference to visits to the House: for 1867: 21 November; and 2, 3, 6 December. For 1868: 24 March; 6, 15, 16, 20 April; and 1 May. For 1869: 25 April.

2. During her widowhood, Agnes signed most of her letters to Joseph Pope as "Macdonald of Earnscliffe." Also see her Introduction to Pope's Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John A. Macdonald, which she signs "By the Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe" at its beginning, and "Macdonald of Earnscliffe" at its conclusion. She is also listed as "Macdonald of Earnscliffe" in the publication Who Was Who, 1916-1928.

3. Laframboise defers to Louise Reynolds's assessment that "Canadian Topics" and "Men and Measures in Canada" were both authored by Agnes Macdonald (118).

4. See McTeer for particular publication details.

5. During the late 1980s (well after she was under considerable media pressure to "act properly" as the wife of the Leader of the Opposition from 1976 to 1979, and then as the wife of the prime minister from 1979 to 1980, and also the year in which she ran for federal office herself), Maureen McTeer became a prolific and regular contributor to Chatelaine.

6. Grace Lee Nute, speaking as an academic and canoeist, suggests that the pace and design of the Simpsons' journey did not conform to usual canoe protocol, and that it is possible that George Simpson may have been "showing off for someone's benefit" (12), with the hope or belief that his wife's travel account would one day either be published or shared with influential people. Nute, who wrote the introductions to Frances Simpson's travel diary that appeared in three consecutive issues of The Beaver, proposes that George Simpson may have influenced or coerced his wife into writing the critical character sketch of HBC Chief Factor Colin Robertson that appears at the end of travel diary (12).

7. This was a reprint; the original article supposedly appeared in an undated, uncredited Washington newspaper.

8. My decision to refer to Agnes here as "subject" and not "object" is deliberate. As a woman in a male-dominated political world, Agnes was "acted upon" (as object), but she emerges as an "actor" (or subject) in how she situates her narrative self in her published political work.

9. Here, Reid appears to be paraphrasing Van Slyck.

10.1 first encountered this reference to Madge MacBeth in Vanessa Reid's dissertation (64). The irony of MacBeth's reference to the Ladies's Gallery as an eagle's nest is that 154 this was the name of the Macdonalds' home in Ottawa, an image that appears in Agnes's travel sketches as the train car (the Earnscliffe) in "By Car and by Cowcatcher," and her reference to the "Eagle's Cliff landmark in "On a Canadian Salmon River."

11. Also see Collins, who wrote that "her judgment is said to be scarce less sound than that of Sir John, who, it is whispered, is in the habit of consulting her when he is about to take some important political step" (507).

12. This episode is cited by Dale Thompson (321-322); its source is a letter dated 12 February 1878 exchanged between Mackenzie and his daughter, Mary Thompson. Agnes was reacting to the reappointment of Timothy Anglin as Speaker of the House, accomplished after Mackenzie had outmanouevred Sir John A. by drawing upon the minutiae of legal precendents and policies.

13. For specific details, see Lady Dufferin's journal entry for 3 November 1873. Also see Newman (123) for an excerpt from Lord Dufferin's letter to Sir John A. Macdonald that recounts the manner of his wife's presentation of this political performance.

14. For a more detailed biography of Glover, see Frederic Fraser Thompson.

15.1 have been unable to locate Elizabeth Glover's journal. The Royal Commonwealth Library at Cambridge University holds Sir John Hawley Glover's papers, but nothing written by Lady Glover. It seems that the library once held a published manuscript by Elizabeth Glover titled "Lest we forget..." but the volume is now missing. See Rowe.

16. Here, Agnes is referring to Queen Victoria's decision to make Ottawa the permanent capital.

17. For a fuller analysis of the two women's journal letters, see Chapter Three of Carter's "A Contingency of Words."

18. See Carter's "The Circulating Self."

19. George Simpson not only dictates the daunting pace of the journey, but he determines when and where the travellers stop to eat (2 May 1830), he influences and punishes the crew's behaviour (6 May 1830; 7 May 1830), he conducts fur trade business (18 May 1830; 1 June 1830), and hosts a dinner at Fort Garry for "all the respectable Settlers" who lived there (10 June 1830).

20. Agnes casts a fifteen-year-old John A. Macdonald as the head of the Macdonald family (his mother and two sisters) when his father's fortunes and then health declined. While she does not explicitly connect his ability to attend to the "network of family cares, claims and responsibilities" (347) of the Macdonalds to the macrocosm of a nation, she does imply that the young pioneer and family protector moved easily into the role of pioneering and protecting a country, suggesting that "[i]t is no exaggeration to say 155 that the nation he was building up ... looked to him and him alone for the development and perfecting of the scheme he had pioneered and carried through amid countless difficulties" (350).

21. For more biographical details about Letitia (Mactavish) Hargrave and James Hargrave, and for an overview of the fur-trade landscape in Rupert's Land during the 1830s-50s, see MacLeod.

22. Louise Reynolds suggests that this is a mistake in Pope's manuscript, and that he really meant to call Agnes "impulsive" (113), rather than "imprudent." In his review of Reynolds's biography, P.B. Waite advises that "[o]ne cannot gloss over Pope quite like that. It is better to assume he meant what he said. He usually weighed his words" (Review 524). I am inclined to agree with Waite.

23. For her more detailed discussion of symbolic form and meaning, or how "the representation of virtue in the female form interacts with ideas about femaleness, and affects the way women act as well as appear" (37), see Warner's analysis of the Statue of Liberty (3-17), and of statuary in Paris (18-37). 156

CHAPTER FIVE: Introduction to Travel Writing

Lady Agnes Macdonald's ride through the Canadian Rockies on the cowcatcher of a train is one of the great stories of the nineteenth century. During Sir John A.

Macdonald's 1886 pre-election campaign tour from Ottawa to Vancouver on the newly completed CPR, Agnes decided to experience rail travel in the most visceral sense that she could. With considerable resolve and imagination (and a candle-box), she discovered that there was enough space to construct a seat for herself on the cowcatcher; a cowcatcher was the metal frame projecting from the front of the train, and it kept the track clear of obstacles that could cause a derailment. Agnes attests to the effectiveness of this piece of equipment (as well as the protection offered by her less-than-enthusiastic chaperones appointed by her husband) in what is probably the most humourous episode in all of her writing. In her travel sketch "By Car and by Cowcatcher," Agnes blithely reports that

[w]ith the 'Secretary' [Sir Joseph Pope] on my 'guest's' candle-box, I was

enjoying the beauty of the scene just described, when the roadway

immediately before us swarmed with little black pigs, which had darted from

bushes growing near the track. There was a squeak, a flash of something

near, and away we went, leaving one poor beauty lying dead on the road

behind us. The Secretary averred that the body had struck him in passing; but

as I shut my eyes tightly almost as soon as the pigs appeared, I cannot bear

testimony to the fact. (II, 310) 157

Joseph Pope, as we might imagine, was less than amused. In his memoirs, he presents a quite different account of the experience, first chastising Lady Macdonald for exhibiting a "characteristic imprudence" in her cowcatcher-candle-box riding scheme, and then confirming "that if that pig had struck any of us going at the rate we were, it would have been more disastrous than a rifle bullet. I have not ridden on a cow-catcher since" (56).

Because Agnes and Joseph Pope were not injured, they could indulge in the humour

(however dead-pan) of the incident. Yet the danger was quite real. In her own travel account, Through Canada with a Kodak, Lady Aberdeen devotes an entire chapter to the report of a disastrous railway accident involving a herd of cattle on the track (113-119).

In a more recent portrayal of Lady Macdonald's fantastic cowcatcher ride, the

Canadian folk band Tanglefoot depicts Agnes as a type of visionary. In their 2002 title song "agnes on the cowcatcher," for example, the band sings:

She said all my life it's been my dream to sit where I can see

Everything that lies ahead and what's in store for me

So why should I sit back and let the world's beauty pass?

One day I will sit out front and look ahead at last.

The relationship between vantage point, sight, and knowledge in Tanglefoot's song expresses key themes in women's travel writing, particularly as they help situate the female body within a travel landscape. Agnes Macdonald acknowledges this relationship in her efforts to reconfigure her transportation (first railway car and then canoe) to better accommodate the woman traveller; while fishing in northern New Brunswick, she concludes that "it is my fate to enjoy life most of all when seated on an empty candle- 158

box" when one is placed in a canoe for her to sit on ("On a Canadian Salmon River" II,

622). If the woman traveller was doomed to struggle with the gendered nature of

transportation, Lady Macdonald breezily dismisses the challenge with a candle-box.

Clearly, the danger and mystique of the "outside" world required but a creative touch to

become as safe and as comfortable as any place in a woman's own home. A woman

would travel, Agnes Macdonald tells us, no matter what obstacles she encountered along

the way, even if "such an innovation on all general rules of travelling decorum was no

doubt very startling" ("By Car and by Cowcatcher" II, 296).

In addition to rethinking her place in travel vehicles, a woman traveller could

also take advantage of new environments to test or reconsider the cultural parameters of her identity. On one occasion in 1884, for example, while the Macdonalds were holidaying in Riviere-du-Loup, Agnes and "a few friends" (Paul 41)' planned an additional journey to Springhill and then to the Parrsboro mines. The tour of the mines prompted her "to say a few words to the crowd, which was quite unusual" (Paul 43).2

While it is not clear whether Lady Macdonald's impromptu visit down a coal mine shaft or her speech afterwards qualified the journey to be included in that year's Dominion

Annual Register, in its "Journal of Remarkable Occurrences" (Paul 43), it is clear that travel brought out the "remarkable" in Agnes.

A nineteenth-century woman traveller could express herself in remarkable and creative ways through the literary periodicals of her time. Lady Agnes Macdonald took advantage of such venues by publishing three known travel sketches, which include, in chronological order by publication date: "By Car and by Cowcatcher,"3 based on Sir 159

John A. Macdonald's pre-election campaign tour from Ottawa to Vancouver during the summer of 18864 on the CPR; "On a Canadian Salmon River," a fishing vacation of

"three weeks' life in the wilds" (449) that Agnes spent on the Restigouche River immediately following the close of the parliamentary session in June of 1887;5 and "An

Unconventional Holiday," a train trip she took to Banff Springs and back in the autumn of 1890.6 A fourth sketch, which is more of a cultural study than a travel sketch, but that

I include in my discussion of Agnes's published travel writing, is her "On a Tobogan."7

This last piece recalls the popularity of tobogganing as a recreational winter sport. I include it here because the underlying economic implications of this sketch complement the main themes in Agnes Macdonald's travel writing.

These periodicals made Agnes Macdonald's writing available to an international audience: "By Car and by Cowcatcher," "On a Canadian Salmon River," and "On a

Tobogan" appeared in issues of Murray's Magazine: A Home and Colonial Periodical, which was published in Great Britain, and "An Unconventional Holiday" appeared in

The Ladies' Home Journal, which was published in the United States. In her discussion of "By Car and by Cowcatcher," Lisa Laframboise suggests that "[Lady] Macdonald's article would have received circulation throughout the British Empire, and certainly would have been read in important circles in Canada, but it was published in a vehicle aimed primarily at a British audience familiar with the travels of British ladies" (94).

Given what we know of Agnes Macdonald and her relationship to the political world of nineteenth-century Canada, her decision to share her post-colonial travel experiences with both British and American audiences is probably not accidental. 160

If Agnes Macdonald was imprudent for behaving in such a reckless and unseemly manner while she travelled, her focus on the economic future that tourism and settlement would bring to the western Canadian landscape made her a thoughtful, perhaps calculating, participant in their promotion. This landscape was a complex and fractured one, bringing with it a variety of social, cultural, moral, and psychological challenges under the purview (and the pen) of the citizen-mother travel writer. If it is true, as

Menzies et al. suggest, that "from the very first breath of Confederation there were manifold variations and hierarchies of civil, political, and social citizenship, and entire classes of subaltern peoples [including women] . . . whose belonging to 'nation' was either unconditionally denied or vigorously contested" (22), it is not true that all women fell into this category of dispossessed and disempowered people. Rather, women of privilege—of the governing elite—occupied an important position in the new society.

These women were entrusted with the responsibility of creating good social citizens through the means they had available to them.

Many women of privilege had access to political information about their world.

Though they might not have articulated this information explicitly through their words, actions, or writing, they sometimes showed evidence of being influenced by it. While Sir

John A. Macdonald the politician toiled in Parliament on behalf of western expansion

(by means of European or Euro-Canadian settlement), Lady Agnes Macdonald the writer appeared to toil "on the road" on a similar theme. It is probably no coincidence that

Agnes produced her travel sketches during the Dominion's Third Ministry (October 17,

1878 to June 6, 1891), when Sir John A. Macdonald held the following cabinet 161 portfolios that influenced the governance over, and development of, the Canadian North

West:8 Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, Minister of the Interior, President of the Privy Council, and Minister of Railways and Canals.9 It is also worth noting that Sir

John A.'s National Policy (an integrated effort to promote Canadian security and prosperity through policies that involved the CPR, Immigration, and protective tariffs on

Canadian manufacturers) was articulated as a plank in the Conservative Party's 1878 election platform. Economics, politics, and domestic activity all played equal roles in establishing the rules, values, and norms of mainstream Dominion society. Amy Kaplan discusses this shared undertaking, that:

Reconceptualizing domesticity in this way might shift the cognitive

geography of nineteenth-century separate spheres. When we contrast the

domestic sphere with the market or political realm, men and women inhabit

a divided social terrain, but when we oppose the domestic to the foreign,

men and women become national allies against the alien, and the

determining division is not gender but racial demarcations of otherness. Thus

another part of the cultural work of domesticity might be to unite men and

women in a national domain and to generate notions of the foreign against

which the nation can be imagined as home. The border between the domestic

and the foreign, however, also deconstructs when we think of domesticity

not as a static condition but as the process of domestication, which entails

conquering and taming the wild, the natural, and the alien. Domestic in this

sense is related to the imperial project of civilizing, and the conditions of 162

domesticity often become markers that distinguish civilization from

savagery. Through the process of domestication, the home contains within

itself those wild or foreign elements that must be tamed; domesticity not only

monitors the borders between the civilized and the savage but also regulates

traces of the savage within itself. (184)

Kaplan's reconsideration of the separate spheres ideology, particularly the placement and role of the domestic, raises a number of points relevant to my discussion about Agnes

Macdonald and her writing. First, Kaplan's "domestic versus foreign" paradigm unifies the traditional domestic, political, and economic spheres to reflect the shared purpose of

White women and White men to work together to establish a White society. This unification helps to blur the lines between private and public, and domestic and political.

Second, Kaplan's perception of domesticity as a "process" rather than a "static condition" attributes a degree of agency to those elements that constitute the domestic, such as the traditional roles of women as home-makers (so their identities as wives and mothers), and the symbol of the home itself. As Kaplan points out, domesticity as a process qualifies it to be read as a component of "the imperial project of civilizing," which places women (traditionally associated with the domestic) in a much larger context that is both active and political in its purpose. Finally, if, as Kaplan suggests, the home represents the site in which "domesticity not only monitors the borders between the civilized and the savage but also regulates traces of the savage within itself," then women may be seen as key players in creating the desired social citizens at home as well as in more public spaces by influencing the behaviour of their husbands and children. At 163 the very least, Kaplan's discussion implicates women in a shared undertaking with men, in which "the cultural work of domesticity" had a public role to play.

The "citizen-mother" seems well situated in Kaplan's revisioned domestic space, where this figure performed a public and political (yet domestic) role. As such, and as a narrative symbol in texts about nation and nation building, the citizen-mother acts in conjunction with complementary masculine symbols, and it is this select pantheon of typed, imperialist characters that has offered clear if "[h]egemonic expressions of

[Canadian] citizenship (the citizen-soldier, the citizen-mother, [and] the active political and economic citizen), which were widely adopted" (Menzies, Adamoski, and Chunn

30)10 from the late nineteenth century through today. We encounter these other, masculine exemplars of civil society in Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches: the image of the North-West Mounted Policeman, who surfaces as the citizen-soldier, as well as the image of the ethnically desirable immigrant, who appears as the economic citizen.

Travel Writing Critical Contexts

Lady Agnes Macdonald and her travel writing have generated little critical attention in travel literature studies. While travel writing, as many literary critics have argued for some time, occupies an important place in the canon of early Canadian literature, Agnes Macdonald has yet to be properly situated within this literary genre.

The diversity of her writing may represent part of the problem: Is she a diarist, political writer, or travel writer? The fact that her writing also exists in nineteenth-century periodicals and archives may still present additional challenges to accessibility and 164

making these texts available to more than just an academic readership.11 The increase in

online archives and journals, however, is changing accessibility issues. I have, for

example, recently discovered that the National Archives of Canada has now made

available digital copies of Agnes Macdonald's diary entries for 5 July - 7 Dec. 1867 and

23 April 1868.n

Most available studies about travel writing, however, tend to focus almost

exclusively on published texts, including travel narratives, instructional or educational pieces, or edited collections of journal letters or diary entries. Rarely do we find

anthologized sketches from nineteenth-century periodicals, an unfortunate editorial

decision that tends to misrepresent the full diversity of nineteenth-century periodical literature.13

Published travel writing anthologies also do not tend to explore the theme of nationality: how it affects each woman traveller's point of entry into landscape, or the differences in what she was looking for, or what she found. While British and American travellers are often acknowledged as distinct groups, Canadian travellers are usually included with either group (often British). The drawback of this kind of organizing principle is that it undermines the rich generic and thematic diversity of women's travel writing, including the political or economic aspects of what we could consider national travel identities. It assumes that all nineteenth-century women travellers were influenced by the same sensibilities. Like Susan Blake, I agree that the underlying purpose of travel fundamentally influences various aspects of the travel experience, as well as the narrative itself. If one is endorsed to move through a colonized landscape, for example, in order to survey the land for its potential to support settlement, then that landscape will probably be assessed for its ability to sustain basic survival needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Thus, the traveller will look for these types of features, and will probably interact with people along the way with this in mind.

The following well-known travel writing anthologies include few, if any, references to Canadian women, and tend to make implicit assumptions that Canadian,

American, and British women travellers were identical in sensibilities and in their relationships with the geographies through which they travelled. These texts include:

Shirley Foster's Across New Worlds: Nineteenth-Century Women Travellers and their

Writings; Leo Hamalian's Ladies on the Loose: Women Travellers of the 18th and 19th

Centuries; Barbara Hodgson's No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women

Travellers; Karen Lawrence's Penelope Voyages; Mary Morris's The Illustrated Virago

Book of Women Travellers; Jane Robinson's Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of

Women Traveller, and Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers; Colleen

Skidmore's This Wild Spirit: Women in the Rocky Mountains of Canada; and Marion

Tinling's Women into the Unknown: A Sourcebook on Women Explorers and Travelers.

Most of these texts are not helpful in establishing a context for reading Agnes

Macdonald's travel writing. Although Jane Robinson's Wayward Women: A Guide to

Women Travellers acknowledges the importance of travel agendas in its categorization of her chosen writers (categories include pioneer, evangelist, emigrant, etc.), most of these travel writers are British, and they travelled outside of Britain. In order to be considered for this collection, the women travellers had to have published a book-length 166 account of their travels; Marion Tinling's chosen women travellers are also the better known published travel writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Leo Hamalian's text does not consider North America as one of the travel destinations that helps to organize his chosen writers, and while Shirley Foster's anthology includes a chapter of North American travel narratives, travels through

Canada are represented by well-known women travellers Isabella Bird, Anna Jameson,

Susanna Moodie, and Catharine Parr Traill. Barbara Hodgson's text expands slightly on

Foster's list (including more obscure women who were involved with the fur trade, like

Letitia Hargrave and Isobel Gunn), but she excludes women who travelled with an explicit agenda (such as immigration or missionary work). Hodgson complements the biographical information and travel writing excerpts in her text with a variety of illustrations, which personalizes the information, and helps readers to visualize some of the physical contexts of early travel experiences. Hodgson's text may leave readers wanting more information, but it is a wide-ranging text that emphasizes the pluck, resolve, and imagination that many of our travelling foremothers possessed.

Mary Morris's anthology offers less visuals but more biographical details and travel writing excerpts than Hodgson's text. She focuses on the ways in which women grapple with the issue of their gender when they travel, but does not investigate the connections between gender and nationality, or gender and travel destination. Writers are not listed alphabetically, nor organized by time period, nationality, or travel destination, and most of her chosen women writers are independently wealthy and single. Canadian writers and Canadian content are represented in Morris's text by Isabella Bird, Emily 167

Carr, and Gwendolyn MacEwen.

The only anthology in this list that contributes in any substantive way to my

discussion of Agnes Macdonald's travel writing is Colleen Skidmore's text, which

focuses on Canadian, American, and British women travellers who took advantage of the

CPR to explore the Rocky Mountains. The scope of Skidmore's work includes women

writers, botanists, and artists travelling from about 1885 through the middle of the

twentieth century. Skidmore's work celebrates the diversity of race and artistic

expression: "works by and about Aboriginal and Metis women and Euro-North

American and British women are included . . . [such as] photographs and paintings, novels and letters, plays and poetry, private travel diaries and published articles" (xx).

Skidmore's chosen travellers are recognized names in the history of the Rocky Mountain parks, who often drew their inspiration or validation from a supportive network of women who had previously travelled through this area (xxi).14 This anthology is an informative and engaging text, and in the following chapter, I draw upon Skidmore's analysis of the relationship between her women travellers and the CPR Company to help

situate Lady Agnes Macdonald's role as a travelling prime minister's wife. 168

Notes

1. It is unclear who these travelling companions are. The only named friends in Paul's article are Robert and Sarah Leckie.

2.1 would like to thank Patricia Townsend, Archivist at Acadia University, for bringing this story to my attention. See Paul for the entire story, in particular the text of Agnes's speech, as recorded by an unnamed reporter. Agnes reportedly said: "T thank you from the bottom of my heart. Such an unexpected welcome from you is flattering to me, indeed, and I shall tell Sir John how much I am indebted to you. I have been greatly pleased with my visit and when I went down into the mines the other day I was asked if I was not afraid. My reply was: 'Why should I fear to go where so many of you spend eight hours at least every day of your lives? I hope to come and see you again'" (43).

3. "By Car and by Cowcatcher" appeared in two consecutive issues ofMurray's Magazine. The pagination is as follows: Part I, 215-235; Part II, 296-311.1 use both issue and page numbers in my citations.

4. This journey occurred from July 10 to August 30.

5. "On a Canadian Salmon River" appeared in two consecutive issues of Murray's Magazine. The pagination is as follows: Part I, 447-461; Part II, 621-636.1 use both issue and page numbers in my citations.

6. "An Unconventional Holiday" appeared in two consecutive issues of The Ladies' Home Journal. The pagination is the same for both issues: Part I, 1-2; Part II, 1-2.1 use both issue and page numbers in my citations.

7. "On a Tobogan" appeared in a single issue of Murray's Magazine. Therefore, I use only page numbers in my citations.

8. For the exact tenure of these portfolios, refer to the Guide to Canadian Ministries since Confederation (13-18).

9. During the Dominion's Third Ministry, the portfolios associated with governance over the North West were either established or further refined. For more particular details, see Guide to Canadian Ministries (16).

10. Menzies, Adamoski, and Chunn suggest, however, that these images were also used by marginalized groups in an attempt to belong to, or challenge, the dominant culture, and that "the privileges and burdens of citizenship" (30) have been contested by a number of scholars.

11 .While conducting the research for this dissertation, I required interlibrary loan service for microfilm versions of Murray's Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine, and the Ladies' Home Journal; in addition, I visited the National Archives of Canada (the NAC in 169

Ottawa) to confirm information about Agnes's diary, then only available on microfilm.

12. These were the only images available on the NAC web site as of 4 January 2010. To date, a full transcription of Agnes Macdonald's diary has not yet been done, although much of the diary itself has been excerpted in a few texts.

13. See Gerson (A Purer Taste), for an overall sense of reading practices in nineteenth- century Canada. For an overview of the periodical industry in 19th century Canada, see Distad.

14. For example, Skidmore relates: "Vancouver author Julia Henshaw races Philadelphia photographer and writer Mary Schaffer to press with a book on mountain wildflowers after Schaffer shares her photography technique. . . . Popular British novelist Mary Ward infuses her heroine with shades of explorer Schaffer . . . and includes Schaffer photographs in her 1910 novel Lady Merton, Colonist. In a thinly veiled promotional brochure published by the CPR's Minneapolis Soo Line, Schaffer refers readers to Grace Seton-Thompson's A Woman Tenderfoot for advice about clothing for mountain travel" (xxi). 170

CHAPTER SIX: The Citizen-Mother as Travel Narrator

In her analysis of travel writer Anna Jameson, Judith Johnston discusses the tension between a woman's home and the outside, travel landscape, and the corresponding intellectual freedom that came when a woman traveller wrote about her experience. Johnston explains:

Travel-writing, like travel itself, was fraught with danger, the danger that

encounters with freedom, the physical experiences of traversing the wild

untamed outdoors, might engender independence of mind and person, and

that women in particular might apply the perceived freedom in travel

discourse in their own lives. (Anna Jameson 111)

If travel and "travel discourse" offered women a means to explore (and possibly

redefine) a sense of themselves and of the cultural ideal of womanhood in general, then

Johnston identifies an intellectual and subversive way in which women could influence

the creative process of living and life-writing discussed by Phyllis Rose. Yet if a

woman travel writer was to maintain her credibility with readers, she could not afford

to create a text or discourse that was so foreign that it alienated them.

We find evidence of this balance in Agnes Macdonald's travel writing. Unlike

the overall tenor of Agnes Macdonald's diary writing, which highlights a moralistic,

religiously-fervent Agnes, the narrator in her published travel sketches more

lightheartedly articulates the friction between domestic responsibility and the desire

and ability to abandon it. In her sketch "An Unconventional Holiday," for example, the 171

Lady Macdonald narrator humorously illustrates a woman's reality of that time: such a

narrator embodied both the traditional ideal of the nineteenth-century woman, as well

as the "New" woman1 who is associated with the twentieth century. While Lady

Macdonald travels only after she obtains her husband's permission to do so, her desire

to leave home, as a curative measure, introduces readers to a more independent

woman. Agnes launches her modern woman traveller with a light narrative touch. In

this sketch, "The Chief (Sir John A.) initially responds unfavourably to his wife's

travel request,

[dismissing it as] frivolous and unnecessary, adding that his grandmother

(always described as the most useful and superior of women, but who

fortunately departed this life before I suffered in contrast), had never

complained of neuralgia, or asked for change and rest. . . the Chief insisted

on the advantage of rest and seclusion sought for at home-hinted at the

possibility of even recovering from a neuralgic eyebrow while engaged in a

round of domestic duties. (I, 1)

As Agnes suggests, travel discourse provided women writers with new symbols and plot-lines that enabled them to create new cultural narratives about themselves and their lives. Travel, however, presented a few narrative challenges for the woman travel writer. Because unsettled or sparsely-settled landscape represented, at best, a rudimentary social organization, a lady's place in it was not particularly secure. In

Agnes Macdonald's travel writing, we see evidence of this situation when her travel narrator is either misunderstood or misread out-of-doors, a situation that Agnes remedies by reinstating either the civility or the maternal aspect of the woman

traveller's identity. By choosing to refer to her travelling self as "Lady Macdonald,"

Agnes also draws attention to the social expectations of who or what the travel narrator

is supposed to be, or is capable of being.

Lady Agnes Macdonald was not alone in this respect. In the spring of 1840,

Isobel Finlayson2 endured a gruelling journey from England to York Factory (by ship),

and then on to the Red River Settlement, where she was to join her husband, Duncan

Finlayson,3 the newly-appointed Chief Factor of the Red River District. Ultimately ill-

suited to life in pre-Confederation Canada, Isobel, like her sister Frances Simpson, did not thrive in this fur-trade world; the value of these women and wives was their social identities as genteel British ladies, not their ability to adapt to the settler's life in a challenging wilderness. In representing the perceived dichotomy of lady and traveller, however, Isobel Finlayson provides a telling—and for the purpose of this dissertation— narratively instructive moment in her travel diary. In recalling a humourous episode in which an over-anxious settler bungles his well-intended greeting of the Factor's new wife, Isobel writes:

[Mr. Mowatt] . . . hurried to meet us, eager to offer his congratulations upon

my arrival in this country. . .. [H]e accosted the first lady he met which

happened to be Miss Ross [aged 17], with 'How do you do Mrs. Finlayson'

accompanied with a very original bow. Without taking the trouble to

undeceive him she replied 'Very well thank you' but Mr. Ross informed him

the lady in question was his daughter. [Mowatt then] commenced his 173

complimentary speeches to Miss Allen [aged 50] as Mrs. Finlayson, but she

soon led him to understand that he was in error. Being rather annoyed at this

second blunder, he darted off. . . . [T]he [next] person he encountered . . .

was [my maidservant] Mary. . . . Being now certain he was right, he made a

very low bow without venturing to speak. (33)

Mr. Mowatt's comical search for the "real" Mrs. Finlayson conveniently illustrates the

conundrum of locating the nineteenth-century woman traveller: what were her

contemporaries looking for in her physical presence, and what do we now look for in

her narrative representation? The "Isobel Finlayson" travel narrators work from under,

through, and around multiple narrative filters in their attempts to balance the often

conflicting roles of lady and traveller.

Like Isobel Finlayson, Lady Macdonald's narrator-woman-traveller initially appears within her journey and within the text of the narrative as an unrecognizable character. In the opening paragraphs of "On a Canadian Salmon River," neither French nor English secondary characters in the narrative appear to know where exactly to situate the woman traveller in the traditional adventure plot. Such a misreading prompts a humourous episode in which the narrator huffily justifies her existence by providing her travel resume, and simultaneously reminding readers of her respectable social status. A powerful manipulation of incident, character, and humour mitigates the eccentricity of the woman traveller stereotype, while at the same time prompting Lady Macdonald to identify herself. In other words, after such initial misconceptions, women such as Agnes and Isobel ultimately assert—or legitimize—themselves by openly articulating their 174 respective social statuses. I quote this next passage at length:

'Pourquoi M'dame est elle ici si loin de la station,' wondered a pretty French

girl who brought our supply of fresh butter as she handed the basket to my

maid. 'Mais, sans doute,' she added, after a second's thought, 'elle a peur des

chars enhaut.'4

This was too much! I who had crossed mountains that span a continent on

a cowcatcher, just for fun; who had passed over trestle bridges two hundred

feet high, standing on a railway car step, and laughed to look down the abyss;

who had travelled two thousand miles in the depths of a Canadian winter

over a newly laid and hardly opened railway line-I who had done all these

fine things to be supposed afraid of staying overnight in a car drawn up on a

blind siding in a country railway station, only one hundred miles below

Quebec! Sadly I pondered on the difficulty of achieving fame! To a village

near which I own five acres of rock, and a summer cottage, and where I had

spent months at a time, the story of my exploits had clearly never come! The

shock had made fresh air necessary, so I rose and looked out. (I, 447-448)

In this passage, Lady Macdonald reveals her pride in being a seasoned, fearless traveller.

Read metaphorically, it also establishes the semantic invisibility of the woman traveller, and in so doing, provides an opportunity for Agnes to assert herself and her experiences as part of an authoritative discourse. Or, as she suggests, to assert herself as a proud woman traveller of social renown and "fame."

The above examples, however, depict the woman traveller in a passive situation, 175 where only her appearance is misread. Mistaken identity can also come about through the woman traveller's questionable behaviour. During an episode in "An Unconventional

Holiday," Lady Macdonald once again finds herself subject to social scrutiny and assessment, and once again relies on the device of mistaken identity to assert herself, and experiments with the power of humour to destabilize social expectation. In emphasizing her identity as a lady, she undermines any questionable behaviour that may be attributed to her as woman traveller. Consider how Lady Macdonald controls perception in the episode at White River, where she buys a replacement pipe for her godson:

'Mr. Conductor,' I said emphatically when that official came to know what

my ladyship would be pleased to do, 'I shall await the 'fixing' of that trestle

on a siding at White River.' So we tarried a long day at White River and

went shopping, and I bought a tobacco pipe. Not for myself, or for my own

use, but to restore the lost equanimity of my godson who, in a moment of

inadvertence, had walked over his only meerschaum early that morning and

was horribly disconsolate in consequence. Never shall I forget the look with

which the solitary shop boy, in the single shop at White River, regarded me,

'the lady traveling in her private car,' when I demanded a clay pipe! He

changed countenance visibly, handed over the article, put on his billy-cock

and walked out to call his friends. These were not numerous or distinguished

looking, but they gaped at me in silence until I had taken refuge . . . feeling

with a sinking heart, as I did so, that the esteem and respect of the nine

inhabitants of White River was lost to me forever. (I, 2) 176

In this passage, the roles of conductor and shop boy helpfully draw attention to, and thus endorse, Agnes' s social status as lady, which once again mitigates the effect of a perceived questionable behaviour. Humour disempowers the perceived threat of eccentricity, a behaviour that has been conventionally associated with the woman traveller. Moving through a public travel space, Lady Macdonald places herself under public scrutiny a number of times, a narrative ploy that enhances her image of a proper lady, wife, and mother. On a few different occasions in her sketch "On a Canadian

Salmon River," for example, Lady Macdonald draws attention to her feminine sensibilities by deferring to the men who oversee the fishing expedition. When her travel party encounters a set of rapids and other obstacles in the river en route to the fishing camp, Agnes anxiously turns to the Captain, and "[w]oman-like . . . asked if there was any danger" (I, 454). Once at the camp, she later situates her travelling self under the

"male gaze" of the Superintendent. The following passage reveals much about Agnes as traveller: her damp dress and mosquito netting indicate she is likely a resilient and prepared traveller. Yet her self-consciousness reminds her readers of the stereotypical image of the woman traveller, and of the lady behind the mosquito netting. Agnes writes:

as I stepped forth to meet him [the Superintendent], it was with a hope that

my loosely-fitted grey gown (drenched in last night's shower, and not quite

dry yet) would pass muster; and though a mosquito-veil, fastened securely

round my old straw hat, and confined about my collar-bone with an elastic

string, testified to a weak but natural dread of sandflies and mosquitos, I

hoped-and not in vain-that the general unaffected shabbiness of my appearance would meet his approval. (II, 622)

While such descriptions helped a woman travel writer to portray herself in a suitable manner, there were other narrative means by which she could accomplish this goal.

She could include travel companions.

Travel Companions: The Role of "Secondary Characters"

In an attempt to portray herself in a positive and proper way, a skillful writer like

Agnes Macdonald could include a cast of travel companions or secondary characters. In her discussion of Anna Jameson's travel writing, Judith Johnston proposes that one way in which a nineteenth-century woman traveller could maintain her physical and moral security was to create a "white hierarchy" (Anna Jameson 114) of European status and authority, in which she selectively introduced and placed other secondary "characters" like God, voyageurs, other travellers, and aboriginal individuals in her narrative. Thus the description and portrayal of these characters becomes an important means by which women travellers controlled the ways in which they could portray their travelling narrators.

Lady Macdonald alludes to a select few travel companions, sometimes by name, as is the case with "An Unconventional Holiday" and "By Car and by Cowcatcher," but then either abandons them, or relegates them to the background of her writing. Yet their appearances, however brief, can be read as discursive attempts to control travel experiences that might otherwise undermine the integrity and influence of Agnes

Macdonald's travelling self. Secondary characters can help emphasize feminine 178

attributes of the woman traveller, by either allusion or by more concretely enduring the

bumps and scrapes of travel themselves, thus helping to preserve the outward appearance

of the woman traveller's self control and decorum. In the former instance, for example,

in "An Unconventional Holiday," Lady Macdonald travels with "Margaret," who is

recruited to act as "sometimes nurse" to Agnes, and "a tall young man to whom thirty

years before I had promised to teach his catechism" (1,1). The combined effect of

Margaret's presence and Agnes's godson reminds us of the supposed delicate

constitution of the lady traveller, who requires both a female attendant and male

chaperone. Lady Macdonald's status as godmother also enhances her self-portrayal as a

respectable matron and role-model.

In her travel narratives, Lady Macdonald at times projects behaviours or

experiences onto other female travel companions to help heighten the danger of travel as

it destabilizes or undermines other women's femininity, all the while promoting the

security of her own. The best example of this occurs in "On a Canadian Salmon River," when an unnamed woman, "the most sunny-tempered and charming of women" (I, 45 6)5

is attacked by bugs in the middle of the night; while this companion has been briefly referred to earlier in the sketch, she makes only this one isolated appearance in the foregrounded action of the sketch. After the fishing party is caught in a rain storm and is forced to take shelter in a rustic home nearby, Agnes and her female friend are compelled to sleep on the parlour floor. While Lady Macdonald immediately falls asleep, her friend is not so fortunate. The wording of the following passage even hints that her ladyship may have enjoyed a bed off the ground. 179

In any event, Agnes writes:

At three, next morning, I was awakened by my friend's voice. I beheld her by

the dim light, sitting up in utter disconsolateness, having been unable to

sleep a moment. The floor was lively with insects, she assured me-very

dirty, and very horrible. I felt convinced she was right, yet the absurdity of

the position so overcame me, that with a most cruel lack of feeling and

sympathy, I fell into fits of immoderate laughter. It was contagious, and

especially to one of so gay a heart. She laughed too. Peal after peal echoed

through that silent cottage. To stop was impossible. Our guides who, by way

of guardians were sleeping on [sic] the passage outside, must certainly have

thought us quite mad. I could hear their brief muttered conversation in the

Micmac tongue, and though not understanding a word, I could well imagine

the consternation with which those simple creatures listened to our untimely

merriment. (I, 456)

There are a number of features in this passage that merit a closer reading. On a superficial level, this episode demonstrates the sense of joy and liveliness that characterizes Agnes Macdonald's travel narrator. We are invited to laugh at the friend's physical predicament, along with the two women themselves, a response that undermines the discomfort and sordidness of the incident. Yet, while Agnes takes care to distance herself from the bug attack, she is careful to represent her friend in complimentary terms.

In this way, Agnes Macdonald's woman traveller maintains a sense of decorum: she is neither subjected to a physical indignity, nor does she compromise her own dignity by writing a vulgar report about another woman's femininity.

This brief episode is reminiscent of similar upsets in earlier travel accounts. Ten years before Isobel Finlayson made her journey from England to the Red River, her younger sister, Frances Simpson,6 accompanied her own husband on a post-wedding tour through Rupert's Land. George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, had wed his much younger cousin in an effort to emphasize the propriety of British marriages

(or, to his contemporaries back in London, "racially pure" marriages), and to signal an end to the practice of mixed-race marriages between European traders and Aboriginal women. Yet Frances Simpson travelled with her own social agenda. Much like Lady

Macdonald, Frances Simpson relies upon a female travel companion at one point to off­ set the unladylike aspects of travel. In her travel diary, Frances recalls an ill-fated piggy­ back portage during which one of her travelling companions, Catharine MacTavish, is thrown head over heels into the mud, which Frances calls "a situation the most awkward, and most ridiculous that ever poor Lady, was placed in" (10 May 1830). That the two women must be likewise carried on other occasions increases the chance that such an upset was likely to happen, and thus emphasizes the security of her femininity because

Frances is never subjected to this indignity.

Her sister Isobel Finlayson's travel party included at least four other women: a

Miss Ross, a Miss Allen [sic],7 and Isobel's personal maid, Mary; later in the journey,

Miss Ross is replaced by her sister (a second Miss Ross), and a Miss Evans. For the most part, these women remain silent, and do not participate in Isobel's travel account. This may be partly due to the invisible barrier of social class of which Isobel was aware and 181 wished to maintain. As a woman who was required to work for her living, Miss Allen would not have been Isobel's social peer. Miss Allen did, however, provide a way for

Isobel to showcase her own feminine superiority. When the unfortunate Miss Allen experiences an upset "a la Catherine MacTavish," Isobel, like her sister Frances, is there to record the moment for posterity:

Miss Allen, in her hurry to perform her toilette had tumbled into the lake.

We soon discovered by the laughing faces of all around us that nothing very

serious had occurred, and when I entered the tent, to offer my assistance I

found Mary helping her to change her wet clothes and vainly endeavouring

to comfort her, for she was crying bitterly, and lamenting the hardships and

dangers to which she was exposed in such a dreadful journey. (34)

Miss Allen's failure to travel with ladylike decorum is a useful narrative device that heightens Isobel Finlayson's success as lady traveller. In the example above, Isobel invites us to laugh at Miss Allen's clumsy "toilette" and noisy outburst, along with the other travellers and crewmen.8

Another way that secondary characters help foreground a woman traveller's femininity is by recognizing her maternal identity: while on one level the woman traveller exists on the fringes of social propriety, Lady Macdonald makes it clear that she has lost none of her domestic appeal when she leaves her home. While her contextual environment may have changed, she still visually embodies aspects of civilized society.

Barbara Freeman identifies the underlying issue involved here in her discussion about the

"public persona [known as] Kit" (5), by considering journalist Kit Coleman's travel and 182 political writings under a chapter called "Adventurer or Mother?" The question that

Freeman poses in her sub-heading is significant, because it requires an "either/or" answer, which acknowledges these two culturally polarized female identities. Kit

Coleman and Agnes Macdonald, however, demonstrate how women could be both adventurer and mother, despite the difficulties such a decision entailed.9 By including small children in her travel sketches, Lady Macdonald reassures her readers that travel does not de-feminize women, or render them unfit domestic role models or authorities.

Here, Agnes participates in the late-nineteenth century debate surrounding the

"Woman Question," where the assertive "New Woman" with "her education, her independence, [and] her tendency to flaunt traditional family values and blur the boundaries between conventional male and female behavior," was being savagely criticized as "a reprehensible virago, a freak of nature bound to destroy the hallowed separation of gendered spheres and wreak havoc on such sacred institutions as marriage and motherhood" (Yalom 268). Although she had neither husband nor offspring, even

Mary Kingsley appears to have shared a similar concern and strategy (however ironic she may have been) in asserting her femininity, "writing letters to the press, stressing her passion for babies and cooking" (Foster 11). So, too, has Susanna Moodie's portrayal of her narrative self been assessed for such elements. Carole Gerson notes that "[i]n a ground-breaking consideration of the maternal perspective in Roughing It in the Bush,

Bina Freiwald links Moodie's modes of representation to her identity as mother, noting that 'There is always a child at Susanna's side'" ("Nobler Savages" 11). It is narratively significant, then, that we usually encounter Lady Macdonald travelling with younger, 183 impressionable companions, or that she is recognized by small children when she travels on foot. In "An Unconventional Holiday," Lady Macdonald has not only been entrusted with the care of "a rosy little maiden of sixteen years, whom I selected for this trip from a charming circle of young acquaintances in Ottawa" (I, 1), suggesting that she is a popular role model for young women, but in the second half of this sketch where she hikes through the woods at Banff, she comes upon "some small accommodation for sportsmen and fishermen in a roughly built house on the shore, where dwells with her parents a certain pink and dimpled tiny child, who, on my second trip to the lake, offered a kiss, and whispered shyly that she loved me very much" (II, 2). In "By Car and by

Cowcatcher," another young child similarly approaches Lady Macdonald when the travellers disembark somewhere north of Lake Superior, an event that even appears to enhance the travel experience. Lady Macdonald reports that

[t]he effect of the scene was considerably heightened by the appearance of a

very small child, with chubby cheeks and blowing curls ... a veritable atom

of humanity outlined against the sky. ... I think he was anxious to discover

what I was so earnestly gazing at, for with much deliberation he turned his

wee head in every direction, beginning with a steady look at a shining cliffs

summit. ... Finding nothing remarkable to demand his attention, he . . .

trotted home again, returning my kiss of the hand with a bright little smile as

he disappeared. (I, 221)

Such episodes depart from the overall jocular tone that characterizes much of Agnes

Macdonald's travel writing, and lend themselves to the romantic tone that she evokes for 184 the most part when discussing the natural scenery of her travel landscape. In foregrounding these idyllic images of children and youth, and connecting them to her woman travel narrator, Lady Macdonald foregrounds the idyllic image of the maternal woman.10 As an earlier point of reference, we similarly find Frances Simpson accepting the attentions of a young child. While Simpson emphasizes the challenges of her journey to a lady's identity, explaining that "a Canoe voyage is not one which an English Lady would take for pleasure . .. exposed [as she is] to a scorching sun, cold winds, and heavy rain-putting up late some evenings drenched to the skin" (26 June 1830), she reassures us that this does not compromise her own maternal identity. During one of her travelling party's stops, for example, Frances Simpson informs her readers that "[t]he daughter of one of the principal Chiefs (a little Girl about 8 years of age) came forward, and saying a few words in her native language, presented me with a Bouquet of Cherry Blossom very prettily arranged, as a mark of friendly greeting" (2 May 1830).

Conclusion

An effective example of the social invisibility of the woman traveller can be found in Sir Joseph Pope's The Day of Sir John Macdonald: A Chronicle of the First

Prime Minister of the Dominion. The frontispiece picture at the beginning of Pope's text, titled "Sir John Macdonald Crossing the Rockies Over the Newly Constructed Canadian

Pacific Railway, 1886," depicts Sir John A. Macdonald standing at the back of a train car, being greeted by a group of men, probably railway workers. Based on a colour drawing by C.W. Jefferys, this image is certainly the pre-election train journey that Sir 185

John A. and Agnes took in the late summer of this year, the events of which provide the basis of Agnes Macdonald's travel sketch "By Car and by Cowcatcher." Because this reprint is evocative of a photograph taken of the same journey (with people in similar poses), the secondary figures in the Jefferys image are likely Agnes and Joseph Pope.11

While the written travel sketch gives us a definite—and memorable—impression of Lady

Macdonald's experience of this journey, the exact opposite is true of the narrative offered in this particular rendition of the Jefferys picture.12 Here, the woman

(presumably Agnes) who stands with Sir John A. Macdonald at the back of the train is practically featureless, a notable contrast to the more clearly-drawn facial features of the prime minister, the third traveller (probably Joseph Pope), and the men who surround the train. This "fuzzy" visual of woman—as traveller, and as historical subject—is what

Agnes Macdonald sought to clarify in her travel writing.

Jefferys's image prompts us to reconsider the implicit tension between seeing and being seen, or between subject and object positions in historic events, or the visual or textual rendering of those events. This is particularly relevant in Agnes Macdonald's situation, because a significant amount of her writing articulates the desire to be an active and public "subject" in her world, as opposed to her culturally determined

"object" position; that is, her position of being observed by others, something I have previously addressed. For the most part, we can conceptualize Agnes Macdonald's desire to be an active subject with the social activities and commitments she became involved with in her capacity as a citizen-mother. Her travel narratives permit her to expand on the impact that she had as citizen-mother, as they allowed her to bring her 186 domesticating influence to unsettled or newly settled areas in the Dominion. In her travel sketches, we find her deliberately positioning herself in ways that present specific "body narratives" to be read by others. As a self-edited subject and object, Lady Macdonald suggests that, as a writer, she was aware of the authority of the active subject role of her citizen-mother narrator. 187

Notes

1. For a more detailed discussion of the public debate about the "New Woman," a figure characterized by "her education, her independence, [and] her tendency to flaunt traditional family values and blur the boundaries between conventional male and female behaviour" (268), see Yalom, particularly Chapter Seven.

2. For a more detailed biography, see Van Kirk ("Simpson, Isobel Graham [Finlayson]").

3. For a more detailed biography, see Friesen.

4. It is not entirely clear what the young French woman means in this passage. Roughly translated, it reads: "Why is Madame here, so far from the station? . . . But, undoubtedly, she is afraid of the upper cars." Agnes has arrived before the rest of her travelling party, and so her private train car has been detached from the rest of the train and moved two miles from the station where she will wait for her companions. It is possible that the French woman wonders if Lady Macdonald has moved away from the rest of the train cars (the "upper cars" closer to the station) because she is afraid of the other travellers. Such a reading is in keeping with Agnes's other attempts to show how women travellers are often misread: in this instance, the French woman's misreading of Lady Macdonald (as a feminine and vulnerable woman traveller) provides Agnes with the opportunity to correct the misreading, and therefore enlighten her readers about the inner resilience (perhaps the true nature) of the woman traveller.

5. This woman is probably Sarah Leckie. Agnes became friends with Sarah and Robert Leckie during her trip to Parrsboro (which I referred to in the previous chapter). Leckie was the mine manager who escorted Agnes on that trip.

6. For a more detailed biography, see Van Kirk ("Simpson, Frances Ramsay").

7. Miss Allan (note the difference in spelling) was, according to Sylvia Van Kirk, "a pernickety, aging spinster" (151) who had worked in England as a governess, and was then engaged by the Hudson's Bay Company to instruct the mixed-blood young ladies proper British manners at the Red River Academy. She did not seem to fit in with her new surroundings, however, and failed to become more permanently established there, as other female teachers had, through marriage (Van Kirk 189). Miss Allan's personality lent itself to caricature in Isobel Finlayson's travel journal. I retain Isobel Finlayson's original spelling to avoid confusion.

8. The irony of the "Miss Aliens" in women's travel writing is that the fuss and bother usually associated with them enables their voices and experiences to be registered in women's travel journals; Miss Allen's unseemly behaviour may have provided a useful narrative function in promoting Isobel Finlayson's femininity, but it also helps to preserve an otherwise marginal (and female) presence in the fur trade world. In this sense, Isobel "ventriloquizes" Miss Allen's response to travel. 188

9. As a "working woman," Kit Coleman was particularly susceptible to social criticism. See Chapter 1: "Which is Kit?" in Freeman, or Ted Ferguson's "Introduction" for a sense of the expectations many readers had of a woman who was both a mother and a journalist.

10. Susan Mann discusses the larger issue of how a group of nineteenth-century Canadian women travellers "harnessed travel to a domestic agenda" (179), but of particular relevance to my reading of children in the travel accounts of Agnes Macdonald and Frances Simpson is Mann's reference to Maria Bogart, who "travelled on a sailing ship (1865-66)... with a toddler ... to impose a semblance of domestic stability on her sea-faring husband, the captain of the vessel" (179).

11. The photograph I am referring to was taken by a Harold Lockwood, and has been reprinted in Newman (189).

12. This does not appear to be the result of a poor reprint job, as I have found the same unclear image in three other copies of Pope's 1915 text. I have not yet been able to locate a copy of the original drawing or any other reproductions of this Jefferys image, although Gwen Davies has suggested that Jefferys's drawings were often reprinted in schoolbooks. She wondered if the perception of gender has played a role in the representation of gender at different times, and if any clearer images have been reproduced. I plan to investigate this idea at a later time. 189

CHAPTER 7: Travel Architectures, the Symbols of Civility

Introduction

I refer to key images or icons that appear on Lady Macdonald's travel landscape as "architectures of landscape," an evocative phrase that acknowledges the importance of the concrete institutions or structures that appear upon the Dominion's national landscape, and the more abstract politics (the underlying ideals, racial conflicts, etc.) that they represent. The presence of non-Aboriginal settlements, churches, Hudson's Bay posts, North-West Mounted Police outfits, and the railways and cars of the CPR represent, in tangible or visible terms, Euro-centric (or Euro-Canadian) incursions into the Canadian landscape. Their appearance on the landscape acknowledges the implicit political dynamics of this space: how it is assessed, quantified, traversed, or occupied, and perhaps even more instructive, the implicit assumptions of who had the authority to assess, quantify, traverse, or occupy the space in question.

Such images—or icons—provide a nationalist adhesive that bridges physical and psychological distances across the spatial enormity of the Canadian wilderness, and the challenging elements of its geography, social classes, and racial or ethnic communities. I use the term "nationalist adhesive" aware of the exclusive, racist weight it carries with it:

Canadian nation building in the nineteenth century was clearly a "White Man's" undertaking, which sought to secure a landscape and corresponding cultural identity that did not take into account, nor accommodate, racial diversity.' Yet, as Agnes Macdonald demonstrates, "White Women" were also involved in this national project. I extrapolate national narratives from such icons, or read these icons as national narratives, much as a number of scholars have approached early Canadian texts in

ReCalling Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production.

Such approaches, the editors argue, "might be said to embrace the nation, in that they both turn to the nation as a privileged unit of analysis (among others) and critique what we might term the nation's braces: those structures and mechanisms which gird, support, invigorate and animate the nation" (xxviii). The Canadian Pacific Railway most literally illustrates this concept, as its steel tracks physically bound together the Dominion's

(White) people and territories into a unified "nation," while at the same time dislodging and destroying Aboriginal peoples and settlements whose appearance contradicted what a (British) North American concept of nation was all about.

Theories of Space and Settlement

Relevant spatial theories that help to read Agnes Macdonald's travel writing include those proposed by Benedict Anderson, Shelagh Squire, and Annette Kolodny.

All three discuss the ways that symbols help articulate landscape and experience, or, to borrow Kolodny's term, how certain images engage us in reading the "languagescape"

(200) of travel-writing texts. Since all travel additionally involves some kind of agenda or impact, even the most recreational travellers are not exempt from participating

(however obliquely) in the underlying politics of a travel landscape. For Agnes

Macdonald, this nineteenth-century outside world was not just a wilderness of trees, rocks, and rivers, but it was a wilderness in which political structures and racial 191 otherness were struggling to evolve or survive. And, when Lady Macdonald travelled through this landscape, she did so from the unique and politically charged position of being married to the man who was instrumental in creating it, and who presided over it.

For example, the CPR that conveyed Lady Macdonald across the prairies to Banff

Springs and the west coast represented much more than a comfortable or novel way to travel. The CPR represented John A.'s possibly greatest—albeit initially bleakest- political success in that it physically realized the notion of a united geographic Dominion of Canada, despite the tremendous racial and ecological costs that we now tend to associate with it.

In his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson discusses the ways in which texts (or print media in general) assist in the creation of cultural communities, although the members of those communities may be separated by great geographical distances. Anderson argues that if such texts contain images that signify the same things among a population, or evoke similar responses in people, they perpetuate a common set of cultural ideals, and therefore endorse a psychological sense of cultural belonging.2

While Anderson tests his theory by considering how nationalism has evolved in non-

European countries, the relationship he explores between physical dislocation and psychological bridge (that people do not need to live in a same, known geographical location in order to feel connected to one another) is relevant to any discussion about

Canadian nationalism. From its inception, Canada has always centred on the issue of bridging space, whether this be geographic, governmental, or multicultural space.

Anderson's theory of image and meaning helps explain the significance of icons that appear in Agnes Macdonald's travel landscape and travel writing, and the contribution that her writing makes to discussions about Canadian national identity. So too does Shelagh Squire's research on the development of tourism in the Canadian

Rockies, particularly as women travellers helped to define it. In reading "landscapes as texts," Squire argues that "[t]he growth of tourism in the Rockies was a fundamental part of both regional and national development [that] involved a complex set of meanings and values, power struggles, and competing ideologies" (4). In her analysis of selected women settlers in the United States, Annette Kolodny suggests that for a woman pioneer to succeed in her new environment, she needed to identify "a meaningful relational paradigm in and through which she might be usefully and comfortably located on either terrain [of wilderness or home]" (200). Kolodny concludes that women pioneers gravitated to the home and domestic routine as a means of establishing such a paradigm

(201). We can also apply Shirley Foster's analysis of distinctively female narrative elements to our discussion of domestic architectures. Foster establishes the following parameters that help identify these female-oriented elements:

First, there is the treatment of topics not generally explored in any depth in

male travel writing. These include the appearance, costume and manners of

women; details of domestic life such as household management and culinary

habits; behaviour towards children; marriage customs and female status; the

importance of 'space' in the physical environment. All these often suggest a

covert means of challenging the male norm and of establishing a new

female-oriented genre. On a more psychological level, the literary re- 193

enactment can be seen as an act of self-expression, combining the urge to

articulate and communicate with a desire to examine the self in an unfamiliar

context. (24)

If, in her travel sketches, Agnes Macdonald does not provide an exclusive focus on the presence of women and the details that characterize their daily lives, her interest in homes and settlement and the various factors that enable them to succeed (such as marriage, procreation, physical security, and economic prosperity) is evidence of the citizen-mother's "urge to articulate and communicate" the features and goals of a civilized society.

In addition, I am interested in how architectures of landscape relate to (or even dialogue with) Northrop Frye's theory of the "garrison mentality" (225-226). I agree with

Frye's argument that the overwhelming spatial wilderness of Canada may have prompted many individuals to retreat behind a structural garrison and the militaristic protection it offered (225), because this relates to the "law and order" ideals promoted by the images of the CPR and NWMP that I discuss in Agnes Macdonald's writing. The main difference, however, is that, being a woman, Lady Macdonald interacts with the wilderness without a traditional explorer or conquerer mandate. Frye excludes an entire gender from his analysis, an omission which does not go unnoticed by feminist critics, including Helen Buss, who maps and then questions the authority behind the critical heritage of the "wilderness theme" in Canadian literature. Buss argues that:

[fjhese accounts of 'difference' confirm a vision of women and the Canadian

land that I have found in autobiographical accounts by women. By foregrounding autobiographical works rather than traditional fiction or

poetry, I am recommending not only that we go through the archaeological

site of the Canadian tradition again, but that we expand the perimeters and,

indeed, even change our definition of territory.. . . All the women

autobiographers examined in this essay react to the strangeness of the

Canadian landscape by merging their own identity, in some imaginative way,

with the new land. They arrive at this point in two ways: through a

relationship with significant others and through some creative activity that

discovers each woman's unique relation to the land. ("Women and the

Garrison Mentality" 126)

Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches, as well as her political sketches, fit within such revised parameters. In departing from, or indeed expanding upon, Frye's theory, Buss then suggests that

[w]omen's experience of Canada indicates that being enclosed by the land is

a somewhat more positive experience, one which demands metaphors of a

more erotic and maternal nature. Their optimism verifies the belief that

survival and success here, in life as well as in literature, depends not on our

ability to mount garrisons, but on our ability to adapt old skills to new needs,

on our desire for community and communication, and on our need to make a

connection with the land by positive acts of the imagination. (133)

Lady Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches arguably qualify as such "positive acts of the imagination," and while many of the icons or metaphors that she uses to help map her 195 travel landscape are explicitly masculine (such as the images of the CPR and NWMP), they work in conjunction with the more feminine-coded objectives of settlement and tourism. By mapping her travel landscape with images that represent some aspect of an overall national authority or agenda in which governing officials "have sought to constitute and convey their own idealized visions of citizenship - to remake the populace, as it were, in their own image[:] ... an imperial male citizen - loyal, autonomous, rational, content, white, and British through and through" (Menzies et al.

22), Agnes Macdonald reveals a shrewd grasp of the politics of her travel landscape, and contributes to the ways in which an evolving Canada was perceived and documented: her sketches offer her own "imagined community" of the Dominion of Canada. The images that appear in her travel sketches therefore promote this landscape as a prosperous, well- governed area that was not vulnerable to the competing interests of either Great Britain or the United States, the latter of which contemplated the Dominion's North West with annexation in mind. These images articulate the hope and plan to secure the prosperity of the Dominion's future, providing what W.S. Wallace calls the "factor of common hopes for the future . . . [which] is one of the most important elements in New World nationalism" (151).

Domestic Architectures

Domestic architectures, represented by the home and the broader context of human settlement, expand upon the role of the citizen-mother and of female domestic authority, which I have mapped previously. I have discussed how such domestic icons 196 often work in conjunction with overtly masculine architectures of landscape (such as the

Parliament Buildings); here, I extend this discussion to consider how home and human settlements work on a larger, national scale as they are endorsed and protected by other masculine architectures, such as the military enforcement symbolized by the NWMP, which I will discuss later in this chapter. Amy Kaplan politicizes this type of relationship between women and men, and extends its influence beyond the home and the nation. She describes it as a

structural opposition .. . [of] the domestic in intimate opposition to the

foreign. In this context domestic has a double meaning that not only links the

familial household to the nation but also imagines both in opposition to

everything outside the geographic and conceptual border of the home. . . .

The idea of foreign policy depends on the sense of the nation as a domestic

space imbued with a sense of at-homeness, in contrast to an external world

perceived as alien and threatening. (183-184)

A good place to launch a discussion about the image of home in Agnes

Macdonald's travel sketches is to start with the narrator's (that is, Lady Macdonald's) relationship with her own home, in particular the role that the departure and return sequences play in the sketches. Home is an obvious place to start, because, while a woman needed to leave home to travel, her authority as traveller depended, in part, on her ability to ensure that she was always associated in some way with the domestic authority of the citizen-mother (and her roles of wife and mother), which was represented by her home. In her discussion about Mary Kingsley's metaphorical mapping strategies, Alison Blunt considers the complex subject positioning of their author

(specifically in Travels in West Africa). Blunt concludes that "to refer to subject positionality highlights the inherent spatiality of such constructions, which are ambivalent rather than fixed over space and time.. . . Travel is shaped by departure, journey, and return, and blurs movement and dwelling. In this way, travel is as much about constructions of 'home' as 'away'" (68).

Leaving Home

Because Agnes Macdonald's fishing trip sketch, "On a Canadian Salmon River,' opens with the travels already underway, and therefore lacks an orientation to home, I will only focus upon the departure sequences of Agnes Macdonald's two sketches about her travels through western Canada. In "An Unconventional Holiday," Lady

Macdonald's Ottawa home represents the source of a neuralgic condition, which she decides can only be cured by a train trip to Banff. Lady Macdonald humourously explains that she must travel for health reasons, and "that routine of all things was most distressing to my particular brand of neuralgia, while household accounts brought on severe spasms, and the sight of a butcher's boy was fatal" (I, 1). The nineteenth-century woman travel writer who is usually cited as the best example of the curative effects of travel is Isabella Bird,3 who was an invalid at home, but proved a robust traveller when she packed her bags and ventured outdoors. Unlike Isabella, however, Lady Macdonald appears more cautious in her rejection of home. Her "unconventional holiday" occurs only after considerable negotiation with her husband, the "Chief," to whom she appeals for permission to travel. In such a re-enactment, Lady Macdonald easily mitigates the questionable social status of the woman traveller: while she may embody an outward- seeking desire to leave home, she still submits to her husband's greater authority.

In addition, the humorous negotiation scene between husband and wife in this sketch represents a symbolic gesture in which the prime minister of Canada (a man) approves safe and healthful passage through Canada (for a woman). While Sir John A.

Macdonald may grudgingly agree to his wife's travel plan "with gentle resignation" (I,

1), his government is more assertively depicted as the host of her "[m]any happy days and restful... at Banff Springs Hotel" (I, 2).

In leaving home in "An Unconventional Holiday," Lady Macdonald strategically quits the Macdonalds' Eamscliffe residence in Ottawa, moving to a train car similarly named the "Eamscliffe." On a symbolic narrative level, then, Lady Macdonald never actually leaves home, at least not until the second half of her sketch, when she physically disembarks from the train car to participate in a side trip to Banff. In addition, Lady

Macdonald makes pointed reference to the Eamscliffe train car some nine times in this travel sketch,4 in ways that remind her readers of the constant presence and security represented by the car, and also the possibilities that it represents by breaching the distance between the familiarity of a woman's home and an exterior, unknown landscape. Lady Macdonald depicts the Eamscliffe train car as providing a "refuge behind . .. [its] sheltering curtains" (I, 1), an environment characterized by "bright hours

.. . [and] happy hearts" (I, 2), and a means for moving through potentially dangerous landscapes. Since "An Unconventional Holiday" functions, to a large extent, as a 199 narrative that promotes the west as a place to settle, the image of home moving easily

(and safely) through western Canada suggests on some level the domestic capabilities of this landscape. In this sense, Agnes Macdonald presents the home (and the citizen- mother's source of authority) as a form of "travelling domesticity" (Kaplan 185), in which stasis and mobility exist simultaneously: "On the one hand, domesticity's 'habits of system and order' appear to anchor the home as a stable center in a fluctuating social world with expanding national borders; on the other, domesticity must be spatially and conceptually mobile to travel to the nation's far-flung frontiers" (Kaplan 193). If home may be in motion (through immigration), when it stops (as part of settlement), it then has the ability to modify the social, cultural, economical, and therefore political nature of a landscape through its civilizing capabilities.

One of Agnes Macdonald's contemporaries, Lady Elizabeth Glover, is another writer who plays on the civilizing significance of home. Her description of Government

House in Newfoundland places both husband and wife in a position of overseeing and shepherding the future prosperity of the island. From a letter Elizabeth received before joining her husband at his colonial post, we learn that "[t]he front of the house has an extensive view over undulating country, and from the back, the sea and a portion of the town" (239-240). The Glovers' temporary home is positioned as a physical mediator between the civility of settlement and the "quite unknown" wilderness interior of

Newfoundland. It is worth noting that Governor Sir John Hawley Glover is associated with a period of Newfoundland's history when young women worked at what he deemed more "fitting" jobs in factories rather than on the wharves (260), and when the island's 200 culture was improved through the increased popularity of music and drawing (247).

These connections between Government House and the civilizing of a wilderness space may be applied to our reading of similar domestic and political images that appear in other travel accounts.

Another way that Agnes Macdonald promotes home is by incorporating domestic elements into the setting of her travels. For example, in "By Car and by Cowcatcher,"

Lady Macdonald does not make any reference to the Macdonald family home she leaves behind, but rather the governing home of the Dominion: the Parliament buildings in

Ottawa is her point of reference in the departure scene of this sketch. Once the travellers are underway, Lady Macdonald then turns her attention to the comfortable, domestic characteristics of their accommodation on the train, in effect demystifying the train compartment by aligning it with the interior of home: "The 'Jamaica'-her large fixed lamps brightening each little sitting-room-had a very homelike effect. Baskets of flowers stood on the narrow tables, already heaped with books and newspapers; comfortable sofas lined her polished sides, and wide arm-chairs stood on either side of the entrance- doors" (I, 216).

The return passages in Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches allow her to reconnect with this more stationary aspect of home and of her role as home-maker. The conclusion of "An Unconventional Holiday" does not return Lady Macdonald to her home in

Ottawa, but leaves her still aboard the CPR, contemplating "the land, so fair and so lonely, with all its rich possibilities wasting there in the sunlight" (II, 2), and wondering

"[w]hy is there not larger immigration?" (II, 2). She concludes with a moralistic tale 201 about a young man's death of "want and hunger!" that she once witnessed on a "fine

London street" (II, 2). In the broadest sense of "leaving home," Lady Macdonald has left hers to offer potential immigrants an enticing glimpse of the domestic possibilities available in the Canadian North West. In addition, in describing the extensive park lands at Banff, she maps this part of the North West as a recreational landscape for more privileged travellers, like herself. It may not be coincidental that Lady Macdonald's published endorsement appeared while her husband was Minister of the Interior, a portfolio that included the promotion of Canadian immigration to the west.

The conclusion of "By Car and by Cowcatcher" also fails to return Lady

Macdonald to where she started, nor does she reflect on home, or the return to home.

Instead, she merges narrative, traveller, and reader, with the momentum of the train. We are left hurtling along in motion, and so quickly, that the actual landscape becomes a blur. Lady Macdonald subjects us to the power of the machine (the train), and we literally remain in travel motion forever, as does her narrative self. One effect of this narrative ploy is that it in one sense completes the transnational railway system in her sketch, even though her actual journey came to an end at Port Moody in British

Columbia. Her concluding paragraph, then, is pure fiction, prophetic and surreal, so that even though Sir John A. Macdonald did not make a railway journey completely across the country, Agnes makes sure her readers do, and thus fulfils the original political purpose of the trip (and the sketch). Lady Macdonald writes:

The Canadian Pacific line was not completed beyond Port Moody at the time

I write of. Now it has been carried forward fourteen miles further to its real 202

terminus-and no fairer spot can be found anywhere, I think, than the site of

the infant city of Vancouver.

On we go, speeding forward to the coast, meeting the sweet breath of

ocean mingled with rich scent of pine boughs, their delicate tips waving

welcome as we pass-on, on, steadily, swiftly down to the sea! More speed,

and we fly forward, past rock and river, slope, grass-land, and lakelet; more

speed, and the blending of forest colours grows bewildering in the summer

air; still more, and it is all one line of mingled beauty of that distant ocean,

and see the flash of its bright waters on the red sands of a bay below! (II,

311)

This is a powerful passage. If we read it metaphorically, and consider that the original point of departure was Ottawa's Parliament buildings, then the fact that the travel sketch imaginatively moves us all the way to the west coast of Canada is politically significant because it realizes Ottawa's physical reach from centre to margin. There is no stopping

Agnes's train; presumably, there is no stopping the political process that will rest only when a coast-to-coast vision of Canada is realized. This sketch celebrates the "last spike" hammered into the railway track in November of 1885, an event that fulfilled Sir John A.

Macdonald's dream of a Confederation that included British Columbia as part of the

Dominion.

In Lady Macdonald's "On a Canadian Salmon River," however, the return sequence functions quite differently, and offers an interesting point of contrast to the interplay between the Earnscliffe home in Ottawa and the Earnscliffe train car: 203

Peter's railway whistle rang out like a cry of pain as we sadly shook hands

all round, stepped into our respective canoes, and glided off smoothly,

swiftly, scarce parting the sunbeams on that golden brown water, close to the

feathered island, round its shining sands, under the towering wooded height

of 'Eagle's Cliff,' below the tossing rapid, and so on 'down stream,' as we

journey always to whatever shore we are bound for, and the years roll on. (II,

636)

In this instance, Agnes reverses the image of home, this time situating Earnscliffe or

Eagle's Cliff5 as a permanent location in her travel landscape; while she never left a home to commence her journey, she leaves a permanent (if metaphoric) home behind when she leaves the wilderness.

Reading "home" in Travel Landscapes

Reference to Agnes Macdonald's actual home in Ottawa (Earnscliffe) is not the only physical symbol of domestic order and authority that appears in her travel sketches.

Her narrator also relies on the generic symbol of home as a means of shaping the content or tone of her narratives. In her article " Woman's Testimony': Imperialist Discourse in the Professional Colonial Travel Writing of Louisa Anne Meredith and Catharine Parr

Traill," Judith Johnston discusses the ways in which these two women, who were both born in England but then permanently resettled in Australia and Canada, respectively, filtered their anxieties about the wilderness of their new environments through images that tempered their fears. Johnston explains that "[t]he rose-covered cottages which appear in both texts [Notes and Sketches of New South Wales and The Backwoods of

Canada] recording reactions within two or three weeks of arrival are mere fictional manifestations of [their] anxiety" (40). Although Lady Macdonald travelled with a different agenda (i.e., not as a potential settler, but as a privileged traveller), she still experienced wilderness as a woman, and therefore relied on the image of home to provide a similar means of filtering contentious experiences, observations, or other information.

The authority of the home surfaces most explicitly when Lady Macdonald records the appearance of individual homes or settlements in her travel landscape, including the social order that they represented (like marriage, family, maternal identity, or domestic routines, such as the preparation of food and the significance of meal times).

My analysis of this domestic image focuses mainly on the evidence of flourishing British

North American (or later Dominion) settlements, but it also draws attention to the corresponding process of what we might call "unsettlement," which obviously needed to occur before a successful Euro-centric expansion could take place. I am of course referring here to those Aboriginal groups which were permanently displaced (and replaced) by the Dominion project of expansion.

In depicting a travel landscape as one in which domestic activities apparently thrive, Lady Macdonald acknowledges a seeming paradox about the Canadian wilderness: while it was a physically harsh and unsettled place, it simultaneously supported or even protected the feminine project of domesticity. The presence of domestic activity or imagery implicates women as active agents in the project of 205

"civilizing" the Canadian wilderness through the means available to them as citizen- mothers. I define this term as an Imperial project, and Agnes Macdonald has a place within the greater context of this effort as undertaken by European women.

A half-century before Agnes Macdonald embarked on her travels through the

Dominion of Canada, the presence of European women in central and western areas of

British North America was integral to the success of Imperial Britain's efforts to redress the "miscegenation" of fur trade unions between White HBC employees and Aboriginal women, and the mixed-race offspring of these country marriages. In Many Tender Ties:

Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870,6 Sylvia Van Kirk documents the complex roles of both Aboriginal and British women in fur trade society, drawing attention to the particular type of authority that each group of women brought to their marriages: an

Aboriginal woman could empower her European husband with knowledge of trade routes or animal migration patterns; a European wife, or "lovely tender exotic" (Van

Kirk 187), brought a husband a sense of social or cultural propriety and status. Frances

(Ramsay) Simpson, for example, to whom I have referred earlier, arrived in British

North America as the bride to George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay

Company. Their whirl-wind honeymoon visit through Rupert's Land acquired the festive appearance of a "triumphant procession" (Williams 157), which helped to impose a veneer of European decorum on Simpson's own situation. According to Van Kirk,

George Simpson did not just encourage his subordinates to choose Aboriginal wives in order to improve trade and profit (31), but he "showed a flagrant disregard for fur-trade custom and formed a series of liaisons with young mixed-blood women whom he treated 206

in a most callous manner" (161). That both men and women in fur-trade society

condemned George Simpson for his marriage to Frances Ramsay (and subsequent

disassociation from his Aboriginal consorts) suggests that interracial unions were an

entrenched and respected element of Rupert's Land.7 Despite her youth, this racial

feature of the landscape does not go unnoticed by Frances Simpson, who describes a

group of Aboriginals: "Some are Copper coloured, others of a dirty yellow, and some

few of the Women & Children are nearly as fair as Europeans" (14 May 1830).

Sisters Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill made similar, albeit more permanent, incursions into the wilderness of British North America. Emigrating from

Britain as the wives of retired officers on half-pay, both sisters helped settle then Upper

Canada with "good," British-born stock. While the Strickland sisters committed themselves as permanent residents to the gruelling life of settlers, and Frances Simpson and Isobel Finlayson did not, all four women helped import a sense of European domestic civility into pre-Confederation Canada. Frances and Isobel have been credited with bringing a veneer of social decorum to the fur trade world, and Susanna and

Catharine with mapping the settler's experience, and articulating this experience. The latter two's respective publications--i?owg/zwg- it in the Bush, The Backwoods of Canada, and The Female Emigrant's Guide (later republished as The Canadian Settler's Guide)-- promote a woman's domestic identity and role as fundamental in settling the land.

The image of home and related domestic details function as narrative anchors that secure the woman traveller's social roles of lady, wife, and mother within a stable, recognizable space in an otherwise unstable landscape. While movement from indoors to 207 an outdoor travel landscape has the potential to destabilize a woman's social identity, the image of home in travel narratives provides an anchor or point of refuge that she can retreat to, or refer to.

The degree to which women identified with the image of settlement, and the ways in which it affected her, are poignantly illustrated in Frances Simpson's travel journal when the young bride articulates the visceral reassurance the bustling settlement at Sault St. Mary's [sic] provides: "The appearance of a civilized habitation rising in the midst of a boundless Wilderness, served in great measure to dissipate a certain feeling of melancholy, which I felt" (14 May 1830). Catharine Parr Traill is another writer who orientates the central theme of The Backwoods in Canada around the security and civility that the home represented in the wilderness she encounters in her new world. Her introductory comments suggest that the text should help the settler-housewife "enjoy the pleasure of superintending a pleasant, well-ordered home" (6), and Parr Traill's journey up the St. Lawrence is a mapping exercise in which cultivation and "[pjatches of verdure, with white cottages" increase the "more genial aspect" (15) of the countryside; of a site at Fort William Henry, she determines "[t]he situation is excellent. There are several churches, a military fort, with mills, and other public buildings, with some fine stone houses" (26). Similarly, in affiliating herself with domestically oriented images, whether by evoking a deliberate and feminine image of herself, or by making note of homesteads and other signifiers of home, Lady Agnes Macdonald establishes herself as an authoritative travel narrator. Domestic Architectures: The Imagery of Settlement

Within the greater political context of post-Confederation Canada, the icon of home represents on a macrocosmic level the tangible progress of Sir John A.

Macdonald's policies concerning the Canadian North West, which he and his

Conservative party had been advancing since the 1870s.8 Home, as envisioned by Lady

Macdonald, represented a secure and thriving place, all across the Dominion. Moving from individual home to the broader context of human settlement, Lady Macdonald identifies her travel space as one that supports the immigration and permanent homesteads of European settlers. Thus, we encounter a number of references to settlement in her travel sketches, such as those appearing in "An Unconventional

Holiday," in which she makes sweeping reference to "upspringing hamlets, clearances, changes and improvements, which, breaking into those tracts of rocky wooded country, so delight the eye of the intelligent pioneer" (I, 1). In "By Car and by Cowcatcher, she develops these images even further, depicting them in such a way that settlement connects regions (and therefore people) across the prairie landscape, evident in her observation that "[fjrom Regina to Gleichen ... we passed over 330 miles of prairie, having stations and settlements from ten to twenty miles apart" (I, 225). Such descriptions re-imagine the space of endless prairie as one of concrete dimensions and measurable distances.

Lady Macdonald also promotes very specific (typically Euro-centric) domestic ideals associated with settlement by emphasizing the nationalities and characters of railway officials, which she does quite extensively in her sketch "By Car and by Cowcatcher." In this narrative, Lady Macdonald describes a number of specific encounters with secondary characters, including a "jolly-faced Englishman [whose] duties were to look after trestles in the neighbourhood" and who shows her "his wife's picture, and bec[omes] quite confidential" (I, 221), another being "a Norwegian with flaxen hair" (I, 222). The "Indian Agent" who attends the Blackfoot conference, lives in

"a smart new cottage standing bolt upright-a square block in a large fenced enclosure," and informs a rather horrified Agnes that despite his isolated circumstances, "he is to be married in a week!" (I, 226). Because these characters are associated with domestic and/or European images, their appearance promotes a sense of permanency, or at least a visual (and European) incursion into the wilderness of the western frontier: their appearance attests to the effectiveness of the Dominion Lands Act of 1872,9 and advances the national identity that was promoted by the Canada First Movement, in which "images of race, gender, and nature form[ed] a set of intersecting symbolic resources . . . used explicitly to attempt to maintain British hegemony and White racial homogeneity, the basis of Canada's supposed superiority" (Mackey, '"Death By

Landscape'" 126).I0 That these individuals in Lady Macdonald's travel sketches are very

"White" (Caucasian) or very married suggests a continuity of European-based descendants, or "governable entities" (Brodie 57) well in the making, those

"instrumental other[s] . .. whose value depended both upon rapid assimilation and potential contribution to economic growth" (Brodie 57). This image of the ideal settler provides an interesting point of contrast to the mixed-race offspring of preceding generations in the same space, and a point that would not have been lost on Agnes Macdonald's contemporary readers. Of the long-term impact of the presence of

"whiteness" in settler societies, Joanna Brooks refers to the work of "[l]egal scholars like

Cheryl I. Harris [who] suggest that during the colonial and early national eras whiteness came to be understood as cultural and economic capital; that is, as a valuable and efficient attribute belonging to the emergent middle class and civil society" (para 5). In her own discussion about the economic aspect of race, Cheryl Harris paraphrases

Andrew Hacker's discussion about race relations and power in the United States, particularly his argument "that white became a 'common front' established across ethnic origins, social class, and language" (1742-1743).u Lady Macdonald's two travel sketches "By Car and by Cowcatcher" and "An Unconventional Holiday" offer a coded appeal to the ideal (and White) European settler, the latter sketch concluding with a quantitative, ringing endorsement of immigration to the North West. Here, she tells us, newcomers will be greeted by "[a] land with splendid soil, excellent for mixed farming; and a fine, healthy climate, with minerals to be mined, coal to be excavated, and many an opportunity for rewarding honest, faithful labor; watched over by a governmental system which holds out every possible inducement to emigration of a good and solid class" (II, 2).

A "good and solid" Protector

In a public environment and discourse, the institution of the home worked in conjunction with public architectures of military, economics, religion, transportation, and recreation, represented (variously) by the church, the Hudson's Bay Company, the 211

North-West Mounted Police, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, a list of explicitly masculine authorities that support the domestic project of White settlement, as well as the project of tourism. Exemplifying the "citizen-soldier" character type, the military men or NWMP officers who appear in Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches join her citizen-mother as "[h]egemonic expressions of citizenship" identified by Robert

Menzies et al. (30). Colleen Skidmore's work helps us to read the significance of this masculine, militaristic image. Skidmore contributes to our general understanding of the diversity of women travellers (their ethnicities, their experiences, and their creative output) who explored the Canadian Rockies, but most useful to my dissertation research is her examination of the relationship between women travellers—specifically those who travelled during the early twentieth century (thus during Agnes's lifetime)~and the CPR and the political agenda to sell the Canadian west. Recognizing the useful role that women and images of women travellers played in promoting travels west, the CPR designed its sales strategy with this in mind, a strategy "which featured women against mountain backdrops in its print advertisements from as early as 1909" (xxvi).

Yet, as Skidmore demonstrates, and as Lady Macdonald consistently reminds us during her own travels, women and mountains were only two ingredients of successful travel experiences, and successful advertising designs. In two colour advertisements for the Banff hotel and Lake Louise, for example, women travellers are depicted in languid poses looking out at mountain views, but this "female gaze" either observes, or is directed by, an RCMP12 officer: the advertisement for Lake Louise involves a scene in which two women contemplate a mountain scene from a hotel room window, while an RCMP officer patrols the area outside (451), and the advertisement for Banff depicts an

RCMP officer directing a woman's gaze (453). In her analysis of the former image,

Skidmore argues that

[r]ather than independently exploring the landscape, she is supported and

guided, and perhaps protected, by a classic male RCMP officer in full dress

uniform. The Mountie appears as an additional feature of the Rocky

Mountain landscape to lure the potential female tourist. The woman viewer,

however, like the figure who is excluded by a frame from the vista, is

directed to consuming the landscape by means of her gaze alone, aided by a

knowledgeable male authority. (425)13

Skidmore's analysis of early twentieth century advertisements14 draws upon the earlier aesthetic of female vulnerability and the desire or need for a male military protector established by Lady Macdonald in her own travel writing. In referring to entrenched

North-West Mounted Police15 outposts or the presence of police officers throughout her travel sketches, Lady Macdonald evokes a militaristic authority that has been sanctioned by the Dominion government. Her two sketches "By Car and by Cowcatcher" and "An

Unconventional Holiday" indicate that, while geographically far from the Dominion's governing centre of Ottawa, and while comprising a landscape of untouched, rugged natural beauty, the Canadian North West was characterized by a strong military presence. In the wake of the Red River Rebellion (1869-70) and North-West Rebellion

(1885), such a detail provides a critical message for government officials, Aboriginal tribes, and prospective immigrants alike: the Aboriginal "situation" was well in hand. 213

Referring to the North-West Mounted Police as "the advanceguard of settlement," S.W.

Horrall argues that "[i]n anticipation of possible conflict with the native peoples,

Macdonald decided to organize a mounted police force, soldier-policemen who could economically perform both a civil and a military role" (181).

The military message for Agnes Macdonald's contemporaries, therefore, was that the North West was anything but a vulnerable, unpeopled landscape. On more than one occasion, we find Lady Macdonald bringing the wealth and immense space of her travel landscape under the watchful eye (thus the perceived authority) of an NWMP station. In depicting the area around Port Arthur, for example, she writes from the vantage point of overseer, writing that "[fjrom the mounted-police-post height the rich country lay below us, variegated as a tulip bed to the horizon, and watered by the great northern river at this part of its thousand navigable miles" ("An Unconventional Holiday" II, 2). So too does she portray the watchful presence of a NWMP outpost in Prince Albert, "[a] long, scattered, wooden settlement-containing about eight hundred souls-with a well-built and trim-looking mounted-police-post on a height overlooking it" ("An Unconventional

Holiday" II, 2).

In addition, we learn that considerable portions of Lady Macdonald's journey occur under the personal protection and guidance of an NWMP Inspector. When Agnes and her travel companions wish to embark on a hiking expedition through the woods at

Banff, for example, we learn that "[i]n charge of the party was our friend the Mounted

Police Inspector, who at Calgary had been responsible [for us]" ("An Unconventional

Holiday" I, 2), and in the second half of this sketch when Lady Macdonald's party later wishes to visit the battleground at Duck Lake (a site of the North-West rebellion), they do so "in a police wagon under the care this time of a Corporal" (II, 2). In positioning these police officials and travellers, Lady Macdonald evokes a strong presence of law enforcement in her travel landscape. This element of the western landscape probably appealed to potential immigrants and recreational travellers alike: under such a paternal protector, new pioneering settlements could flourish unimpeded, and travellers could move safely and unhindered across the prairies.

Overall, Lady Macdonald depicts leadership or governance over the North West as an integrated network of individual NWMP outposts, and officials who seem always ready to accompany travellers on various expeditions. In "By Car and by Cowcatcher," for example, Lady Macdonald enumerates the following places and people in the first half of the narrative: Government House, Winnipeg (I, 223); "an important officer of the

Company" (I, 224), who is probably later identified as the "General Superintendent" of the CPR (I, 234); Government House, Regina (I, 224), where they are joined by the

Lieutenant-Governor of the NW Territories (I, 226); and "a review of the Mounted

Police [in Calgary]" (I, 232). Such a network indicates a well-connected and established sense of order and duty in what was once a relatively unknown and lawless part of the

Dominion.

In addition to the military protection offered by the NWMP, a woman traveller could also draw upon her spiritual overseer to help her make her way through this un- policed part of the Dominion. 215

The Citizen-Mother "Sells" the West

In her article about women's travels through the rockies, Shelagh Squire considers the ways in which the politics of tourism affect the representation of the western Canadian landscape. Squire qualifies tourism as "a social construct through which a range of culturally defined attitudes and values may be mediated and represented" (3), and launches her discussion by suggesting that Agnes Macdonald's cowcatcher ride (and the sketch it inspired) was a deliberate effort to promote the safety of rail travel (7). Here, Squire cites R.B. Macbeth, a young contemporary of the

Macdonalds, who included the popularized ride in his own book, in which he wrote that

"Lady Macdonald loyally rode for part of one day in the mountains on the cow-catcher of the engine, as a way of advertising to the world the safety of the new road" (146). The suggestion is of course that such a promotion of the railroad indirectly endorsed the efforts of men like Sir John A. Macdonald who were instrumental in its creation.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, under the shrewd management of William Van

Home, provided a timely and convenient venue for Lady Macdonald's travel writing, specifically her sketches that promoted tourism in western Canada. In his book The

Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism, E.J. Hart explains that in order to attract travellers to take the CPR, people like Van Home commissioned Canadian artists to provide sketches and drawings for the railway company's promotional brochures and posters.16 Many artists enjoyed free rail passes or layover privileges, and on other occasions, special cars were outfitted as darkrooms, to better accommodate photographers.17 Agnes alludes to this through her references to 216 guide-books when she embarks on one of her rail journeys, and upon her arrival at Banff

("An Unconventional Holiday" I, 1); she also refers to Albert Bierstadt (a popular

American landscape artist in the late 1880s), who "is reported to have said about Lake

Louise that the scenery thereabouts was some of the loveliest he had ever looked upon ..

. [and] that this should be his very next picture" ("An Unconventional Holiday" I, 2).

Furthermore, the CPR relied on writers to support its promotional scheme; excerpts of travel accounts were included as part of annotated timetables. Lady Macdonald's sketch

"By Car and by Cowcatcher" lent itself to this creative enterprise, particularly her description of the foothills of Banff, which was included in one such timetable:

Here the pass we are travelling through has narrowed suddenly to four

miles, and as mists float upwards and away, we see great masses of scarred

rock rising on each side - ranges towering one above the other. Very

striking and magnificent grows the prospect as we penetrate into the

mountains at last, each curve of the line bringing fresh vistas of endless

peaks rolling away before and around us, all tinted rose, bluish-pink and

silver, as the sun lights their snowy tips. Every turn becomes afresh mystery,

for some huge mountain seems to stand right across our way, barring it for

miles, with a stern face frowning down upon us; and yet a few minutes later

we find the giant has been encircled and conquered, and soon lies far away

in another direction. (Hart 27)18

Such testimonials promoted all aspects of the travel landscape: "the history, industrial and natural resource development and the sporting opportunities of the passing 217 countryside" (Hart 26). Travellers could request special annotated timetables that included extra blank pages, which allowed them to set down their own experiences, no doubt inspired by the timetable testimonials, like the one written by Lady Macdonald, and the landscape they observed first-hand from the train cab. A popular tourist souvenir, the annotated timetable also provided travellers with the usual travel information, like departure and arrival times, as well as the mileage covered by the journey (Hart 26-27).

If, as R.B. Macbeth suggests, Lady Macdonald consciously designed her sketch

"By Car and by Cowcatcher" as promotional copy, and took advantage of the publication needs of the new annotated timetables, then she is an important pioneer in the evolution of selling the west as a tourist destination.19 Her travel sketches about western Canada, in particular, arguably demonstrate one of the earliest attempts to articulate—and thus promote—what would later become known as the "Yellowstone model" of national park creation and management. Yellowstone National Park, formed in 1872, has long been considered a template for the creation of national parks world-wide, until fairly recently, when Aboriginal and ecological concerns have called into question some of the principles upon which Yellowstone was first conceived. Joanna Kafarowski argues that while Yellowstone may have benefited from nineteenth-century attitudes toward nature preserves or the role such preserves played in tourism,

these parks also reflected earlier ambivalent attitudes towards local

Aboriginal people.... In the late 1800s, these exclusionary policies (based

on Western ideals of protection) extended to evicting aboriginal peoples

from their communities within areas proposed as national parks. (57) 218

The Yellowstone model, therefore, succeeded because the American government correctly realized the future potential of the tourism industry, and for this new economy to flourish, prospective travellers needed to be assured of reliable transportation and a secure destination. In depicting Banff as the Canadian equivalent of Yellowstone, Lady

Macdonald similarly highlights the new tourist economy, as well as endorsing the underlying authorities of CPR and North-West Mounted Police that helped to make this possible. In "An Unconventional Holiday," Agnes alludes to this political dimension of tourism. She explains:

As is well known to Canadians-especially to those of Canada's more worthy

sons and daughters, who are interested in her progress and development-fifty

thousand acres of this particular part of the country has been appropriated by

the government and set aside as a National Park, in worthy imitation, no

doubt, of you, our American brothers, and your magnificent Yellowstone. (I,

2)

While it is uncertain to what extent Lady Macdonald was aware of the political expediency of displacing Aboriginal groups from the designated park land of

Yellowstone (this area was a key part of the American fur trade),20 she was certainly well aware of the conflict between the Dominion government and Aboriginal groups in the

Canadian North West. Nor would the relationship between the CPR, military, and

Aboriginal peoples have been lost on Lady Macdonald's more politically attuned

Canadian readers (perhaps those "more worthy sons and daughters" to whom she makes her appeal): the 1885 Riel uprising in the North West occurred at a fortuitous time for 219 the financially beleaguered CPR company, whose petitions for more government funding were approved only after the railway showcased its importance by moving military troops from Toronto to Winnipeg in an unprecedented four days (Creighton, The Old

Chieftain 416-426).21 The CPR improved communication and transport of settlers and of the military, another point that does not go unnoticed by Lady Macdonald:

A few distant roofs to the right, mark the hamlet of Saskatoon, where, in the

days of the half-breed rebellion, stood a military hospital.

We were now on historic ground, for in 1884 [sic] this part of the great

northwest was the scene of a French half-breed rising, that for a few months

threatened to be dangerous, and which it rather puzzled the Dominion

authorities, civil and military, how to meet and quell. Breaking out in early

spring, when all traveling was at the most difficult in an almost unknown

country, two thousand miles from headquarters, it was, I imagine, somewhat

difficult for those unlucky officials to decide on what to do first. ("An

Unconventional Holiday" II, 2)

The CPR emerges as a central and powerful image throughout Agnes

Macdonald's travel writing. Its appearance on her travel landscape counters any misperception among Agnes's contemporaries that western Canada was an unplanned, uncivilized, and vulnerable space. Lady Macdonald demonstrates this in a number of ways. In "An Unconventional Holiday," for example, she may suggest that she travels without an itinerary, but her movement across the prairies is deliberate and directed by

"the all-pervading Canadian Pacific Railroad Company" (I, 2), a company busily acquiring more land and more tracks. She explains that

[w]e had no very definite plan of travel and I eschewed dates. In a vague,

pleasant sort of way, we were bound for Winnipeg on the prairies, Calgary,

in the ranch country, Banff, in the Rocky Mountains, Glacier in the Selkirk

Range, and Vancouver on the Pacific Coast, in British Columbia. A new

railway line was just being completed from Regina, the small capital of our

Western territory, to Prince Albert nearly three hundred miles from thence,

on the North Saskatchewan. The Canadian Pacific Company were to 'take it

over' in a few days. (I, 1)

The speed and reach of railway expansion is a remarkable feature of the CPR that Lady

Macdonald notes a number of times, as in her description of Calgary "hardly fifteen years old yet, but 'handsome' now with churches, villas, shops, streets and new railway lines projected and commenced-one already tearing up the prairie for twenty miles, destined to reach distant Red Deer and Edmonton before another year has passed" ("An

Unconventional Holiday" I, 2). Later in the same journey, as she travels beyond Regina, she continues to report on the reach and progress of the railway:

A new line this, 'opened' only a week before, running far north to the

confines of civilization. Near two hundred miles of rich prairie land lay

between Regina and our first stopping place, Saskatoon. An occasional

station-house with water-tank attached, and, at most, one shanty, alone broke

the solitude of those stretching plains. (II, 2)

The Canadian North West of the late 1880s implicated politicians, the military, businessmen, and Aboriginals in an uneasy relationship of ongoing conflict and negotiation. When depicting the scenery in her sketch "An Unconventional Holiday,"

Lady Macdonald draws our attention to the physical results of this relationship, recording "a forest primeval, one as imagined in early dreams before the actual half- chopped, half-burnt, wholly disfigured woods of civilization have dispelled the illusion"

(I, 2), and, perhaps the more physically gruesome remains of buffalo herds, now reduced to a "low, long, horrid-looking wall of neatly-piled, bleached skulls, gathered from the prairie" (II, 2). In considering these "physically gruesome remains" as the casualties of

Euro-centric progress, we might add the more visually unthreatening~but equally gruesome—images that appear alongside the razed forests and slaughtered buffalo: the commodified image of Aboriginal people and their culture.

Yellowstone and Banff National Parks were environments that supported this kind of Aboriginal image. Much as the toboggan became a recreational item for non-

Aboriginals, so did "real" Indians become performers in the new space of cultural theatre. For example, the Stoney Indians entertained guests staying at the Banff Springs

Hotel with "horse races, bucking and roping competitions and traditional dancing .. .

[and] horse packing and tepee pitching" (Hart 76). Enacted in a "replicated space"

(Raibmon 159) of Aboriginal daily life and culture, these activities became a consumer item in the new tourist economy. Paige Raibmon discusses the underlying political significance of such Aboriginal "live-exhibits," that

[ejxhibits of Aboriginal people were particularly meaningful during this

period when Americans and Canadians were displacing Aboriginal people in 222

the name of Western expansion and national development. Through their

graphic display of Aboriginal authenticity alongside, and inseparable from,

Aboriginal savagery, the live-exhibits illustrated the political and moral

necessity of government 'civilizing' policies such as removal, reservations,

religious conversion, and assimilation through education. (161)22

We encounter a type of Aboriginal live-exhibit in Lady Macdonald's sketch "By

Car and by Cowcatcher." Reading an Aboriginal performance through a nineteenth- century lens and from the perspective of prime minister's wife, Agnes reduces the physical presence of Blackfoot Indians to an impotent entertainment, part of a "static tradition" (Raibmon 169), that amounts to little more than, to use her words, "a sham."

After a conference between Sir John A. Macdonald and Blackfoot chiefs, the travellers are asked if they would like to be treated to a performance. Agnes writes:

Some of the younger chiefs, however, would like to show us a sham fight, if

'Our Brother-in-law' approved.... A scene of wild acting followed.

Ranging themselves in hostile lines the Blackfeet, breaking into savage war-

whoops, surged and rushed together with such fury that it was hard to believe

the whole proceeding was only a good sham. . . . Fierce and desperate indeed

seemed these wild men as they galloped hither and thither, loading, firing

quick rounds, reloading, firing again and again, till the solitude echoed with

noise of battle. (I, 230-231)

While Lady Macdonald suggests that the war performance seems realistic enough, she reassures us that it is, after all, only "wild acting," and only performed with the 223 permission of the Dominion's prime minister. Her additional observation that "Crowfoot took no part in these warlike proceedings. He sat among his white-faced guests, still wrapped in his blanket, mourning, as we must suppose, for the lost Poundmaker" (I, 231) situates prominent Blackfoot individuals, Poundmaker and Crowfoot, in a way that emphasizes the diminished leadership of the Blackfoot Indians. This episode is both symbolic and sympathetic: Poundmaker, the adopted son of Crowfoot, had attempted to negotiate peaceful agreements between First Nations peoples and the Dominion government in the 1880s, reluctantly becoming involved in the eventual (perhaps inevitable) conflict that arose between the two groups.23 His death then represents, both in reality and symbolically, a potential loss of constructive leadership, and a break in generational continuity. By casting Aboriginal individuals into the narrative past of her writing, Lady Macdonald establishes the present and future as one in which Aboriginal cultures and influence occupy a specific place in Euro-Canadian society. Conversely,

Agnes's sympathetic reading ("as we must suppose") of Crowfoot's grief over the loss of his adopted son personalizes this Aboriginal individual within familiar European conventions of mourning, while at the same time emphasizing the element of "courtesy" that enables her woman traveller to recognize this aspect in a racial other.

The Citizen-Mother and Racial Otherness

A citizen-mother like Agnes Macdonald could also draw upon religious authority as a means of guiding or controlling racial others who appeared in her travel landscape.

Religion, as we have seen already, represented a vital source of strength for many pioneering women who found themselves otherwise alone in their lives: religion undoubtedly countered Agnes Macdonald's despair the morning she sat alone outside

T.C. Patteson's home, Frances Simpson's loneliness when her husband forbade her to socialize with the only women nearby (those of Aboriginal and Metis descent), and

Catharine Parr-Traill's fears as she watched her husband become more despondent and less able to provide for the couple's growing family.24

Yet while a Christian faith bolstered the flagging spirits and lives of women pioneers, it disempowered other individuals who were also part of this early Canadian landscape: Aboriginal peoples. The nomadic existence of Aboriginal groups who occupied the Dominion North West destabilized the landscape for those undertaking the project of a European and Christian settlement, a point that is perhaps best articulated by

Isobel Finlayson as she approached Fort Garry. In the excerpt that follows, Isobel records the polarization of wilderness and civilization, particularly as represented by the races that she associates with either landscape:

now and then an Indian tent would enliven the scene, out of which men

women and children, rushed to gaze at us as we passed along. The first signs

of civilization began to appear in the shape of hay-stacks within rude

enclosures, then horses, and horned cattle, were seen grazing along the

banks, and shortly after, log houses, with their various outbuildings were

thickly scattered on both sides of the river. (34)

Isobel then describes the presence of a mission in the wilderness as "a most pleasing picture," particularly as it appears to establish a sense of order and peace among the Aboriginal people. She tells us of an "Indian Settlement [near Fort Garry], its neat little whitewashed church, partially surrounded by trees, the Missionary's quiet dwelling, and the mill upon the bank" (34-35).

Lady Macdonald consistently depicts the image of the individual Native body in

European terms, or as a compliant figure who submissively yields to the spiritual (and domesticating) influences of Christian religion, similar to the ways in which she depicts the geographical wilderness of the land as being easily "tamed" through agricultural practices and European settlement. Frances Simpson reflects on the power of religion in her remarks about a "visit to the Catholic Priests, who appear to possess great influence over the minds of the people [Iroquois, Algonquin, Nippising tribes]" (2 May 1830). In

"By Car and by Cowcatcher," Agnes Macdonald alludes to a similar power of Christian religion in her portrayal of the Native body as physically immobile and mute. She describes

[t]wo delightful Sioux boys [who] were brought to Government House by

the priest who is educating them at his Mission School near Qu'Appelle.

Their bright black eyes alone gave sign of life as, during a long visit, they

stood perfectly rigid in brand-new broad-cloth, never stirring a finger. They

sang in turn at their priest's gentle command, each breaking out into a hymn

quite mechanically, in a clear, treble voice, but without the slightest

intonation of any kind, and without a wink! I longed to hear them speak; but

they looked so fat, and were so motionless, I feared such an effort might

bring on an attack of indigestion. While they were still singing there came a great clatter of horses, and a sweeping rush of uniformed men, followed

presently by piled-up baggage waggons, [sic] drawn by strong steeds across

the prairie-a division of the North-West mounted Police corps, returning

from outpost duty at Prince Albert, 250 miles away. . . . They form part of a

body of mounted men a thousand strong, who are stationed in the North-

West at Government expense, to keep order among the Indians, and to

prevent the selling of liquor. (I, 224-225)

In this passage, Lady Macdonald illustrates the desired end product of government policies on Dominion settlement: an immobile and complacent Native presence. She depicts a Native population that is regulated by the spiritual and civilizing efforts of both religious and military men. Taught their catechism at a Mission School, the young Aboriginal boys are then brought to perform in the further "civilizing" structure of Government House. An interesting point of contrast in the above passage involves the background sound of a "great clatter of horses, and a sweeping rush of uniformed men" as aNWMP division approaches. If the Aboriginal body is a silent, inactive, and minimal element in the sketch, the image of law and order is loud, mobile, and large, "part of a body of mounted men a thousand strong," who are there "at

Government expense, to keep order among the Indians" (I, 224). The smooth transition from spiritual to militaristic authority presents an image of an overlapping, continuous presence of White patriarchy in a landscape once dominated by a strong Aboriginal presence. That the Sioux youth are described as "mechanical," dehumanizes them, suggesting that their behaviour is pre-programmed (therefore predictable), and that they may possibly lack an ability to feel, and an ability to express themselves as individuals.

Later in the same sketch, Lady Macdonald applies this dehumanizing metaphor to the Chinese labourers further west in the Selkirk mountains, who "had a curious effect, as of some mechanical apparatus with an awful semblance of humanity. And yet we know theirs is the oldest civilization in the known world! How fortunate it is that all nations do not express civilization in the same way!" (II, 303). Like the Indian youths, the Chinese labourers are depicted as a silent, uniform group, "[sjtanding mute, wide- eyed and expressionless, their shovels all held at the same angle" (II, 303). The

"distance" that Agnes establishes between herself and the Chinese group of individuals evokes social and cultural barriers: she is likely prevented from speaking with them partly because of social class (they are labourers, and she is a lady), partly because of the obvious language barrier, and partly because they are visually non-European. In Lady

Macdonald's travel landscape, both Aboriginal and Chinese characters are depicted as inarticulate and distorted examples of humanity. The "bright black eyes" of the Sioux boys and the "wide-eyed" Chinese labourers, however, suggest that these two racial minorities are involved in actively observing their surroundings, including the activities of the dominant culture.

While she appears to be genuinely interested in the cultural differences between herself and the racial others she encounters in her travels, Lady Macdonald renders

Aboriginal peoples as a prominent but silent component of the recreational background of her travels. She reassures her readers of the benign nature of this racial group:

Not Indians, be it understood, in war-paint and feathers, but domesticated red 228

men in coarse garments of European build-men who are devout members of

the Roman Church, baptized Oscar and Joe respectively, and hailing not

from forest or prairie, but from the Mission Reserve at Campbellton near

Metapedia. Genuine Indians, however, just the same, the characteristics of

their race still preserved wonderfully intact-stolid, silent, deft, watchful,

ready; signs of their old stately pride and endurance visible still in a cold

passive indifference, and shy, almost scornful, yet clumsy air-signs also in

their gloomy faces of that Indian fierceness showing itself in the blood and

carnage that makes horrible much of this continent's early history, and which

only two years ago, Canada learned had not wholly disappeared from among

this wild people, which civilization is fast 'improving' off the face of the

earth altogether. ("On a Canadian Salmon River" II, 621-622)

Agnes's reference to the re-naming and re-clothing of Aboriginal bodies acknowledges the authority of the "uncompromising criteria of'civilization'" (Axtell 169) brought to the new world by European colonizers and missionaries.25 Her discussion about the vestigial remnants of Aboriginal identity is equally as telling: if Agnes celebrates

"characteristics of their race still preserved wonderfully intact," she celebrates characteristics that have been profoundly modified. For example, the "old stately pride and endurance" of the Aboriginal in the past now exists as "a cold, passive indifference, and shy, almost scornful, yet clumsy air" in the present. And "Indian fierceness," according to Agnes, is only evident in the mien of their now "gloomy faces." Regardless of the sincerity with which she portrays the Indian of her world, Agnes Macdonald's 229 observations and choice of wording portray a disempowered Native presence.

Nor does this disempowered status generally appear to be an issue with

Aboriginal peoples, according to Lady Macdonald. In her report of the Blackfoot Indian conference in "By Car and by Cowcatcher," she reassures us that the Aboriginal people are reasonably satisfied with their lot: "We had heard the Indians had many grievances, and expected a long list; but though Crowfoot talked at length, and repeated the same things many times over, these were his only complaints. While he spoke, the minor chiefs kept up a low chorus of apparent approbation" (I, 229). Agnes then turns to her husband's address to the Indians, to reinforce this picture: "He knew Crowfoot and his tribe were loyal and quiet men, obedient to Treaty obligations. They had proved themselves so when only a short time ago other tribes rose in rebellion, led on by bad men who only thought of their own evil ends" (I, 229). Sir John A. Macdonald concludes that the government will endorse support only as it assists the Blackfoot to become farmers, advising that "[fjhey must dig and plant and sow, like white men, to get good crops; then sell some of the produce of their reserve, keeping what was necessary for their own support. White men worked hard for their food and clothing, and expected

Indians to do the same" (I, 229). The relationship that Agnes depicts here between the

Dominion government and Aboriginal groups is one in which White cultural values are privileged over Aboriginal ways and lifestyles.

A fishing vacation, which represents another recreational redefining of a traditional economy and use of the land, provides another opportunity for Lady

Macdonald to draw attention to the nature and function of Aboriginal individuals in her 230 world. In "On a Canadian Salmon River," for example, the "six [Native] canoe-guides"

(I, 452) provide the muscle that enables the fishing expedition, but this is their sole contribution: Lady Macdonald depicts them as "busy, silent men" (I, 455), or "simple creatures" (I, 456). And Gray, her ladyship's personal canoe-man, is depicted in terms that exemplify ideal characteristics of the "modern" Native because of his useful, but non-threatening presence:

though not a linguist, unable indeed to read or write in any language, Gray

was keen, intelligent, full of observation, and, in his line, never for a moment

at a loss what to do. He could manage a canoe, fish, shoot, hunt or swim, all

to perfection. His life spent in the woods, for he had lived among Micmac

Indians all his younger days, had made him strong, rugged, fearless and long-

enduring; and yet there was an air of simplicity and gentleness, almost

childishness, about the man that was very attractive. (I, 458-459)

While Agnes suggests that Gray might not be of Aboriginal heritage, the abilities that he acquires while living with this racial group (his strength and fearlessness, and his hunting and fishing skills), qualify him to work as a fishing guide. The literacy skills that would enable Gray to participate in the discourse of the dominant culture, however, are not included in his learning. Thus Gray, despite his many talents, is somewhat romantically dismissed (or at least disempowered) in the narrative, associated with "an air of simplicity and gentleness, almost childishness."

The positioning of racial otherness in Agnes Macdonald's travel writing relays an additional message of economic control. Her two sketches: "On a Canadian Salmon 231

River" and "On a Tobogan"26 depict recreational landscapes, in which iconic symbols of economic transportation (canoe and toboggan, respectively) are transformed into recreational vehicles. Visually, these sketches (particularly "On a Tobogan") metaphorically encapsulate the shift in authority, from Aboriginal to Euro-centric. In these sketches, both canoe and toboggan are also depicted in close relation to the Native body, and in ways that emphasize Native silence and complicity.

In "On a Tobogan" for example, Lady Macdonald disempowers the masculine, physical presence of the North American Indian: first, she domesticates "him" politically, and second, she contrasts his inactivity to his wife's industry:

In the North-West Territories of Canada, among the semi-civilized or 'treaty

Indians'-those who have entered into negotiations with the Government and

receive yearly supplies of food, farming implements, and seed, &c.-the lord

of the teepe, or wigwam, has the best of it when the family travel, for

harnessed by a 'tump line,' or thong of raw deer hide passing round her

forehead and attached to the tobogan, the squaw toils on hour after hour,

hooded in her long draped blanket, while he steps out in his fringed leggings

and shorter blanket carrying, if anything, only a light gun. (77)

Working in conjunction with the portrayal of a treaty-Indian's reliance on governmental support, Lady Macdonald's "On a Tobogan" sketch depicts the transformation (or indeed, the appropriation) of the sled, from a basic economic structure used by

Aboriginals, into a recreational structure that is "[s]till made by Indians only, but 'to order' now, and handsomely fashioned" (78). Here, Lady Macdonald alludes to a 232 profound economic shift where prevailing Dominion recreational interests have redefined the use of an item that has previously supported traditional Aboriginal subsistence practices:

The tobogan-corruption of the Indian word odabagan a sled, adopted by the

white man as a light and graceful vehicle, whereon to slide down icy slopes

for pastime or exercise-has always been, and still is, in constant use among

Indians, wild and semi-civilized, to transport for the former his dead game or

firewood, for the latter his hunting supplies or scanty belongings, as well as

anything else either may desire to carry from camp to camp. As the luggage

van to a 'pale face' so is the tobogan to a savage, with the difference that a

tobogan is only available in winter and on snow. (77)

This passage emphasizes the contrast between "White" play and "Indian" work, even suggesting that such labour (as facilitated by the toboggan) is indicative of a "wild [or] semi-civilized" existence. Lady Macdonald advertises the form and function of the new toboggan as a clear sign of progress, explaining that "the smart descendant the tobogan of a higher civilization in use to-day for sliding (or toboganing as it is incorrectly called) down artificial or carefully prepared slopes, where a gay company assemble" (78).

If, however, Agnes Macdonald appears to endorse many of her husband's political policies regarding the settlement of the west, she engages in a feminist mapping of landscape, similar to the ways in which the renowned woman traveller Mary Kingsley interacted with the people and land of Africa. Alison Blunt observes that

[i]n her descriptions of the landscapes of West Africa, Kingsley 'mapped' the region in narratives and metaphors, rather than cartographic precision.

She often gave personal accounts of her experiences that emphasized her

own aesthetic and emotional responses to the landscape. This style

undermined her authority as a scientist, but reinforced her personal authority

as an eyewitness. She also provided landscape descriptions that expressed

her personal identification with the place, instead of the 'monarch-of-all-I-

survey' genre of travel writing more characteristic of male accounts . . . this

writing style emphasizes the connections between observer and observed,

quite different from the standard, male style of providing a panoramic gaze

that objectifies landscape.... Kingsley had to constantly negotiate the

demands of establishing herself as an authority of sorts (so, participating in

the male world), while not upsetting gender categories so much that she

would lose all authority (so, not participating in the male world completely).

In other words, she had to gain masculine authority by acting feminine! (145)

Like Mary Kingsley, Agnes Macdonald negotiates the boundary between her role as observer, and of being observed. So too does she demonstrate that she could exert her own authority by "acting feminine." In her travel writing, as in her other narratives,

Agnes Macdonald "acts feminine" as a way of participating—with influence—in her world. During the prairie meeting with the Confederation of Blackfoot Indians in "By

Car and by Cowcatcher," for example, Lady Macdonald records her conversation with

"Mrs. Crowfoot":

She bade me welcome-of course by aid of an interpreter. Scanning, with something of disdain, my plain travelling dress and dusty appearance, she

enquired if I were not a great 'chief lady.' I assured her I was but a humble

individual brought to the prairies only to look after the travelling comforts of

my lord and master. I am sure Mrs. Crowfoot appreciated this reply, as she

remembered the weary days of plodding over snow and sun-baked earth,

drawing a heavy sled by a thong passed round her forehead, while her lord

stalked on in front, with only a gun as encumbrance. (I, 231-232)

A number of distinctive features characterize this episode, particularly those involved with the process of perception and narration. Three separate narrators participate in this conversation: Lady Macdonald, "Mrs. Crowfoot," and an interpreter, who is likely male, and possibly of European descent. His control over the information that passes between the two women is mediated by his own cultural expectations and values, and is then mediated further by Agnes Macdonald's editorial and creative hand. While the original conversation among the Blackfoot woman, the interpreter, and Agnes cannot be reconstructed, a cultural narrative about the social order of nineteenth-century Canada may be imagined. First, Agnes situates her woman traveller as a subject of study to both the Mrs. Crowfoot character, and the interpreter: it is Agnes, not an Aboriginal woman who finds herself scrutinized by a racial "other." Through the interpreter, we learn that

Mrs. Crowfoot observes a great chief lady during the meeting, a device that permits both the interpreter and Lady Macdonald to acknowledge a European order of social status and authority that the lady traveller brings with her, and the Aboriginal recognition of this social order. In referring to Agnes as a "chief lady," and her own mate as "her lord" 235

(232), the Mrs. Crowfoot character acknowledges (complicitly, or through the mediating influence of the interpreter, or as Agnes wishes to translate the exchange) feminine and masculine terms of identity, and their implicit authorities, as class signifiers in a British- based social hierarchy. We find a similar occurrence in Frances Simpson's travel diary when she records an episode that occurred in an area she refers to as the "Savage Lands" in which she "had the honor for the first time, of shaking hands with an old Indian Lady who we saw here, and who gave me what I supposed to be her blessing, in a most discordant jargon" (6 May 1830). While Frances takes license in her assumption about what the Indian Lady says, she imposes a British propriety over the scene: an Aboriginal woman relates to Frances on the appropriate social stratum, and Frances receives an appropriate greeting.

Second, in assuming or misappropriating the thoughts and very identity of Mrs.

Crowfoot, the interpreter/Lady Macdonald implicates the Native woman in a larger,

European-based sisterhood of domestic identity. In referring to this Native woman as

Crowfoot's "Mrs.," the interpreter and/or Lady Macdonald subsumes Aboriginal sexuality safely under the known order of British North American monogamy: "Mr. and

Mrs. Crowfoot" semantically represents a lawful European marital relationship.27 Carole

Gerson emphasizes the complex and coded image of female Aboriginal bodies in other nineteenth-century literature (specifically the work of Susanna Moodie and Catharine

Parr Traill), explaining that the "biological function (or malfunction) [of an Aboriginal female character is] an obvious factor in what the European viewed as the inevitable and necessary disappearance of [Aboriginal] people" ("Nobler Savages" 7-8). Gerson reads 236 the image of Aboriginal women in Moodie and Parr Traill as a metaphor for racial extinction, whereas I read "Mrs. Crowfoot" in Agnes Macdonald's work as a metaphor for a European marital norm. However, both of our readings acknowledge the efforts of nineteenth-century woman writers to articulate the cultural beliefs or values of their time through their creative work.

Susan Blake's research on gender, race, and travel is also helpful to a reading of

Agnes Macdonald's exchange with Mrs. Crowfoot. In her analysis of Mary Hall's nineteenth-century African travel account, Blake addresses the nineteenth-century woman traveller's complicated relationship with the "colonized other," particularly the complex positioning of a European (White) woman colonized by gender, and the ways in which she then negotiates relationships with those who have been colonized by race.

Blake argues that a European woman had much to lose, and little to gain, by evoking the image of the African other as savage; by identifying or responding to civility, rather than savagery, a woman traveller would be able to engage in a type of dialogue with her environment in which her strengths would be emphasized. For a White woman to maintain control in situations involving herself and a racial other,

the vulnerable woman's power, courtesy, is more effective than the imperial

power represented by firearms.... If Africans are savages, unarmed women

must be vulnerable. Conversely, if woman's power, courtesy, is to work,

Africans must respond to it; they must be courteous themselves. The

validation of a woman's strength requires African subjectivity. (Blake 353)

While the main difference here is that Mary Hall documents her interaction with a male 237

African Sultan, and Agnes Macdonald relates her experience with a female North

American Indian, the underlying principles are quite similar. Susan Blake argues further that "Hall thus rejects racial superiority as a source of power because it is inseparable from gender superiority. She must, however, assure herself and her readers that she controls her caravan. This she does by replacing the authority of race with that of class.

Her relations with the chief and other African royalty are reciprocal; with her servants and porters, maternal" (353). Since White and Native women are both colonized by gender, we might choose to re-read the passage in which the Mrs. Crowfoot character refers to Agnes as a "great 'chief lady,'" and to her own husband as "her lord" (in response to Agnes's own reference to John A. as "[her] lord and master"), as a passage in which the authority of race takes a back seat to the authority of class.

In comparing the narrative strategies used by men to record similar interracial meetings (in particular, Ewart S. Grogan's travel account), to that of Hall's text, Blake additionally notes that the purpose for travel influences the means by which that travel is accomplished. For example, she notes that Grogan relies on physical force and violence in his dealings with Africans, because his travel agenda as a surveyor must "overcome the physical obstacles of the land for a rail route that is itself a means to conquer the land for trade, settlement, and political control" (349). While Lady Macdonald does not travel with a conqueror's prerogative, her travels and travel writing do contribute to her husband's involvement and identity as cultural and geographical conqueror. Therefore, she must similarly overcome obstacles to her husband's success.

In her discussion about the relationship between national identity and concepts of citizenship, Janine Brodie argues that "as the terrain of the Canadian state expanded and with the implementation of the Indian Act (1876), the identity of the First Nations was rapidly transformed from independent actors to faceless objects of administration" (58).

While I agree with Brodie's general argument, she speaks here of a male-centred Euro-

Canadian administrative relationship with Aboriginal bodies; in her travel narratives,

Agnes Macdonald introduces us to a different relationship which both asserts a Euro­ centric control while at the same time recognizing individual Aboriginal faces. I don't read this relationship between White women and Aboriginals as a more racially enlightened one, but merely different than the relationship between White men and

Aboriginals. Agnes Macdonald did not have the same political or military means to assert herself or imperial objectives in an Aboriginal landscape, even though I read her portrayal of Aboriginal individuals as fundamentally supporting such objectives. Her interactions with Aboriginal peoples were far more limited and possibly orchestrated than those of her White male contemporaries: exchanges were mediated by interpreters and overseen by military protectors, and meetings were often part of formal social visits.

Agnes' s record of these exchanges and meetings therefore become part of a White feminine "languagescape," as Kolodny suggests, in which images of domesticity or manners, symbols associated with the citizen-mother, become part of a White feminine text about racial otherness.

Civilizing the Economic Landscape

From 1670 to 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company functioned as an important, 239 highly visible economic entity, and was associated with the exploration and mapping of the British North American wilderness. In her travel sketches, Lady Macdonald deftly undermines the vestiges of this occupation of, and domination over, the vast physical space known as Rupert's Land. She does this by foregrounding elements associated with the new industries that supported, and were supported by, settlement and tourism, as well as new transportation and trade routes, all ingredients of future economic growth and prosperity. In doing so, she necessarily backgrounds (and thus, effectively disempowers) the past authority of the HBC as an economic space. In her world and in her writing, tourists and settlers alike have become the new explorers: she suggests that the west is a brand-new landscape being mapped and defined by the present and future economics of settlement and lumber and mining industries. Since all of these initiatives reflect government priorities and policies, Lady Macdonald situates the Dominion government as a sponsor of these new explorers and cartographers of the Canadian landscape.

One way that Lady Macdonald accomplishes this is by noting the shift in economic strength and potential of the North West from trapping to lumber, mining, farming (agriculture), and recreation. This undermines certain aspects of the HBC, in particular trade and travel routes, when Agnes refers to the area as a "newly-penetrated" landscape ("By Car and by Cowcatcher" I, 219); the fact is that this area had been explored and well-mapped first by Aboriginals, and then HBC traders and officials a long time beforehand. One of her descriptions of the Canadian Pacific Railway, for example, positions it as a cohesive structure that bridges distance and has replaced the explorers of the past to become the cartographer of the future: "Passing at night the many 240 pretty and flourishing little towns and villages nestled in the wide valley of the Ottawa

River, we were now in the new country, that, comparatively unknown until the Canadian

Pacific was built, is still destined to be of importance" ("An Unconventional Holiday" I,

1).

In moving in a linear fashion across the prairies, Lady Macdonald continually draws attention to "settlements large and small, with every sign of progress and coming prosperity, [that] met the eye at intervals during our journey [from Winnipeg] to Regina"

("By Car and by Cowcatcher" I, 224). This is an era of new industry and economic possibilities, Lady Macdonald advises, and thus we find her in the first part of "By Car and by Cowcatcher" methodically evaluating the landscape for its future economic potential. On nine memorable occasions in this sketch, she enumerates the resources that characterize her travel landscape, particularly those that will support settlement and tourism. Lady Macdonald describes "[fjuel for all time [that] covers great rounded hills, that rise in endless succession" (I, 219), lumber and "treasures of gold, silver, and copper which are supposed to lie hidden away in that newly-penetrated region" (I, 219), the quarry of Rossport (I, 221), silver mines in Port Arthur (I, 223), the farming settlements in and around Winnipeg (I, 224), the "cattle ranches" in the Calgary foothills (I, 233), and the sulphur springs of Banff (I, 234). The content of Lady Macdonald's travel sketches offers an attractive sales pitch to business entrepreneurs, prospective settlers, and vacationers.

In depicting the shifting economic reality of her travel landscape, Lady

Macdonald contrasts the bustling new settlements and booming lumber and mining 241 industries of the present, with the changing presence of the Hudson's Bay Company and the historical business monopoly that it once represented. On more than one occasion in

"An Unconventional Holiday," we find our attention drawn to the changed purpose and presence of three places that once served as HBC trading-posts. In a short passage that condenses history to focus on the promise of future prosperity, Agnes reports on the scenes that she views from her seat on the train. She reports that "[a]t Mattawa, once a

Hudson's Bay trading-post, we saw the centre of a great lumbering district, on the banks of a wide, rapid river, an increasing settlement, busy people, and the tented camps of sportsmen" (I, l);28 and quickly follows with her impression of Fort William:

Beyond Port Arthur, which lies on the great lake's then low shore, Fort

William,29 an important railway point, stands on the site of an old Hudson's

Bay fort, where more than a hundred years ago the astute traders of that

mighty corporation took rare and priceless furs from half savage Indian

hunters in exchange for blankets, beads and flour. (I, 1)

A few lines later, Agnes then tells us about another former HBC post, writing that "We had admired, en route, the beautiful Nepigon River, where the 'Old Red' fort stood long ago on a fine plateau close to the lake shore" (I, 1). Lady Macdonald expresses similar sentiments in "By Car and by Cowcatcher," where we learn that "[a]t the broad river's mouth [Nepigon] on Lake Superior stood an old Hudson Bay post, known as Red Rock, one of that Company's trading stations where so much money was made long ago. In future, I believe it is intended to be more a rendezvous for sportsmen and fishermen than a place for money-changers. Game in plenty is said to roam among those dark forests" (I, 242

221).30 The future economy of Canada, according to Lady Macdonald, is one in which the wilderness does not fuel a fur trade, but a tourist industry. She permits one of her travel companions in "An Unconventional Holiday" to illustrate this point:

Beyond North Bay, for two hundred miles, we seemed entangled in a

network of lakes, streams, rivers, rocky banks, gravelly points-a broken

country, which Margaret, who knows everything, told us was very rich in

mineral wealth, and full of big game; but I do not know if she was speaking

from experience or was quoting from a guide-book. Any one could see that it

was the paradise of lumberers. (I, 2)

Conclusion

In the introduction to her book on women travellers, Jane Robinson identifies the barriers to women's travel in previous centuries. She explains that "[traditionally, pioneering has always been a dangerous and male preserve. There was no room for women in the open boats of the pilgrim navigators setting out in the early centuries of

Christendom to win new lives (or lose their own) for God, nor in the craft and caravan of those marauding for power and knowledge in their wake" (1). Rising to the challenge of gendered spaces (travel landscapes, agendas, and modalities), women like Agnes

Macdonald demonstrated a true pioneering spirit in finding ways to adapt to this otherwise exclusive territory. It is not difficult to envision Lady Macdonald resolutely forcing a candle-box (and therefore her presence) into an "open boat. . . craft [or] caravan," as she did in a canoe and on a cow-catcher, in order to travel. Lady Agnes Macdonald travelled extensively throughout her life, covering great geographic distances, and experimenting with different types of transportation. Her youth involved an emigration from Jamaica to British North America, via England. Her adulthood saw her travelling extensively throughout the Dominion of Canada, and, during her widowhood, Agnes continued her travels in Europe, retiring to Eastbourne,

England, but wintering in Switzerland and Italy. As her skill with a candle-box reveals,

Lady Agnes Macdonald was not just interested in seeing different places, but was also interested in how she was able to physically experience the landscape she travelled through. In addition to cowcatcher, canoe, and toboggan, Agnes Macdonald experienced the novelty of riding a bicycle, even driving in a car during the later years of her widowhood.31

This chapter has discussed Lady Agnes Macdonald's travel sketches as

"narratives of nation." On one level, these sketches present a literary account of a woman's travel experience—what she did and what she saw—through the landscape of a new country. On a more complex level, however, these sketches deliberately politicize this landscape. Thus, Agnes Macdonald contributes to the ways in which the Dominion of Canada was perceived in her own time, and the ways in which future Canadians could remember their history of nation building. We hear her voice, the voice of the citizen- mother, who gives us a gendered account of what a woman saw when she travelled throughout Canada, and what she believed was important to share with us. Yet her voice also helps to memorialize Sir John A's project of nation building. Lisa Laframboise specifically assesses Agnes Macdonald's narrative self for this kind of impact, 244 suggesting that "[t]he narrator's observations of the landscape and its potential thus emphasize the importance of the railway and of the Chiefs political and national triumph, by enumerating the visual rewards of western expansion" (104). Like

Laframboise, I read Agnes Macdonald's narratives as complementing or re-articulating the perspectives and policies of her prime minister husband. In Agnes Macdonald's travel writing, then, the images of civilization and wilderness, represented, in part, by images of Aboriginal bodies or activities, become controlled or "shaped by the needs of the white text" (Goldie 85), a text that seeks to justify and promote the success of

European settlement. Thus the "white text" promotes those symbols and mythologies necessary to a European cultural continuity and social order, such as the images of home, military order, an economic order established by the CPR, and religion. If women did not have the means to make the legislation that influenced such cultural continuity and social order (for example, laws regulating Aboriginal peoples, or laws that created a military force or the infrastructure of new economies), they had, as citizen-mothers, other social and creative means to influence the development and growth of a civil society based on this social order. Agnes Macdonald's social means, as we have already seen, included her involvement with her church and with the Ottawa Orphans' Home. Her travel writing~her "white text"—represented a creative means by which she imagined and articulated a traditionally "ideal" nineteenth-century Canadian homeland. 245

Notes

1. See Senese, as well as Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis.

2. See, for example, the second half of Chapter 2: Cultural Roots, starting on page 28.

3. In her entry for Isabella Bird, Jane Robinson writes that by the time Isabella was forty, she "had succumbed to a debilitating spinal complaint, depression, and acute insomnia. Travel was prescribed-and she became addicted" (82). This addiction kept Isabella travelling widely, right up until her death at the age of 73.

4. See examples on pages 1, 3, 4 (mentioned three times), 7, and 8 (mentioned twice).

5. See the Commonwealth Relations Office's publication about Earnscliffe (particularly page 13) for the story of Sir John A. Macdonald's alleged role in the naming of the house.

6. See also Jennifer H.S. Brown.

7. Also see Warkentin, xiv.

8. For a more detailed discussion of the policies and agenda of Macdonald and his Conservative party, see Chapter Eight: "The Plan in Realization" in Creighton's The Old Chieftain.

9. For a brief overview of the Dominion Lands Act, see Murray.

10. As a political initiative, the Canada First Movement did not exist beyond the 1870s. However, its promotion of a distinct Canadian national identity, particularly one that was inextricably linked to the country's climate and geography, continued on to influence writers and artists. See Mackey's discussion about the explicitly nationalist contributions made by Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, and the Group of Seven ('"Death By Landscape'" 126-127). See also Wallace, who proposes that Canada First originated as an intellectual movement in 1868, and that three of the five original members were men with literary ties-H.J. Morgan, Charles Mair, and R.J. Haliburton (152), and Story's definition of "Canada First" (146).

11. See p. 12 in Hacker for his discussion of this idea.

12. This national policing force was originally formed in 1873 as the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). It was renamed the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) in 1904, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1920. For more information, see "RCMP." 246

13. Here, Skidmore is referring to the woman traveller in the brochure for "Resorts in the Canadian Rockies" (453). The woman's gaze is directed by a mountie, who points at an image of a resort, which is contained in a shield-shaped frame.

14. The advertisements for Lake Louise and Banff are both dated circa 1930.

15. For a brief history of the North-West Mounted Police, see "NWMP."

16. See Hart, particularly Chapter III: "The Railway Art School." Hart also documents the use of these Canadian images in various periodicals throughout the late 1880s, for example: The Illustrated London News and The Graphic (in Britain); Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (in the US); and The Dominion Illustrated (in Canada).

17. The Royal Canadian Academy of Artists was founded in 1879, and the CPR's promotional strategy helped further the international reputation of the Academy. Hart mentions that many commissioned pieces became part of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in London in 1886. In terms of promoting Canadian culture and Canadian landscape, the pictures at this exhibit coincided with the advent of the Thomas Cook travel company, which had been operating since the 1860s, and was, by the 1880s, in the market for some new and exotic destinations for its more adventurous clientele. See Chapters III and IV in Hart.

18. This passage was excerpted from Agnes Macdonald's sketch "By Car and by Cowcatcher"( I, 233-234). However, railway officials or Hart slightly altered Agnes's original text (either intentionally or by mis-transcribing the text). I include the original text below, and have underlined those words or punctuation that were changed: "Here the pass we are travelling through has narrowed suddenly to four miles, and as mists float upwards and away, we see great masses of scarred rock rising on each side - ranges towering one above another. Very striking and magnificent grows the prospect as we penetrate into the mountains at last, each curve of the line bringing fresh vistas of endless peaks^rolling away before and around us, all tinted rose, blush pink and silver, as the sun lights their snowy tips. Every turn becomes a fresh mystery, for some huge mountain seems to stand right across our way, barring it for miles, with a stern face frowning down upon us; and yet a few minutes later we find the giant has been encircled and conquered, and soon lies far away in another direction."

19. Colleen Skidmore explains: "When the CPR took up women's images to promote its rail travel opportunities, hotels, and amenities in the 1930s, the figure of the modern, young, middle-class travelling woman was well-established, and her glamorous reputation was one that enhanced the company's reputation, as well as the aura, spirit, and idea of the woman seeking travel experiences" (xxvi).

20. The area eventually established as Yellowstone National Park occupied the central (and beaver-rich) trapping system of the Missouri Fur Trade during the first half of the nineteenth century; see maps on pages 24, 44, and 49 m Wishart. 21. See Rasky, particularly Chapter XVI: "The Whipcracker" for a more popular account of this historic episode, as well as a sketch of William Van Home's role in overseeing the construction of the CPR

22. Raibmon then goes on to discuss the nuanced, sometimes ironic, ways in which Aboriginals (specifically the Kwakwaka'wakw from Vancouver Island) successfully adapted commodified Aboriginal performances to serve as both "traditional ritual and modern labour" (189). Not adverse, in theory anyway, to the idea and the need to adapt in order to survive in a changing world, the Kwakwaka'wakw recognized the financial benefits of participating in a modern labour force that included actors to work in the new "cultural industry" of live-exhibits. For example, the money that was earned from these new jobs supported the potlach system, an important tradition in many Aboriginal cultures (Raibmon 169), but one that Dominion authorities wished to put an end to.

23. For a more detailed biography about Poundmaker, see Dempsey.

24. For a brutal (but memorable) sketch of Catharine's pioneer reality, see Chapter 11: "Barefoot Crusoes" (especially pages 179-189) in Gray.

25. For more information, see chapter seven in Axtell: "Reduce Them to Civility," particularly pages 168-170.

26. Somewhat confusingly, Agnes Macdonald spells this word as "tobogan," while I use the Canadian spelling: "toboggan" in referring to a sled.

27. Also see Axtell (169) for examples of civil laws passed to govern Aboriginal sexual relationships.

28. For a brief history of Mattawa House, see Doug Mackey.

29. For a brief history of Fort William, see Morrison.

30. For a brief history of Red Rock House, see "Township of Nipigon: History."

31. See Reynolds, pages 171-72. 248

CONCLUSION

On the morning before she gave birth to her daughter, an ailing and restless Lady

Macdonald turned to her reading for comfort. While it is not clear what text she chose, it was a religious one, and it obviously inspired her. She reflected on the significance of one line in particular, that '"We find our true country wherever we can feel & practise what is good & great'" (7 February 1869), later declaring it "a fine view of the subject!"

Perhaps the line resonated with Agnes, a world traveller who would eventually live in several different countries in her lifetime. It may also have appealed to her sense of her place and role as the wife of Canada's first prime minister. To say that Agnes Macdonald was a disempowered individual in her world because she could neither vote nor hold public office overlooks the influence and abilities that she actually had and used to make tangible changes in her world. Enabled by her race, social status, and education, Lady

Agnes Macdonald acted "as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances"1 in making her "good and great" social and cultural contributions to the new Dominion through her philanthropic activities and her personal and published narratives.

The image of the "citizen-mother," a publicly engaged yet fundamentally maternal image, is well suited to a discussion about the role that gender played in the early days of the Dominion of Canada. We see evidence of the citizen-mother's presence and influence in the daily activities that Agnes records in her diary: of her social involvements with the Ottawa Orphans' home, or her efforts to bring her religion into the lives of others. We also see evidence of the citizen-mother in Agnes Macdonald's published narratives about the political and travel spaces of Canada. In these sketches,

Agnes evokes images of social order and domesticity commonly associated with the citizen-mother as a narrative means to domesticate the unsettled areas of the Dominion.

Whether she worked within her home, within the Ottawa community, or throughout the

Dominion landscape, Agnes Macdonald was committed to sharing a vision of a civil social order that was informed by her religion and her sense of purpose as a wife, mother, daughter, and sister.

Political wives have occupied an important, if not always recognized, role in

Canada's past. J.M.S. Careless's article "George Brown and the Mother of

Confederation, 1864," for example, provides such a case study in considering how a change in George Brown's marital status had a very real and pivotal impact on Canadian history. As the title of Careless's article suggests, Brown's ability to overcome his legendary personal dislike of John A. Macdonald in order to achieve Canadian

Confederation was largely due to the influence of his marriage to Anne Nelson. Careless helpfully extends the application of his analysis of Brown, arguing that Brown's "public conduct was so much affected by his private concerns, centred in his wife and family, that the former cannot be properly described without reference to the latter. No doubt much the same is true of other men, not excluding [the] Fathers of Confederation" (57), and then warning against the practice of excising the personal from the political in discussions about public men. This oversight, Careless suggests, risks the production-- and understanding—of a history with all the substance and animation of "a filleted cod"

(58).2 How is it, then, that we generally know so little about this group of women, these 250

"Mothers of Confederation"?

In the forty years since Careless wrote his article, minimal progress has been made in recovering these Canadian women from obscurity, as writer Moira Dann discovered. During the summer of 2009, Dann travelled to Province House in

Charlottetown, attempting to follow the route taken by the Canadian politicians who had invited themselves to a conference organized by Maritime politicians to discuss the idea of a Maritime union. It was there in September of 1864 that the group of men now known as the "Fathers of Confederation" began the work of a much larger union that would one day stretch from British Columbia to Newfoundland to the Arctic Ocean. As

Dann wandered the halls of Province House, a black and white photograph taken of conference delegates on the front steps of Province House reminded her of the men who made history. But it was Dusan Kadlec's "Province House Ball - 1864," a colourful painting on another wall, that introduced Dann to an entirely different cast of characters.

Kadlec's painting captures one of the conference festivities, a social event to which the conference delegates brought their wives, daughters, or sisters. I know what Dann felt when she saw that image of Victorian glamour and society, that unexpected image of politicians "flirting" and dancing with the women in their lives. Several years ago during my own visit to Province House, I remember looking at Kadlec's painting with the same amazement. Women and Confederation? Who were they? Dann introduces us to a few of them—Anne Brown, Mercy Anne Coles, and Helen Pope—and then reflects on the importance of Kadlec's painting to Canadian women, that: "it made it possible to imagine myself there. The indirect experience of events by those women (indirect 251 because of societal givens about gender at the time) was similar to my indirect experience (indirect because the events are now several generations removed)" (par. 8).

If Dann's short article lacks the scope and depth of an academic discussion on the subject of gender and nation, her response is visceral and meaningful in articulating the gap between gender and participation, and between Canadian women and their foremothers.

Through her talents as a writer, Lady Agnes Macdonald reaches across this gap to share with us her lived experiences and her imaginative stories about nation building.

Through her, we encounter narratives about Canada that provide glimpses into the personal and the public spheres that she moved in. Drawing often upon the authority of religious and domestic imagery, Agnes Macdonald's narratives reinstate a feminine vision of Canada. If at times this association makes her writing seem conformist (and this is particularly true of her diary), it provides insight into the complex and sometimes conflicted role of the nineteenth-century woman. While Agnes Macdonald may have found religion a much-needed comfort and support in times of personal adversity, she also gained strength from those qualities that were not generally attributed to the submissive, feminine ideal of her time: Lady Macdonald's intelligence, ambition, curiosity, and wit prompted her to be seen and heard by her contemporaries on a number of occasions. Such occasions include both the poignant and the unexpected, like the time

Patteson observed her sitting on the gate outside his home to distance herself from her husband's drunken behaviour, or when Mackenzie witnessed her indignant outburst in the gallery of the House of Commons as she reacted to his party's parliamentary 252 behaviour. Other narrative occasions come directly from Agnes herself in the form of political or travel sketches that she published in literary periodicals. Along with her diary, these historical vignettes and published works offer us a chance to re-imagine the people, places, and events of the Dominion of Canada's early history as they were experienced by a woman.

Academic discussions about the significance of gender and nation have increased critical awareness of the traditions and policies that have excluded women from histories and the cultural production of national memory. The collection of papers in ReCalling

Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production, for example, address such issues of privilege, selection, and historical narratives. Originating from a conference held in late June of 2003, these papers by literary and cultural studies scholars discuss the status of early Canadian research in the contemporary imagination. In the book's introduction, editors Jennifer Blair, Daniel Coleman, Kate Higginson, and

Lorraine York write that the renewed interest in Canadiana has been brought about partly because of an increased accessibility to archive material thanks to web-based archives and search engines (like Canadiana.org), and reprints of obscure texts by presses like

Tecumseh and McClelland and Stewart (the New Canadian Library series) (xv). Internet technology has made other texts, like The Letters ofLetitia Hargrove and The Canadian

Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893-1898, available online. Furthermore, the editors argue, this increase in access has brought about a corresponding increase in academic debate about these reprinted texts, the motivations for recovering them, and the past literary criticism concerning them. 253

Agnes Macdonald lived in a fascinating time in Canada's past, and in many ways, her individual struggles to reconcile her private and public selves mirrored the fledgling

Dominion's struggles to juggle its loyalties to Great Britain and its desire to become an independent nation. As a woman, wife, and socially prominent individual, Lady Agnes

Macdonald would on occasion find her own loyalties pulled in different directions: between her Queen and her prime minister; her God and her husband; and her private and public families. Fortunately, while the politics in her own home, the politics in the House of Commons, and the politics involving Great Britain and the Dominion did not always have complementary agendas,3 the three main environments or "houses" in which Agnes

Macdonald moved—church, Parliament, and Earnscliffe—made similar demands upon her as wife, as mother, and as Lady Macdonald. Thus, she was often able to reconcile her personal and public interests and responsibilities. Busily moving from household to

House of Commons, where she respectively attended family and Prime Minister, Agnes soon realized that a "good housekeeper" promoted the interests of family and nation, no matter what house she happened to be in.

Long after her days as Prime Minister's wife, Agnes continued to write about

Canadian politics. In the correspondence she maintained with Joseph Pope from 1891 to

1914 while he was executor to the Macdonald Estate, Agnes kept him up-to-date on what she thought of British-Canadian relations, Wilfrid Laurier's politics, and how the Borden

Administration should best approach Tariff Reform. In exchange for her political insights, or perhaps to keep them equally as well informed, Pope kindly forwarded Agnes the latest Hansard Reports.4 254

Not one to forget such a good friend, it is hardly surprising to find Agnes (now the

Baroness Macdonald of Eamscliffe) in 1896 once again settling down with pen and paper to let Prime Minister Charles Tupper know "in the strongest English [she] could get off the tip of [her] best pen'" that he should appoint Joseph Pope the next Under Secretary of

State (Reynolds 153).5 Surely, as Pope must have agreed, this was wise counsel: maybe political "impropriety" in a woman wasn't such a bad thing, after all. Notes

1.1 would like to thank Wendy Robbins for bringing this saying to my attention. See her "Gendering ImagiNations" for its source and for her discussion about its relevance in discussions of gender and fictional female characters "who often feel like second-class citizens, trying to be 'as Canadian as possible under the circumstances'" (167).

2. Careless based his criticism on Alexander Mackenzie's 1882 biography of reformer George Brown, an edition that included few personal letters exchanged between Brown and his wife, Anne. Aside from undermining Anne's obvious role as political wife, such selective editorial decisions wrongly suggest that home and the House of Commons were completely polarized and gendered spaces. In reading some of what Mackenzie omitted, however, we soon learn that Anne was indeed a confidante, and that Brown's domestic life filtered into his political world very much. On 20 June 1864, for example, when Brown is offered a new cabinet post in the Cartier-Macdonald ministry, he writes to Anne: "How I do wish you were here to advise me. You cannot tell how I wish you had been" (qtd. in Careless 65). Several months later at the Quebec Conference, Brown reports showing baby pictures of his daughter Maggie (Careless 72).

3. One example would be the behind-the-scenes political manipulation that Great Britain engaged in during the Washington Treaty talks. See Creighton, specifically Chapter Three: "Fish and Diplomacy" in The Old Chieftain for a detailed overview of what occurred (and at Canada's expense) during these treaty talks.

4. See Chapter 13 in Reynolds.

5. Here, Louise Reynolds excerpts a letter written by Agnes to Pope, 30 January 1896. 256

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Notes:

1) Where I have been unable to determine a word in Agnes Macdonald's diary, I have either replaced the unclear word with [?], or have made an attempt at a transcription, which appears in square brackets, followed by a question mark. For example, [earnest?] in the entry for 17 Nov. 1867.

2) I have streamlined the text to exclude words Agnes crossed out of her diary, and to include words she obviously meant to insert (as indicated by her notations within her diary). I have also replaced many single dashes with commas, for greater ease of reading.

3) Many titles Agnes mentions in her diary appear to be shortened versions of much longer titles. I use the longer, more complete titles in my table.

4) In some instances, I have been unable to provide the complete titles of books, author names, or publication dates and biographical data. For these references, I provide whatever information Agnes includes in her diary.

5) Finally, there are a few oblique references to books and reading that Agnes makes in her diary, but which I have not yet been able to clarify and thus confirm. I have not included these references in the table below. A post-dissertation project would attempt to identify them, and also to add more information to the appendix that follows.

READING & AUTHOR COMMENTS IN DIARY DIARY PUBLICATION ENTRY DATE DATE

The Anxious Inquirer John Angell "John says he was a congregationalist. He 17 Nov. after Salvation Today. James must have been a truly spiritual man." 1867 (186?) (1785-1859)

The Old Helmet. Elizabeth "I find it has done me much good. I 17 Nov. (1863?) Wetherell admire it very much. There is something 1867 pseud. Susan so [earnest?] & loving in its religious Warner tone. Religious novels are most (1819-1888) unsatisfactory to me, but my Helmet is not a religious novel."

"The Old Helmet pleased me much-the 1 Dec. 1867 style was so fresh & unworldly-it came like a breath of pure air across the world's hot fevered currents." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 279

New America. Deson "which Mr. Alexander had given me & 1 Dec. 1867 which Sir John did not approve of—for me."

Life and Letters of Alexander "[I] liked it so very much. Her earnest, 1 Dec. 1867 Elizabeth, Last Moody Stuart life pervading religion is such an example Duchess of Gordon. (1809-1898) in these fashionable days of outward (1865) worship. I think we are all so formal, & so untrue in our devotions, not intentionally, but because a lot of false, formal creed is [living?] among us."

"[I] felt greatly better for its perusal. I do yearn to be better."

Articles from The "Read ... the article amendment of the 1 Dec. 1867 Edinburgh. Anglican rubric & found it much my way of thinking. Dr. Jones would not call it orthodox, but I am not orthodox I fear."

Citoyenne Jacqueline, Henrietta "such a thrilling story of the French 6 Dec. 1867 a Woman's Lot in the Keddie Revolution!" French Revolution. pseud. Sarah (1865) Tytler (1827-1914)

By the Trent. Eliza S. Oldham "the last Prize Temperance story & very 6 Dec. 1867 (1879) well written."

The Last Chronicle of Anthony "good, but tedious." 1 Jan. 1868 Barset. Trollope (1867) (1815-1882) "The little episodes... touching the Dobbs 19 Jan. 1868 Broughton family—Madalina & Conway Dalrvmple—are almost shvlv described, read refreshingly after the bolder descriptions of wrong living & wrong acting, which we are all getting only too well accustomed to." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's r< 280

The Jesuits in North Francis Parkman "It is light & chatty, tho' interesting & 1 Jan. 1868 America in the (1823-1893) graphic enough. Marvellous men indeed Seventeenth Century. were those Jesuits in the wild forests of a (1867) then strange land, among the bloody savages, at whose mercy they were! Tame minded is our religious faith in contrast with that which led them forth & kept them up thro' all they must have had to encounter! I have an idea that there is much exaggeration, but granting that, there is still much left, which ought to make us, Idlers of the English church really ashamed."

"I am sorry now I chose that book-really 14 Jan. 1868 I did not choose it, the others did[;] however it is amusing & makes a good beginning."

"Still at the 'Jesuits in America' 4 Feb. 1868 wondering over their powers of endurance, fortitude and self sacrifices. The Book interests us, as telling of so much of the early History of our country, but many of the records are unnecessarily distressing and seem much exaggerated. Still it is a very readable Book."

"We finished 'Jesuits in America'--it is a 22 Feb. 1868 melancholy sort of book, full of suffering & disappointment, of stories of high hopes blighted & strong hearts broken, of high aims frustrated, of useless sacrifice and of the unavailing heroism. So at least it seems, on first thoughts; still tho' the first Christian Martyrs on this Soil, seem to have perished in a vain, and also mad struggle against powers of darkness overwhelming, I think Some little seed was left by the wayside. The whole failure of their gigantic plan for conversion, is quite comprehensible. It was begun & continued too much in their own thought. There seems too, a lack [of] looking unto Jesus; a striving after 'things spiritual' without the great Help we are so earnestly asked to seek." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 281

Le Blocus. Episode de Alexandre "interesting enough, but too much like all 2 Jan. 1868 la fin de I 'Empire. Chatrian the others by the same author." (1868) (1826-1890) & Emile Erckmann (1822-1899)

Histoire d'un homme Erckmann- 11 Jan. 1868 dupeuple. nd Chatrian

A Short Account of the (Mrs. Cresswell) "The whole Style of the Life described in 12 Jan. 1868 Life of Mrs. Elizabeth it struck me very much.—The hearty- Fry. vigorous religious tone of every page, the (1850) high spirituality of the Belief-the energy & power of its practical results, pleased me so much. Whatever one may think of her neglect of home duties~(& something like that peeps thro' even her Daughter's fond admiration & approval) one cannot help acknowledging, I think, that she was specially raised up to do a good work, & that her influence & example were~& are now-most useful. Many of its passages were most instructive to me, & all thro' the Book I kept thinking of the Parable of the Talents. Alas! It made me remember how mine are rusting~& yet (for self reproach is very easy & very common—& in my weakness, I gather up any crumb of consolation) & yet, I feel that under God's blessing, I too have a sacred & Holy Mission & I too am praying His good help to fulfil it."

"Her foreign travels are interesting 12 Jan. 1868 enough, & I think I formed a pleasing idea of her very much because she seemed to appreciate scenery which is one of my keenest pleasures. In the lingering weakness of her death bed there is nothing painful or distressing, & still more satisfactory no rhapsodies recorded, no unreal & affected convictions expressed or paraded, which seems to me to spoil so many religious Biographies."

Articles from Pall 11 Jan. Mall magazines 1868; 27-29 Feb. 1868; 23 April 1868 Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 282

Paul the Pope and Anthony 19 Jan. 1868 Paul the Friar. (1861) Trollope

The Silent Hour. by the author of "I began it today & like it much. I read a 19 Jan. 1868 "Essays by different The Gentle Life sermon out of it first now to Mama on the Old & well known (Henry van 'Prayers of Mankind' & we both found it Divines" Dyke, 1852- very good." 1933)

Cometh up as a Rhoda "a decidedly objectionable book—perhaps 19 Jan. 1868 Flower. Broughton that is strong, for anything so vulgar in (1867) (1840-1920) style & commonplace in writing of all things I hate the fashionable delineation of passion in novels a la mode. The scenes in "Cometh up" especially Nellie's last Interview with her Lover, when, herself a wife, she tells him how dearly she loves him & how much she wishes never to leave him, is evidently intended to be powerful, but in my humble opinion, it is only coarse & strong. No subtle touches, no fine or refined working atones for the broad badness of the tendency of the whole scene. It is all flippant mischief, & I do not like it! I think we are gliding into a very dangerous kind of highly seasoned fiction. Authors, authoresses in particular seem to think it necessary to write something very startling, or very bad, so that they may attain as nearly as possible the Wood & Braddon Standard."

"Fast Life" Anthony "when Trollope tries to write "Fast Life" I 19 Jan. 1868 Trollope think he does it in an ashamed mild sort of way, & from that I suppose him to be a really better judging mind than some of his fellow authors & authoresses."

Home in the Holy Mrs. Elizabeth "It is a lively description of life in Modern 19 Jan. 1868 Land. Anne Finn Jerusalem, & its pleasant style makes it (1866) (7-1921) very readable. How I should dearly love to travel in Palestine! One's mouth waters to read Mrs. Finn's description of the places we read of hallowed for all time, as the scene of our Blessed Saviour's Earthly Life. She does not give one to imagine that modern Jerusalem is the dirty, poor, crumbling city that some writers have depicted it. And her conviction that the country is a very fertile one, was quite a new light to me." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 283

Froude 's Essays on James A. Froude 2 Feb. 1868 the Times of Erasmus (1818-1894) and Luther.

North-West Passage Viscount "really charming~a vivid, pleasant 3-4 Feb. By Land, Being the William account of their journey across the 1868 Narrative of an Fitzwilliam continent & their route over the Rocky Expedition from the Milton mountains. Written in most pleasant Atlantic to the Pacific, (1839-1877) Chatty Style. The Book containing much Undertaken with the & information imparted in the pleasantest View of Exploring a Dr. Walter way. It seems to me as if I must sometime Route Across the Butler Cheadle or other in my Life have known very Continent to British (1836-1910) intimately the Young Viscount & his Columbia Through cheery medical friend, the one handed British Territory, By Assiniboine, the quaint, fearful Doctor, & One of the Northern the Silent Squaw." Passes. (1865)

Letters from Europe. John W. Forney "He is a fierce Republican owner, & 5 Feb. 1868 (1867) (1817-1881) Editor of two or three Northern newspapers, sees everything English thro' blackened spectacles, and is very unsparing in his criticisms! I liked some of his Sketches tho' and I do think the inequalities of social life in England, strike a stranger~I know they struck me!! The wickedness of the poorer classes & the luxury of the higher is certainly somewhat remarkable, but English People—and those who even in the colonies constantly visit England are apt to forget how much these things jar. It is a delicious country for the rich, but I should hate it for the Poor, and there is no denying, at least I think not, that the Middle Class toady & fawn."

"[I] finished them. Republican-red 6 Feb. 1868 Republican all through with some good 'bits' to my mind. John says some of his Statements are untrue, that he was misled, & certainly for four months visit he has a good deal to say about Europe. Every ninth man in England is a Pauper or nearly so~unfortunately I believe this is true." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 284

The Life of William Robert Isaac "His aims were high indeed. I specially 22 Feb. 1868 Wilberforce. Wilberforce like his conscientiousness about the (1838) (1802-1857) spending of his time. I hope I may learn & some useful Lessons from this, and am Samuel trying to read it slowly and carefully so Wilberforce that it may retain its place in my memory. (1805-1873) I find I had almost forgotten how to read steadily, and had no idea how given up I had become to restlessness until I begin to try & accomplish something."

"I am so much interested in William 23 Feb. 1868 Wilberforce and his times. I like his energy, his devotedness and the lofty spirit in which he worked."

"The five volumes did not, by any means, 22 March drag. It is a strong tonic, that biography & 1868 good for the soul. As I read it Longfellow's Blacksmith kept ringing in my ears 'Something attempted, something done'-but I liked the calm closing of his later years. As I read of them, I heard— There remaineth a rest'~& c.~echoing softly, thro' the tones of the old weary Christian as he faded away. It is interesting too—the Book—in many ways to me, tho' as a Diary the style is very meagre. John says there ought to be more in it. Sometimes what the children call the 'Hurry-skurry' of it, grows fatiguing, & if one may dare to say so, I think it was a perplexing Life. So much undertaken-of course the chief feature in every book about Wilberforce is the Part he took in Abolition. The poorest, meanest Life would have been gloriously crowned by that, and now American Slavery has been fought against & blotted out by the men, whose career must have been strengthened & perhaps suggested by his example. This style of reading is so satisfactory and I am so glad I have begun it. May God bless it to me. In the hurry and often vexatiousness of this Life, one needs something to lift up the Heart. I would give mine entirely. Surely it has been won by many mercies, by the crowning one—at least. I only pray I may not be dazzled." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 285

Life ofWilberforce. "I often wonder in reading some passages 19 April (con't) in some religious Biographies if the 1868 writers were really as good as they say they felt themselves to be. I could never imagine a truly Christian person being anything but filled with a sense of their unworthy shortcoming! Now 'Wilberforce's Life' was so free from that. His humility was so genuine all thro' his Diaries & letters!!"

The Huguenots: Their Samuel Smiles "it is interestingly written & the first part 22 Feb. 1868 Settlements, Churches, (1812-1904) useful & very good, but the final chapters and Industries in disappoint me. However it is the kind of England and Ireland. reading I think good~of a religious (1867) tendency, and contains some stirring lessons of suffering for Christ. Would we so suffer, we with our selfish narrow hearts, always self seeking, self indulging, self-mentioning!"

Wanderings among Rev. Henry A. 22 Feb. 1868 the Falashas in Stern Abyssinia. (1862)

Batavia. Henri 25 Feb. 1868 (1858) Conscience (1812-1883)

Life of Trust: being a George Miiller "a favorite book of mine." 25 Feb. 1868 narrative of the Lord's (1805-1898) dealings with George "a remarkable book." 26 Feb. 1868 Miiller, written by himself. "Its bare style its quaintness, its rugged 22 March (1861) Cromwellian method I freely admit, but 1868 its living power, its wonderful, faithful vitality, its high holy Christian teaching, troubled by no party leanings cannot be denied either! I do like & find it most useful. It has taught me what I never knew before—Prayer is a full & complete sense as a Power, an Agency, by & thro' Faith. And I have so proved it. The dav mav come when I shall tell how the story of the Lord's dealings with me, would be [just?] as wonderful. Blessed be his Holy Name."

"Finished Mtiller's Life of Trust." To bed 29 March early, tired & anticipating a busy week. 1868 What Joy & peace in my heart. What great marvellous blessings surround me!" Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 286

Polynesian W.T. Pritchard 22 March Reminiscences; or, 1868 Life in the South Pacific Islands. (1866)

The life and death of Harriet Parr "my reading party came in & we all 24 March Jeanne d'Arc, called (1828-1900) enjoyed 'Jeanne d'Arc' till near one." 1868 the Maid. (1866) "My reading class & all much pleased 31 March with 'Jeanne of [sic] Arc' In its way a 1868 nice little Book."

Memoirs of the life of William Roberts " I d'ont [sic] think I can at all realize the 23 March Mrs. Hannah More. mind of a Literary woman." 1868 (1836) "Read some of Hannah More & struggled over stupid Sir Philip Francis." In reading Biographies sometimes, what dislike one feels for the Hero!"

"Read much of Mrs. Hannah More's Life 29 March but am perhaps disappointed. It lacks 1868 vividness & life after Wilberforce's. One passage struck me~as follows. 'I have the mortification to find that petty & (as they are called) innocent employments can detain my heart from heaven as much as tumultuous pleasures.' 'You will tell me that if my affections be estranged from their proper object, it signifies not much whether a bunch of roses or a pack of cards does it.' She is writing to Wm. Newton & alluding to the time she devoted to the cultivation of her flowers."

St. Luke 9th "Reading St. Luke 9th-with Ellen-after 23 March praying for teaching to teach her. She 1868 seems more thoughtful. I do hope I may be useful to her. Wrote about her confirmation to Dr. Jones. I think what struck me most in the chapter was 'What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world.' In reading of the great Pitt, that verse often passes thro' my mind, there is something exquisitely sad to me—in his closing years. In his disappointments & failures and in his broken heart—for surely he died of [at?] Austerlitz & in his turn the Hero of Austerlitz died of a broken heart & just so sadly. Vanity of vanities all!" Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 287

Le Recit d'une Soeur. Mrs. Pauline "am disappointed by the commencement." 31 March (1866) Marie Armande 1868 Craven (1808-1891) "I lay down wearied with "Le Recit" until 6 April I fell asleep for 20 minutes & woke 1868 refreshed."

"Reading still "Le Recit d'une Soeur." it 15 April is very interesting in its way~& I like 1868 much its devoted Christian tone. There may be too much flattery & rather too many loving Phrases for English tastes, but it has a fresh, pure tone, spite of being very French & foreign."

"There is in 'Le Recit d'une Soeur' much 19 April to admire on uprightness~so to speak and 1868 spirituality. My life might be so careless & seem more earthly than it is~without some attempt so to order my reading, as to bring my mind into intercourse with better things."

"Reading "Le Recit & much charmed with 23 April its purity & spirituality of tone. I like the 1868 transcendentalism—it is so much better for the mind, that [sic] the prosaic worldly practicalness of modern fiction."

"Read yesterday a critique in Blackwood 30 Aug. on 'Le Recit d'une Soeur' & books of a 1868 similar tendency & style. I thought it a good review but hard & material. There is much truth however in its remarks on sentimental religion, & on enthusiasm. They are glowing & beautiful to read- almost picturesque if one may use the word, but in the real, galling, unsentimental trials, the troubles in which it is so difficult to see anything ennobling, I somehow doubt if that estatic [sic] Creed would serve." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 288

Le Recti d'une Soeur. "Much & greatly as I admire the Book I 30 Aug. (con't) can see the faults alluded to by 1868 Blackwood's critique. It is so much easier after all to bear the discomforts one imposes on oneself, than to bear the trials others make you endure. I think it would be far less difficult to give up all reading except of a religious tendency, to go to church in the cold grey of morning to wear an unbecoming habit, than to bend one's will to another's or to bear patiently a hidden home cross. After all I feel as if some tone less estatic [sic] were a healthier one, for the wear & tear of this work-a-day world. I am afraid no woman with my vocation in life for instance, could conveniently or consistently, not to say rightly spend so much time in white muslin and rapture. I am afraid she would find many duties that required much repression of too strong sentiment & that very continual church going in some cases is well nigh impossible. For myself I am inclined to find, that private prayer is more absorbed, but then I am dreadfully shy in religious things."

The Life of Mary Anne Mary Anne "a very excellent religious Biography~I 15 April Schimmelpennick. (Galton) would adopt as much as possible, reading 1868 (1858) Schimmelpennick of a serious tone for the present, and I (1778-1856) trust, that in my feeble way, I may be able to do good to my self & even to others. I would earnestly try to enter my protest against some of the follies & vices of the present day—Novel reading is certainly a folly—if not a vice—and, tho' I used to be fond of them, now I am losing all taste for them."

"She was very good, religious & very 19 April sensible, and is strong against many of the 1868 follies of her day."

'"The Life of Mrs. Schimmelpennick' is that of a clever serious minded woman, but somehow there are many wants in it— to my mind. I think she must have been very tired of being sensible from her very Babyhood!" Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 289

The Analogy of Bishop Joseph "John says it is the most difficult book in 20 April Religion, Natural and Butler the English language." 1868 Revealed, To the (1692-1752) Constitution and "I 'took in,' but slowly. Great talk about 25 April Course of Nature. Fenians." 1868 (1736)

Leaves from the Queen Victoria "[I] like it. There is such a spirit of 10 May Journal of our Life in (1819-1901) content & happy temperedness all thro its 1868 the Highlands. pages & if not the writing of a very clever (1868) woman at least the evidence of a wise one."

Memoirs of the Life John Heneage "it is very light & most amusing—and 27 Aug. and Reign of King Jesse gives one a great admiration for the Elder 1868 George the Third. (1815-1874) Pitts." (1867)

"Contes" Alfred de "they are trifling & very absurd. John says 27 Aug. Musset some are bad. I d'ont [sic] think any in 1868 this volume are that but puerile exceedingly."

Monks of the West. Charles "I like his very devotional style. I delight 27 Aug. (1863-1877) Montalambert in books about good devoted people—men 1868 (1810-1870) & women with high aims & great capacity for self denial, & above all who possess that glorious lofty Faith, which is so grand to believe in!"

Life of Bishop Harvey "It is very interesting, telling of a young 30 Aug. Mackenzie. Goodwin, Dean man's mission work in Natal & Central 1868 of Ely Africa—such a cheerful devoted Christian as he must have been. A life full of wholesome happy work is so much to be envied, of all toil is the toil of pleasure! I am growing cross, idle, & spoiled & need many hours of thought & self examination."

Periodicals {Pall Mall, 31 Aug. Blackwood's, and 1868 Helena's Household).

an article in "read aloud as usual, & to myself the 2 Sept. 1868 Blackwood's on article in Blackwood on Disraeli." Disraeli

Lost and Saved. Mrs. Caroline "It excited me painfully & I went to bed 5 Sept. 1868 (1863) Norton unhappy." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 290

A Churchman's Guide Robert Brett "I liked [it] very much indeed, for some 21 Sept. to Faith & Piety: a (1808-1874) things, as the children say." 1868 manual of instruction and devotions. (1871?)

Cruise Alone. McGregor 23 Sept. 1868

Massacre of St. William White 24 Sept. Bartholomew. 1868

Adam and the Dominick "Very new theories. The chapter on the 27 Sept. Adamite. McCausland origin of language very remarkable. Since 1868 (1806-1873) John told me to read very few Novels~I am losing some of my Taste for very light Books."

"The Seabord Parish" "such a charming Sunday story." 3 Jan. 1869 (in Sunday at Home)

Dombey and Son. Charles Dickens 5, 7, 9 Jan. (1812-1870) 1869

Essay on Pitt & Fox Bulwer Lytton 7 Sept. 1869 (1803-1873)

Life of the Reverend "A faithful Christian man it seems to me, 17 Jan. 1869 Henry [V?] Elliott but of no very high Type—his Journal in travelling & his letters, good, but no great spirituality in style of writing."

Cruise of the HMS Rev. John "Heavy, light reading is Prince Alfred's 29 Jan. 1869 Galatea, Captain Milner cruise—a dreadful waving of flags & HRH The Duke of decorating of Arches & yet some Edinburgh, KG in interesting scraps about the gold mines & 1867-1868. their working." (1869) "Read in the 'Cruise of the Galatea' of the 3 Feb. 1869 attempt on Prince Alfred's life by a Fenian at Sydney-that reminds me of the wretched Whelan."

"I finished the Galatea's Cruise & flatter 4 Feb. 1869 myself I know a little more about the Antipodes than I did before reading it, but there is so much flummery than t'is difficult to get wheat from chaff."

article on Jean 22 Jan. 1869 Baptiste Colbert

"Elliott's Life" Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 291

Historical Characters. Sir Henry "found 'Talleyrand' most interesting. 27 Jan. 1869 (1868) Bulwer Much of it is very striking as is History, & (William Henry all the writing good. I am much Lytton Earl interested." Bulwer) (1801-1872) "I finished Bulwer's 'Talleyrand.' 3 Feb. 1869 Talleyrand's life is very interesting & his times stirring. I shall read some day, a longer history of him. I am interested in the Lives of Statesmen, because of my Husband's tastes & career."

"Read today a sketch of Cobbett's Life 5 Feb. 1869 among Sir Henry Bulwer's Historical Characters. It is styled 'The Contentious Man' & so styled truly. What a restless curious life, & what talents much wasted! It is so often so, talent misapplied~or wasted. Perhaps Cobbett's were more the former than the latter. He must have been a horrid man to meet in society, & most disagreeable as a rule! I have seen him at Madame Tussaud's & there he looks so honest and down [right?] & good hearted. Not like a down[right?] man who changed from strong conservatism, to red hot Liberalism—or one who would bring Tom Paine's Bones back to England—to be worshipped! Or something very like it!"

"We begin to read 'Canning's Life' this evening."

Martin Chuzzlewit. Charles Dickens "my light Book is now that delightful 4 Feb. 1869 (1844) (1812-1870) Martin Chuzzlewit. I am slowly re-reading Mr. Dickens-having only read his volumes really thro' long ago, when almost a child." Appendix A: Agnes Macdonald's reading 292

Our New Way Round Charles Carleton "a very nice book ... which tho' written by 1 Dec. 1869 the World. Coffin an American, who can't forego hitting (1869) (1823-1896) Britain and British rule-whenever a favorable opportunity presents itself, still makes a very readable Book-something more than amusing ... I am very much interested in it, & have been reading regularly."

"It has given me the only information abt. 7 Jan. 1870 China, that I ever possessed & makes me long to travel. But the volume is intensely Yankee-and radical~so perhaps I had better not say too much in its praise either here or elsewhere!"

The English Note- Nathaniel "[they] annoy me a great deal. It is an 2 Jan. 1871 Books. Hawthorne amusing book to me I suppose in some (ed. Sophia (1804-1864) way, or I should not read it, but he is so Hawthorne, 1870) sneering, & so prejudiced! In the bottom of his heart I can see he, spite of himself, admires Oxford and our beloved old cathedrals, but in how grudging & reluctant a manner. It makes my mouth water, to think how much the beggar saw, and it makes my eyes water, to see how little he appreciated!"

"a sort of rough Diary kept by him during 9 Jan. 1871 his four years as U.S. consul in Liverpool. He travelled to England & Scotland during that time, and writes very naturally & pleasantly but in a very prejudiced style."

General references to For 1868: reading the Bible 24 March, 12 April, 1 Sept. Also see 14 Mar. 1875. CURRICULUM VITAE

Robin Sutherland

Wilfrid Laurier University, B.A. (1990) Acadia University, M.A. (1995)

Academic Publications: "Searching for Our Alma Maters: Women Professors in Canadian Fiction Written by Women. In collaboration with Wendy Robbins and Shao-Pin Luo. Journal of Canadian Studies 42.2 (Spring 2008): 43-72.

"Introduction." Joan at Halfway. By Grace Dean McLeod Rogers. Halifax: Formac, 2007. vii-xvi.

'"Good Housekeeping': Agnes Macdonald writes about Home and Parliament in nineteenth-century Canada." Studies in Canadian Literature 29.1 (Autumn 2004): 35- 49.

"(Re)Discovering Hidden Voices in Canadian Literature: Emerging Identities in Selected Works by Sylvia Fraser." The Canadian Vision 6 - Publication of Conference Proceedings. Milazzo, Sicily: Universita di Messina, 1999. 91-103.

Creative Publications: "Eternal Optimist" (narrative poem/exhibition piece). "The River and the City: New Brunswick scenes by Jackson Ehrlich." Art Exhibit. Cobalt Gallery. Saint John, NB. 10 Sept - 2 Oct., 2004.

"A Bizarre Love Triangle" (short story) lichen 5:2 (Fall 2003): 84-85.

"Singing in the Pain" (short story) Room of One's Own 23:3 (2001): 55-59.

"Three Times a Lady" (short story) Zygote 7:2 (Summer 2000): 6-9.

"Dan's Days" (short story) The Gaspereau Review 5 (Fall 1998): 27-33.

"White Lines" (short story) White Water Journal 8:1 (Spring/Summer 1998): 8-9.

Conference Presentations: '"Good Housekeeping': Agnes Macdonald writes about Home and Parliament in nineteenth-century Canada." "Women in Motion." Mount Allison University. Sackville, May 2003. "Lady Agnes Macdonald: The Life & Lines of (M)other Canada." Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities, Toronto, May 2002.

"Canadian Campus Fiction: Women in the Faculty Body." Contributor and co-presenter with Dr. Wendy Robbins. Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities, Quebec City, May 2001.

"The Professor as She: Portraits from Canadian Fiction by Women, 1947-1999." Contributor and co-presenter with Dr. Wendy Robbins. "Women in the Academy: Global Warming and the Chilly Climate" Colloquium, Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities, Edmonton, May 2000.

'"He Said; She Said': Retelling the Fur Trade with the Nineteenth-century Woman Traveller" "The Future of Memory: VII European Multidisciplinary Seminar on Canadian Studies." Milazzo, Sicily, October 1999.

"The Silent Princess: Language-Politics and Castle-Politics in selected works by Sylvia Fraser." "Women's Exiles: An International, Interdisciplinary Conference." Universidad de Huelva. Huelva, Spain, May 1998.