GREAT DAMES

Great Dames is a collection of biographical sketches, memoirs, and essays about twentieth-century Canadian women from all walks of life. While attempting to capture the meaning of the ordinary lives of extraordinary women, it also explores the possibility of challenging, even subverting, the traditional view of life writing as an endeavour to 'summarize and fix in time the public careers of public men/ The fifteen essays represent a variety of alternative approaches to feminist biography, including chronological narrative, thematic exploration, multiple biography, con- versations between biographer and subject, interviews, diaries, and even fictional accounts. In selecting their subjects, from Mennonite refugee women to an Ojibwa ethnologist, the contributors were asked to consider women who would be unlikely candidates for longer biographies; in the course of their research, however, it became clear that the lives of at least two of the chosen subjects warranted book-length examination. The selection also attempts to address perceived gaps in regional, class, racial, and disciplinary representation in life writing. Together, the essays reveal that the content, form, and perspective of biography are now bound only by the creativity, research energy, and taste of the biographer.

ELSPETH CAMERON is a professor of English at the University of Tor- onto, and the author and editor of many Canadian literary biographies. JANICE DlCKlNisan associate professor in the Faculty of General Stud- ies at the University of , and the editor of Suitable for the Wilds. This page intentionally left blank Edited by Elspeth Cameron and Janice Dickin

Great Dames

UNIVERSITY OF PRESS Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com © Press Incorporated 1997 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada

ISBN 0-80200422-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-80207215-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Main entry under title: Great Dames Includes index. ISBN 080200422-9 (bound) ISBN 080207215-1 (pbk.) i. Women - Canada - Biography. I. Cameron, Elspeth, 1943- . II. Dickin, Janice. FC26.W6G731997 92O-72'o97i €96-932371-9 F1OO5.G73 1997

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. For Doris McCarthy, and for all the other great dames whose lives make a difference This page intentionally left blank