| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, editors. Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax. Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 318. Cloth $65.00, paper $35.00.
In the last decade there has been increasing interest in the postwar period of Canadian social history, a transformative period in state-citizen relations that deeply affected understandings of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Much of this scholarship has focused on the national level. This collection of essays, edited by Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, shifts the terrain by exploring these dramatic changes in social life at the local level. Halifax is a wonderful site for such local analysis as a port city with international influxes of people and ideas, a place dominated by a military presence, and the capital of a province considered a leader in Atlantic Canada yet one also known for its conservative social values.	1
Out of this city came a surge of women's activism in the postwar period that reconstructed women's roles and provided new services for those in need. It is women's activism of this particular period that is the focus of the collection. This activism was tinged with maternalism, which, in many cases, had both liberating and oppressive effects on various groups of women. The contributors to the collection are aware of the contradictory nature of such maternalist causes, but for the most part the authors choose to focus on the positive and celebrate the contributions that women made during the era. They highlight how women improved the lives of women and children through women's organizations, women's volunteer experiences, and individual campaigns. Contributors address four major themes: the role of the state, the secularization of services, the influence of the Cold War on Halifax, and the complicated relationship between city and province.	2
Several essays in this collection are simply gems, giving us an understanding of a certain aspect of women's activism that has not been fully developed previously. Here I must first acknowledge Wanda Thomas Bernard and Fingard's essay on African-Nova Scotian domestic workers. This is an important contribution, a first in Canadian scholarship, detailing the challenges of these domestic workers and the racism that they experienced in their postwar work lives. And yet, I want to know more, particularly about the relationship between Jewish women employers and African-Nova Scotian domestic workers. Was there more of a bond, an understanding of exclusion, between these two groups than between the workers and their Christian bosses? I also want to know more about their experiences of racism, harassment, and exploitation as domestic workers. In recent scholarship there is considerable attention to these negative aspects of this job, and yet it appears that these issues are glossed over here. What kind of worker solidarity was there between these domestic workers? Above all, I want to hear the voices of these domestic workers. It is such a shame that the authors interviewed these women and yet provide no quotations where the women speak for themselves about their work experiences.	3
Shirley Tillotson's essay on child welfare worker Gwendolen Lantz is beautifully crafted to personify the tremendous changes in public and private welfare through the career of one woman. Unlike some of the other essays, Tillotson provides a strong analysis that situates Lantz within the political, economic, and social milieu of her time. This is very thoroughly researched to capture the nuances of the tensions between Lantz and various social agencies. Tillotson is not afraid to provide a critique of the child welfare pioneer, criticizing her strong opposition to unwed mothers. She also provides important research through the use of the city directory to determine that Lantz lived much of her adult life with one particular woman. While it is not possible to define the nature of this relationship, it is vitally important that the living arrangement be declared. The history has yet to be written that documents just how many women living with long-term female companions (including the likes of Charlotte Whitton) were instrumental in the development of social welfare in Canada.	. . .

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