The first history of the battered women’s shelter movement in Canada, No Place to Go traces the development of transition houses and services for abused women and the campaign that made wife battering a political issue. Nancy Janovicek focuses on women’s groups in small cities and rural communities, examining anti-violence activism in Thunder Bay, Kenora, Nelson, and Moncton. She also pays close attention to Aboriginal women in northwestern Ontario, where the connections between family violence and the devaluation of indigenous culture in Canadian society complicated effots to end domestic violence. This book lays bare the aims and challenges of establishing women’s shelters in non-urban areas. The local histories presented here show how transition houses became hubs in a larger movement to change attitudes about domestic violence and to lobby for legislation to protect women.

Nancy Janovicek is an associate professor of History at the University of Calgary.

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Historian Nancy Janovicek has undertaken the important task of outlining the history of establishing transnational housing (and services) for battered women in Canadian small towns. Her writing is accessible, combining narrative from shelter activists with her interpretation of the early documents from each of the communities. This is a much needed contribution to the scholarly knowledge about the battered women’s shelter movement, documenting the struggles to get services for abused women and to frame domestic violence as a public issue rather than a private one. […] This would be an excellent text for undergraduate courses as an exploration of the way we were and the journey to where we are and hope to move.

Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 62, Fall 2008