Sojourning Sisters
The Lives and Letters of Jessie and Annie McQueen
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2004
- Category
- General, Historical, Letters
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780802048776
- Publish Date
- Oct 2004
- List Price
- $49.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780802036971
- Publish Date
- Mar 2003
- List Price
- $84.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781442680074
- Publish Date
- Feb 2003
- List Price
- $84.00
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Description
Shortly after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1886, two young sisters from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, took the train west to British Columbia. Jessie and Annie McQueen each intended to teach there for three years and then return home. In fact they remained sojourners between British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Ontario for much of their lives.
Drawing on family correspondence and supported by extensive engagement with current scholarship, Jean Barman tells the sisters' stories and, in doing so, offers a new interpretation of early settlement across Canada. As did many other women of these years, Jessie and Annie McQueen remained bound by daughterhood's obligations and sisterhood's bonds even as they got involved in their new communities. Barman takes seriously women as sojourners and uses Jessie and Annie McQueen's letters home to evoke the boundless energy and enthusiasm shown by the thousands of women who helped to form Canada's frontiers.
Like other sojourners, the McQueen sisters did not come to their new home empty handed. They brought with them a distinctly Scottish Presbyterian way of life, consistent with ideas of the nation being promoted in the public realm by fellow Nova Scotians such as George Monro Grant. Confident in their assumptions, including the central role of religion in the formation of a grand national vision, women like these sisters were critical in uniting Canada from coast to coast. Broad in its critical approach and nuanced in its interpretations, Sojourning Sisters is a major contribution to the field of life writing and to the political, gender, and social history of Canada.
About the author
Jean Barman, professor emeritus, has published more than twenty books, including On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia (Harbour Publishing, 2020) and the winner of the 2006 City of Vancouver Book Award, Stanley Park’s Secret (Harbour Publishing, 2005). Her lifelong pursuit to enrich the history of BC has earned her such honours as a Governor General’s Award, a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and a position as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
Awards
- Winner, Clio Award (BC Region), Canadian Historical Association
- Short-listed, Lietenant Governor's Medal, British Columbia Historical Foundation
Other titles by
Raincoast Chronicles Fifth Five
Fifth Five
British Columbia in the Balance
1846–1871
On the Cusp of Contact
Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia
Invisible Generations
Living between Indigenous and White in the Fraser Valley
Iroquois in the West
Maria Mahoi of the Islands
Abenaki Daring
The Life and Writings of Noel Annance, 1792-1869
The Literary Storefront: The Glory Years
Vancouver's Literary Centre 1978-1985
French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest
Good Intentions Gone Awry
Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast