I became more and more intrigued with women as the semester progressed. I know where this interest stems from. My own mother raised four children as a single mom. She went back to University as a 40 year old and just powered through nearly two degrees. She is my hero on so many levels. What makes a human being so strong and persevere to achieve the next level of greatness?
I believe it is love and selflessness. I wanted to know more about women, and what carries them; what it means for women and their progress; women and their struggles; women and new countries; women and their entrepreneurial spirit derived from the sheer necessity to survive; women and their nationality and how this affects their placement in society; women and the men in their lives; women resisting oppression and slavery. When I went to research women in pre-confederation Canada via the internet, the information was actually far from bountiful. This interest in knowing what women have gone through really sparked the next level wanting to know more; deciding on my research project topic seemed to be easy(ish) from this point. I decided I wanted to know more about women during the Cariboo Gold Rush.
An interesting page I did come across was about women’s rights. I found this website this very insightful when applying the knowledge I have learned and then orienting it to pre-confederation Canada. The time line is very helpful in visually displaying what it took to get to where women are today. What I came across more often than not though, was a more prominent display of women as the centre of attention around the time of women’s suffrage. WWI pictures of women were easy to come by:
A pictorial display of women pre-confederation, was a bit more difficult. I did however find a great picture of the “Fille du Rois.”
I found the “filles du roi” to be absolutely fascinating. The fact that a large number of Canadians can trace their roots back to the 700 odd women that came from France under the reign of King Louise XIV is remarkable! Then 200 years later the same process was occurring in British Columbia during the settlement of Victoria and the Cariboo during the Gold Rush.
I was tremendously inspired to know more about the First Nation Peoples. How their world was literally turned upside down with settlement. How an entire group went extinct. It is so tragic. I am also taking Cultural Anthropology and this class was very symbiotic when it came to what I have learned in History. The talk of societies and how history has been documented over time.
Referencing women and pre-confederation Canada and trying to find suitable pictures, the lack of being able to find information/pictures demonstrated something to me. It demonstrated that the voice of women has been long muffled. That not until the 20th century was there advancement and that the lives of women in the mid 19th century were literally managed through the eyes of men and what they saw as best possible governance.
The well chosen readings that we did each week broadened my knowledge base and understanding of various types of environments that women manoeuvred their way through and critical thinking allowed me to not judge based on today’s standards but to research and digest the material considering the circumstances of that time.