Home Social Landscape Featured Articles Modesty and Meaning: Women in Alberta Local Histories

Modesty and Meaning: Women in Alberta Local Histories

by Nanci Langford, Ph.D.

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Stiles (1985) and Langford (1994) have identified several features of this collective memory: an emphasis on some aspects of settlement over others, a rigidity of roles for men, women and children and a particular characterization of women as capable, willing, self-sacrificing and almost saint-like, help-mates in the frontier family enterprises. Where does this uniform view, which is both a stereotypical and romantic view of settlement come from? Most of the published accounts of the settlement years in Alberta were written by the second generation to live on the homesteads, the children of the original couple who broke the land and created the family farm. This generation remembers the hard work of their parents, but their own lives are recalled as ones of freedom, exploration of nature, close family times and adventure. They idealize their parents, in ways which are often close to reality. The first generation of men and women to settle in rural Alberta did endure hardship and work extraordinarily hard. One of the difficulties we have in reconstructing this period is that those who lived it had little time to record what was going on in their lives, and some of it was so painful and difficult that they did not want to tell the full story of those years. These realities are reflected in the number and styles of accounts written by the first generation. Women’s homestead accounts are often carefully constructed, aware of an audience that may read them someday, although many still show their feelings about their lives. Men’s are characterized by their reporting of events and little sharing of feelings. Despite the care with which they were written, they reveal much about the lifestyle that is unpleasant, boring and tragic. These are not the accounts we have used to recreate our popular understanding of the settlement years. If we had, we would have a less homogeneous view of first generation men and women and acknowledge instead their very diverse experiences and responses to the settlement experience. It is important to acknowledge that on the surface, this generation does appear homogeneous. The process and tasks of settlement were similar, regardless of place of settlement time or resources. Settlers in the north found themselves in comparable situations to southern Alberta settlers two decades before them. Men and women had to learn specific skills, create a home, a farm or ranch enterprise, they had to partner in ways that they specialized in some tasks and shared others. Women were predominantly valued for their skills in feeding the family, this is a universal value in the period. All settlers, however reluctantly, had to believe that the life they were trying to build would eventually be better than the one they left behind. So the representations in community local histories are not inaccurate, but undoubtedly uniform in the way they make everyone brave, strong and capable, everyone skilled, and self-sacrificing.

The idealization of this generation is also influenced by a romanticizing of the act of migration and the idealization of motherhood. Ironically, a good example of this idealized version of the settlement generation, and particularly of women and women as mothers is found in a community history that is in every other way a good exception to the standard community history. Pioneer Days in Bardo, Alberta, written between 1941and 1944 by Ragna Steen and Magda Hendrickson, two amateur historians who were members of the Bardo community, is my favourite community history for a number of reasons.⁷ Here, the stories of the community and its families are organized into themes such as “Ways and Means”, “Social Life” and “Livelihood”. Women are featured in a chapter on the “Ladies’ Aid”; the chapter on “Homemaking” includes the efforts of both men and women to create comfortable secure homes for their families. Unlike most community histories, women and girls are fully integrated into the complete text, story examples of both sexes are used throughout the book. The book tells a story about the community, how its inhabitants related to and supported each other, and includes patterns of work, daily life and social interaction.

The example of idealized imagery included in this history is found both in the dedication and in a chapter called “Our Pioneer Mothers”. It is more typical of the writing found in many other community histories. Written almost as a homage, this chapter emphasizes the poverty of the pioneer generation in contrast to the fineness of their characters: “But though their faces were tanned and their hands were caloused and work-stained, they had a loving look and a tender touch for all who were in need.”⁸ The idealization of these women as mothers is found in statements such as: “Their greatest happiness was in caring for their children. Many a son and daughter of pioneers can say with Abe Lincoln, “All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother”⁹. Mixed with these kind of statements, however, are stories of real people in the Bardo area, and many of these examples support the claims that pioneer women were indeed remarkable people who suffered "incredible hardships”, “nervous fears” and accomplished marvelous feats.

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