About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
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Description
Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities, but scholars have argued that very little changed. How can these interpretations be reconciled? Making the Best of It examines the ways in which gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority populations, girls and women, and different parts of Canada and Newfoundland. They reassess topics such as women in the military and in munitions factories, and tackle entirely new subjects such as wartime girlhood in Quebec.
Collectively, these essays broaden the scope of what we know about the changes the war wrought in the lives of Canadian women and girls, and address wider debates about memory, historiography, and feminism.
Contributor Notes
Sarah Glassford is a social historian and an archivist in the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor. She is the author of Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross, and coeditor of A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War. Amy Shaw is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Lethbridge and a research associate with the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic, and Disarmament Studies. She is the author of Crisis of Conscience: Conscientious Objection in Canada during the First World War and coeditor of A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War.
Contributors: Graham Broad, Heidi Coombs, Marlene Epp, Claire L. Halstead, Sarah Hogenbirk, Barbara Lorenzkowski, Lisa Moore, Lisa Pasolli, Jennifer Shaw, Joseph Tohill, Sarah Van Vugt
Editorial Reviews
[T]his is a very useful study, one in which the authors make full use of British and American research, and the bibliography alone will make it invaluable.
— CHOICE Connect
This collection [of essays] importantly brings our attention to voices and perspectives that have excluded from World War II Canadian history and, in doing so, directs us to think further about areas that remain to be explored.
— University of Toronto Quarterly
