New book explores how rural women of the past spent their free time
"What were small town women doing for fun?" Guelph author Rebecca Beausaert
"We know a lot about how men were having fun and there were lots of leisure activities for men, but what about women?"
That is the question Guelph author Rebecca Beausaert set out to answer in her new book Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914.
Often when people think of women from southern Ontario during the turn of the 20th century they might picture boring, quiet and meek women.
But through Beausaert's research into what women from Dresden, Tillsonburg and Elora, were up to back then, readers get a better understanding of what small town life was like for them.
Beausaert recently sat down with CBC KW's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris to talk more about the book.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article.
Craig Norris: Pursuing Play tells the story of what women did for fun in three small Ontario towns between 1870 and 1914. Why did you want to write about this specific time in history?
Rebecca Beausaert: This is a formative time in Canada's history, and when we look at leisure, it's a time when many citizens have more regulated hours of work and there's more emphasis on having fun. So you do your work day and then there's time for some form of leisure after because they're realizing the benefits of play and relaxation. It just makes you a better citizen, a better worker.
I wanted to look at how some of those formative changes were affecting small town Ontario and their rural areas. And we know a lot about how men were having fun and there were lots of leisure activities for men, but what about women? What were small town women doing for fun? What were they allowed to do? What were they prevented from doing, and what role did they play in creating opportunities for themselves?
Craig Norris: Why did you choose Dresden, Tillsonburg and Elora?
Rebecca Beausaert: I have a personal connection to Tillsonburg. I worked at the Tillsonburg Museum when I was an undergrad and so I became familiar with the town's archive which was really rich.
Elora stood out to me because of its landscape. The gorge, the river system, was something that a lot of small towns didn't have in Ontario. And then Dresden stood out because of its history and Black settlement.
So these three towns have a lot of commonalities and a lot of differences as well.
Craig Norris: How did you go about researching leisure time in these towns?
Rebecca Beausaert: It was a lot of looking through unorganized, uncataloged files in these towns, in their museums, in their archives, in their libraries. It was looking at newspapers on microfilm. I was doing my research before a lot of these sources were digitized and a lot of them still aren't digitized. So doing small town rural history is a little more difficult from that sense. It was a lot of time just sifting through sources and finding little gems.
Craig Norris: What are some of those gems that you found?
Rebecca Beausaert: The newspaper is really prominent in the book because these towns all had a weekly newspaper with a social column. So that told us who's having what party, which sports team is playing, which theatrical production is coming. It doesn't tell us everything but it tells us more about what literate middle and upper class people wanted to know.
I also looked at jail records and court records because that tells us a little bit about the disreputable modes of fun women were engaging in. I see gambling, drinking, theft, vagrancy, things like that.
And women's diaries, women's memoirs, women's letters also have a prominent place. So their voice is coming through their memories of their childhoods and growing up and interactions with friends. Photographs also have an important place [in the book], actually being able to see how people were having fun.
Craig Norris: What do you think has changed the most in the lives of women from then until now?
Rebecca Beausaert: Definitely greater recognition of the fact that women are just as capable as men when we're talking about sports, especially physical activity. That women don't have to stay in the home. They don't have to abide by these rules that society sets for them. That they are just as deserving of well-rounded, broad social lives.
Craig Norris: What do you think has changed the least?
Rebecca Beausaert: As much as women have more opportunity, there are still barriers, especially when it comes to things like sports.
I also think that perceptions about small towns haven't changed much. That's one of the reasons why I wrote the book. I kind of wanted to counter perceptions about small towns being boring and backward and not having a lot to do.
And I think they are very interesting places to live. But those living outside small towns maybe don't see that. So I think those perceptions about backwardness in rural and small town Ontario haven't really gone away.
Craig Norris: What do you hope people take away from Pursuing Play?
Rebecca Beausaert: I hope they take away just how diverse these women's lives were, how much these women were managing. A lot of them are mothers. Some of them are working and taking care of families, expected to look and act respectable in their communities, to do fundraising, but also to nurture their minds, their bodies, to pursue reputable modes of of play.
So these women are juggling a lot but they're also carving out time for fun because there's greater recognition that different modes of fun had a lot of benefits.
And I want people to maybe look at small towns and rural areas a little differently, that these were places where there was a lot of recreation, sports, theatrical productions, clubs, travel, simple things like getting together over dinner and tea. There was a lot to do.
Listen | Rebecca Beausart, author of Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870–1914
