Spring/Summer 2005 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

NEW IN PAPERBACKSojourning SistersThe Lives and Letters of Jessie and Annie McQueenJean BarmanShortly after the completion of the transcontinentalrailroad in 1886, two young sisters from PictouCounty, Nova Scotia, took the train west to BritishColumbia. Jessie and Annie McQueen each intendedto teach there for three years and then returnhome. In fact they remained sojourners betweenBritish Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Ontario formuch of their lives.Drawing on family correspondence and supportedby extensive engagement with current scholarship,Jean Barman tells the sisters’ stories and, indoing so, offers a new interpretation of early settlementacross Canada. Like many other women ofthese years, Jessie and Annie McQueen were affectedby daughterhood’s obligations and sisterhood’sbonds even as they became involved in their newcommunities. Barman takes seriously women assojourners and uses Jessie and Annie McQueen’sletters home to evoke the boundless energy andenthusiasm shown by the thousands of women whohelped to form Canada’s frontiers.Like other sojourners, the McQueen sisters didnot come to their new home empty-handed. Theybrought with them a distinctly Scottish Presbyterianway of life, consistent with ideas of the nation beingpromoted in the public realm by fellow NovaScotians such as George Monro Grant. Confident intheir assumptions, including the central role of religionin the formation of a grand national vision,women like these sisters were critical in unitingCanada from coast to coast. Broad in its criticalapproach and nuanced in its interpretations,Sojourning Sisters is a major contribution to the fieldof life writing and to the political, gender, and socialhistory of Canada.Jean Barman is a professor in the Department ofEducational Studies at the University of BritishColumbia.Winner of the Clio Award for the British Columbia Region,given by the Canadian Historical AssociationWinner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal, given by theBritish Columbia Historical Federation‘An important book that merits a wide audience …Sojourning Sisters is a magnificent piece of historical interpretationand storytelling. Barman has original insights intoBritish Columbia and the process of nation building, andshe skilfully translates the lives of Annie and Jessie McQueeninto stories of nation builders.’Suzanne Morton, BC Studies‘The narrative in Sojourning Sisters is carried by the extensiveand vibrant correspondence between the various familymembers … Thanks to Barman’s scholarship, and the wealthof primary sources on which she was able to draw, we cannow appreciate the role that two engaging individualsplayed in the shaping of a nation.’Charlotte Gray, Canadian Historical ReviewAlso by Jean Barman:Constance Lindsay SkinnerWriting on the Frontier0-8020-3678-3 / £32.00 / $53.00 / 2002The West Beyond the WestA History of British Columbia, Revised Edition0-8020-7185-6 / £16.00 / $32.95 / 1996HISTORY314 pp / 6 x 9 / Available15 halftones, 2 mapsPaper ISBN 0-8020-4877-3 £18.00 $27.95 COriginally Published in Cloth: March 200315