Category Archives: Women’s History
Spotting the Difference: Comparing Canadian Sex Work Legislation from 1985 and 2014
Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Hasn’t Changed

It is unsurprising that the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform launched a constitutional challenge to the PCEPA in 2021- brought to the Ontario Superior Court between October 2 and 7, 2022.On September 18, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court released its decision in CASWLR v. Attorney General (Canada), deciding to uphold the PCEPA.
Opting for “Sexual Wellbeing for All”: Community & Sex Education in Alberta, 1970s and 2024

Karissa Patton and Nancy Janovicek Eric Dyck’s comic lampoons a longstanding dispute on sex education in Canada: comprehensive sex education as crucial to young people’s health, bodily autonomy, and human rights vs. parents’ rights to make decisions about what knowledge and services their children’s access. Since the 1960s, students and youth have been vocal in the debates about curriculum on… Read more »
Feminism and its Malcontents in Canadian Universities

Sara Wilmshurst First off, I’d like to bless the Internet Archive for preserving human folly. The paper under review today has been scrubbed from its original home but lives on in infamy through the Wayback Machine. I am speaking of “On the Challenges of Dating and Marriage in the New Generations,” published under the name of Benyamin Gohjogh. It made… Read more »
Uncovering the Rutherford Maid: Gender, Class, and Representation in Living History

Julia Stanski I discovered Lillian Rose Adkins on September 27, 2023. Although I hadn’t known her name, I’d been searching for this woman for at least five years. Others had been looking for much longer. She’s been dead for more than half a century, but Lillian might be the key to a representational puzzle that has obscured her—and women like… Read more »
Thinking Historically about Sexuality, Gender, and the Implications of “Safety”

Gemma Marr “The luxurious habits of civilized life lead to many excesses. Those of gluttony and hard drinking have been sufficiently commented upon. Tracts and newspapers showing the fatal results of intoxication, surround us on all hands. But an evil more destructive than any of these has received, comparatively, but little attention. It is time that the warning was given,… Read more »
“Absurd Quackery”: The Canadian Women’s Health Movement, Vaccine Attitudes, and Healthsharing

Kathryn Hughes In 1989, the popular Canadian women’s health magazine Healthsharing published an article entitled “Shots in the Dark: The Risk of Infant Vaccination”. Echoing the anti-vaccine movement of this period (the title borrows from the 1985 influential anti-vaccine text DTP: A Shot in the Dark), the article discussed the risk of the DPT-P vaccine, quoted personal stories from mothers… Read more »
Not Noted on the Voyage: Judith Desjarlais and John Rae

By Sara Wilmshurst Nearly every time I review archival documents, I bump into a story that I’m desperate to pursue, but it is not relevant to the project at hand. This time I decided to just do it. My Google Alerts tell me it is time; Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology team recently announced they are returning to the Franklin Expedition… Read more »
Remember/Resist/Redraw #30: Intergenerational Resistance in Vancouver’s Chinatown

The Graphic History Collective recently released RRR #30 by erica hiroko isomura and Kaitlyn Fung that highlights intergenerational resistance and community organizing in Vancouver’s Chinatown. In particular, the poster emphasizes the role of women in preventing the building of a freeway through the community in the 1960s as well as ongoing efforts to resist displacement and gentrification. We hope that… Read more »
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