Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

H I S T O R Y
Caught
Montreal’s Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945
Tamara Myers
STUDIES IN GENDER AND HISTORY
From the late nineteenth century to the Second
World War, a ‘young and modern’ girl problem
emerged in Montreal in the context of social
and cultural turmoil. In Caught, Tamara Myers
explores how the foundation and implementation
of Quebec’s juvenile justice system intersected with
Montreal’s modern girl. Using case files from the
juvenile court and institutional records, this study
aims to uncover the cultural practices that transformed
modern girls into female delinquents.
From reform schools of the nineteenth century to
the juvenile court era of the early twentieth, juvenile
justice was a key disciplinary instrument used to
maintain and uphold the subordination of adolescent
girls. Caught exposes the attempts made by the
juvenile justice system of the day to curb modern
attitudes and behaviour; at the same time, it reveals
the changing patterns of social and family interaction
among adolescent girls. Myers also uncovers the
evolving social construction of these young culprits
– les jeunes filles modernes with their penchant for la
vie legere – as generated by parents, church authorities,
women’s groups, social workers, the media, and
juvenile justice agents. She illuminates the rich texture
of these girls’ public and private lives in the first
half of the twentieth century, humanizing the stories
of girls who were condemned for being too modern
as they worked, played, and resisted the authority of
parents, community, and the law.
Tamara Myers is an assistant professor in the
Department of History at the University of British
Columbia.
Rural Protest on
Prince Edward Island
From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement
Rusty Bittermann
Who has the more legitimate claim to land, settlers
who occupy and improve it with their labour,
or landlords who claim ownership on the basis of
imperial grants This question of property rights,
and their construction, was at the heart of rural
protest on Prince Edward Island for a century.
In Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island Rusty
Bittermann examines this conflict and the dynamic
of rural protest on the Island from its establishment
as a British colony in the 1760s to the early 1840s.
The focus of Bittermann’s study is the remarkable
mass movement known as the Escheat movement,
which emerged in the 1830s in the context of growing
popular challenges elsewhere in the Atlantic
World. The Escheat movement aimed at resolving
the land question in favour of tenants by having
the state resume (escheat) the large grants of land
that created landlordism on the Island. Although it
ultimately gained control of the assembly in the late
1830s, the Escheat movement did not produce the
land policies that tenants and their allies advocated.
The movement did, however, synthesize years of
rural protest and produce a persistent legacy of
language and ideas concerning land, justice, and
the rights of small producers that helped to make
landlordism on the Island unsustainable in the
long term. Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island is
a comprehensive and fascinating examination of an
important, but often overlooked, period in the history
of Canada’s smallest province.
Rusty Bittermann is an associate professor in the
Department of History at St. Thomas University
Approx. 400 pp / 6 x 9 / December 2006
12 illustrations
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9219-5 / 978-08020-9219-9
£48.00 $75.00 E
Paper ISBN 0-8020-9450-3 / 978-08020-9450-6
£22.50 $35.00 C
Approx. 382 pp / 6 x 9 / August 2006
1 figure, 7 maps
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-0439-3 / 978-0-8020-0439-0
£42.00 $65.00 E
Paper ISBN 0-8020-7229-1 / 978-0-8020-7229-0
£20.00 $29.95 C
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