Merna Forster’s 100 Canadian Heroines: Famous and Forgotten Faces offers a brief look at 100 accomplished women. It’s the sort of book you can pick up and put down, since each profile only takes 5 to 15 minutes to read.
The title irks me. The back cover says, “… has created the ultimate guide to cool Canadian women…” No, it hasn’t. Too many of the women featured in the book weren’t Canadian. In fact, given the book’s title and back cover copy, one non-Canadian woman is too many.
The following groups are covered in the book:
- Those born in Canada and who accomplished much here.
- Those born outside of Canada, but they came to Canada at a young age and accomplished much here.
- Those who lived in Canada for a few years and accomplished much while here, but weren’t Canadian.
- Those who were born in Canada, but left at a young age. Their major accomplishments took place in other countries and they are usually associated with those countries.
I would have expected the book to cover only groups 1 and 2. Groups 3 and 4, while noteworthy in their own right, shouldn’t have made the cut, not when the book is supposed to be about Canadian heroines. Don’t include women who weren’t Canadian in a book titled “100 Canadian Heroines.”
The quality of the profiles is uneven. They sometimes include speculation that, if false, would mean the woman wasn’t a heroine at all. Some profiles contain a good amount of detail; others, not so much. I regard the book as a starting point, an overview that will introduce you to women (not necessarily Canadian women!) whose accomplishments may have been ignored by history.
In fact, one thing the book does very well is to once again highlight the fact that history really is HIStory. Women’s accomplishments have all too often been ignored by the history books. Sometimes recorded firsts weren’t firsts at all. A woman beat the man history chose to remember.
Some of the profiles are perhaps about accomplishments that some wouldn’t consider heroic, but in this day and age, we sometimes forget how difficult it was for women who wanted to pursue vocations or embark on journeys that weren’t considered “feminine.” It took an incredible amount of courage and sacrifice. It’s one of the reasons I cringe whenever a modern woman distances herself from feminism, especially when it’s a professional woman.
There are some profiles about women with accomplishments that I don’t see as heroic from any angle. They’re more of historical interest, which is fine. But again, that darn title.
Would I recommend the book? Sort of. It does offer more than you’ll find by surfing the net, but barely. I’ll definitely hop online and learn more about the women who caught my interest, but I suspect that a search for historical Canadian women would also have offered just enough to wet my appetite, which is mainly what this book does. Having said that, reading it will probably introduce you to some women you might not stumble across yourself, so it could be worth picking up.
