Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914

Levelling the playing field

Life in the Canadian countryside at the turn of the twentieth century is often generalized as insular, backwards, and arduous. These assumptions are redressed in Rebecca Beausaert’s Pursuing Play, which highlights the complexity of small-town culture through a lively examination of women’s efforts to negotiate space for themselves and their leisure pursuits.

Amply illustrated, Pursuing Play draws on d...