Sisters in the Wilderness (53 page)

Since
Roughing It in the Bush
is by far the best-known book by Susanna, it has repeatedly been put under the academic microscope. Among the most helpful analyses are two by Michael Peterman: “
Roughing It in the Bush
as Autobiography,” in
Reflections: Autobiography and Canadian Literature
, edited by K.P. Stich (1988); and
This Great Epoch of Our Lives: Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush
(1996). A collection of essays which cast a new light on many aspects of Canadian women's writing, and which I found helpful and provocative, was
Re(dis)covering our Foremothers
, edited by Lorraine McMullen (1990). I learned a lot from Alec Lucas's contribution, “The Function of the Sketches in Susanna Moodie's
Roughing It in the Bush,”
and Bina Freiwald's “‘The tongue of woman': The Language of the Self in Moodie's
Roughing It in the Bush.”

CHAPTERS 13 AND 14

Most of the information in these chapters is contained in the exchange of letters between the Strickland sisters on each side of the Atlantic, and in Pope-Hennessy's biography of Agnes Strickland. Samuel Strickland's pioneer memoir,
Twenty-seven years in Canada West
, was first published in 1853, and was reprinted in 1970 by Hurtig.

CHAPTER 15

Most of the Moodie material in this chapter comes from Susanna's letters, and from “‘A Glorious Madness,' Susanna Moodie and the Spiritualist Movement” by Carl Ballstadt, Michael Peterman and Elizabeth Hopkins (
Journal of Canadian Studies
, Vol. 17,No. 4, Winter 1982-83). The nineteenth-century fascination with spiritualism has often been ignored by serious historians, while attracting the attention of twentieth-century believers. One of the best and most dispassionate accounts of the Fox sisters' activities appears in
The Spiritualists, The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
by Ruth Brandon (1983). I also looked at
Mediums and Spirit-Rappers and Roaring Radicals
by
Howard Kerr (1972), and Geoffrey Nelson's
Spiritualism and Society
(1969). For information about Victoria Woodhull, I read Barbara Goldsmith's
Other Powers, The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull
(1998) and Mary Gabriel's
Notorious Victoria
(1998). Ramsay Cook's
The Regenerators, Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada
(1985) gives the social context for the Moodies' spiritualist activities.

CHAPTER 16

My principal sources for information about Orange Order activities in 1860 were Donald Creighton's
John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician, The Old Chieftain
; Gerald M. Craig's
Upper Canada, The Formative Years;
and
Early Travellers in the Canada
1791
-
1867 (1955) edited by Gerald M. Craig. Audrey Y. Morris (
The Gentle Pioneers
) has produced the best account of John Moodie's travails as sheriff.

CHAPTER 17

No aspect of the Strickland sisters' achievements has been more neglected than Catharine's interest in natural history. Two articles that explore Catharine's activities are “‘Splendid Anachronism,' The Record of Catharine Parr Traill's Struggles as an Amateur Botanist in Nineteenth Century Canada” by Michael Peterman (
Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers
, edited by McMullen, 1990) and “Science in Canada's Backwoods” by Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley (
Natural Eloquence, Women Reinscribe Science
, edited by Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Schteir, 1997). Another essay in the Gates and Schteir volume was also useful: Stephen Jay Gould's “The Invisible Woman.” For background on science in nineteenth-century Canada, I read Suzanne Zeller's
Inventing Canada, Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation
(1987). Information on Catharine's botanist friends comes from the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
. I was also helped by
The Pioneer Woman
by Elizabeth Thompson (1991) and “Catharine Parr Traill and the Picturesque Landscape,” a paper prepared for the Lakefield Literary Festival in 1998 by Elizabeth Hopkins.

CHAPTER 18

There are marvellous local histories and early photographs of the Stony Lake area. Among those I used were Enid Mallory's
Kawartha, Living on These Lakes
(1991); Jean Murray Cole's
Origins: The History of Dummer Township
(1993); James T. Angus's
A Respectable Ditch: A History of the Trent-Severn Waterway,
1833
-
1920 (1988); Katharine N. Hooke's
From Campsite to Cottage, Early Stoney Lake
(Peterborough Historical Society, 1992); and Richard Tatley's
Steamboating on the Trent-Severn
(1978). The quotations from James Ewing Ritchie come from his travel book
To Canada with Emigrants
(1885).

CHAPTERS 19 AND 20

For a sparkling social history of late-nineteenth-century Ottawa, there is nothing to compare with
The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier
by Sandra Gwyn (1984). The quotation from Maria Thorburn was kindly sent to me by her great-great-granddaughter, Jane Monaghan. All the other family information in these pages comes from the Traill Family Collection in the National Archives of Canada and the Patrick Hamilton Ewing Collection in the National Library of Canada.

I found additional useful material in
Ottawa, An Illustrated History
by John H. Taylor, and in “Making Science Beautiful: The Central Experimental Farm, 1886–1939” by Julie Harris and Jennifer Mueller (
Ontario History
, Vol.
LXXXIX
, No. 2, June 1997). Maime Fitzgibbon's
A Trip to Manitoba, or Roughing It on the Line
, appeared in 1880 and has not been reprinted.

Picture Credits

page no.

12
  Robert Malster

17
  NAC C 67337

18
  NAC NL 15658

21
  NAC C 67341

42
  NAC C 41067

71
  NAC C 2394

79
  NAC C 23073

80
  NAC PA 201405

88
  NL 15559

92
  NL 15558

100
  NAC C 11811

121
  NAC C 1993

153
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

156
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

162
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

164
  NAC C 31493

169
  NAC C 9556

212
  NL 22012

215
  NAC C 67335

229
  NAC PA 127486

231
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

233
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

242
  Collection of The New York Historical Society

265
  NAC C 5164

266
  NAC C 606

267
  NAC C 2183

275
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

282
  NACC 67346

283
  Katharine Hooke, Peterborough

284
  NAC C 67327

296
  NAC C 145223, C 145224

304
  Katharine Hooke, Peterborough

308
  NAC C 7043

309
  NAC PA201403

320
  NL 17457

324
  NAC C 67343

328
  NAC PA 13248

331
  NAC PA 26304

336
  NAC C 67334

338
  NAC C 55562

344
  NAC PA 117832

346
  NAC PA 67353

349
  Hastings County Museum, Belleville

Index

Albert, Price of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
72
,
176

Albion
,
89
,
90
,
124
,
210

Anglo-American Magazine
(Toronto),
219
,
289

Anne
,
51
,
52

Anti-Slavery League,
23

Arkwright, Richard,
5

Arthur, Sir George,
138
,
142
,
145

Ashburnham,
143
,
174
-
75

Athenaeum
(London),
124
,
335

Atlantic crossing,
49
-
65
; boredom,
54
-
55
,
62
; conditions in steerage,
52
-
53
,
57
; length of voyage,
52
; voyage of the
Anne
,
55
,
57
-
58
; voyage of the
Rowley
,
61
-
64

Atwood, Clinton,
xiv
,
234
,
260

Atwood, Margaret,
xiv
–
xv

Auburn (Stewart residence),
81

Austen, Jane,
19
,
20
,
34

Backwoods of Canada, The
(Catharine Parr Traill),
115
-
16
,
124
-
25
,
178
,
183

Baldwin, Eliza,
165

Baldwin, Robert,
163
-
68
,
172
-
73
,
200

Baldwin, William,
164

Beecher, Henry Ward,
253

“Bees”,
104
,
206

Belleville,
119
,
229
; Bridge Street house,
161
,
274
; entertainment,
232
; Moodie house fire,
160
; mourns John Moodie's death,
279
; politics,
166
-
68
; social divisions,
152
53
,
156
-
57
; social standing of Moodies,
161
; society,
148
,
156
,
161
; Susanna's daily routine,
161
-
62
; town,
151
-
52
,
231
-
32

Belleville Intelligencer
,
170
,
279

Benjamin, George,
168
-
73
,
269
,
279

Bentley, Richard,
39
,
204
-
5
,
217
,
221
,
224
,
230
,
235
,
246
,
247
,
248
,
250
,
270
,
271
,
273
,
276

Bentley's Miscellany
,
217

Bird, James,
27
,
46
,
51
; and Emma Bird,
22
,
35
,
42

Bird, James (son),
51
,
61

Blackwood's Magazine
,
210

Blessington, Lady,
23

Blewett, Octavian,
271

Bonaparte, Napoleon,
5

Bond Head, Sir Francis,
126
,
129
,
130

Botanical Society of Canada,
291

Boulton, George,
73
,
143

Boulton, Henry,
122

Bourinot, John,
345

Bowell, Mackenzie,
279

Bridges, Rev. George Wilson,
183
-
84

British officers, half-pay,
30
,
43
,
72

British Whig (Kingston),
170
,
172

Brockville,
68

Bronte, Charlotte,
9

Bungay,
8

Burney, Fanny,
20
,
34

Burnham, John,
342

Butt, Susanna,
5

Caddy, Hannah,
106
,
141

Caddy, James,
129

Caddy, John,
106

Canada Company,
39

Canadian Crusoes
(Catharine Parr Traill),
190
-
3

Canadian Home Journal
,
343

Canadian Literary Magazine
,
124

Canadian Magazine
,
124

Canadian Settler's Guide
(Catharine Parr Traill),
238
-
39

Canadian Wild Flowers
(Agnes Moodie

Fitzgibbon and Catharine Parr

Traill),
297
-
99

Capron, E.W.,
245

Carlyle, Thomas,
36

Cartier, George-Etienne,
265

Caswell, Edward,
340
-
41

Cattermole, William,
40
-
41

Cavendish, William George Spencer, sixth Duke of Devonshire,
213

Chamberlin, Brown,
299

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal
,
190

Chatterton, R.D.,
73
,
90

Cheesman, Thomas,
22

Chippewa,
78
,
102
-
3

Cholera epidemic,
60
-
61

Clementi, Rev. Vincent,
290
,
303
,
307

Cobourg,
72
-
74
,
229

Cobourg Star
,
73
,
74
,
90
,
202

Cohen, Moses,
169
.
See also
Benjamin, George

Collins, Wilkie,
205

Colonial Advocate
,
68
,
121

Cooper, James Fenimore,
243

Cot and Cradle Stories
(Catharine Parr Traill),
342

Creighton, Donald,
119
,
165
,
167

Crimean War,
237
-
38