A collection of journalist Michele Landsberg's Toronto Star columns, where she was a regular columnist for more than twenty-five years between 1978 and 2005. Michele has chosen her favorite and most relevant columns, using them as a lens to reflect on the second wave of feminism and the issues facing women then and now. An icon of the feminist movement and a hero to many, through her writing and activism Michele played an important role in fighting...

Elsie MacGill achieved many firsts in science and engineering at a time when women were considered to be inferior in the sciences. In 1923, at the age of nineteen, she became the first woman to attend engineering classes at the University of Toronto. She was the first woman in North America to hold a degree in aeronautical engineering and the first woman aircraft designer in the world. As chief engineer for the Canadian Car and Foundry Company she...

Marion Dewar could never ignore a person who was begging in the street. Along with money, she would offer words of encouragement and friendship. Perhaps it was her training as a nurse, her devout Catholic upbringing, or maybe it was simply because she was a genuinely compassionate woman. As mayor of Ottawa from 1978-1985, Marion Dewar worked tirelessly to bring about non-profit housing, better public transportation, support and encouragement for the...

Details the innovative, courageous, and creative activism of the "second wave" women's health movement in Canada between 1960 and 2010. This activism (re)claimed women's bodies, created women-centered spaces and services, and challenged a medically dominated healthcare system. Feminists challenged diagnoses, treatments, laws, policies, and research, as well as the care women were offered the way they saw their bodies and themselves. Legions of women,...

Includes Susan G. Cole interviewing Gloria Steinem and writing by Margaret Atwood, Susan Crean, June Callwood, and Marian Engel. Broadside: A Feminist Review was a groundbreaking Canadian feminist newspaper published between 1979 and 1989. While Broadside paid attention to everything from feminists making art to street activism, it also covered the mainstream, from pop culture to peacemaking. The Broadside team uncovered the work of female artists...

In the spring of 1970, seventeen women set out from Vancouver in a big yellow convertible, a Volkswagen bus, and a pickup truck. They called it the Abortion Caravan. Three thousand miles later, they "occupied" the prime minister's front lawn in Ottawa, led a rally of 500 women on Parliament Hill, chained themselves to their chairs in the visitors' galleries, and shut down the House of Commons, the first and only time this had ever happened. The seventeen...

This engaging study of a still active women's organization is more than a centennial history to make its members proud. It also provides a lively exploration of a unique organization founded by early women leaders in higher education who offered friendship, community engagement, and lifelong learning. With a leadership of exceptional women, the organization played a largely overlooked role in the women's movement by supporting education and the arts,...