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 diaries, letters, newspapers, and census records to investigate women’s recreational activities in three southern Ontario towns—Dresden, Tillsonburg, and Elora—between 1870–1914. Though women’s recreational choices were restricted by pervasive ideas about propriety, Beausaert reveals how they increasingly spearheaded both formal and informal clubs, events, and social gatherings, and integrated them into their daily lives.

In telling the story of what small-town women did for fun while navigating social hierarchies, nurturing ties of kinship and friendship, and advancing community development, Pursuing Play adds a new dimension to Canadian histories of gender, leisure, and popular culture. Encompassing public and private pastimes, the growth of sports, the phenomenon of “armchair travelling,” and the ease with which recreation can slip from reputable to disreputable, this rich study uncovers how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the nature and scope of women’s leisure in small-town Ontario and beyond.

Rebecca Beausaert is an adjunct professor in the Department of History, University of Guelph, and co-founder and co-director of the “What Canada Ate” website.

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"A fascinating study that was a pleasure to read."

Tillsonburg Post

“The book is a fascinating look at how far women have come, and how much we owe to our grandmothers and great grandmothers for agency and activism that changed society’s notion of what constituted women’s ‘place’ in what was once almost exclusively a ‘man’s world.’ Pursuing Play is richly illustrated with rarely seen photos of women from the late nineteenth century. And while it is an academic work supported by 90 pages of research notes, it is an easy and entertaining read suitable for casual readers of historical non-fiction.”

Ontario Farmer

"As Canadian athletes like Summer McIntosh gain recognition following the 2024 Olympics, Beausaert’s book offers historical insight into how women in the late 1800s and early 1900s broke barriers to participate in sports like croquet, ice skating, and bicycling."

Sydenham Current