University of Calgary

PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository

Graduate Studies Legacy Theses

2001

"Times are hard": a Saskatchewan farm woman's

experience of the Great Depression

Bye, Christine Georgina

Bye, C. G. (2001). "Times are hard": a Saskatchewan farm woman's experience of the Great

Depression (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB.

doi:10.11575/PRISM/17025

http://hdl.handle.net/1880/41063

master thesis

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'Times are Hard": A Saskatchewan Farm Woman's

Fscpenence of the Great -on

Cristine G e o r g i ~ Bye

ATHESIS

SUBMITIED TO THE FACUZ,TY OF GRADUATE SITJDIES

IN P A R " FULRLMENT OF THE REQ-

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEFIEMBER, 2001

S Cristine Gee* Bye 2001

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ABSTRACT

This thesis focuses on the key strategies an elderly Saskatchewan farm woman

used to sustain herself and her family during the Great Depression. Based on an

extensive collection of letters Kate Graves wrote a daughter between 1930 and

1941, the thesis argues that Kate's experience of the Depression revolved mainly

around work and the family. Rather than challenge prevalent ideas about men's

and women's work and familial roles, she embraced and drew strength from

them. Ultimately, this determined matriarch used gendered expectations to

construct and reaffirm her identity as a "good" f m n woman. In doing so, she

helped to sustain the status quo and to bring a measure of stability to rural

Saskatchewan sodety during a time of upheaval.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people helped to make this thesis a reality. First, I would like to

thank my supemisor, Dr. David B. Marshall, for believing in me and this -ect

from the moment I walked into his office more than three years ago. His

scholarly insights, sense of humour and intuitiveness have been a source of

strength throughout this process. I am also giateful to the members of my

examining committee, h. R Douglas Francis, Dr. Elizabeth Jameson and Dr.

Tamara P. Seiler, for reviewing my thesis and offering helpful suggestions and

encouragement. I feel fortunate, in addition, to have received generous financial

assistance from the University of Calgary's Department of History, and to have

enjoyed abundant intellectual, practical and social support from faculty, staff and

my fellow graduate students.

For helping me with the research portion of this -ect I thank

Saskatchewan kchives Board employees in Saskatoon and Regina, and many

people in the communities of McCord, Madcota, Glentworth and Gravelbourg,

Saskatchewan. It was a joy to engage with individuals who cared so passionately

about history. Audrey Wilson with the McCord and District Museum, Maggie

Brown with the Rural Municipality of Mankota, and Deidre Downie with the

Rural Municipality of Waverley were particularly generous with their time and

advice. Hazel Major, Nellie Spier, Mildred Thomson, Les Win, Paul Bonneau,

Tony Kress and many others proved equally helpful and enthusiastic.

This would not have been possible without the support of Kate

Graves' descendants. Many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have

helped in countless ways. First and foremast I wish to thank Jean (Griffiths)

Checkel, Anne (Griffiths) Rodvan%, and Muriel (Griffiths) Bye for preserving

Kate's letters and entrusting them to me. The letters that Kate wrote to their

mother, Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, during the Great Depression form the

basis of this thesis. I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to study the life

of the woman who was their grandmother and my great-grandmother. I must

add that I am deeply indebted to Jean for hnscribing Kate's letters. Her careful

and arduous work made my job that much easier. I also appreciate the many

hours Enid (Wallace) Kolskog spent recounting her memories of Kate for me,

and the hospitality Allen and Murray McGea, and their wives Audrey and

Norma, showed me when I conducted research in Saskatchewan, Other family

members who have expressed a warm interest in this project and, in some cases

have shared their recollections, photographs, diaries and family memorabilia

with me, include Gordon Graves, Wes Hatlelid, Sherry (McCrea) Gettle, Stan and

Leah McCrea, Jim and Sherry McCrea, Bill Graves, Velma (Anthony) McCrea,

and Marilyn McCrea.

My good friends have been a tremendous support to me. Thank you to

Tania Therien for sending me cheering e-mails, to Dot Foster and Susan

Gagliardi for keeping me in their thoughts, and to Kate Logan and DanieUe

Kinsey for graciously editing my work and acting as sounding boards at all

hours of the day and night. I would also like to thank Jeri Lynne Lorentzon for

encouraging me to let my light shine.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge m y parents, Muriel and Arnold Bye, my

sister JoAnne (Bye) Meents, and my children, Gee- and Lawson Beaty.

Thank you, all, for supporting my academic goals and for engaging me in

stimulating conversations that have helped to clarify my views. Above all, 1

thank Georgjna and Lawson for their unqualified love.

DEDICATION

For my children, Georgina Linden Louise Beaty and Lawson Gale Beaty, who have been with m e through this and much more

TABLE OF CONTENTS

. . Approval page ................... .. ................ ...................................................-....................JI 0.. Abstract ................................................................................................................... .........m

Adcnow1edgements .................... ......................................... Dedication ..................... ....... ................................................................ ..................-vi .. Table of Contents .............................................................................................................

INTRODUCTION .................................................... The Great Depression Through Kate Graves' Eyes 1

Kate Graves and the Ritual of Letter-wxiting ................................................lO

CHAFER ONE 'Those Were Great Days": The History of Kate Graves, 1866-1929 .................. -...25 CHAPIERTWO 'Times are Hard": Saskatchewan, the Graves Farm and the Depression, 1929-1941 .................................................................................. .................49

cxLumRTICREE "I Like to Hoe M y Own Row": Gendered Work Strategies ............. .... ....... .......71 CHAmElx FOUR "Your Father Says I Cannot Leave, They Need M e Very Much": Women's Response to M a r g m b a . tion ................... .... .............. ..,...............95

CHAFrERFIVE ............................... .................................. .. "I Think So Much of Edward" .... ... -114

CONCLUSION ................................................................................. "A Very Remarkable W~man". 141

REFERENCES .................... .. ......... ... ............................................................. ....150

INTRODUCTION

The Great Depression Through Kate Graves8 Eyes

She sits at the kitchen table on a hot afternoon in the summer of 1932. A

tall, angular w o r n with upswept grey hair and a thinly drawn mouth, she is

writing a letter to a far-away daughter. She gazes out the window at the maples

that border the farm. Most are dying from the drought that has gripped the

prairies for three years in a row. Beyond the trees lie the dry bed of the Wood

River, a stretch of bleached cropland and the weathered M o u s e where one of

her daughters lives. A grasshopper becomes entangled in the sleeve of her house

dress. She disengages it and retums to the task at hand.'

Between 1930 and 1941, Kate Graves dspatched more than 158 letters

from her farm in southwestern Saskatchewan to Georgina Edith (Graves)

Griffiths in east-central Alberta.2 Her letters detail her domestic8 farm and

community labour, her ministrations to sick family members and neighbowsf

and her gifts of time' money, food, clothing and energy to relatives and others.

They provide us with a rare opportunity to view the Great Depression through

the eyes of an elderly farm woman who lived it This thesis focuses on the work

and family-related strategies Kate used to endure, arguing that she coped with

the Depression in ways that were consistent with her perceptions about work,

f d y and gender. Her strategies both constructed and reinforced her identity as

the "good" farm woman.

The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one examines the factors

that shaped Kate Graves' life and located her in southem Saskatchewan at the

start of the 1930s. Chapter two explores the impact of the Depression on

Saskatchewan and the Graves' farm Chapter three desaibes the work strategies

Kate employed to sustain her family and the farm enterprise. It argues that her

essential labour in the house and yard did not translate into inmeased

recognition and power because of entrenched ideas about men's and women's

p p e r spheres. Chapter four discusses Kate's and her family's responses to the

margidhtion of women's work The fifth chapter describes Kate's efforts to

sustain her son's family during the Depression, and what her actions say about

the value accorded male and female family members.

The thesis concludes with a brief description of Kate Grave's death in 1941,

at age seventy-five, when Saskatchewan was still feeling the effects of the Great

Depression. It is fitting that we, like the people who attended Kate's funeral,

d e c t on the key role she played in her family's life, and the values that

sustained her.

To date, very little is known about prairie farm women's experiences of

the 1930s.J A handful of published nminiscences highlight rural girls and

women, and a destitute-but-cheerfd "farm wife" appears in the best-known

memoir of the era, James Gray's D e W&gr Y-4 But, by and large, women

like Kate Graves are missing from the story of the Great Depression. Most

Depression histories focus on politics, economics, and public policy - not on how

individual farm women and their farnilies coped at a grassmots level? Even

published photographs of farm women are scarce, outnumbered by images of

spee&i@hg political leaders and unempIoyed male migranis and ptesters.6

The few sdtolars who train their gaze on Western Canadian farm women

of the 1930s tend to provide general, wideranging analysis that tells us little

about rural women's everyday lives.' Wendy Wallace, for instance, generalizes

about urban and rural Saskatchewan women's experiences concaning

everything from poverty, pydrol@d depression and infant mortality to relief,

medical care and government employment policies.8 She paints a grim pidure of

women's overall situation, arguing that married and single women were victims

of economic circumstances who retreated to the home and abandoned pre-1930s

feminist aspirations. A thorough, nuanced examhation of farm women's roles,

values' and contributions to families and communities is missing.

Other scholars get doser to rural women's lives, but focus on only one

aspect' such as feminism or work Often, they cover broad time periods, rather

than looking only at the decade of the Depression. In this way, prairie women's

specific responses to the exigencies of the 19309 are lost or downplayed.

Examples include Veronica Strong-Boags article on feminism on the prairies in

the inter-war years, Carolina Van de Vorsfs M.A. thesis on the history of fann

women's work in Manitoba from the mid-1800s to the 198Os, and Julie Dorscht's

article on the work lives and marital and social relationships of four

Saskatchewah farm women from the 1930s on.9

Only Christa Scowby, who analyses the letters h t appeared in the

"Mainly for Women" pages of the bebetween 1930 and 1939,

begins to provide a detailed portrait of ordinary Western Canadian farm

women's roles, concerns, and sense of themselves during the Great Depression.

Scowby argues that women's identity revolved around their reproductive,

productive and community work. Although they focussed mainly on their roles

as mothers and wives, rural women redefined the meaning of those roles over

the course of the Depression - using the "Mainly for Women'' pages to

legitimize and seek greater recognition and appreciation for their work. Where

Wallace sees women as victims and their focus on the domestic sphere as

evidence of failure, Scowby sees rural women as active agents who both asserted

and challenged their traditional roles. To Scowby, these women faced the

Depression with a sense of what one "Mainly for Women" contributor called

"Divine Discontent"; they made the best of their situation, while refusing to

accept it.10

S c o w s MA. thesis provides an excellent foundation for a deeper, more

holistic exploration of nual women's lives. For as Kate Graves' letters indicate,

4

life during the Depression wasn't just about work. It was also about emotionsf

relationships and rituals. It was about dealing with circumstances that stretched

women and families to the limits of their endurance. It was about finding the

physicalf social and emotional resources to carry o n Focussing on an individual

f a . woman like Graves can cont r i te to a fuller, more intimate understanding

of women' s lives' the Great Depression, and Western Canadian history as a

whole.

This thesis is grounded in several key assumptions about the value of

using ordinary women's narratives to help create rounded pictures of women's

lives in the past. I assume, fust of all, that women's experiences are central to the

history of the Canadian and American Wests, that their work has helped to

sustain their familes and communities, and that their decisions, values and

actions have helped shape historical events. Although conventional historians

have assigned them minor roles or overlooked them altogether, women's

experiences and perspectives are as significant as men's.11 Historians who

neglect the majority of the population tell an incomplete and misleading story.12

Simply inserting women into historical accounts is not enough, however.

Historians must think about what women did in history and how they perceived

their actions. This is my second assumption= That women were active agents in

the drama of history. Neither victims nor passive bystanders, they acted in ways

that helped shape events." Elizabeth Jameson says historians' main task is "to

explain history through the eyes of the people who made it, to try to understand

why they acted as they did, and how their ads either preserved or changed the

way things were."l* Evaluating women's lives from the viewpoint of the players

themselves often leads historians to a more positive interpretation of women's

past experiences.15

At the same time' I assume that there are knits to women's agency, that

events, relationships, and cultural and personal beliefs acted as restraints on their

lives. Kate Graves and her family were actors in the drama of the Depression,

but they encountered strains from within and without. The weather8 agricultural

prices, government policies, health problems, persodity conflicts, family and

community expectations, her own ideas about the options open to her - all these

things impinged on Kate's life. The real question is, given what Kate Graves had

to contend with during the Depression, how did she iespond?l6

My fourth basic assumption is that private writings are often the best way

to get at women's experiences. Public documents such as newspapers tend to

obscure women's stories or to tell them from men's pempedives; censuses and

other demographic data tell us the quantities but not the qualities of women's

lives; prescriptive literature depicts ideology: how some people thought women

ought to behave, rather than how they actually behaved. Women's lettem,

diaries and memoirs take us as close as we are likely to get to women's lived

experiences. More than that, they offer us a glimpse of the way women thought,

felt and perceived their own lives. Rivate writings such as Kate Graves' letters

provide us with what Jameson calls a "subjective entry into women's lives."l7

They offer us a sense of the variety and complexity of those lives, and their

meaning for those who lived them.

The fact that women's lives and writings often centre on the domestic and

the "ordylary,," rather than the public and the momentous, is no reason to

discount than. History is shaped by private actions and beliefs as much as pubIic

developments. As feminist scholars are fond of sayink "The personal is

politid"l8

Ordinary women's private writings can educate us in the "richness of

daily &."I9 They can help us to follow Western American historian John Mack Faragher's advice to write "history fkom the h i d e out"20 They also remind us

that the rhythms of women's lives may difkr substantially from those of men's

lives-21 They may alert us to female cultures - complex webs of social

relationships and rituals that parallel and i n t e with male c u l w - that other

sources hide from view.=

I assume, lastly, that women in the past were complex, multidimensional,

imperfect beings: "Real people who led real lives."23 Women were defined by a

range of factors operating at the same time. It is a mistake to think that their

lives and identities can be neatly compartmen~ed. Nor were women

stereotypical figures to be pitied or revered. Viewing them as heroines, as some

historians would have us do, does not serve them, or anyone, very well. It

obscures the fact that people's lives are largely coloured by human emotions,

unconscious rituals and thoughts, and a litany of small, daily trials and triumphs.

Women themselves did not see their lives as heroic They "just did what had to

be done."24 Historians who mythologize women or gloss over their perceived

flaws and inconsistencies deprive us of a valuable opportunity to connect with

full human beings from the past. It is predsely their humanness Ulat makes

historical figures like Kate Graves so compeUing.2s

Reading her letters, one cannot help but recognize that Kate was indeed

an actor in the story of her life. She Iived in difficult times, she suffered from

deprivation, illness and anxiety, and she carried an enormous worlcload. But she

responded to these challenges with strength, awareness and stoidsm. This

woman did not perceive herself as a victim. Her solid presence shines through in

her writing. The overall portrait that emerges is of endurance' familial devotion

and emotional conflict. Although generally cheerful' empathetic and capable,

Kate o c c a s i d y comes a<zoss as judgmental, self-pitying and moralistic She

was not a parag- she was an ardinary, complex human being who kept her

eyes and efforts focused on the things that mattered most to her.

Certainly, what mattered most to Kate Graves during the Great

Depression was the stuff of the private rather than the public sphere. Although

she was aware of the political and economic forces at work around her, and

interacted with the public world, these were not her prime concerns. She saw the

Depression dose up, read it in its immediate impact on her life and that of her

family. Her domestic chores, her relationships with her family and friends, her

loved ones' health, the amount of food on the table and clothing on people's

backs - these were the themes that occupied her. It is also apparent that she

belonged to a world populated by other women who supported her, worked

alongside her, and shared her priorities.

The structure of this thesis reflects the cyclical nature of Kate's domestic

life and the overall consistency in her experience of the Depresion. I have

chosen a thematic, rather than a chronological, approach in order to reflect the

dailiness, the repetitiveness, of her life. Her experiences revolved around the

domestic sphere - her chores and pessonal relationships - not the outside world

of politics, economics and the environment26 Rather than follow her through

the years of the Depression and measure her life against events such as drought,

crop failures, economic hardship, relief distnibution and shifting government

policies (which characterized the entire period anyway), it seems more important

to stay in one place and dig deeply into the fabric of Kate's life. Such an a p c h

is more likely to expose the nuances of her experiences of the Depression.

I also rejected a duonological approach because it would have forced a

particular plot -- either triumphal or tragic - on this woman's life. It is too

simplistic to think of her experiences during the -on in such terms; they

were not all good, but neither were they a l l bad.27

Many things shaped Kate's perspective during the 1930% including her

material conditions, temperament, Me experiences, ethniaty and religion Given

the content of her letters, howwer, it makes sense to view Kate's life primarily

through the lenses of gender, age and class. What did it mean to be an elderly

farm woman during the Great Depression? How did these factors affect her

work roles8 family relationships and Iociltion in the private and public spheres?

How much power and status did she have in her family and community?

The chapters that follow explore these issues primarily through the

medium of biography. Several feminist scholars have remarked that this fonn - if used imaginatively - is particularly appropriate for the study of ordinary

women's lives.28 Perhaps no other genre has as great a capacity for finding

meaning in "the minutiae of the everyday."29 Leading Canadian biographer

Elspeth Cameron says: "It would be difficult to find a genre ... that emphasized

more fully the value of 'the parti- or 'Lived expaience?"'*

Most biographies, until recently, have lauded extraordinary men and

women who have achieved success in the public arena. But as the biographical

sketches featured in Elspeth Cameron and Janice Dickin's book - #

demonstrate, it is possible to subvert this appmack It is possiile to shed light on

individual women whose Lives, like those of vast numbers of women, were

"episc~hc, fragmented, dispersed" and characterized by "margjdity8

discontinuity, and irnprovisation."Jl In this way we can see that lik sometimes

shapes people, rather than the other way around.

I have not approached Kate Graves' life with a particular theory in mind. I

wanted to let what I found in her letters inform my condusions, rather than vice

versa. The fact that she was my great-grandmother (although I never knew her)

has induced me to be as scrupulously objective as I can. Cameron stresses:

Even when the subject may be relatively f-8 in fact most espedally where he or she is f a d h r 8 the biographer must wipe the slate as clean as possible of previous impressions and undertake

painstakingly the task of collecting information bit by bit. This state of mind can best be described as a self-induced limbo of unknowing."32

One of biographys strengths is that it allows historical researchers to test

condusions established by other means. As Susan Mann Trofimenkoff says,

biography can be "the laboratory for testing certain generahations about a

given society, a given social movement, the process of social change or even

female behaviour itseIfIfW33 Do Kate Gravesf experiences support, or suggest the

need to adjust, established thinking on prairie women and the Depression?

Biography can also provide "building blocks" for historians wishing to

construct a general picture of an era or event From Kate Graves' life and those

of other individuals, we can extrapolate information about the 1930s overalL

Kate's life may not reflect the lives of all rural Saskatchewan women during the

Great Depression, but it is sure to speak to some of them." Although her letters

form the core of this thesis, I have scoured relevant secondary and primary

souxes, including local histories, diaries, letters, memoirs, census records and

newspapers, in an attempt to set her life in the context of other women's and

families' experiences and the Depression as a whole.

The particular biographical approach I have chosen is a combination of

what Stephan Oates refers to as critical biography, which analyses its subject with

"detachment and scepticism," and pure biography, which uses narrative and

fictional techniques but adheres strictly to the evidence.35 I have asked critical

questions of Kate's letters, but her missives are so rich in detail that they cry out

for a descriptive, narrative approach ir la Donald Creighton's landmark

biography of John A. Macdonald.36 In addition to these methods, I d o n a l l y

use quantitative analysis, focusing on relevant public documents such as censuses

and government reports, to determine the typicality of Kate's experiences. And,

I use literary analysis -- asse%ing the tone, style and mood of Kate's letters -- to

try to get at her thoughts and feelings.

Having said all this, the main reason I've chosen to use biography is

because Graves has a powerful story to tell. This is the tale of a "flesh-and-

blood" woman who wrestled with a host of circumstances beyond her control.37

She dealt with "black blizzards," poverty, overwork, illness, and family conflict

and separation. It is also the story of a woman who found pleasure and meaning

in life, and who tackled her problems in ways that made her the pillar of her

family. She sustained the farm with her labour and old age pension cheques,

nurtured her family with food, affection and cod liver oil, worked and sociahed

with valued women relatives, and generally supported her family in ways that

were expected of prairie farm women in the 1930s. Thus, she provided her loved

ones with a sense of stability and comfort during an extraordinarily di€ficult time.

Kate Graves and the Ritual of Letter-writing

The act of putting fountain pen to paper was extremely important to Kate

Graves during the Great Depression. Even though the family had little money

for essentials, and stamps were a luxury in many Saskatchewan farm homes,

Kate procured enough stationary, pens and postage to keep up a steady

correspondence with her daughter GeorgiM at Fleet, Alberta, and other relatives

in Quebec, British Columbia, California and the eastern United States. She

followed a strict writing regimen, and felt guilty when she strayed from it. On

April 19,1933, she wrote:

Dear Georgina Edith: I have just discovered I have not written you for over two weeks, as April 3rd is the last I have entered on my list of letters I wrote. I find it is well to jot them down when I write. Then I sort of keep track of the numerous letters 1 send. It is not my custom to go over two weeks when writing to any of my family. I hope you forgive me and always remember you are very dear to your Mother. I will always love you.38

For Graves, who was writing a daughter she had not seen for nine years,

a letter was an essential sign of caring. If she did not write regularly, she believed

Georgina would fed unloved. Perhaps this was because she, hemelf, relied

emotionally on her daughter's letters. She expected Georgina to write her often,

and when the letters were brief or tardy, Kate was aggrieved. She was proud of

her own ability to write long, frequent letters. Commenting on the shortness of

G e o r g i d s "epistles," she said: 1 write such long ones - bet you wonder how I

can." Another time she asked, 'Who writes oftener than me?"39 Sometimes,

Kate reminded Gee* that she owed her aunt and sisters letters. The

unspoken message was that good mothers and daughters were prolific, reliable

letter writers. Kate was the communication hub for her family, using letters to

maintain family relationships, and she expected her daughters to be the same.

We begin to see how the very act of letter-writing was key to Kate's sense of

identity.

Given her domestic responsibilities and the pressures the Depression

created, one wonders how Kate found the time and indination to pen several

letters a day. Nothing prevented her from writing. She wrote amid dust storms,

family strife, visitors, illness, and preparations for family and community events.

She wrote within hours of her daughter Mary's burial, while tending her

critically ill husband, and immediately upon learning that her last remaining

sibling was dead. Not only did Kate produce numerous letters of several pages

each, but she made entries in a diary each night. Clearly, she was driven to write.

Several scholars have argued that women on the American frontier in the

latter part of the nineteenth century used letters and diaries to gain a sense of

control over Wcult circumstances.40 Perhaps letter-writing was a survival

strategy for Kate, helping to order her thoughts and reassert her sense of herself

in times of stress. The daily ritual of sitting with pen and paper may have helped

make the Great Depression bearable.

Kate would not have been the only Saskatchewan farm woman to use

letter-writing as a coping medranism in the 1930s. Several women told the

in 1937 that writing letters helped cure

them of '"a case of the dumps."*l One woman said writing to the West=

-Violet McNaughton was "a real safety valve" that helped keep

Depression-hit people out of mental hospitals, and another told McNaughton, "I

had to write or 'bust."'*

Kate's letters are a potpourri of names, news, observationsJ opinion,

aphorisms and sentiment. The vast majority are filled with everyday details

about her domestic work, the men's farm work, the weather, the farnily's health,

pricesJ meals, trips to town, church and women's club activities, visits with

women friends and close relatives, and news of neighbouft and distant kirt.

Kate's Wfiting style is plain and straightforward. and her sentences jump from

one subject to another without transition. Her thoughts appear on the page in

the order they occur to her. All flow together in one long, multi-page paragraph.

Hence, we see passages like this one, from January 1936:

We are all invited to Ethel's for dinner an Gordon's 6th birthday, and expect to get to J.D. Hamilton's on the 5th for our W.M.S. social tea. Dorothy has washed and hung some clothes out It is 7 above zero now. Our hens are laying all winter. From 4 to 8 (eggs) a day. The Oxford gmup seem to be getting lots of followers and I think may do some good. One queer thing is they seem to be all of the well-off fok.43

From a family dinner, to a Women's Missionary Service tea, to the

laundry, to the weather, to hens, to an international religious movement - Kate

writes as if all details and thoughts are of equal importance. Often she speaks as

if Georgina is in the same room and she is answering a question or comment put

to her, as when she says: "Yes, it is a lot to think sugar is taxed 2 cts. a lb."u

English literature professor Elizabeth Hampsten says Wting such as this may

appear disjointed to the eye, but it sounds perkctly natural to the ear. It is a

"talking voice" that awaits a listener. "A reading voice is able to supply

transitions that appear less evident to a silent eye," says Hampsten.45 Kate's

letters to Georgina, then, are actual conversations.

Interestingly, there is much that Kate omits from these conversations.

Reflectiveness, direct emotion and abstract thinking are missing by and large.

She writes concretely and at short range, rarely stepping back to consider the

general significance of her experiences or her own response to them. She seldom

considers events beyond her immediate neighbourhood, and when she does, she

relates them to people and activities in her own world. She writes of surface

things, rather than content. She says the minister gave a serxxton, but not what

the sermon was about or what spiritual chords it struck with her. She says family

members visited, but not what they talked about. She says her daughter-in-law

picked an argument with her, but not what her daughter-in-law actually said.

Rarely does she express intense emotion. She may say she feels "so sorry"

someone has died, or that she is "so alone" because her son and husband are

away, but she goes no deeper. Neither does she permit herself to express

emotions she considers to be negative or unfeminine, such as anger, frustration

or disappointment. And she almost never complains, either about her

circumstances or other people. "I should be ashamed to say what I have said,"

she admonishes herself, after mentioning that two neighbow bachelors seldom

offer to drive her and her husband Tom to church* Kate adheres to an

unspoken "code of loyalty" concemhg her spouse and children, rarely criticizing

them overtlyP7 In life she was fond of telling family members to "nwer dirty

your own nest," and she attempts to follow the same precept in her letter-

writing.48 However, as we will see in subsequent chapters, she sometimes subtly

(and not so subtly) derides those who do not live up to her expectations of good

women and men

In her study of the diaries of Midwestern American pioneer women,

Gayle R Davis found that some diarists disclosed their emotions in order to

maintain their "mental eqdiium," while most s~upulously avoided

expressions of feeling for the same reason. The women who M y expressed

their emotions tended to be educated members of the middle class.49 Elizabeth

Hampsten, who studied the private writings of sirnilat women at the turn of the

century, found that middle class women tended to write more abstractly than

working women, and to use more formal, sentimental language. Neither dass

described the physical landscape in which the women found themselves.sO

Although Kate Graves was educated and literate, her writing generally

resembles that of the working women Davis and Hampsten describe. Only when

she discusses subjects like motherhood and death does her language shift into

sentimental gear.

Kate rarely desccih her overall situation during the Great Depression

She mentions wind, drortght and insectsf but not their impact on the general

landscape. She mentions her family's food and money shortages, but seldom

descrii the social, economic and political dimate in her community and

beyond. Her focus is inward, on people and activities in the house and yard. She

interprets the Depresion in tenns of its impact on her life and that of her family;

even when she does mention the big picture, she recasts it to fit her immediate

setting. Thus, the environmental impact of the Depmssion is desaibed in terms

of dust in the house and the extra cleaning it entails. The global economic

depression is seen through the lense of the f d y ' s farm: 'There is a big scarcity

of work all over North America, but chores enough"S1 The social impact of the

Depression is discussed in tenns of her son's reduced economic and marital

15

prospects: "I am sorry for Edward. He is young and he works hard and he feels

he gets nothing, and he will want to get married."" And discusions of politics

take place in the context of her personal economic and family situation. Her

musings about the possi i ty of political revolution are sparked by the

realization that she may not see Georgina's children before she dies; comments

about the Sodal Credit party (which Georgina evidently favours and Kate does

not) revolve around the fact that some people in the community wear shabby

coats and Kate has not had a new coat in eight years.

Kate does not generalize about her experiences and those of the people

around her during the Depression. She observes that some people are physically

or mentally ill, and some are alcoholics, but she does not link these problems to

the Depression. She acknowledges that her family is on relief, but does not

comment on or question the relief situation in general. Rarely does she complain

about the Depression. When she does, she does not gripe on her own behalf* She

speaks collectively, as in, 'We are fed up with bad dust and wind sturms." Or,

she uses others as her mouthpiece* "Edward is discouraged out and out," she

says of her son. "He would like to move right off."53 She says her niece Maude

Flick would like to move, too. "Sick of this having nothing so long.54" Overall,

Kate's attitude towards the -on is one of stoicism and guarded

hopefulness. "Never get discouraged," she tells Georgina. "Good times will

return. I often say I wiJl not live to see them, but others will."55 In many ways

her attitude resembles that of the extremely poor but proud, determined and

individualistic people who wrote to Prime Minister RB. Bennett seeking help in

the early 1930s. It is a spirit of what L.M. Grayson and Michael Bliss have d e d

"nineteenth century grit."56

Kate's take on the Great Depression contrasts sharply with views

expressed by some prairie women at the time. Mrs. Ted East, Alice Butala and

Mrs. L.C. Shoebridge all wrote letters to women's editor

Violent McNaughton railing against the social and economic plight of people in

their area, condemning relief officials and the inadequacy of the relief system.

and suggesting political and other remedies.57 "I do hope before the next

election the people will ask themselves a few more questions. Where does al l the

relief money go to?" wrote East in 1938.5s The women made dear connections

between the problems people were experiencing and the larger phenomenon of

the Depression. Butala said pregnant women were aborting their babies because

they were too poor to care for them. And Shoebridge criticized local politidans in

her municipality for paying more for medical than other forms of relief. "People

are being starved and worried into sickness and nervous mental breakdowns

and they pay $1 to feed them and $3 to cure them of the mdts of their feeding

(or lack of it)."59

These women wrote far more graphically and emotionally about the

Depression than Kate did. Shoebridge said cattle in her area were "walking

skeletons,'' and a local famiys situation "twisted my heart more than wer I felt

before."sO East talked openly of the negative effect failed crops were having on

her husband's disposition and her mamiage. "I do so pray we get a crop this

year. I'm sure it will mean the end for us if we don't. The eternal rages are

simply sapping my health away."61 And, Buhla said people in her part of

southwestern Saskatchewan lived under "the most shocking conditions." 'The

stories I could tell! The very stones on this desert would weep for us."62

Why did Kate write diffemntly about the Depression than these women?

One explanation is that she was a mother, writing to her daughter and not to a

public figure who might put what she said in the newspaper. The women who

wrote McNaughton wrote for the express purpose of venting their problems

and their views on the Depmssion. Kate wrote to maintain emotional ties with

her child.

The stoical tone of Kate's letters may also reflect the value that was placed

on emotional restraint in the 19305 in ma1 Saskatchewan. Newspaper,

government and church reports emphasized drought-stricken farmers8 bravery

and optimism, often praising them for demonstrating the "spirit of the old

pioneers." "The farmer, his wife and children are matching their courage and

powers of endurance against difficult conditions but they will win out and they

deserve to win,"said the author of a 1939 federal government report.63 "The

spirit of the F p l e is truly magni£icent," said a United Church official in 1931.

"They say very little - even by way of c0rnplakring."~4

Rural women who spoke openly about problems sometimes met with

hostility. Butala was pilloried in her community for a letter she wrote the

-descriig the dire poverty in her area, and a "prairie wife"

who described farm women's stark lives in a Chatelaine article sparked

hundreds of protests from fann women who said they were coping admirably.65

Evidently the "good" prairie wife was ever positive, uncomplaining, and blind to

unpleasant reality.

The Graves family as a whole placed a premium on stoicism. In times of

emotional stress, such as illness or the death of loved ones, family members

were expected to "bear up."66 Manbas who f a d difficulties without complaint

were praised for their courage. For instance, when Kate's son Edward and his

wife Dorothy moved to Quebec in 1937, Kate wrote that Dorothy "was brave

and went willingy."67 Given all these considerations, it is not surprising that

Kate downplayed her emotional reaction to the Depression.

The fact that she kept a tight rein on her emotions and focussed so closely

on people and activities in her immediate M e does not diminish the validity of

her letters as sources, however. Her writing contains a wealth of information

about her values, experiences and feelings. She may not use passionate language

to express herself, but the detail and space she devotes to topics like family

separation and conflict reveal strong em~tion nonetheless.68 And, her detailed,

often repetitive accounts of domestic work and family activities dearly reveal the

themes she found significant and wished to stress.

Kate Graves could not control what was going on around her during the

Depression, but she did have control over what she put in her letters, over how

she chose to present her life and herself as a person. It must have been

comforting week after week, to reconstruct and r e d h n heftelf on the page.

Her chosen identity was that of the "good woman. Everything she wrote said:

"I am a devoted mother and wife. I am caring, selfless, pipious and hardworking. I

find meaning in m y relationships with others. I do what is expected of women I

follow the rules. I do not complain and I do not engage m emotional displays. I

bear up."

NOTES: INTRODUCIION

1. Kate Graves letter to Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, MdZord, Saskatchewan, 16 August 1932 Kate Graves Family Papers. Personal collection of Cristine Bye. Allen McCrea, personal interview, McCord, Saskatchewan, 14 July 2000. AU letters by Kate and other Graves family members originate from McCord, Saskatchewan, unless o t h h noted.

2. Kate Graves' family farmed near McCord, Saskatchewan, approximately two hundred kilometres southwest of Regina and forty-five kilometres north of the Canada-United States border. Her fourth eldest daughter, Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, lived on a farm about 450 kilometres away, near Fleet, Alberta.

3. Until recently, historians have paid scant attention to Western Canadian farm women in general. Historian John Herd Thompson has deemed them "truly the last 'neglected majority' in prairie historiography." Most literature that does exist on rural prairie women focuses on the period prior to 1930 and highlights the d f h g e movement and women's organizations. See Thompson's review of Mary Kinneafs -view 70 (March 1989 Agriculture," in h k 4. John Schultz (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1990), 107. Also see Royden Loewen, "On the Margin or in the Lead: Canadian Prairie Historiography," -731 (Winter 1999), 27-8,344; Gail Cuthbert Brandt and Naomi Black, "'11 en faut un peu': Farm Women and Feminism in Q u k and F%ance Since 1545," / Ass-

. . 1 (1990), 74; Patricia Roome, "Remembering Together. Reclaiming Alberta Women's Past," in

ed. Catherine A. Cava~ugh and Randi R W m e (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1993), 187-8.

4. Myrtle G. Moorhouse, Buffalo V V e G. -(Regina: Banting Publishers, 1973); Gwyneth J. Whilsmith, (Zurich, Ontario: Gwyneth J. Whilsmith, 1987); Lulu Beatrice Wilken, The Wav It Was (Regina: Banting Publishers, 1979). Jaws H. Gny, a W m r Y y

. . (Toronto: Maanillan of Canada, I%), 172-8.

5. Academic and popular histories of the Great Depression tend to be national in scope. See Pierre Betton, G-1939 (Toronto: McC1eHand and Stewart, 1990); Barry Broadfoot, - 9 - 1 9 3 9 - $ , - . . (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1973); Michiel Horn, ed., TheDirtY- -(Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1972); A.E. Safarian, 311p

m t h e f l o r o n t o : McClelland and Stewart, 1970); John Herd Thompson and Allen Sager, -9-1939 of J2&& (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985). The few works which focus on the prairies include G.E. Britnell, T h e -(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939); and Janice Patton, pow a e D e m

(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973).

6. See photographs in Broadfoot, Ten Gray, pie Ye- - Byfield, - (Edmonton: United Western

Communications, I-); John Herd Thompson, W s L - . (ToronW Oxford

University Press, 1998).

7. Survey texts that provide insight into the general experiences of Canadian women and families during the Depression include Cynthia Comacchio, of F e . .

flomnto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); and Veronica Strong-bag, w e w nav w a i v e s of w d W w 1 9 - 1 9 3 9 (Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books, 1988). One of the few works that looks specifically at Canadian women's lives in the 1930s is Denyse Baillargeon, T)o. Wo- Home trans. Yvonne Klein (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University h, 1999). American works on women and the Depression far outnumber Canadian studies. They include Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, ed., w m

(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999); Julia Kirk Blackwelder, of 929-1939 (inilege Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1984); Susan Ware,

19193qS(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982).

8. Wendy Eileen Wallace, "All Else Must Wait: Saskatchewan Women and the Great Depression" @LA. Thesis, University of Victoria, 1988).

9. Veronica Strong-Boag, rPulling In Double Harness or Hauling a Double Load?" in . - ed. R Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, 2nd ed. (Edmonton: Pica

Pica Press, 1992), 401-23; Caxolina Antoinetta J.A. Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work in Manitoba" (MA. Thesis, University of Manitoba, 1988); Julie Dorscht, "'You Just Did What Had to Be Donee: Life Histories of Four Saskatchewan 'Farmers' Wives,'" in "Other"

ed. David De Brou and Aileen Moffatt (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1995), 116-30.

10. Christa I, Scowby, "Pivine Dhntenf i Women, Identity, and the Western Producer" (MA. Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1996). Also see "'I Am A Worker, Not A Drone': Farm Women, Reproductive Work and the Western 1930-1939," Saskatchewan -48:2 (Fa11 1996), 3-15.

11. On the prevalence of heroic male nation-builders and the absence of women in conventional histories of Canada and the Canadian West, see Catherine A. Cavanaugh and Randi R. Warne, # 8 . (Vancouvec UBC Ress, 2000), 3,12; Veronica Strong-Boag, "Writing About Women," in -ut Modern ed. John Schultz (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1990)' 175-6; and Veronica Strong-bag and Anita Uair Fellman, eds.,

a .

Wo- # . 3rd ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997), 2 On stereotypical images of women, see Susan Armitage, 'Through Women's Eyes: A New View of the West," in-

"ed. Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson (Norman and London: Univexsity of Oklahoma Ress, 1987), 9-18; Brandt and Black, "11 en faut un peau,'" 74; Beverly Stoeltje, "A Helpmate for Man Indeed: The Image of the Frontier Woman," of 88:347 (January-March, 1975), 27-41; Joan M. Jensen and Darlis A. Miller, T h e Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West, &view 49 (1980), 176-184; Elizabeth Jameson, "Women as Workers, Women as Civilizers: True Womanhood in the American West," in- 14564.

12 Cavanaugh and Warne, 10. Also see Paula M. Nelson, "A Reflection on the Study of Women's History," Iourn4lof thc. 23 (Spring/Sutnmer 1996), 10; and Strong Boag and Fellman, 4.

13. David De Brou and Meen Moffatt, e d s . , " a B e w a n Worn (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1995), 45.

14. Elizabeth Jameson, "Washburn, Chickens, and Crazy Quilts: Piecing a Common Past," 632,3 (Spring/Summer 19961, IS.

15. Nelson, "A Reflection on the Study of Women's History," 10.

16. Elizabeth Jameson approaches her book with several assumptions appropriate to my shtdy: (1) "People make their own history through daily acts that either preserve or transform existing social relationships and cultural meanings." (2) Wow much people can change their Lives depends on material circumstances, social relationships, and their understandings of their own and possibility." (3) "Everyone psesses multiple and often inseparable so& of identity." All -: Class. In Q@&Qg&

* . (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 9-10.

17. Elizabeth Jameson, Women as Workers, Women as Civilizers," 147-8. Also see Strong- Boas Writing About Women," 181; Armitage, "Through Women's Eyes," 13; Ruth Pierson and Alison Prentice, "Feminism and the Writing and Teaching of History," )4 t la n tis 72 (Spring 1982), 42.

18, Eliane Leslau Silverman, u t Best West; W- on the Frqpfier 1880-1930 (Montreal: Eden Press, 1984), iv; Piemn and Prentice, "Feminism and the Writing and Teaching of History," 42; Strong-Boa& Writing About Women," 177; Elspeth Cameron, "Biography and . - * . Feminism," in -ve: V@rs o m in ed. Libby Scheier, Sarah S h d and Eleanor Wachtel (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1990), 76.

19. Strong-Boag, "Writing About Women," 175.

20. John Mack Faragher, "History From the Inside Out Writing the History of Women in Rural America," 33:5 (Winter 1981), 543.

21. Gerda Lerner, The P a s w ~ W o v . . . . (New York Oxford University Press, 1979), 162-3; Elspeth Cameron and Janice Dickin, eds., Great flotonto: University of Toronto Press), 9; Franca Iaeovetta and Mariana Valverde, &&r C;Mnids; New

floronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992)' I&.

22. Strong-kg, Writing About Women," 181; Bettina Aptheker,

Massachusetts Press, 1989), 12-5. For historiographical discussions on women's culture, see Eliane Leslau Silverman, 'Writing Canadian Women's History, 1970-82 An Historiographical Analysis," @ . I 634 (December 1982); Gail Cuthbert Brandt, "Postmodem Patchwork: Some Recent Trends in the Writing of Women's History in Canada," #22:4 1991), 456-8; and Aileen Moffatt, "Great Women, Separate Spheres, and Diversity," 17-25, in Other V w

23. Armitage, 'Through Women's Eyes," 14.

24. Julie Do& "You Just Did What Had to be Done," in- 116.

25. Strong-Boag, "Writing About Women," 194; Elizabeth Hampsten, Writing Women's History in North Dakota," *@Plains3 (Spring/Summer I%), 5.

26. See Eliane Silverman's observations on how the women she interviewed saw their lives on the Alberta frontier. Last Best WesL "Preface," iv.

27. See William Cronon's discussion on historical narrative, particularly his observations about "progressive" plots and "tragic" or "declensionist" plots, and the radically different ways two historians narrate the story of the American Dust Bowl. Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," /73:4 (March 1992), 1347-76.

28. Sara Alpern et al-, eds., Lives of Mode= -(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, I*), 3-5. Cameron, "Biography and Feminism," 72-82; Cameron and Dickin, Great D m 3-18; Joan Jensen,

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 28; Susan Mann Tmfimenkoff, Terninkt Biography," Atlantis 10:2 (Spring 1985),1-9.

29. Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, quoted in Cameron, "Biography and Feminism," 76.

30. Cameron, "Biography and Feminism," 76.

31. Cameron and Dickin, Great 6.

32. Cameron, "Biography and Feminism," 78-9.

33. Tmfimenkoff, "Feminist Biography," 4.

34. J.R. MillerI "D'Alton McCarthy, Jr.: A Protestant Irishman Abroad," in poswell's ed. RB. Fleming (Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1992), 191;

Cameron, "Biography and Feminism," 81.

35. Stephan Oats, quoted in Frances G. Wpenny. "Expectations of Biography," in wsw- Children, 15.

36. See Halpenny's discussion on Donald Creighton's use of pure biography. Ed., 16-20.

37. Carl Degler, "Preface," in JNom- Wesward To- , - - Lillian Schlissel (New York: Schocken Books,1982), 3.

38. Kate Graves letter to GeorginaI 19 April 1933.

39. Ibid., 24 March 1939; 22 July 1932.

40. Elizabeth Hampsten, w v to Y o 0 of ofem . ~ 1 9 1 Q ( B l o o m i n g t o n : Indiana University Press, 1982), 92; Gayle R. Davis, "Women's Frontier Diaries: Writing for Good Reason," W m ' s S w 149 (1987), 12

41. G w N o f - W m (Winnipeg), March 1937,44.

4.2. Alice Butala letter to Violet McNaughton, Divide, Saskatchewan, 12 January 1939; Mrs Ted East letter to Violet McNaughton, Or-, Saskatchewan, 8 September. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon, McNaughton Papers, Files 16,22.

43. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 28 January 1936.

44. Ibid., 19 April 1933.

45. Hampsten, to Yo- 95.

46. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 12 May 1938.

47. Gail Grant, "That Was A Woman's Satisfaction: The Significance of Life History for Woman-Centred Research," Canadian_Oral-

- . 11 (1991), 35-7.

48. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 1514 August 1998.

49. Davis, Women's Frontier Diaries," 10-1 1.

50. Hampsten, Read This to Yo- 2639.

51. Kate Graves letter, 10 March 1932.

5 2 Ibid., 8 April 1931.

53. Ibid., 11 May 1937.

54. Ibid., 12 August 1937.

55. Ibid., 3 August 1934.

56. L.M. Grayson and Michael Bliss, eds., Wre- of J , e w to &B. p30-193Z (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), xxv.

57. Mrs. Ted East lettels to Violet McNaughton; Alice Butala letters to Violet McNaughton; Mrs. L.C. Shoebridge letters to Violet McNaughton, North Portal, Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon, McNaughton Papers, Files 16, 22. These women corresponded with McNaughton regularly, as friends and newspaper readers. Much of the content of their letters is of a personal nature, but the women understood that McNaughton might publish appropriate segments in the W-

58. Mrs. Ted East letter to Violet McNaughton, 16 June 1938.

59. Mrs. L.C Shoebridge letter to Violet McNaughton, 13 October.

60. Ibid., 15 May 1933; 14 February 1937.

61. Mrs. Ted East letter to Violet McNaughton, 16 May 1938.

62 Alice Butala letter to Violet McNaughton, 25 Januaxy 1938.

63. E.W. Stapleford, to 0 . . --(Ottawa: King's Printer, 1939), 129.

64. "Report of M. & M. Visitation," 7 July 1931, Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon,

United Church of Canada, Edmund Oliver Papers, XW.D.14.c

65. Alice Butah letters to Violet McNaughton: 25 January 1938'26 January 1941. "Prairie Wife ...by One of Them," Chatelaine. May 1935,29,32-3. "More about the World's Worst Job'" Chatelaine. June 1935,79. "Prairie Wives in Revolt!" Chatelaine. August 1935,16,48. Edna Jaques also appears to have prompted criticism for describing women's lives and generaI conditions near Briercrest, Saskatchewan, in "Drought!" November 1937,18,745; see Stapleford, Bpgort 128.

66. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 17 July 1933.

67. lbid., 29 June 1937.

68. Hampsten, b d This Onlv to Yo- 21.

~ ~ O l u E

"Those Were Great Daysw: The History of Kate ~ n v & , 1866-1929

She could clearly remember the summer of 1893 when she was

pregnant with her daughter Georgina at their former home at Maritana,

Quebec. How hot it had been. How big she was with her two-week overdue

baby. "And, oh, the lots of lovely astrachan apples!" She and her three older

children walked across the road to the orchard to pi& them and she cooked

them by the panful in the days before the baby's arrival. And the night

Georgina was born, there was an electric storm and shower.1

Perhaps Kate Graves' memories of "red, luscious apples" and rain

were sharpened by the fact that, on the Saskatchewan farm where she found

herself in the summer of 1936 - mailing birthday greetings to forty-three-

year-old Gqrgina - the temperature was 109 degrees Fahrenheit (K) in

the shade, her garden was scorched, local farmers had harvested little or no

wheat for eight years, and the family faced yet another year on government

relief.2 How seventy-year-old Graves must have longed for the lush gardens,

orchards and maple sugar groves that had smrounded her for the first forty-

eight yeas of her life. How she must have questioned her decision to leave

her comfortab1e home in the East for a homestead in southern Saskatchewan

Of course, she and her family could not have known that economic and

environmental forces would conspire to bring the province - including their district - to its knees in the 1930s. They could not have known the Great

Depression would strike Saskatchewan more viciously than any other part of

Canada and most of the world. Nor could they have predicted how

drastically the decade would alter their lives and dreams.

This chapter looks at Kate Graves' Me prior to the w o n . It

attempts to define her in terms of her experiences, interests, temperament,

and social, economic, ethnic, religious and educational status. In addition, it

attempts to understand how Kate found herself in Saskatchewan in the 19308.

Thus, the chapter takes us from her childhood and childbearing years in

Quebec to her life as a middle-aged wife and grandmother on a

Saskatchewan homestead.

The person at the centre of this thesis was born Kate Edwards on

March 11,1866, at Franklin Centre, Quebec (then Canada East),

approximately twenty-five kilometres southwest of Montreal. She was one of

eight children, four of whom died as young children. Both parents were

Enghsh-speaking: Her father was a surveyor who had emigrated from

Scotland as a child, and her mother was born in Canada East and came from a

long line of New Englanders dating back to the late l6OOs.3 Later in life, Kate

would speak proudly of her Anglo-Celtic heritage and would enjoy

sprinlding Scottish sayings throughout her letters.

Kate graduated from Huntingdon Academy in 1884 at the age of

eighteen, with ambitions of becoming a school teacher. But her father

declared that teadung would be "too hard a job" for his youngest daughter.4

Perhaps he adhered to the belief -- widespread among middle and upper-

class Victorians - that women should not work outside the home; or perhaps

he genuinely felt that tall, slender Kate was too frail for the demands of

teaching. Either way, he used his patriarchal authority to point Kate towards

a life devoted to domesticity and motherhood.

On October 14,1885, Kate wed Thomas Edward Graves at Marittam,

Quebec. She was nineteen; he was twentyane.5 Originally from Champlain,

New York, Tom was a short man with a good sense of humour and a gift for

reciting poetry. He held an engineer's certificate and was a skilled

wheelwright' blacknith, carpenter and maker of horse-drawn ploughs and

cultivators6 Tom and Kate's farm was the site, not only of two apple

orchards and a maple sugar bush, but a carpentry shop and a small iron

foundry which Tom owned with an older brother' John.' In 1888, he bought

out his si'bling. The day the agreement was signed' Kate wrote in her diary

that she would serve as bookkeeper. Although it was Tom who signed the

legal papers' she clearly saw herself as a partner in the enterprise. "l hope we

will be able to pay our debts," she wrote. "We have lots of them, but w e are

young and hope to succeed."B

Kate and her husband did, indeed' prosper in the coming years.

Between 1887 and 1901, Kate bore seven daughters and welcomed a five-

year-old foster son from England into her home. Her last child, a boy, was

born in 1907 when Kate was forty-one? Her life was a busy round of

housekeeping, gardening, sewing, making maple syrup8 raising poultry,

caring for her children and aged parents, running the Maritana Post office,

and exchanging social calls with friends and relatives. Tom was on the school

board' Kate belonged to the Ladies Aid, and both regularly attended local

Protestant churches and took an interest in politics (travelling once to

Ormstown, Quebec, to hear Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier speak).

There was money to pay for books, fancy dresses' the children's schooling,

music lessons, and help with domestic and farm chmes.10 EventuaJly8 five of

Kate's daughters - including Georgina - went to teachefs college to take up

the pmkssion Kate had been denied." Work, family, religion, education and

an interest in community and public affairs were clearly valued in this home.

Kate experienced her share of worry and sorrow during this period, as she

nursed her children through illnesses and her beloved parents and thirty-six-

yearold brother died. Still, she would look badc on her life in Quebec years

later and say, "Those were great days."lZ

In 1908, Kate's world was jolted by the news that there was "free land"

for the taking in southwestern Saskatchewan. Tom's eldest brother George,

who was married to Kate's sister Emma, urged Tom to go west with him to

file on a daim_l3 Under the Dominion Lands Act of 1908, a homesteader could

obtain a quarter section of land (160 acres) and purchase an adjoining quarter

section by meeting certain residency and farming sequirements. Similar

homesteading regulations had been in effect since 1871, but this was the first

time the dry, short-grass plains stretching from Moose Jaw to Calgary were

up for grabs.14 On April 19,1909, Tom and George each filed on 320 acres

along the Wood River, about 140 kilometres southwest of Moose Jaw and

forty-five kilometres north of the Saskatchewan-Montana border, in the

future Rural Municipality of Mankota (R.M. 45).*5 In doing so, they joined

the two million people who flooded the prairie provinces between 1901 and

1931. Most, We the Graves brothers, established their homesteads between

1909 and 1912, at an average rate of more than forty thousand a year. In

Saskatchewan alone, the number of fanns grew from 13,445 in 1901 to 95,013

in 1911 - a seven-fold maease.16 Southwestem Saskatchewan saw its

population ~ m p from 46,560 people in 1906 to 178,200 in 1916. The number

of farms in the area quadrupled.17 Anxious to take advantage of high grain

prices, the newcomers wasted no time in breaking the prairie sod. Crop

acreage in Crop District No. 3, which encompassed most of southwestern

Saskatchewan (including Tom's homestead), soared from 20,000 acres

(8,094 hectares) in 1907 to more than 600,000 acres (242,810 hectares) in

1914.18

It is hard to say what impelled Tom Graves to take up farming on the

Wood River Hains at the age of forty-six. People were motivated to

homestead for many different reasons.19 Perhaps Tom was influenced by his

excitable eldest brother, who brimmed with money-ma- schemes.20 He

may have thought he could "prove up" his free homestead in a few years

and sell it far a tidy pmfit.21 Perhaps he was concerned about the shrinking

availability of farm land in eastern Canada and wanted to give his two sons

an opportunity to own land of their own.22 Or, perhaps he was seduced by

Dominion government and Canadian Pacific Railway pamphlets that

blanketed eastern Canada, the United States and Europe with images of "The

Last Best West": a utopia where a spirit of fteedom and egalitanamm . .

reigned, where the soil was fertile and the climate wholesome, and where the

flat, unforested landscape was ripe for the plough.23 Western Canadian

historian Bmce Baden Peel, who grew up in the vicinity of the Graves'

homestead, writes that settlers were infused with "the optimism of a boom

period."24 They thdled at the prospect of owning a half-section of land (more

than most could ever accumulate in eastern Canada or Europe), and had

visions of achieving swift financial success. Many welcomed a fresh start in a

new land. 'We felt like new men," said one pioneer ye- later."

More difYicuIt to explain than Tom's decision to homestead is his choice

of location. His new farm, and his family's future home, lay in " P ~ s

Trianglen - an arid region stretclung from the forty-ninth to the fifty-second

parallel and encompassing southern Saskatchewan, southeastern Alberta and

a small comer of southwestern Manitobk Fifty years earlier, Captain John

Palher and other scientific expedition leaders had dismissed this 200,000-

square-kilometre area as unsuitable for agricultural settlement. The strip

between the South Saskatchewan River and the international border was

particularly "useless," they said. Here lay a desert of cacti, sage and sandy soil

"unfit for the abode of civilized man."26 Tom Graves' homestead was in the

heart of this accursed country.

The farm was situated on a treeless, atmost-level plain near the future

community of McCord. To the south and west were gently rolling hills - the northem slopes of Wood Mountain and Pinto Butte. The "river" that bisected

the property was little more than a creek, which usually dried up in summer.

When Tom arrived, the land was thinly covered with natural grasses and, like

all soils in the Brown Chernozemic soil zone, low in organic content. The

fertility and texhw of the area's light brown soil varied considerably. Tom's

land was not as rich as that of some farmers, but neither was it as sandy and

fragile as some districts to the north and northeast. Tom's homestead was

located in what is known, evocatively enough, as a "Cold Steppe" climatic

region27 Records from the first three decades of the twentieth century show

that annual precipitation in southwestern Saskatchewan was light, summers

were short and hot, and winters were characterized by dramatic temperature

fluctuations and little snow?B Not d y did less rain and snow fall in

southwestern Saskatchewan than in most of the prairies (the annual average

was twelve to thirteen inches), but precipitation levels were extremely

unpredictable. Between 1914 and 1928, annual spring and summer rainfall in

the Rural Municipality of Mankota ranged from four inches to fourteen

inches. The area was subject to wuent droughts, partly because

evaporation often exceeded predpitation.29 High temperatures and winds

sucked moisture from the soil and burned vegetation. Surveyors reported in

1910 that the scorching July winds "felt like coming out of the hot oven."30

Recorded temperatures ranged from summer-time highs of 104 degrees

Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) to winter-time lows of -53 degrees Fahrenheit (-52

Celsius)*3* As if such climatic vagaries weren't enough to contend with,

homesteaders in Tom Graves' area could look forward to frequent early

frosts and hail storms. Hail s t ~ c k the southwest quadrant more often than

any other part of the pmvince.32 Clearly, farming in semi-arid southwestern

Saskatchewan was a risky business.

Historian Barry Potyondi says experienced farmers ''knew

instinctively that Palliser had been right," and avoided the tip of the

northwest- Great Plains.33 Tom Graves' lik in rival Quibec didn't equip

him to make informed decisions about homesteading on the prairies.34 He

may not have realized that the best agricultural land had been taken long

before he reached the Westf and much of southwestern Saskatchewan was

marginal at best.35 Perhaps he selected his homestead too quickly, caught up

in the competition with thousands of other would-be pioneers lined up at

Dominion lands offices aaoss southem Saskatchewan and AIberta. At the

Moose Jaw land office alone, 9,573 people filed on homesteads in 1909 - 1,278 of them in the same month as Tom.36

Most likely, Tom Graves simply wanted to grow wheat He believed

agricultural experts and immigration propagandists who exalted the area's

capacity for wheat growing, and may even have thought he could counteract

the semi-arid region's limitations by using dryland farming techniques

promulgated by the pundits-37 Like thousands of others, Tom saw not

parched fescue grasses, but "rolling seas of g a i n " 3 8

How did Kate Graves feel about her husband's homesteading

venture? Both she and Tom were ambivalent about living permanently in the

West. Unlike Georgef s wife Emma, Kate did not immediately take up

residence on her husband's homestead. She remained in Quebec while Tom

spent the better part of each year between 1910 and 1913 proving up - breaking land and erecting a sod barn, blacksmith forge, and two-storey 16

by 24foot frame house worth seven hundred dollars.39 In a 1911 letter to his

daughter Katey, Tom said: '7 do not know if we will ever move out here to

live. Mama will have to come out next summer and see the place before we

decide. Not a tree to be seeh"40 Scholars have debated women's response to

the pioneering experience - some depicting women as reluctant pioneers,

and others insisting that many women were involved in, and embraced, the

decision to homestead.41 Tom's letter indicates that Kate had a say in the

decision to migrate. There is no record of Kate going west to view the

homestead before she settled there in 1914. Why she agreed to the move we

do not know- If Tom was set on going, she may have felt it was her wifely

duty to support him and to keep the family together. Given her Victorian

upbringing and lack of economic independence, it would have been difficult

for her to ddecide otherwise. Kate's granddaughter Enid (Wallace) Kolskog,

who grew up near Kate in Saskatchewan and was emotionally close to her,

says Tom itched to homestead because he loved "the wide open prairie," and

her grandmother fell in with his wishes because "in those days women did

what the men wanted you to do."Q The subject of Kate's role in the Graves'

decision to homestead raises a number of questions about Kate's relationship

with her husband - about how much weight her opinions carried and the

degree of power each spouse *eyed. These questions will be discussed in

further detail in chapter four.

Kate's ambivalence about moving West was likely tied, as it was for

many homesteading women, to the necessity of leaving familiar

surroundings, hiends and relatives- No doubt it helped to know that her

sister's family was already established on a neighbowing homestead, and

seven of her nine children were moving, too. Historians frequently

emphasize the social isolation women experienced on the frontier, but Kate

and Tom's area, like much of the prairies, was thick with extended families

and groups of friends and neighburs who travelled west together.43 With

her extended family about her, Kate did not suffer from the same degree of

loneliness that some female newcomers did. Nevertheless, adjusting to Iife on

their barren homestead, with its dearth of greenery8 nearby towns and farm

and household amenities, was not eksy for the forty-eight-year-old Quebec

transplant. "I wished myself back east for a good year and sometimes since,"

she later recalled.44 A photograph taken a few years after she arrived shows

Kate fetching water horn a pump in the middle of a beaten-earth farm yard

with an unpainted, unadorned building (looking more like a granary than a

house) in the background. She is neatly dressed in an ankle-length dress' sun

hat and polished boots. Although rail-thin, she is obviously physically fit. On

the back of the photograph, Kate has written, '!In my fifties." The caption

indicates that part of her felt she was too old to be homesteading. Surely she

had reached a stage in M e where she should be past such toil. Her comment

could signify bitterness or bemusement- Either way, she was not overjoyed

to find herself in such a time and place.45

Kate did acclimatize to homestead life, however, and over the next

fifteen years became an intrinsic part of her rural community. She operated

the local post office out of a granary from 1914 to 1921 (an occupation which

brought her into fiquent contact with other settlers), helped birth her

daughters' and neighbour women's babies' joined the women's section of the

Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association, and regularly attended

interdenominational Protestant church services - ultimately joining the

United Church when it was formed in lm.46 She was an active member of

the church's Women's Missionary Society, making quilts and packing clothes

for "our mission work among the Indians of our North West"47 She raised

poultry and churned butt=# and sold her produce to the local store. Tom

served as a school trustee and was involved in farm organizations and the

local agricultural sodety.48 Although Kate's daughter Georgina left for

Alberta and another daughter moved to British Columbia, her remaining five

daughters and foster son settled within a thirty-five kilometre radius of Kate

and Tom's farm Edward, the youngest childf continued to live with them.

Kate took pleasure in her garden, visiting with neighborn and caring for her

growing brood of grandchildren.

In these years the Graves became well-aquainted with the

unpredictable nature of the climate. Drought struck in 1914, only to be

followed by ideal growing conditions in 1915.49 A photograph taken that

year shows family members up to their chins in a stand of oats that stretches

to the horizon - a sight that must have confirmed Tom's vision of the

bounteous West.50 Drought gripped the district again from 1917 through

1920, and many farmers were forced to apply for government relief in the

form of seed grain.51 The area's parched, ove~4tivated farmland began to

blow.52 Kate's daughter Katey (Graves) HatleIid, who lived in the

municipality to the east, noted in 1920 that an all-day dust storm was "playing

havoc with some of our wheatt"S3 More than five thousand Saskatchewan

farmers, most of them in the southwest, abandoned their land. Then came a

cyde of favourable crops, culminating in the bumper crop of 1928.54

Despite occasional crop failuresf Kate and her husband were

reasonably well off. They were among the few people in the area who had

money from the sale of property elsewhere to invest in their homestead.55

In addition, Tom received an inheritance fmm his father which he used to pay

off the pre-emption in 1922.56 The Graves planted trees around the

farmstead to break the wind, and Tom built a 24 by %foot bam, granariesf a

cqwntry shop and a blacksmith shop.57 The house acquired a coat of white

paint and green trim. While not luxurious, it was bigger and better appointed

than the homestead shacks that dotted most of the countryside.58 Like most

Saskatchewan fanners, the Graves did not have electricity or indoor

plumbing, but Tom rigged up a hand pump at the kitchen sink so that Kate

did not have to haul water from the yard (except in winter when the water

pipe froze).59 Another feature which pleased Kate greatly was the good-sized

pantry Tom built off the kitchen, complete with a counter-top and cupboards,

where she could make cakes and cookiedo Kate and Tom purchased their

first car in 1925 and, in the spring of 1929, subscri'bed to a telephone service31

Kate also acquired a $165 fur coat and was able to afford occasional paid

domestic help.62 And she and her husband travelled. They returned to

Quebec for an extended stay in 1917, and spent the winter of 1921 with their

daughter Arma on the West Coast.63 In 1924 Kate took the tain to Fleet,

Albertaf for a visit with Geoqina, her husband Bert and infant son64 Kate's

letters to Georgina in 1925 blaze with optimism and prosperity. They've

harvested lf633 bushels of No. 1 wheat, she's sold eight and a half dozen eggs

for twenty-five cents a dozen, "Father" is building a new granary, the

neighborn have new linoleum, cars and radios, and "our trees look

grand."65 .

As farmers, the Graves were relatively restrained when it came to

purchasing land, farm arrimals and equipment. Many Saskatchewan farmers

overextended themselves fhan&Uy in the 19209 by expanding their crop

acreage and trading their horses in for tractors and other farm machinery.66

In 1926, the average Saskatchewan farm was 390 acres, and the average farm

in the Rural Municipality of Madata and surrounding municipalities was 419

acres.67 The number of tractors, trucks and combines in the province

doubled between 1926 and 1931, to more than sixty thousand-68 Tom and

Kate Graves, meanwhile, kept their farm to appmximately 375 acres and

stuck with a home-drawn plough. They did not amass sizeable cattle or horse

herds.69 Nor, it seems, did they accumulate a large farm debt or mortgage.70

The spring of 1929 found the Graves family in an enviable economic position

indeed.71

Kate Graves was now sixty-three years old and about to enter the final

phase of her life. If we were to take a snapshot of her as she stood at the

brink of the Great Depression, what would we see? Six main points

concerning her age, economic position, ethniaty, temperament, class and past

experiences become apparent. First of all, Kate Graves was an elderly,

married farm woman. The 1931 census shows that five pex cent of

Saskatchewan's 421,850 female residents fit this description72 Older women

like Kate accounted for 20 per cent of the 107,683 married females who lived

in rival areas.73 The province's elderly population was relatively small; 14 per

cent of a l l residents were £Sty or over.74

Secondly, we would see a woman who was economically dependent

on her husband. According to the 1931 census, 63 per cent of Saskatchewan

females aged fifteen and over were married. Very few of these women had

jobs away from their homes and farm yards. Employed women made up

only 12 per cent of the labour force.75 Kate Graves was a financially

resourceful person who used money she made from selling butter and eggs

to build a "wee nest egg."76 But the fact that she had little or no income

independent of her husband and the f a n n put her in a vulnerable position.

The homestead and preemption were registered in Tom's name alone, and

her legal rights concerning the land and family assets were limited. Few

prairie women in the first decades of the twentieth century owned land

jointly with their husbands, and very few women obbined homesteads in

their own names. (The Dominion Lands Act of 1908 prevented women from

obtaining homesteads or pre-emptiom unless they could prove they were

heads of f d e s . ) Saskatchewan legislation prior to 1915 would have allowed

Tom Graves to use or dispose of the land and f d y property as he chose.

After that date, Tom would not have been permitted to sell or mortgage the

praperty without Kate's written consent, and she would have been

guaranteed an interest in the home and land upon his death But the law did

not prevent a husband from selling or willing to others the farm equipment,

livestock, and household goods that made the farm a viable enterprise. Nor

would Kate have had a daim to the land or assets if she divorced or separated

from Tom. Her contriiution to the building up and maintenance of the farm

would have counted for nothing. In fact, it was not until 1979 that

Saskatchewan law recognized women's right to an equal share in family

~ ~ p e r t y - "

The third thing our imaginary snapshot would reveal is that Kate

Graves, like numy prairie residents in the early part of the century, lived

chiefly among her own kind - socialidry: and worshipping with people who

shared her language, faith and cultural background. More than two-thirds of

the people she setfled amongst were Canadian-born, most of them

Anglophones from Ontario or Quebec. She belonged to her municipality's,

and the province's, largest ethnic group - people of British descent. In 1931,

approximately 50 per cent of the population of Saskatchewan and the Rural

Municipality of Mankota had English, Irish or Scottish ancestors. Although

people of French Canadian, German and other ethnic origins settled in Kate's

area, most individuals in her social drde were E q g l i s h ~ United

Church-goers from Ontario, Quebec, the United States, and Britain. In 1931,

the United C h d and the Roman Catholic Church vied for the largest

number of womhippers in Kate's municipality. But her denomination

dominated rural southem Saskatchewan as a whole, with forty per cent of

the population daiming adherence's

A fourth point concems Kate's tmperament and values. She

habitually wore a severe expression for the camera, and it is true that she had

a stern side. She made no bones about the fact that she disapproved of

smoking, drhking alcohol, and playing cards on Sunday.79 She had strict

ideas about right and wrong, and was not afraid to voice her opinions.

"Sometimes when we get older, we can soften our blows quite easily,"Kate's

granddaughter Enid Kolskog said in 1998 when she herself was eighty-five.

"But I don't think Grandma ever did."80 Yet, family members also remember

Kate as affectionate and warm-hearted - hugging grandchildren, aadlmg

babies, and treating others with respect. "I remember a very kind person

who would never say anything (negative) about anybody, and wouldn't

allow anyone else to say anything/ says grandson Wes Hatlelid. "You could

joke about someone's shortcomings, but you wouldn't joke behind their

backs."*l

Many who knew Kate Graves say she was "refined" - her education

and breeding showed in her conversation and manners.82 "She was one of

the gentlewomen of the day," recalls Hatldid. "You 'took' tea ... and she was

very careful with her English and pronunciation."~3 Les Wilson, who grew up

in Kate's area in the 19209 and '30s says, "My dad had a lot of respect for Tom

and Mrs. Graves. They were more genteel, long-suffering folk"**

This raises a fifth question, concerning Kate's dass. Determining her

place in the social hierarchy is not easy, for class distinctions are fluid things

that vary according to the criteria used. Should G t e Graves' class designation

be based upon her material wealth? Her husband's livelihood? Her social

status in the community? Her education level? Her aspirations for hersel€ and

her children? Her sense of etiquette? There is a marked lack of consensus

among scholars on the subject of dsss in rural westem Canada. Some, like

sociologist S.M. lipset, say dass distincticms did not exist in rural

Saskatchewan, that farmers were a "one-class community."85 Lipset treats

farmers as a dass unto themselves, apart horn town and urban dwellers and

"the big interests."& Some scholars lump farmers in with capitalists, while

others say they belong to the working class.87 Some divide prairie residents

into the "middle class" and the "working class," but fail to explain how they

arrive at such d i s h c t i m . 8 8

It seems wisest to say Kate Graves belonged to a middle category of

farmers.89 At the top end of the scale were wealthy families who owned large

farms and elaborate homes, and employed several full-time domestic and

farm labourers. These families were generally English-Canadians who

gravitated to positions of authority in the community* At the opposite end of

the hierarchy were poor families who owned no land or whose farms were

so small and unproductive that they were forced to hire themselves out as

low-paid ''hired hands." Well-off famiIies might fall into this category if they

offended local morals or belonged to an unfavoured ethnic group. Between

these two extremes were "respectable families" who owned average sized

farms and employed seasonal helpPo Kate meets these criteria on all counts.

The Graves' farm was similar in size to many in the district, and their house

was neither small nor grandiose. The couple's moderate income allowed

them, at busy times of the year, to hire a man to help with field work and

chores, and a woman to help with domestic work. They were among the

roughly 42 per cent of Saskatchewan fanns who used hired labour of some

sort in 1931.91 The Graves family also held responsible positions in the

community. As an educated, well-mannerd, God-fearing AngleCeltic

woman who attended one of the community's dominant churches and

40

belonged to its principal women's organizations, Kate Graves was nothing if

not respectable.

Lastly, it is important to consider Kate's past experiences and general

attributes. The namative of her life to date shows her to be a resilient

individual capable of uprooting herself at mid-life and adjusting to economic

setbacks. She had a tremendous capacity for hard work and a keen sense of

responsiity to family, church and community. She was a sociable person

who -eyed meeting new people and spending time with relatives and

women friends. She had witnessed serious illnesses and death, and had coped

with emotional loss and family separation. She had a husband who valued

her opinions, who attempted to lighten her work load, and whom she

regarded as a partner. She used her energy and skills not only to help

provide for her family, but to accumulate money of her own; a degree of

economic independence was important to her. She was educated and

intelligent, with interests that ranged from politics to the farm cooperative

movement to church missionary work Last but not least, she was a

principled person who strove to do right in the eyes of God, her family and

her community.

Kate Graves went into the 1930s with a considerable store of

experiences and resources. She had witnessed good times and bad, and had

p v e n haself to be capable, adaptable, selfless, and vigorous of mind and

body. Surviving the Great Depression would demand all these qualities and

more.

NOTES CHAPrERoNE

1. Kate Graves letters to Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, 30 July 1936,2 August 1938.

2. Ibid., 30 July 1936.

3. Genealogical documents compiled by Kate Graves and daughters, Kate Graves Family Papers.

4. 'The Late Mrs. Thomas E. Graves," newspaper obituary, 1941, Georgina Edith (Graves) scrapbook, Kate Graves Family Papers. Muriel (Griffiths) Bye phone interview, 29 January 2000.

5. Genealogical documents, Kate Graves Family Papers.

6. Pre-emption Patent Application, Homestead File, 1858791, Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon.

7. Ethel F. Graves, "My Native Place"; "The Late Thos. E. Graves," newspaper obituary, 1941, Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths scrapbook. Kate Graves Family Papers.

8. Kate Graves diary, 19 April 1888, Kate Graves Family Papers.

9. Genealogical documents, Kate Graves Family Papers.

10. Kate Graves diary, 1888; Mary (Gordon) Edwards diary, 1898-99; Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths diary 1905-09. Kate Graves Family Papers. Kate and her family attended various Methodist and Presbyterian churches; they likely belonged to the latter denomination. Kate and Tom paid schooI fees and room and board for their daughters to attend high school in Omstown, Quebec The family regularly hired male farm hands and female domestic servants and seamstresses.

11. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, Edmonton, Alberta, 13 August 1998. Murid (Griffiths) Bye phone interview, 29 Januaqr 2000.

12. Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths diary, 1905-09; Kate Graves family genealogical documents; Kate Graves letter to Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, 2 September 1932.

13. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998; Wes Hatlelid telephone interview, 14 December 2000.

14. Vernon C Fowke, National P o l i f v and (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 59-62 72-7; Bmce Baden Peel, "RM. 45: The Social History of a Rural Municipality" (M.A. Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1946), 94-114; D.M. Loveridge and Barry Potyondi, From to the A ~ U N ~ V of the . .

. . *(Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1983), 20-1; Gerald Friesen, Canadian (I'omnto and Londom University of Toronto Press, 19871,182- 6.

15. Homestead Files, 1859898,1858791,1858795,1859902, Saskatchewan Archives Board. Peel, "R.M. 45," 109-10. Thomast homestead and pr-ption were the northwest and

northeast quarters of section 24, township 5, range 7, west of the 3rd meridian.

16. Fowke, N- 73; GE. BritneU8 J'he 36.

17. Between 1906 and 1916, the number of farms in southwestern Saskatchewan rocketed from 8,750 to more than 38,000. Barry Potyondi, "Losing Ground: Farm Settlers on the Periphery," in J V y v to ed. Thelma Poirier (Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan: Wood Mountain Historical Soaety, 2OOO), 139.

18. Barry Potyondi, Ip Palbef s T- In the 1850-1930 . * . . . (Saskatoon:

Purich Publishing 1995), 112,129; Friesen, J'he 328-

19. Friesen, - . 242-73; R Douglas Francis, -e W e e (Saskatmn- Western Producer Prairie

books# 1989), 107-54; Loveridge and Potyondi, mrn Wood Mountain to 208 167; Peel, "ILM. 45," 174.

20. Wes Hatlelid telephone interview, 14 December 2000. Kate Graves letter to Gee- Edith (Graves) Griffiths, 26 July 1937.

21. Tom Graves was aware of the increasing value of his property. In a letter he wrote his daughter Katey from Milly, Saskatchewan (the community closest to the Graves' homestead), on June 8,191 1, he noted that the price the Hudson Bay was asking for land adjacent to his had jumped from eight dollars an acre in 1909 to twenty-eight dollars an acre in 1911. Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths scrapbook, Kate Graves Family Papers.

. . 22. Friesen, The 251; Loveridge and Potyondi, W- - . 167; David Gagan, a (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 4040.

23. Francis, -s of the W& 107-154; Britnell, W h e a t 36; Hesen, . . 301-5.

25. Ibid.; Friesen, . . 251.

26. Ka-iu Fung, ed., & of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, lW), 41; Captain John Palliser and Henry Yode Hind8 quoted in Loveridge and Potyondi,

. . 109-10; Francis, West, 5-8,20-1; Friesen, The 328.

27. Peel, "RM. 45," S8 7, 18-20; Coveridge and Potyondi, From Wood Whitemud, 29-42; Britnell, 5-

28- Britnell, 4; Peel, "R.M. 45," 27; Canada, Department of A @ d m 8 to 1-

.. . Technical Bulletin No. 15 (Ottawa:

King's Printer, 1938), 13; "Submission by the Government of Saskatchewan to the Saskatchewan Reconstruction Coundl," Saskatchewan, Department of Agridture8

Saskatchewan Archives Board, Pamphlet File, Agriculture-Saskatchewan, 5-7; E.S. Hopkins, A.E. Palmer and WS. Chepil, L- . - . . (King's Printer, 1946), 58-

29. Loveridge and Potyondi, Wood Mountain to * e m Saskatchewan. 41.

40; Fung, Allauk€

30. Quoted in Peel, "R.M. 45," 25.

31. Canada, Department of Agriculture, to Factors& Usg 9.

32 Loveridge and Potyon& From W- to the 40; Peel, "RM. 45," 23- 6.

33. Potyondi, "Losing Ground," 138.

34. For a thorough discussion of settlers' lack of knowledge concerning the choosing and farming of land in dry southwestern Saskatchewan, and the Dominion government's irres6mibility in op&ng the area to settlement, see Loveridge and ~Gtyondi, Wood Mountain 160, 1181-3. The authors say the fact that 53 per cent of the land in RM, 45 Vom Graves' municipality) was filed on more than once, and 18 per cent was filed on three or more times, shows that "many settlers had very little idea of what they were doing." To give Tom credit, it should be nhted that most quirber sections which we& filed on several times were too rough or stony to cultivate. Tom chose arable land in the flattest, first-settled part of the m&apalitf, and he found it productive enough that he did not cancel his claim. See Peel, "RM. 45," 118,120-4.

36. Peel, "RM. 45," 106-119; Loveridge and Potyondi, From Wood 153-161); David C Jones, &@w of (Edmonton: University of Alberta

p m I 1987), 33-41.

37. James Gray, Men D m (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1967); Loveridge and Potyondi, Woad 181-183; Potyondi, "Losing e m , " 142; Jm, of Qust. 30-33.

38. Frans van Waeterstadt, "Into the World: Letter from an Emigrant," quoted in Francis, Tmanes West 135.

39. Homestead Files, 1859898, 1859902, Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon. It is interesting to consider that while Tom Graves spent more than half of each year in Saskatchewan, Kate cared for the couple's younger children and ran their Quebec farm (and perhaps their foundry business), probably with hired help.

40. Tom Graves letter to Katey Graves, 8 June 1911, Milly, Saskatchewan, Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths scrapbook, Kate Graves Family Papers.

41. Historians who emphasize that it was men who decided to move west, and that women reluctantly complied, include Lillian Sdissel, W o m s of &s W e s t w m 1 * -

(New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 10; and John Mack Faragher, -(New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 171. Scholars who question the image of the reluctant female pioneer and argue for a complex interpretation of women's involvement in the decision to migrate, and the homesteading experience overall, include Carol Fairbanks and Sara Brooks Sundberg,

(Metuchen, New J q , and London: The Scarectow Press, 1983), 7379,85; Jameson, "Women as Workers, Women as Civilizers,'' 149-50; Jensen and Miller, 'The Gentle Tamers Revisited," 187.

42 Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998. KoIskog, who was born in 1913, was Kate Graves' first grandchild and lived near her in Saskatchewan from 1916 to 1919 and from 1927 to Kate's death in 1941.

43. Historian Bruce Baden Peel mentions numerous extended family groupings in Kate and Tom Graves' area. The Graves' homestead was located in the most populous township in the municipality. In 1911, almost 30 per cent of the municipality's 447 residents lived in township 5, range 7; the population density was 3.63 per square mile. Yet, Peel emphasizes the social isolation homesteaders, especially women, experienced. "RM. 45," 107-20,16%6. Other scholars who stress women's isolation on the frontier include Linda Rasmussen, e t d,

(Toronto: The Women's Press, 1976), 42; and Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 17. Scholars who note that pioneers often had kinship ties with their fellow migrants include Jamesan, 'Women as Workers," 149; and W. Peter Ward, who says: "Nothing in the memoir literature suggests that men and women often braved the hardships of pioneer life done." "Population Growth in Western Canada, 1901- 77," in- ~ V - P - West ed. John Foster (Edmonton: University of Alber&a Press8 1983), 176.

44. Kate Graves letter to Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, Saskatchewan, 18 August 1938.

45. Photograph, Kate Graves Family Papers. We can only guess at Kate Graves' first impression of the homestead, Elizabeth Ruthig, who first saw the Wood River Plains in 1909 and later became Kate's neighbour and friend, thought the vast prairie "looked a barren land. No trees, no buildings in sight; just prairie and sage brush and a long, long winding trail." Ruthig, "Homestead Days in the McCord District," w e w - 122 (Winter 1954)' 22-7.

46. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998; Wes Hatlelid telephone intemiew, 14 December 2000. Kate Graves letters to G e o r g h : 8 April 1931; 20 April 1932 The Centennial Committee of the Rural Municipalities of Mankota No. 45 and Glen McPherson No. 46, and Lncal Improvement Districts No. 920 and No. 923 (Saskatoon: Mankota Diamond Jubilee committee, 1965) 36; Peel, "R.M. 45," 276. The museum at McCord, Saskatchewan, contains a quilt embroidered in May 1922 with the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association logo, the word "Equity," and the names of local association members, including "Mrs. T. Graves" and "Mr. T. Graves."

47. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 6 August 1925, Kate Graves Family Papers.

48. Kate Graves letters to Georgina, 1925. -List=- VP Iulv 16th & 17th,

49. Peel, "RM. 45," 198-201. The provincial government provided seed grain at reduced prices and instituted other relief measures to accommodate for the drought

50. Photograph, 1915, Kate Graves Family Papers.

51. Peel, "R.M. 85," 21&16; Loveridge and Potyondi, Wood Mo- to 181. Documents filed on October 5,1927, indicate that George Graves' family

had received government relief in 1919 and had experienced several years of aop failures due to drought, early frost and hail. Homestead Files, 1858795.

52. Potyondi, "bsing Ground," 143.

53. Katey (Graves) Hatielid diary, 1920, Kate Graves Family Papers.

55. The Graves were suffiaently well off that between filing on the homestead in 1909 and receiving the patent to it on January 16,1914, Tom could afford to be away from his Quebec founchy and farm for more than six months of each year and, unlike most homesteaders, he did not need to find off-farm employment to scrape together the one to three thousand dollars in farm equipment animals and supplies needed to begm farming. Homestead He, 1859898; John H, Archer, Saskatchewan: A . * (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1980), 100; Friesen, The Canadian 310. Once Tom and Kate sold their property in Quebec, they had even more capital to invest in their homestead. Only 10 per cent of d e r s in R M 45 were in a position to sell property in eastern Canada and o t k regions and use the profits to ship in farm start-up supplies. Peel, "R.M. 45," 154.

56- Genealogical documents, Kate Graves Family Papers.

57. Homestead File, 1858791; Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998; Gordon Graves phone interview, 7 November 1999; Allen McCrea personal interview, 12 July 2000.

58. Britnell, TheWheat- 173; Peel, "R.M. 45," 234,236.

59. Wallace, "All Else Must Wait,"59,75; Veronica Strong-Boa& "Pulling in Double Harness," 406-7; Britnell, me WhEconomv, 177,179; Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 17 June 1935.

60. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998.

61. Peel, "R.M. 45," 278; Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 20 September 1925; 10 October 1939. The family traded or sold their first car for another in 1926.

62. Kate Graves letters to Georghx 19 October 1936; 25 June 1925.

63. Ibid., FtanWin Centre, Quebec, 6 February 1917, Kate Graves Family Papers.

64. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, Kerrobert, Saskatchewan, 25 November 1924, Kate

Graves Family Papers. Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths and her husband Bert had one child, James, at this point They went on to have five more children, whom Kate Graves never met

65. Kate Graves letters to Georgina Graves Griffiths: 25 June 1925,6 August 1925,20 September 1925.

66. Britnell, The Wheat 29-42,29-42,; Fowke, a N- 81. For figures on farm expansion and farm debt in semi-arid municipalities to the north and east of the Rural Municipality of Mankota, see to J Use

67.- Uinversity of Saskatchewan, College of Agriculture, Department of Farm Management, Agricultural Extension Bulletin No. 52, July 1931 (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan), 46; Loveridge and Potyondi, From Wood

68. Calculated from Table XIV, Britnell, L- 41.

69. The RM. 45 relief ledger for 1934-35 shows that Tom Graves owned 320 acres (250 of which were under cultivation) and had eight cattle, nine horses, four pigs and forty chickens. Rural Municipality of Mankota, No. 45, Mankota, Saskatchewan, Relief Ledgers, 1930-1946. In. addition to their half-section in RM. 45, the Graves appear to have owned fifty or *-five aaes near their daughter M a y and son-in-law Matthew Wallace's farm, which was east of the Graves' home place in RM. 44. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 23 April 1930,s April 1931.

70. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgjna, Lafieche, Saskatchewan, 25 August 1945; Kate Graves letter to Geo-a, 8 April 1931.

71. The Graves were more fortunate than the one-third of prairie farmers who had mortgages on their farms in 1931. However, it must be remembemd that their farm income was not large (prairie farmers earned an average of six hundred dollars per year in 1930), and like most western farmers, they probably had invested most of their money in their land and had little cushion in the form of savings or non-farm investments. The 'average' prairie farm family possessed total capital of $14,000 and debts of about $3,000 in 1930-31," writes Gerald Friesen The C- . * 318.

72 Calculated from- of _Canada. Vol. m0 * of Peon&, Table 13,114-5, and Vol. I, Table 17b, 45041. In 1931 in Saskatchewan, there were 22,057 married rural women who were age fifty and over. Of these women, 2,289 were age sixty- five to sixty-nine, (Kate was sixty-five in 1931). Half of the province's 6,619 female residents who were age sixty-five and older were married,

73. Ibid., calculated from Vol. 111, -of Table 13, 114-5. Saskatchewan's total population stood at 921,785 in 1931. Rural residents accounted for 68 per cent of that figure, There were 280,515 rural females and 141,335 urban females in the province; rural females accounted for about 67 per cent of the total female population.

74. Calculated from Britnell, Wheat Table VII, 21; and . . VoL I, Table 7,432. Women age 50 and over accounted for about five per cent

of the Saskatchewan population in 1931.

75. Ciqps of _the P r o m 1% . . Vol. I, Table 8,433; Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 136.

76. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 16 August 1932

77. Rollings-Magnusson, Sandra, "Hidden Homesteaders: Women, the State and Patriarchy in the Saskatchewan Wheat Economy, 1870-1930," Prairie Fo-242 (Fall 1999), 171-283. Catherine Cavanaugh, "The Limitations of the Pioneering Partnership: The Alberta Campaign for Homestead Dower, 1909-25," _Canadian Revie~742 (1993), 198- 225; Prentice, et. aL, Canadian 2257; Ramussen, et al., A e s t Yet to Re- 148-9.

78. Friesen, J'he Canadian P r a m . . 242-?3; Peel, "R.M. 45," 172,304,353-4; Archer, 358; Loveridge and Potyondi,

166-7; Britnell, The Wheat 186-7. In 1931, the Rural Muniapality of Mankota's population included 916 people of English, Irish and Scottish descent, 379 people of French origin, 209 Scandinavians, 162 Germans, 92 Syrians and a smattering of other ethnic groups.

79. Telephone interviews with Wes Hatlefid, 14 December 2000; Allen McCrea, 15 August 2000.

80. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal intem-iew, IS14 August, 1998.

81. Ibid.; Wes Hatlelid telephone interview, 14 December 2000. Kate Graves' daughters described her as "sympathetic" and "kind-hearted." Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 18 May 1941; Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, 12 May 1941. Kate Graves Family Papers.

82. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 1314 August 1998.

83. Wes Hatlelid telephone interview, 14 December 2000.

84. Les Wilson telephone interview, 12 March 2000.

85. S.M. Lipset, . . - *

Saskatchewan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 247.

86. %id, s 5 7 - 9 8 , 7 2 Also see Jean Burnet, Co-: A Sfydy of Rural . . . *(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951), 69-72,7543,105-113; and Edward Belt, and C- . .

(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), 87-8 and 10M.

87. J.F. Conway, West: of a - .

2nd ed. (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1994), 31; Cecilia Danysk,

(Toronto: McUelland and Stewart, 1995); 9 Bulletin No. 5546.

88. Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 50-55.

89. I have adopted the three-tieted social hierarchy of prairie farmers outlined in Friesen, 316.

90. Ibid.

91. Britnell, ple 43.

"Times are Hardn: Saskatchewan, the G&S Farm and the Depression, 1929-194l

In the spring of 1930, Kate Graves reported that more than one hundred

of the trees surrounding the farmstead were dead. "It seems to us this is no tree

country," she wrote. "They were so nice last year, but the drought did it.'" The

loss of many of their trees was a portent of things to come. In the twelve years

between the onset of the Great Depmssion in 1929 and Kate's death in 1941, Kate

and her family lost crops, gardens, loved ones and dreams. Like the rest of

Saskatchewan they experienced economic, environmental, social and other

changes that shook them to the core. This chapter explores Kate Graves' life in

the context of the Great Depressionr What were conditions like in her home, her

area and the province as a whole? How did she fare in comparison with other

farm women and f d e s ?

No part of Canada or the world suffered more during the Great

Depression than the province of Saskatchewan. Drought, plunging wheat prices

and the prolonged contraction of the Canadian economy codlated to almost

destroy Saskatchewan society. At the heart of the province's problems were two

main factors: p10nged drought and dramatically depressed wheat prices. Each

phenomenon on its own would have brought farmers and the province

considerable hardship. Together, they produced disaster. The drought led to

sharply reduced wheat yields, while low market prices meant that whatever

aops did make it to the elevator failed to bring farmers sufficient income to

meet their production costs, let alone enable them to support themselves or

stoke the economy. "To the greater part of the wheat economy the last ten years

would have been extremely difficult even with normal prices," wrote economic

historian AE. Britnd in 1939. 'The complete collapse of wheat and other

agricultural prices produced a desperate situation"2

The impact of both the draught and the agricultural depression was

magni€ied by the fact that Saskatchewan's predominantly rural population was

almost totally dependent on wheat. By the 1930s, more than 80 per cent of the

province's seeded acreage was devoted to the cereal cropf and in the drier parts

of the province (namely the bulk of Pallisds Triangle) the percentage of

wheatland rose to 90 per cent. Saskatchewan possessed more than half of the

country's total wheat acreage? A 1938 Bank of Canada report noted that no

other governmental unit in the civilized world was so reliant on a single

commodity. "On average about 85 per cent of the value of all net production in

Saskatchewan is supplied by the agricultural industry, and about 80 per cent of

the cash income of the agricultural industry is derived from wheat."* The

fortunes of almost everyone in Saskatchewan were tied to those of wheat.5

Furthermoref in the 1920% 70 per cent of Canadaf s wheat - most of it from

Saskatchewan - was exported. Canada's share of the world wheat market was a

whopping 40 per cent6 This placed Saskatchewan in an extremely vulnerable

position Should anything happen to decrease crop yields at home, or grain

prices abroad, the effect would rip through the Saskatchewan economy like the

dry winds that were already beginning to denude the drj'lands in the 1920s.

Saskatchewan's worst nightmare came true in late 1929, when a glut of

wheat on the world market sent the price of wheat crashing down. From $1.03 in

1929, the average farm wheat price per bushel slid to 47 cents in 1930,38 cents in

1931, and 35 cents in 1932 - a four-hundred-year, worldwide low.' Dependent as

it was on wheat exports, Saskatchewan was harder hit than any other province.*

Between 1928-29 and 1933, the province's per-capita income fell by 72 per cent,

compared with 42 per cent for Canada as a whole? Saskatchewan farmers' total

net income dropped from $185 million in 1928 to minus $36 d o n in 1937. lo

Throughout the 1930s, the value of farm income from wheat in Saskatchewan

suffered considerably compared with the 1920s. From almost $286 million in

1925, it dropped to $17.8 million in 1937.11 The cumulative picture is even more

devastating* Saskatchewan farmers' earned $1.1 billion less from wheat sales

between 1930 and 1937 than they did between 1922 and 1929.12

To understand what these figures meant to individual farmers and the

Saskatchewan economy, one must remember that income from wheat

accounted for 80 per cent or more of the average southern Saskatchewan

farmer's income.13 Kate Graves spoke for many farm families when she noted

several times that "we have no money."l4 Kate attempted to earn money by

sehg eggs, butter and cream, but the price of all agricultural products dipped

sharply during the Depression Tom Graves did blacksmithing and carpentry

work for local farmers, but few could afford to pay him. Thousands of

Saskatchewan farmers could not pay their municipal taxes, meet their mortgage

payments or support other sectors of the economy. By 1934, the provincial

government was bankrupt15 Three years later, the Bank of Canada said the

Saskatchewan economy had "almost ceased to function"16 Nor was this a short-

lived phenomenon Saskatchewan farmers' total net income remained relatively

low from 1929 through 1941, which means that the Great Depression lasted two

years longer for Saskatchewan than for the rest of Canada.17

The Depression was not just about rock-bottom wheat prices, however. It

was also about drought and a host of environmental scourges that threatened

crops, farm land and thousands of farmers' ability to support themselves. Not

once in the history of prairie settlement had people experienced the Like. The

drought began in 1929 and reigned for ten years aaoss the entire Palliser

Triangle and beyond.18 'The cloud of discouragement hung heaviest over

Saskatchewan," writes prairie historian James Gray, "for the very simple reason

that in season and out, Saskatchewan had it worst on all cotmts - worst drought,

worst grasshoppers, worst rust, worst cutworms, worst hail."lg

"One could never believe the desolation existing in southem

Saskatchewan did he not see it himself: a shaken Minister of Ldmtu, Gideon

Robertson, wrote Prime Minister RB. Bennett in 1931. "The whole country for

more than one hundred miles in extent..& a barren drifthg desert."20

Newspaper reporters touring the devastated areas reported seeing land that was

'lifeless as ashes," "gaunt cattle and horses, with little save their skins to cover

their bones," and people who appeared "haggard and hopeless."21 By 1937, the

stricken area encompassed eighteen million aues - fully one-quarter of Canada's arable land In a speech to the House of Commons on February 11 that

year, Minister of Agriculture J.G. Gardiner said the survival of nine hundred

thousand people was at stake.=

The dry heart of PaUiser's Triangle - including Kate Graves' district in the

McCord area - bore the brunt of the environmental destruction. In places, hot

winds turned the soil to the consistency of talcum powder and whipped it into

dust storms that darkened the sky, choked roads and coated everything in their

path23 "Terrible wind and the whole country blowing," Kate's neighbow

George Hamilton wrote in his diary in the spring of 1930.24 Some days the air

inside Hamilton's house was so laden with dust that the family had to light a

lamp to see. At her farm down the road, Kate could hear the wind howling

"veryfvery high" and see "the big weeds go rolling past."*s Cleaning up dust

inside the house was a constant chore. Sand drifted several feet up the garden

fence. In park of the municipality, blown soil filled ditches and buried fences and

shelterbelts. '%low outs" -- patches of land entirely stripped of topsoil - appeared in RM 45 and ne@burhg municipalities.26 United Church officials

assessing the region forty kilometres north of McCord said it was "like the

Saharaf with not a green thing to be seed"''

Not all parts of Saskatchewan were turned to d d t h g sand during the

Great Depression. There were areas, especially north of the Yorkton-Saskatoon-

Battleford line, that experienced adequate ainfall and normal crop yields. And

some farms in the south had good years. But there were many that failed to

yield a decent crop for six, seven, or more years in a row.28 One family who

lived eighty kilometres southwest of McCord went fourteen years without a

crop.29 Gop yield statistics tell the story. Wheat yields in Saskatchewan dropped

from an average of 23.3 bushels an acre in 1928 to 2.7 bushels in 1937; the

average annual value of the province's wheat crop from 1930 to 1938 was one-

quarter of the average value for 1924 to 1928, and the value in 1937 was only

one-eighth the previous figure-30

Kate Graves' region fared worse than most of Saskatchewan and the

other two prairie provinces. Wheat yields in the Rural Municipality of Madcota

dropped horn twenty-five bushels an acre in 1928 to five bushels in 1929, and

stayed low for most of the decade. Farmers harvested no wheat at all in 1931 and

1937.31 The annual yield in RM. 45 and surrounding municipalities did not

exceed five bushels an acre for the six crop years between 1929 and 1934.32 Gop

District No. 3 (which toolc in Kate's municipality and much of southwestern

Saskatchewan), recorded the lowest crop yields in Saskatchewan for six years

between 1929 and 1938; its yields were the lowest in the prairies for three of

those years.33

The statistics translated into worry and discouragement for families like

Tom and Kate Graves and their relatives. Many ye- they could not even

salvage enough of their wheat crops for fodder, and had to rely on the

government to sustain their animals. When Georgrna Edith (Graves) G s t h s

was hailed out in Alberta in 1934, her sisters in Saskatchewan commiserated by

recounting their own experiences with crop failure- "It is very, very hard to lose

a aop when you had the prospect of one," wrote Katey (Graves) Hatlelid, who

farmed about thirty kilometres east of McCard. Katey said her family was

experiencing its worst year yet

Last year we had 300 bushels threshed and quite a lot of feed stacked- This year we have less ked by far and not a bit to thresh We will have to get relief feed to keep the chickem alive, and soon too. Our garden was good last year and that helped. This year it is very poor. If it would only rain even now we might have tomatoes and cucumbers, but it seems to dry up from day to day.34

Ethel (Graves) M-a, who lived with her husband Ed on the farm immediately

south of Kate and Tom's, said: "We have almost got used to having no crop, as

we have had nothing for thrashing for four or five years."JS

Wind and heat played havoc with farmers and farmland in a number of

ways. They destroyed mops and gardens by blowing away freshly sown seed,

slicing off young sprouts, and scorching mature plants- They also dried up

sloughs and native grasses, so that there was little for cattle and horses to drink

or eat, and some farmers shot their horses rather than watch them suffer.36 'We

need rain so badly it is a shame the pasture is so bare," wrote Ethel in June 1937.

"The livestock would die of wony if they knew how to worry."37 Desperate to

save their animals, many farmers turned to the only plant that seemed to thrive

in the drought-stricken 1930s: the bushy, prickly tumbleweed. In September

1931, the McCord correspondent for the l o d newspaper said:

A large quantity of green Russian thistle is being put up by farmers in these parts for cattle feed for the coming winter, and thus what has been looked upon as one of the special curses of the country is proving a blessing in disguise. Even fairly ripe Russian thistle stacked with a sprinkle of salt brine mixed therewith makes good feed.38

No doubt farmers were less pleased with the thistle when blowing soil caught in

its spiny branches and entire fields - like the one across the road from the

55

Graves' farm - became dotted with hummocks that farmers found impossible to

dtivate.39

Besides wind8 drought and weeds8 the -on brought hail, wheat

rust epidemis, and swarms of insects and gophers that stripped gardens and

amps of vegetation. In 1938, with Saskatchewan farmers looking at their most

promising crops in years, hail, grasshoppers, wireworms, sawflies and rust

destroyed UO-miEon worth of wheat.40 In Kate's municipality, phalanxes of

green army worms wriggled over crops, barns8 and houses; there were so many

on the roads that vehicles spun their wheels.41 Kate wrote in 1937 that worms

and grasshoppers polished off what little garden the drought spared. "Never

tasted peas, beans, com, beets or lettuce this year," she said9

Saskatchewan's environmental and economic problems had enormous

social consequences. A large proportion of the population was h w f cold,

poorly clothed, ill-housed and in poor health. Hundreds of thousands quired

government help. While between 10 and 25 per cent of urban residents were on

relief at various times throughout the 1930sf the province's d population

suffered to a greater degree.43 "By the autumn of 1937, the completeness of the

crop failure in that year had placed two-thirds of the rural population on the

=lief rolls, and 290 of the 302 rural municipalities of the province had sought

assistance from the government," writes A.E. BritneIl.44 The Saskatchewan

government spent far more on relief than any other province -- more than three

times the rate for each of the other Western provinces and the Canadian

average. The province's 1929 to 1938 relief expenditures (financed mainly by the

federal government) exceeded $153 miUion.45

Relief in drought-stricken nual Saskatchewan took several forms. In the

first three! years of the Depression, many farmers who'd experienced crop failure

worked for muumal . . wages on municipal road Several of Kate Graves'

56

neighbours, including George Hamilton, earned money this way.% The

provincial government also distri'buted direct relief in the form of flour, coal,

roOa and dothin& and agricultural relief in the form of seed grain, fodder, binder

twine and tractor fuel.47 The Rural Municipality of Mankota received almost

$600,000 in direct relief and nearly $1.5 million in agriculture-rehted relief

between 1929 and 1939.48 The provincial government helped drought-stricken

areas further by paying doctors a monthly amount and providing grants to

hospitals to cover individual relief patients' bills.49 And, relief for some came in

the guise of the fledgling dominion-provincial old age pension program.

Between 1928-29 and 1937-38, the program dispensed $16.8 million to low-

income Saskatchewan residents who were seventy and older. The number of

. pension applicants more than tripled over the course of the decade, and officials

recognized that the increase was directly due to the Depression.50 Certainly, it

was persistent poverty that drove Kate and Tam Graves to apply for the pension

in 1937, when they were seventy-one and seventy-three respectively. Kate wmte

in June of that year that a pension administrator was considering her application:

''I hope he hurries a little. Times are hard."51

There were years when virtuaUy every farm family in Kate Graves'

region was on relief. Kate's letters and the Rural Municipality of Mankota's relief

ledgers indicate that Kate and Tom received relief each year between 1930 and

1938.52 Municipal relief records also list the names of Kate's neighbows and five

of her children's families.53 Both Kate's municipality and the Rural Municipality

of Waverley, which bordered the Graves' land on the east, were acutely aware of

their residents' plight. C o d minutes are filled with pleas for more and

speedier government help9 'This municipality has suffered more crop f a i l m

than many municipalities now obtaining relief and as a result practically 100 per

cent of its residents are now absolutely unable to help themselves," said the

Rural Municipality of Waverley's c o d on August 5,1933.55 Councillors asked

the provincial govemment to increase relief food orders by 30 per cent and to

send in train carloads of fruit and vegetables to compensate for gardens ruined

by grasshoppers and drought.

Hundreds of carloads of fruit, vegetables, do* fuel and other items

were, indeed, shipped to southern Saskatchewan throughout the Depression, by

the dominion government, the Red Cross, churches and charitable

organizations. But government relief and donations were not enough to provide

families with anything close to an adequate standard of living. Relief allotments

were far fsom generous, and did not allow for fruits and vegetables.56 Some

families were unable to obtain relief and sumived on nothing but potatoes, or

bread and tea. ''Famine conditions are on us now," said a United Church

minister at Mortlach, west of Moose Jaw. 'We have people in the

neighbowhood who have been staming."57

No one in Kate Graves' circle stamed, but some family members went

without coffee, tea, sugar, cakes and pies, and some neighburs ate Russian

thistles as greens.58 The Graves' diet sometimes lacked variety, espeaally when

the garden failed, but eggs, chickens, milk, home-ground wheat pomdge, bread,

canned pork, and food donatiom from other provinces sustained thern.59 Kate

wrote on October 28,1937, that carloads of relief mots , a t u r n i p s and apples had

amved. "My, I a m glad we are to get apples at last"60 Relief apples were often

bruised from being shovelled out of the train car, but frugal Kate canned the

damaged ones. She was proud of her ability to make scant food supplies "spin

out," and it is amadng to contemplate that, wen in the worst years of the

Depression, she always had enough butter, eggs and relief flour in the house to

produce a cake for company. And, she and her daughters always seemed able to

provide turkeys, picldes and pies for family Christmas dinners and community

fowl s u p .

Not surprkingly, the physical health of many Saskatchewan residents

suffered during this period. Doctors reported cases of malnutrition and scurvy in

southem Saskatchewan. The health of many people also deteriorated because

they could not afford to seek attention for bad teeth, poor eyesight and other

medical problems.61 Medical services and medical relief were not readily

available in some areas. The poor general health of the people in Kate Graves'

family and district is stdcing. Colds, flu and appendicitis abounded. Several

members of Kate's family contracted diseases related to nutritional deficienaesb2

And several postponed necessary medical treatment - the most tragic case being

Kate's eldest daughter Mary, who died of tuberculosis in 1933.

The Great Depresion affected the lives of Saskatchewan residents, and

Kate Graves' family, in many other ways. Farm homes grew more weathered

and drafty as the decade progressed. Clothing and household utensils wore

out63 Newspaper reporters touring the area southeast of Kate's municipality in

1934 reported that broken window panes were patched with cardboard, lard

pails replaced worn out tea kettles, and two sisters took turns wearing "the"

dress to school.^* A Red Cross observer wrote that bedding in Saskatchewan's

southwestern municipalities was so scanty that people layered quilts with old

newspapers to try to keep warm. "Many of the housesf now almost entirely

without paint, have been banked up with earth and even manure, to prevent the

entrance of the icy gale which searches out each chink and crevice."6s Economists

estimated that "it would take W million to restore the clothing of the rural

population of Saskatchewan to pre-depression standards."66 Many people,

including members of Kate's family, could not afford gasoline or licences for

their cars, so they took out the engines, hitched them to horses and called them

'%ennett buggies" (after the prime minister) or "Andemon carts" (after

59

Saskatchewan's pmnier).67

Kate Graves' farm buildings were as grey as everyone else's in the 19309.

George Hamilton banked his house with earth, and perhaps the Graves did,

too.68 Both Kate and Tom were kept busy stoking the house's stoves in

wintertime to try to keep the house warm. Neither rode in the family car

anymore, but went by horse and buggy. Kate's hand-operated bread mixer had

broken down long before. She scrubbed the family's clothes on a washboard

because she couldn't afford a gasoline-powered washing machine. She wore

second-hand clothes donated by churches and relatives in the East, and grew

tired of wearing the same old brown coat year in and year out: "Once, coming

out of church in August someone was saying they had not seen me. I said

everyone should know me. I am not like the butterflies; I don't change my coat

every year."@

Kate went without many things she would have liked during the

Depression. She could not afford trips to Alberta and British Columbia to visit

the daughters she hadn't seen for more than sixteen years. She could not afford a

comfortable retirement on the West Coast, or in the communi~ of McCord. Her

"wee nest egg" shrank considerably. But she was not as desperately poor as

women in districts to the southwest who collected dried cattle dung for fuel and

sewed their families' underclothing, and sometimes their own ho-, out

of flour sacks.70 Nor was she like the Saskatchewan woman who wrote Prime

Minister Bennett to say her shivering family slept on gunny sacks71 Kate found

the resources to feed and clothe herself and her family. She had blankets on the

bed and coal in the stove. She had a telephone at a time when more than 32,000

Saskatchewan farmers dropped the service because they could not afford the

annual eleven-dollar mtal fee.72 She could scrape together six dollars for an

occasional month of household help. And, she could lend money to needy kin,

send dimes to grandchildren for their birthdays, and buy stamps for letters. The

Great Depresson threw all of rural Saskatchewan into poverty. Large and small-

scale farmers alike were on relief. Nonetheless there were some, like Kate

Graves, who fared better than others.

Psychologicallyf the Great Depresion took its toll. Saskatchewanfs mental

institutions overflowed with men and women suffering from ''Depession

shOdCn73 The desperation in Mrs. Ted East's personal letters to West=

&QCI~I= women's editor Violet McNaughton is palpable-74 This is the southwest

Saskatchewan woman whose family experienced fourteen crop failures. Trapped

in an unhappy marriage and plagued by medical problems and povertyf she said

she understood why some people killed themselves or lost their sanity.

EventuaUy, Mrs. East had a "nervous brealcdown," from which she apparently

recovered. Kate Graves' friend and neighbour Carrie Bromley was not so

fortmate, dying in 1939 while undergoing "insulin treatmentsf' at the Weyburn

Mental HoepitaL'S

Myrtle Moorhouse, who farmed northwest of McCord near Ponteix,

describes the efkct years of dust storms, insects, relief, pitiful agricultural prices

and blown-out crops had on her husband: ''He would walk from window to

window crying, with his lungs M of sand that he had breathed in while

seeding."76 Moorehouse's husband turned to alcohol and eventually committed

suicide. H e was not alone. People from Kate Graves' area who killed themselves

during the Depression included a man who could not find farm work, a farm

woman who took strychnine after her baby died of influ- and a seventy-six-

year-old "devoted wife and mothef' who leapt into an abandoned well. 77

Thousands of people chose a less drastic escape route, abandoning their

farms for new homes in northern Saskatchewan or other parts of Canada. Over

the course of the decade, at least one-fifth of the population left the province.78

Kate Graves' region lost more than 22 per cent of its farm population The

number of farms in the Rural Muni6pality of Mankota fell from 478 in 1931 to

383 in 1941 - the second highest decrease out of eight municipalities in the

area79 At least forty-five thousand farmers - most with government help - migrated from southern Saskatchewan to the province's forested north.80

"Many People Leave McCord Area for North," said a

headline in August 1931.81 The article reported that four f d e s

and nine train carloads of household goods had left the district. Kate's foster son

Charles Graves joined the exodus in 1934. Although Kate hated to see him go,

she said, "It is well, as he has just a sand pile."82 She was much less sanguine

three years later when her son Edward and his young family left for Quebec in

search of a fresh start "My it is lonesome without the young folks," she wrote in

a rare expression of overt emotion the day after Edward left83 She went on to

say that a once-prosperous neighbow was scouting for land near North

Battleford, Saskatchewan. "Our best farmers talk of leaving." Although Kate and

Tom ansidered following Edward to Quebec, they decided to remain in

Saskatchewan. Said Kate: 'This seems to be home 'foreordained,' as a canny old

Heiland man would say."s4

It is important to point out that people's lives were not entirely giim

during the Depression The marriage rate slowed, but young men and women

continued to wed and have children85 Edward married George Hamilton's

daughter Dorothy in 1933, working for a local farmer for one dollar a day to

earn money for his wedding s u i t Kate's eldest granddaughter Enid married at

the height of the Depression in 1937, and delighted Kate a year and a half later

by presenting her with her b t great-grandchild. Grandchildren continued to

arrive throughout the decade, and several of them visited and even lived with

Kate and Tom. Besides her family, Kate enjoyed reading, working in her garden

and. of course. attending meetings of the Women's Missionary Society and the

local Homemakers' Qd. Saskatchewan farmers were voracious readers in the

1930s, b w i n g freely from the growing number of travelling and extension

libraries.86 The number of Rural Homemakers' Clubs in the province grew.

inmasing farm women's oppmtunities for social contact-87 People also found

-0yment in picnics. dances. rodeos, sports days. cullling bonspiels. community

suppers. berry-picking expeditions, and other inexpensive activities.

Listening to the radio was a favourite past-time among families and

neighburs. Widespread poverty didn't stop people from purchasing or rigging

up homemade sets.88 Although the Graves did not own a radio for most of the

-on, Kate enjoyed listening to church sermons. political speeches. soap

operas and other programs when she visited other people's homes; towards the

end of the decade she often phoned her daughter Ethel to get the radio news.

She liked to hear and read about what was going an in the world - about the

Dionne quintuplets, King Edward VIKs abdication, and Hitleis machinations in

Emoppe.89

Like many people during the Depression, Kate was interested in politics?*

But they were not a passion with her and she did not appear to see them as the

solution to the province's. and the country's. ills. She was a Li'beral supporter

from way back, and she didn't think much of the radical new party that emerged

in Saskatchewan in the early 1930s, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation

(CCF). "I wonder if there is a chance that times will ever get back to normal

without a revolution," she said in 1933. 'We hear so much Communist talk these

days. We are not Sodalists in this house."91

Southern Saskatchewan did not begin to return to "normal" until the

drought lifted in 1939. The *gleefully reported in June

that unaccustomed rainfall had flooded out "three little pigsff in the McCord area

and that wheat in low-lying spots was actually under water? Crop yields

improved in 1939 and 1940. but plunged again in 1941. Grain prices remained

low. Farmers in Kate's municipality and many others in the southwest continued

to require government assistance into the 1940s. Only after farmers reaped a

bumper aop in 1942 and wheat prices rose in 1943 could Saskatchewan

genuinely say the Great Depression was over.93

For Kate and Tom Graves, the Depression began to ease when their old

age pension cheques started coming in late 1937 and early 1938. Slowly, they

began to re-build the farm. Edward returned in 1939, and the Graves stretched

their thirty-dollar-a-month pension income to help cover his debts and support

his family. Kate's garden began producing again, and the family's diet improved.

For Christmas 1940, Kate and Tom felt they could finally afford to treat

themselves to a radio.

By the spring of 1941, the farm was in remarkable financial shape

considering the previous twelve years. The Graves had accumulated a relief debt

of several hundred dollars, and their municipal taxes were likely in arrears, but

the provincial government reduced or cancelled most such debts in southern

Saskatchewan during and after the Depression.94 Because they had gone into the

Depression with no fann debt, the Graves were in a better position than farmers

who faced years of unpaid mortgage bi3ls.95 Kate and Tom did not live to see the

farm return to the level of prosperity it enjoyed in the 1920s' but they ensured

that it survived long enough to be passed on to their son Edward and future

generations. In fact, the farm would continue to support Graves family members

into the first decade of the twenty-first century, more than sixty years after the

Depression ended.%

The final days of the Depression in Saskatchewan found Kate and Tom

Graves still on the land. They were older and frailer, but they had survived an

economic, environmental and social disaster of apocalyptic pqxxticms. Kate's

experiences between 1929 and 1941 echoed those of countless other

Saskatchewan residents. There was penury, illnessf death, family dis1ocation,

environmental ruin, disappointment and worry. But there was also pleasure in

family, friends, radio, and the taste of relief apples.

Summing up Kate Graves' life overall, one could never accuse her of

failing to live life M y . From young motherhood through grandparenthood, she

threw herself into the task at hand. She was physically, intellectually and sodally

active to the very end. Her last twelve years were not what she hoped they

would be. But she adjusted, just as she always had. Some people succumbed to

mental and physical illness during the Depresion. Some fled. But Kate Graves

endured. And she helped her family to endure. The balance of this thesis

examines the various work and family-related strategies she used to survive. As

we shall see, these strategies included, and were buttresed by, Kate's notions

about men's and women's proper roles.

1. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 5 May 1930.

2. Britnell, The 68; H. Blair Neatby, P o w of * .

~ f l o r o n t o : MaadIan of Canada, 1972), 136; Thompson and Seager, -2-1939 1%; Lipset, Soclahsm, . - 119.

3. Ibid, 14,4841.

4. Quoted in Lipset, . . 44.

5. Ibid., 44-5.

6. A.E. Safarian, The in ~ ~ ~ o m n t o : McCldhd and Stewart, 1970), 42.

7. Britnell, ne 72; Fowke,- Poliq, 259. Thex were the prices of No. 1 Northern wheat on the Winnipeg Exchange. Farmers received considerably lower prices at the elevator; lower grade wheat brought even less money. James H. Gray, J l e W m . . (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, I%), 199.

8. Safarian, The in 84.

9. Thompson and Seager, Canada 351.

10. F.H. Leacy, mto- of . . 2nd Qd. (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 19831,

M119-128.

11. Britnell, W h e a t 771.

12. Stapleford, 26.

13. Ibid.

14 Kate Graves letters to Georgina, 8 April 1931; September 1932.

15. Britnell, Wheat Ecanomv,8,98-9; James Struthers, P o F o State 1914-1PQL notonto: University of Toronto

h, 1983), 109,204.

16. Quoted in Stapleford, 267.

. . 17. Leacy, Historical of M119-128. Low agricultural @ces alone do not explain Saskatchewan farmers' prolonged economic difficulties. By inaeasing import tariffs in 1930 and 1931, the Canadian government protected eastern Canadian manufacturers' incomes at the expense of primary producers such as farmers. Farmers' incomes fell rapidly, but their costs did not Friesen, . . 385. Western agriculture bore the full brunt of both fluctuating e x p r t income and the rigid costs of the Canadian econorny,"writes A.E. Slfariw, The 199.

18. John Archer, Saskatchewan:(Saskatoon; Western Roducer Prairie Books, 19801, 225.

19. James H. Gray, M e n s t the Deceff, (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1%7), 44-5.

20. Quoted in Strutha, No FQylt of Thg& 53.

21. "Milestones and Memories" by "The Stroller," --Post, 12 July 1934, quoted in Britnell, The 60-1.

22. Gray, l3- 3.

24. George E. Hamilton diary, 1921-1932, McCord Museum, M c M , Saskatchewan.

25. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 27 April 1937.

26. Peel, "RM. 45," 389.

27. United Church officials were referring to the region between Cadillac and Lafleche. "Report of M and M Visitation," 7 July 1931, Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon, United Church of Canada, Edmund Oliver Papers, A676, File XVILD.14.c A church official who was familiar with most of Saskatchewan said the area north of McCord dong Highway 13, between Assiniboia and Scotsguard, was "the worst place of all." "In that area there was no ploughing left The wind had blown the soil down to hard pan... around Ponteix the highway itself is blown out, the fence posts dong the mad are covered, the trees in the wind-breaks are covered with dust and have died - it is just a desert." %id, "Report of Visit of Mesrrs. Oliver, Cochrane, Endicott and Wilson to the Dried-out Area of Southern Saskatchewan," 7 July 1931.

28. G v , D w 555-6; Lip~et, SO- . . 119; Blair Neatby, of 31.

29. Mrs. Ted East letter to Violet McNaughton, 8 September.

30. Britnell, Wheat, 69.

31. Peel, "R.M. 45," 220-390.

32 Loveridge and Potyondi, 213,2213,.

33. Calculated from Tables 7,8,9, Hopkins, Palmer and Chepil, . . 53-5.

34. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Flintoft, Saskatchewan, 12 August 1934.

35. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, 4 November 1934.

36. W- 1 July 1937,12; Boyd Anderson, A of & . * (Sashtoon: Saskatchewan Stock Growers Assodation, 1988) 69; "Report of visit of Messrs. Oliver, Cochrane, Endicott and Wilson to the

Dried-out Area of Southern Saskatchewan," 7 July 1931; Edna Jaques, All Wav: & (Saskatoon: Western producer Prairie books, 1977), 166-7.

37. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, 20 June 1937.

38.- 10 September 1931,2 George Hamilton wrote in his d i q on March 1931, that he was burning Russian thistle. By August 1932, he was cutting and stacking it for

feed. Also see Peel, "RM. B5," 389,391.

39. Allen McCrea personal interview, McCord, Saskatchewan, 14 July 2000; D.B. MacRae and R.M. Scott, South C o w : A of a Ser igpf A*- in

(Saskatoon: Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 1934), 14.

40. Gray, Men 44, 50.

42. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 29 June 1937.

43. Alma Lawton, "Relief Administration in Sadcatom During the Depression," Saskatd\ewan -22 (Spring 1969), 58.

44. Britnell, The 97.

45. Lipset, Socrallsm, - . 124; Britnell, The 98-9.

46. George E. Hamilton diary.

47. Blair Neatby, "The Saskatchewan Relief Commission, 1931-1934" 3:2 (Spring 1950), 41-56; Loveridge and Potyondi, From_Wood 219- 24

48. Some surrounding muniapalities received more, some less. Calculated h m Tables 8,12,13, 14, IS, 16 and 17, Loveridge and Potyondi, From W v Mountain 24.2-5.

49. Ibid., 221,243,

50. BritnelI, Wheat 11479. The number of old age pensioners in Saskatchewan increased from 3,343 in 1928-29 to 11,761 in 1937-38. In 1932, the maximum pension for a married couple Living together was $30 a month.

51. Kate Graves letters to Georgina, 29 June 1937.

52. Rural Muniapality of Mankota, No. 45 relief ledgers, 1930-40; Kate Graves letter to Georgi~, 10 March 1932.

53. For example? there are 1-37 and 193940 records for Kate Graves8 son Edward Graves, and 1936-37 records for her son-in-law Ed McCrea. Relief ledgers, Rural Municipality of Madcot., No. 45. Kate's foster son Charles Graves and sons-in-law M. J. Wallace and Martin Hatlelid are

among relief recipients listed in the Rural Municipality of Waverley's minutes for 7 March 1931, Rural Municipality of Waverley, No. 44, Glentworth, Saskatchewan.

54. -ta. The F F a n V-28-1978 (Mankota, Saskatchewan: Mankota Book Committee, 1980) 10-11; Minutes of Council Meetings, Rural Municipality of Waverley, No. 44,1930-42

55. Minutes of Council Meetings, Rural Municipality of Waverley, No. 4 4 5 August 1933.

56. Neatby, "The Saskatchewan Relief Commission," 47; Britnell, Jhe Wheat- 47, 151,169-70; Grayson and Bliss, The W r e m d of -75-9. In 1933-34, the maximum monthly food allowance for a family of five was ten dollars, plus a bag of flour.

57. The minister told of a family that lived on flour for three months and had not eaten meat in six months. "Report of visit of Messts. Oliver, Cochmne, Endicott, and Wilson," 7 July 1931,19.

58. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 19 April 1933; Assaf, And the W w Blew, 29.

59. The Graves' garden was very poor in 1936 and failed altogether in 1937. Kate Graves Letter 14 September 1937.

60. lbid., 28 October 1937.

61. Britnell, Wheat 170-1; Wallace, "All Else Must Waii,"92-3.

62 A young grandson developed rickets (assodated with lack of vitamin D and certain minds), and a granddaughter and daughter developed goiters (enlarged thyroid glads due to iodine defiaenq). At least eight members of Kate's extended family, and many neighbours, had appendectomies.

* . 63. Britnell, The Wheat Economy, 171-5; Lipset, W; Loveridge and Potyondi, 216.

64. MacRae and Scott, 18.

65. "A General V i m of the Drought Area," Saskatchewan Archives Board, Regina, Drought File, Red Cross Society Reports, 1936, SHS101.

66. A.E. Britnell, quoted in Lipset, . . 127-8.

67. Myrtle Moorhouse, Banting Publishers, 1

68. George E. Hamilton diary.

69. Kate Graves letter to Georgha, 19 October 1936.

70. Alice Butala letters to Violet McNaughton, 1 December 1937; George Spence, Syrvivd of a -(Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1%7), S 9 ; A&&& to # * 70.

71. Grayson and Bliss, -of 756.

72. About 34 pa a n t of saska@chewan farms had the telephone in 1931. Britnell, The Wheat 179-80. The Graves a telephone on June l2,1929. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 9

July 1937.

73. Brimell, me 143; Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 45,71,84-85; Scowby, "I Am a Worker," 12

74. Mrs. Ted East letters to Violet McNaughto~ 16 May 1938, 20 July-

75. Kate Graves letter to Ceorginil5 December 1939-

n. Kate Graves letter to Geor@& 10 March 1932; Province of Saskatchewan Records of Registration of Bath, 13 hafib= 1940,26 May 194l, Rural Municipality of Mankota. The elderly wo- whose My found at the bottom of a forty-foot abandoned well lived on a farm noah of M M . 7 2 s~eptember 1938,l-

78. Lipset, Aman'an S- . . 131.

79. Loveridge and Potyon& H W ~ -Athe 320-

80. Britnell, 202-3-

82 Kate Graves letter to GeorgP, 27 F e h a r ~ 19340

83. Ibid., 29 June 1937.

84. Ibid, 18 August 1938.

85. Britnell, The 18-

86. Brimell, 1211216. At various times throughout the decade, Kate appears - the -~wspapI to have read the Regina and a newspaperethe Franklin Centre, Quebe~ called the

87. Ibid, 121. At least two new Homemakers' Qubs formed in the McCord area. (Wood Mount& Historical Society, 1%9), 227,231.

88. Accordjng to cenauo for 1931, about 20 per cent of Saskatchewan farm homes had a radio in 1931. Britnell, 179. However, Bruce Baden Peel says most farms in RM. dS hd a radio histories and memoirs of the 1930s commonly mention radios. Peel, "RM. AS," 283-4; Moothouse, Buffalo 30; Eldm Anderson,

m e a Panorama Publications, 1996), 28-63; Came to W w d 167; "prairie Wives jn Revolt," ~ C I ' O I O ~ ~ O ) , August 1935,19.

89. For ample , sce Katc Gmvg letter to Georg i~ , 26 A p d 1929: "I guess there will not be war for awhile. Hitler is afraid now- Tried twisting the lion's tail, getting him roused at last."

90. For an excellent sense of political views in Kate Graves' region in the 1930s, including tension between Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and other political party supporaers, see Moorhouse, W r n Val& 2526; and Boyd Anderson, -(Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan: Windspeak Press, 1996), 201-10.

91. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 3 April 1933.

93. Lipset, Soaallsm, * * 131; Loveridge and Potyondi, Wood 232-5.

94. Britnell, The 83-9. Rural relief was regarded as a loan which the farmer was expected to repay. Rural Municipality of Mankota relief records show that Tom Graves owed $283.57 for agricultural relief as of June 1938, and that the government cancelled half this debt in 1946 and the remainder in 1947. A "special relief ledger" for 1937-38 shows that the Graves also owed $183.28 for relief food, fuel and flow as of March 1938. In 1938, most relief in RM. 45 up to and including 1935 was cancelled, and in 1945, direct relief advances from 1935 through 1941 were cancelled. m t a . 50 Y- 10-1 1. As the family's aops improved near the end of the depression, Tom was able to pay off a bank debt (for lumber used to build an addition onto the house earlier in the decade), and at least some of the family's municipal taxes. Kate Graves letter to Georgina: 10 October 1939; 2 October 1940.

95. Britnell, Wheat E c o w 88-9. It appears that there were no signrficant loans outstanding when Edward Graves took over the family larm upon Tom Graves' death on July 13, 1941. Katey (Graves) Hatleiid letter to Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 25 August 1945.

96. Today the farm is owned by Kate Graves' grandson, Murray McCrea, whose mother was Kate's daughter Ethel (Graves) McCrea.

CHAPTER THREE

"I Like to Hoe M y Own Row": Gendered Work Strategies

There is no gainsaying the fact that those brave, thrifty prairie farm women have never had the need of credit rightfully their due for the sacrifices they so willingly made in helping to maintain home and family in the real-life tragedy of these discouraging and distressful years. - George Spence, Member of the Legslatwe, Kate Graves' constituency, 1934-1938.1

Kate Graves' letters shed considerable light on what it meant to be a

"good" Saskatchewan farm woman in terms of work during the Great

Depression. Virtually every letter describes long days filled with labour in the

service of Kate's family, home, and farm. Her values concerning work are very

much in evidence. There is no doubt that Kate's work - and her ideas about

work -- helped to sustain her and those around her.

This chapter deals with the economic and attitudid strategies Kate

employed to help feed and clothe her family and ensure the survival of the

family farm. Kate's letters make it clear that her domestic and farm work

strategies were exceedingly important. They show the extent to which Kate's

family and the farm relied economically on her. At the same time, on a more

subtle level, the letters reveal the limitations of Kate's work strategies.

Yes, Kate Graves and Saskatchewan farm women like her worked

extremely hard during the Depression Yes, they employed a range of vital work

strategies; but they did so with the understanding that they were only doing

what was expected of women and that they must not challenge male hegemony.

Kate's letters and other sources show that rural women assumed inaeased

respmsibility for the survival of the family and the farm, but they did not enjoy

a concurrent increase in SdCio-economic power. They were bound by long-

standing notions regarding gender and work that prevented them from

assuming inaeased authority within their households and society at large.

Women and men alike strove to adhere to a "separate spheres'' model which

decreed that farm men were breadwinner-bosses and farm women were

domestically-oriented subdinates. They could not allow women's work to

outshine men's. Thus, as the comment by Saskatchewan politician George

Spence demomhates, much of the work farm women did "to rnaintain home

and family" went unrecognized and unlauded.

In essence, this chapter explores the tension between rural Saskatchewan's

awareness that farm women were playing a heightened economic role in the

1930s8 and the need to discount this role in order to maintain the status quo. The

chapter initially looks at the work strategies Kate Graves and many of the

province's 164,000 d women used to sustain their familig and farms.2 It

shows how women's economic resmrcefuiness and work influenced family

members' well-being and the fate of the fann The chapter then discusses the fact

that women's valuable contri'butiom did not translate into recognition and

power, mainly because separate spheres ideology legitimized the

marghlhtion of women's work. Men's and women's identities were tied to

their location in their prescribed spheres, md they went to great lengths to

preserve gender work boundaries.

In the years leading up to the Great Depression, work on most Western

Canadian farms was dearly divided along gender lines3 Generally, men devoted

most of their time to the farm's principal source of income: wheat They worked

in the field and tended to the horses, range cattle and farm equipment. Most

women were principally engaged in housewo~lc, the care of children and adult

family members, and dairy, poultry and garden work. They spent most of their

time i n d m and near the house. The 1930s saw little change in this fundamental

division of labour.4 Most men continued to direct their attention to crops and the

farm operation as a whole. Some women joined men in the fields, but the vast

majority stayed home. As we shall see, women's home-based work intensified

and the value of their labour increased, but definitions of "men's work" and

"women's work" remained almost constant throughout the decade.

It is doubtful the Graves family and their farm would have survived the

Depression without the countless hours Kate spent separating cream, churning

butter, raising chickens, cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundering, gardening,

carming, scrimping, and saving. When drought and low market prices decimated

the family's wheat income, it was Kate's work in the house and yard that took

up the slack. Like thousands of other western rural women, she was the farm's

economic maiirstay.5 American sociologists Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora

argue that farm women on the Great Plains historically reduced economic risks

on farms by diversifying farm operations and providing "hidden but necesary"

work6 Similarly, Canadian historian Carolina Van de Vorst argues that

Manitoba farm women's efforts bdfered families during economic downturns

such as the Great -on:

Wheat cheques may have financed the bulk of farm improvements in prosperous years, but womenf s economizing and their sale of butter, cream, poultry products, vegetables and country provisions provided the family and the farm with the material means critical to &val in poor economic times7

The work strategies Kate Graves used to help get her family and the farm

through the Depression were many and varied. First of all, she and the women

in her family laboured long and hard. Secondly, they employed reproductive, or

unpaid, strategies related to food preparation, housework and child care. And

lastly, they generated critical income from domestic-related farm products.

Directly and in-y, these strategies supported household and farm activities.

Perhaps the strategy that most defined Kate Graves was her unrelenting

will to work Her letters describe days that began at 5 am. and ended at 10:30

p.m.8 It seems she rarely sat down except to write letters. "I am told by some

that I never seem to rest," she wrote in 1935. "Well, I must say I like to hoe my

own row and keep going as long as the Lord gives me strength."9 Neither her

advanced age nor bouts of illness slowed Kate down.. "I can't stand much heavy

work, but can get around as quidc as many younger folk+" she said on December

17,1934.10 Despite persistent indigestion and pains in her side and left arm, she

worked in the garden and house with her daughter-in-law Dorothy and her

granddaughters. "I work or help all the time," she said. "Could save myself

more than I do if I would."ll Her arm bothered her so much in the spring of

1940 that she often soaked it in the hot water reservoir attached to the kitchen

stove to try to relieve the pain. "I have not been so well, yet keep agoing," she

said.12 Kate wasn't the only woman in her family who seemed driven to work.

Her daughter Ethel (Graves) McCrea, who was seven months pregnant and

whose doctor had ordered her to stay in bed until late moming, insisted on

rising at 6:30 am., milking two cows, feeding and watering skty-nine chickens,

and undertahg a -or housecleaning. Despite the doctds concerns, she said,

"I have got along quite well so farf and I hope to continue to, as it is hard to be

laid up when one wants to be up and doing." 13

The Graves women's long, arduous work days were consistent with those

of many Saskatchewan farm women during the Depression.14 A West-

- s u r v e y estimated that the province's farm women worked a minimum

of 12 hours daily.15 A sixty-three-year-old domestic worker told the newspaper

that she worked fifteen to seventeen houts a day, and another farm woman said

she put in sixteen-hour days "millring cows, caring for poultry and a large farm

garden, and keeping house for five of us.. .and hying to economize, patch and do

without."'6

The latter woman's comment sums up most rural Saskatchewan women's

work strategies in the l93Os.l' Women met their family's subsistence needs by

providing dairy, poultry and garden products for the table. They kept the

household running by preparing meals, washing dishes, laundering clothes and

minding children. And they economized by patching old do- sewing

bedding and clothes (often out of second-hand clothes and cotton flour bags),

postponing the replacement of worn out household items, and refusing to

purchase non-essentials. By assuming responsibility for these unpaid domestic

activities, women kept the family's work force functioning and its cash

expenditures to a minimum. Precious income could then be directed toward

farm expenses rather than family provisions.lS

Like most Saskatchewan farm women, Kate Graves and her female

relatives spent the bulk of their time engaged in domestic household tasks. 'We

seem to accomplish little besides meals and the daily work of a farmefs home,"

Kate wrote in 1934.19 Her entire day was structured around meal times. This

arrangement was particularly convenient for men. It was assumed that whatever

else she was doing - whether she was at home or away - she would have men's

meals on the table, or arrange for other women to feed them. Kate frequently

mentioned returning home in time to start meals and the need to interrupt her

writing to begin cooking. "It is almost six, so I will get supper," she wrote on

April 6,1931. "Men may be here soon."20 When Kate was away visiting relatives,

she arranged for her granddaughters or her daughter-in-law Dorothy to provide

Tom's meals.

The extent to which Kate's work supported farm operations by

nourishing male workers is readily apparent. Not only did she regularly feed her

immediate family and the grandchildren who lived with her, but she often fed

the farm's hired help, keshmg crews, salesmen, men for whom Tom was

doing blacbmith work, her sons-in-laws and their hired men, and other male

visitors. In a one-month period in 1934, Kate cooked and served sixty meals for

people besides herself, Tom and a grandson=

I have had lots of company for meals. A man who worked at our a r was here for 3 or 4 dinners. Jesse Rule (was here) one day. Charley was here for dinner one day, and Fernie two, and others, and so it keeps me busy - baking bread and so o n Bob's man was here 3 nights and for rneals."zl

Kate also reported on May 4,1934, that her daughter Jessie, who lived on a ranch

in the hills to the south, "has had so many men, with branding and vaccinating

the cattle, and two hired men. Small giants who eat like all possessed. We have

had them here several times."*2 Kate's daughter Katey womed about the toll

meal preparation was taking on her mother. On August 27,1937, she wrote:

Dear Mother, she is so little and hail these days, but her spirit is just as keen as ever, and she has so much work to do, and such a lot of people for meals. It just surprises me how she does it ali. And she is such a good cook, no wonder people love her cooking. But it makes her far too much wmk23

For Kate and other women in her family, providing meals meant

considerable time and labour. It meant kneading quantities of bread dough and

many tums of the butter churn handle. "Yesterday..l baked six loaves of bread

and a lot of buns. Enid churned and I made over 10 lbs of butter," Kate wrote on

June 24,1932.24 Providing meals also meant caring for Kate's approximately fifty

chi* hatching chicks, providing feed and water, gathering eggs, and

preparing birds for the roasting pan. It meant sowing, weeding and harvesting

garden vegetables. 'The garden was the main source of food for the family,"

recalls Kate's granddaughter Enid. "Everybody depended on their garden for

vegetables."*S And, it meant canning dozens of items for winter consumptioh

On August 18,1938, Kate reported that she had canned twenty-two quarts of

beans, twelve quarts of peas, and many jars of bean, beet and cucumber pickles.

Her daughter Emma did up more than fifty-six jars of peas in the summer of

1935. "She is a hustler," said Kate? Kate and other women in the family also

preserved wild berries and larger fruit' which they purchased in bulk in the fall.

In November 1934, Ethel said: "I made up 100 quarts of saskatoom and a box of

crabs (crabapples), two of prune plums and two of peaches and three baskets of

grapes' so we don't have to buy much dried fruit"27 Kate and the women in her

family also canned chickens8 pork from the two or more pigs the family usually

kept, and beef they obtained in a sharing arrangement with their neighbows

(known as a beef ring).

Other work strategies which helped to sustain Kate's household included

washing clothes, sewing, and general economizing. Doing the familfs and hired

hands' laundry was a gruelling affair that involved carrying and heating water to

fill washtubs' scrubbing clothes on a washboard, rinsing clothes' hand-cranking a

clothes wringer' emptying the wash tubs, hanging clothes on the line to dry, and

ironing. The entire process could span two days. Kate displayed considerable

resourcefulness when it came to economizing on clothing. She saved money by

mending clothes, knitting mittens8 sewing quilts out of cloth scraps8 altering

donated dresses' and making rag rugs. Sometimes her daughters sewed dresses

for her out-of inexpensive material. Kate also proved her economizing mettle

with food by replacing store-bought rolled oat cereal with home-ground wheat,

and converting much of the family's rnillc into cottage cheese. 'We three like it

very much and no milk is wasted with me when it SOW."^^ And Kate made

limited food supplies stretch out, no doubt with the help of her cooking skills.

"We are a little short of fruit this year. Going a little easy with it. Will have

enough if we eat reasonably. Some people don't know how to make things spin

out like your mother."29

Another of Kate's strategies involved the care of children- She often

tended young grandchildren so that other women and men in the family could

do their work, and she saw to the needs of the one or two school-age

78

grandchildren who lived with her throughout the Depression. Although the

older children helped Kate and Tom with domestic and farm chores, Kate's

daughter Katey observed that their presence meant a heavier workload for

Kate. "So much extra washing and mending, and Mother has to do all her

washing on a board ... Poor Mother at the age of seventy still bringing up d - " 3 0

Kate Graves and other women in her drde clearly bore an enormous

workload, yet they appear to have accepted it without question.. Such toil was

expected of them, and they expected it of themselves.31 Y-am working very

hard just now," Kate wrote in July 1940, at the age of seventy-four. "Just canning

and the daily work, like all the women."32 Kate recognized that she worked hard

- sometimes "too hard for one of my years" - but she was not resentful of her

lot.33 She was proud of her capacity for work "I find lots to do here and often

feel tired, but I still have ambition," she said.34

Indeed, Kate judged other women according to their ability to handle a

heavy domestic workload without complaint. Many of her letters express

admiration for women who are "good workersf' and have "amiable"

dqositions. "Katey is so clever," she said in December 1934. Wow she manages

and keeps things running so smoothly these days - and no complaints. All the

family love her so."Js And, "Emma cooks for seven besides herself. Does not

complain."36 In Kate's eyes, working hard and maintaining a cheerful

demeanour were synonymous with being a good farm wife and mother.37

Expectations of farm women did not stop there, however. Not only were

Kate Graves and many other rural Saskatchewan women expected to wdlingly

work themselves to the bone performing unpaid tasks at home, but they were

w e d to devise income generating strategies that would help to carry the

farm and family. Both nral Saskatchewan society and women themselves

believed that paid labour were part and parcel of women's work38

Throughout the Depression, large numbers of Western Canadian farm

women sold and bartered eggs, butter, chickens, turkeys, cream and garden

vegetables. When environmental and economic conditions allowed, many

women increased production of such items and branched into other areas like

wool and honey.39 Most of Saskatchewan farm women's eamings in the 1930s

came from the sale of poultry and dajl products. Statistics demonstrate the

dramatic effect women's work with chickens and cows had on the province's

farm economy. The percentage of Saskatchewan agricultural revenue from dairy

and poultry products rose from 4 per cent in 1928 to 23 per cent in 1937.

Meanwhile, the percentage of revenue from wheat fell from 80 per cent to 33 per

cent. Saskatchewan farmers continued to depend on wheat for most of their

income in the 1930s, but the grain's relative importance shrank considerably.

Meanwhile, the importance of dajr and podtry products increased five-fold.40

Poultry was an especially popular cash crop in Depression Saskatchewan,

as it seems branging chickens and turkeys required little more than

grasshoppers to swive.41 Kate, her daughters, and many other women in her

area raised poultry for sale. 'Most everyone went into turkeys to get a few

doUars," recalls one local resident." Kate mentions selling two young roosters to

a local man for fifty cents, and selling her surplus roosters to the buyer from the

Swifts company, out of Moose Jaw. Every December, families in Kate's region

helped to slaughter each other's flocks and prepare them for market33 Selling

eggs was another important income earning strategy. In May 1930, Kate

reported that her hens laid twenty-six eggs per day. "We eat 12 a day if alone

and more when w e have company, then use a good few to cook. Yet we sell a

few dozen each week."u George Hamilton took twenty-seven dozen eggs to

town on April 25,1931, and he and his neighbow sold sixty dozen eggs in

McCord a year later.45 (Although Hamilton doesn't say so, the eggs were almost

certainly the product of his wife's labour.)

Besides poultry products, manmany women in the prairie provinces sold

butter and cream. In fact, government officials remarked that growth in the

dairy industry was "one of the bright spots in Saskatchewan agriculture'' in the

1930s. More cream was shipped to the province's sixty creameries than ever

before, resulting in a doubling of commercial butter output over the course of

the decade9 Kate and several relatives shipped cans of cream to Saskatchewan

creameries throughout the Depression. She also sold milk to neighbouring

families, and considerable amounts of butter to a local store and her son-in-law

Bob McCrea In January 1935, for example, she sold Bob sixteen pounds of

butter, for fifteen cents a pound. She also appears to have sold her butter to a

creamery. It wasn't easy producing large amounts of butter, especially in hot

weather. Gallons of cream had to be separated, transforxned into butter in a

barrel chum, cooled in the cellar and pressed into one-pound prints (moulds).

large crocks or cans. But. Kate managed. "It is a job in the summer to make first

class butter," she wrote on July 26,1937. "It takes about 11 days to fill a 5 gallon

can. And ours was called no. 1 special, which pleased rnef.4'

Kate and other farm women did not receive much for their labour. Eggs

that Kate sold for twenty-two cents a dozen in 1925 went for as little as four

cents a dozen in the 19309, and butter that once brought one dollar a pound

dropped to seven cents a pound.* A five-gallon can of cream fetched $1.50.49

But women and their families were grateful for the income nevertheless. Time

and time again, prairie people who lived through the Depression say that farms

and families could not have s h v e d without the proceeds of their butter,

poultry and cream. 'We bought groceries, repairs, everything, all from a aeam

cheque," says a woman whose family farmed near Saskatoon.50

Kate Graves, herself, recognized the value of her income generating

labour during the Depression She said she and Tom felt fortunate to have eggs

and butter to "swapf' for groceries, and she believed that "if we could get a fair

price for eggs and butter we would need no relief."Sl Kate's income, small as it

was, allowed her to buy groceries and other household items that were not

covered by the relief allotment. It may have purchased the garden seedsf cases of

cucumbersf and dress material she bought at the local store. On April 17,1937,

Kate mentioned that she sold eggs in town and bought "some towelling and

cotton and groceries."52 Her income may have financed the wages she paid her

domestic helpers, the small gifts she purchased for family members at Christmas

time, and loans she made to her husband and other relatives. It may also have

enabled her to invest in farm animals, including two cows, a horse and the "four

young c m k e l s " she purchased in 1938.53 Kate seemed particularly proud of

her few livestock purchases. "I own one cow, a fine holstein," she said on July 26,

1937. "Have always owned her."54

The fact that most of Kate's eamings went towards the family's household

needs meant that Tom could direct much of his income towards farm expenses.

He spent money he earned as a blacksmith on building materialsf and may also

have used it to buy pigs and horses. In 1938 and 1940, Tom paid the family's

municipal taxes and a bank debt out of the fann's wheat cheques.55 The Graves'

income from wheat and Tom's blacksmith work was unreliable during the

Depression. Crop yields were low, wheat production costs often exceeded

retunsf and many people couldn't pay Tom for his blacksmith work.56 Tom's

declining health also meant that he wuld accomplish less and less in his shop. But

Kate's poultry and dairy-related labour ensured that the family enjoyed a small

but steady cash flow.57 Thus, not only did her eamiqgs finance the household,

but they directly and indirectly financed the fann.

The economic contribution Kate Graves and other farm women made to

their families and farms in the 19309 cannot be over-estimated- By working

extremely hard and punning vital work strategies at home and in the market,

rural women influenced the course of their families' lives. Often it was women's

work that kept families on the land. The turning point for the Graves family

came in 1937, when Kate's son Edward moved to Quebec. Kate d e d in

Saskatchewan - raising chickens, growing a garden, and caring for family

members and farm workers. Her efforts ensured that two years later, when

Edward's Quebec venture failed, he had a farm to return to. Soon after his

mother's death in 1941, Edward inherited the farm. By sustaining the farm as

long as she did, under very difficult circumstances, Kate ensured Uat family

members would continue to benefit from her labour long after she was gone.

As we have seen, Saskatchewan farm women shouldered enormous work

reqmuibilities in the 19309. Their families' very survival depended on them. But

did the increased value of women's work translate into increased recognition

and power? Did Kate Graves and her peers acquire greater authority in sodety

and the home? The answer is "no."

Farm women's work remained largely invisible during the Depression.

Women toiled in obscurity at their domestic tasks and, when it became apparent

that their poultry and dairy-related work had become the farm's economic

mainstay, it was often appropriated by men Historian Bruce Baden Peel, who

-aced and wmte about the Depression in Kate Graves' municipality, said:

Formerly wheat farmers had scoffed at the raising of poultry or the selling of dairy products as a means of earning a livelihood. Poultry and cows were only for women folk to make a little pin money. During the drouth years many a dirt farmer depended upon his small flock of poultry and few cows to supplement his meagre relief grocery cheques.58

Although Peel recognized the inmead importance of chickens and cows,

he attnited ownership of them to male farmers. Womenf s pin money became

men's farm income. Like Peel, many of Western Canadaf s male-dominated farm

families and public institutions failed to give farm women their due. They tended

to deny them economic and social equality, both inside and outside the home.

Not that most farm women demanded equity. Necessity and tradition kept them

tied to their roles as the farm's uncomplaining domestic servants and unseen

economic props.

A number of sources indicate that male farmers, government authorities

and observers developed a new a v t i o n for poultry and dairy products in

the 1930s. George Hamiltonf s diary shows that he was much more interested in

eggs and poultry than he had been in the 1920s. Between 1921 and 1928, he

mentioned selling eggs three times; he only noted their price once. Between 1929

and 1932, however, he mentioned selling eggs six times, and noted the price each

time. He also noted at least ten occasior~~ when his family and the neighbows

butchered or sold turkeys, roosters and chickens. He made no mention of such

activities in the 1920s. Nor did he mention the fact that poultry was likely his

wife's responsi i ty .59

In 1937, Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture J.G. Taggart told the Royal

Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations he would like to see all

Saskatchewan farmers raising dairy cattle' poultry and gardens, and that a

growing number were doing just that. "It is the rare farmer nowadays in

Saskatchewan who does not keep poultry and attempt to keep a garden. His

methods may not always be of the best, but the effort is made anyway."6*

Newspaper reporters who toured drought-stricken southern

Saskatchewan in 1934 mentioned districts and individual farmers who relied on

poultry and miUc cows for sustenance and income. "Poultry are kept for family

use and are regarded as a necessity," they said of one area "One farmer markets

16 fowl every two weeks regularly; he sells four dozen eggs a week/"'=

And, farmers attending a meeting in 1939 in Kate Graves8 area pointed

out that money from butter and eggs "bought necessities not posmile to procure

with the relief order." The farm- passed a resolution asking the government to

continue relief payments because income from dairy and poultry pducts alone

was insufficient to meet families' needs. "The low price of farm products of this

nature seems to make it clear that unless a farmer were milking numberless

cows and raising countless hens his returns would necessarily be v q smdL8'62

These sources suggest that individual farmers, the government and the

press reagnized the value of poultry and dairy products - and assumed that

they fell under the purview of men The enormous amount of work women did

with poultry and cows was not publicly acknowledged. In essence, men tended

to receive credit for women's work They came in at the end of the process - after women had fed the animab8 milked the cows and churned the butter - and

helped to collect the money and discuss the importance of "theif' chickens and

cows with reporters and at public meetings.63 Women's much larger work

investment was rendered largely invisible.

Interestingly, some farmers may have had mixed feelings about being

associated with chickens and cows during the Depression. Comments by several

observers suggest that respected farmers were dismayed at having to rely on

non-wheat income. For insbnce, a United Church minister descri'bed a "real

farmer" who was "living off his few chickens. He is a good mah..Now he is

strictly up against itff64 The subtext was that Ulings were pretty bad if men had

to stoop to relying on chickem and cows. Chickens and cows were for women.

"Real" farmers grew wheat.

Newspaper reporters and other observers weren't the only ones who

failed to acknowledge farm women's economic contributions during the

Depression. Neither the dominion government nor the legal system recognized

the economic value of farm women's work Canadian census takers did not

record farm women's work as housewives or their role in the production of

milk, cream' butter, chickens' eggs, vegetables, honey and other farm

produ~ts.~5 And the labour and money women invested in the farm was not

legally recognized or pmtected.66 Their direct and indirect contributions to the

farm did not give them income or prom rights. Firstly' they were not

guaranteed wages for their housework or farm chores; even the butter and egg

money legally belonged to their husbands.67 And secondly, they had no legal

right to half the marriage property if the marriage dissolved. Even if they

invested money in farm livestock or other aspects of the farm operation, most

did not have their name on the property title or a legal partnership contract that

secured legal and economic recognition for their contri'bution. Like pioneer

women before them, and farm women who came after' thousands of Western

Canadian farm women were in a tenuous economic and legal position during the

Great Depression. Writes historian Nanci L. Lanf ord:

The farm or ranch woman remained an unpaid and overworked employee in her husband's business, and the law reinforced the views of subsequent generations that this was just the way it was. In 1984, only 40 per cent of Alberta farm women reported that they had any legal partnership with their husbands in the family enterprise.68

How was it that the majority of Saskatchewan farm women received so

little recognition for their work in the 1930s? What explains such profound social

maqhdhtion? For the answer, we must look to the early nineteenth century

and the flowering of the ideology of separate spheres.69 Victorians in eastern

Canada (as in the United States and elsewhere) were bombarded with the

message that women w e "naturally" fitted for the private sphere and men for

the public sphere. Clergymen, medical authorities8 the popular press and

organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union exalted women's

domestic and maternal roles. Ideal women were submissive, pious, morally

upright wives, mothers and daughters who cared for home and family while

their menfolk engaged in the aggressive world of business and public affairs.

'WomanNs first and only place is in her home," said one idealope in 1874.70

Women's realm was defined by their reproductive activities, and men's was

defined by productive work. These ideas supported and were intertwined with

pahiarchal notions about male superiority. Men were held up as family

breadwinners and chief decision-makers, while women were constrained to be

supportive, deferential dependants71

Separate spheres ideology made its way west with the pioneers, where it

was propounded by religious leaders, women's organizations, and farm

periodicals and educatm.72 In the years before the Depression, women who

attended the Manitch Agricultural College's domestic science courses and public

lectures learned that the ideal farm woman was a capable household manager

and helpmate to the farm's "senior partner."'3 Not only was she an efficient

housekeeper, but the model farm woman was a nurturing cheerful and

appropriately submissive companion for her husband and children. "There is

more than manual labour to be done if there is to be a real home," said a

Women's Institute guide. "The mother must radiate c h e e r f t h e ~ ~ ~ hope, faith,

and again faith. She must generate energy and emulation and perseverance. She

must lead and yet appear to trail behind."74 Men, meanwhile, were uged to be

efficient farm businessmen who provided a solid material foundation for their

families and allowed their wives sway in their separate sphere. "The traditional

patriarch gave way to the benevolent patriar&/ writes scholar Jeffery Taylor.

W e was still firmly in control but in a managerial rather than a patemal

sense."75 Men were bosses and women were their willing, hardworlang helpers.

A woman writing in the m c o m p a r e d the ideal farm husband

and wik to an efficient team of horses: "John may lead the load, but Mary surely

does her share of the p ~ I l i n g . " ~ 6

Many Canadian and Amexican scholars have debated the extent to which

men and women on the western frontier actually adhered to the separate

spheres ideal. The consensus seems to be that distinctions between the spheres

were initially blurred - that women took on fieldwork and other chores that

t r a d i t i d y belonged to men-" As homesteads became established and

farmersN general prosperity grew, however, it appears that gendered work

divisions hardened. Women became inueashgly respomiile for household,

garden, dairy and poultry work, and men became solely respo~l~l'ble for cmps.78

"On expanding farmsteads, grain production grew into an exdusively male

endeavour, a trend which started before the turn of the century and

continued on in the twentieth century," WTites Carolina Van de V o r ~ t ~ ~ ~

By the onset of the Depression, then, the image of the dominant male

wheat farmer and his lesser domestic helpmate was firmly established in

Westexn Canada. Separate spheres ideology was alive and well, and continued to

operate throughout the decade.80 Even though the relative economic importance

of farm men's and women's work was reversed during this periodN many people

clung to patriarchal ideas about male superiority and sexual division of labour*

They wntinued to divide labour along gender lines and to accord fann men

more recognition and paver than farm women because, in many cases, their

gender identity and status were at stake. When wheat crops failed, men's image

of themselves as "real" farm men was threatened. It is hardly surprising that

they would strive to maintain authority over their fields, farms and familes.

Many of them took public credit for women's essential work with chickens and

cows - and relegated women to the shadows - because they had to be seen as

providers and heads of households. Wheat was more important than chidcms

and cows, but in the absence of wheat, men would make do with controlIing the

products of women's work. It went without saying that proceeds from women's

products would b absorbed into the ( d e ) farm economy.81 This is not to

suggest that all farm men saw things this way, but it does help to explain why

farm women tended to be marghdked and why their work was generally

subsumed by men during the Depression.

1. George Spe!ne8 Survival of a V m . . (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1%7), 69. Between 1934 and

1938, Kate Graves8 farm was located in the provincial constituency of Notukeu and was rep-ted by Spencer a Liberal. -ve m v e . (Regina: Queen's Printer, 1971), 51,126,166; James H. Marsh, ed. Canadian ed. noronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999) 2227.

2. There were 164,165 females age fifteen and over in rural Saskatchewan in 1931. Seventh Table 18,958.

3. For a thorough discussion of male and female work roles on commercial Manitoba grain farms, see Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work in Manitoba," 79-120. On Alberta and Saskatchewan farm women's segregated work roles, see Nand L. Langford, "First Generation and Lasting Impressions: The Gendered Identities of Prairie Homestead Women" (PhD Diss., University of Alberta* 1994), 78,171. Also see discussions concerning the "sharply gender- divided work pattern" on large wheat farms on the American Great -# and on American farms in general. Nancy Grey Osterud, 'Gender and the Transition to Capitalism in Rural America," -667:2 (Spring 1993), 20-22; Carolyn E. Sachs, . .

(Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld), 1983, 46-7.

4. Van de Vorst, 'A History of Farm Women's Work," 7Pln; Scowby, r)ivine Dis~onttent~" 56- 87,128-146; Kate Graves letters to Geotgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths, 1930-1941.

5. A female Western contributor conducted an informal s u . of the newspaper's readers in 1936 which determined that garden work, milkrng and raising poultry were "on most farms part of the routine work of the housewife, and were considered the mainstay in providing for the needs of the family." Quoted in Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 144.

6. Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora, "Structure of Agriculture and Women's Culture in the Great Plains," - 8 (F8 19881, 195-7.

7. Van de Vorst, "A Histoy of Farm Women's Work/ 230.

8. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 19 April 1933; 2 May 1933; 21 March 1932. Kate sometimes rose at 4:30 a . a to make breakfast for Edward so that he could line up early at the elevator in McCord for relief oats.

9. Ibid., 5 December 1935.

10. Ibid., 17 Decembet 1934.

11. Ibid., 15 May 1933.

12 Ibid., 14 May 1940.

13. Ethel (Graves) McCrea 1- to Georghm, 20 June 1937.

14. It should be remembered that Saskatchewan farm women's work in the 1930s was made doubly hard by adverse environmental conditions and poverty. See Mrs. Ted East letter to

Violet McNaughton, 8 June; Gray, W m 174s; Wallace, 3,14,59; Spence, 69; Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 21 April 1932; 2 May 1933; 25 May 1936; 17 April 1937; 11 May 1937.

15. Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 77.

16. Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 160; Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 140.

17. Saskatchewan farm women's work strategies crossed and connected the lines drawn by post- industrial work categories that separated private household consumption from the public arenas of wage-work and market Women's "productive labouf produced dothin& eggs, dairy products, vegetables and canned goods for home use. Those same produds generated cash in the marketplace or could be bartered for needed items. And women's "reproductive labo~reproduced social life and provided domestic services. Rural ;omen during the Depression stretched family resources by c a d d y patching clothing, and knit communities and families by observing birthdays and holidays and maintaining communities and church gatherings - even as they literally reproduced the next generation An historian who divides women's labour in the home into not two, but five categories, is Vem~ca Strong-Boag, "Keeping House in God's Countgry: Canadian Women at Work in the Home," in On I&

" ed. Craig Heron and Robert Storey (Kingston and Montreal: Mffiill-Queen's University Press, la), 124-51.

18. Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 1264,169.

19. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 15 June 1934.

20. Ibid., 6 April 1931.

21. Ibid., 27 February 1934.

22. Ibid., 4 May 1934.

23. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafledre, Saskatchewan, 27 August 1937.

24. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 24 June 1932.

25. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog telephone interview, 27 January 2000.

26. Kate Graves letter to Georgim, 5 August 1935.

27. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgha, 4 November 1934.

28. Kate Graves letter to Geoqha, 17 June 1935.

29. Ibid., 19 April 1933.

30. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 20 March 1936.

31. Christa Scowby argues that Saskatchewan women worked hard during the Depression "not out of a sense of nobility or devotion to duty, but because there was work to be done and t h e was no one else to do it" And, Saskatchewan farm women who became farm wives between 1936 and 1945 told Julie Dorsch they "just did what had to be done." No doubt Kate Graves and other

women in her family felt the same way about work to some extent. However, Kate's letters also reveal that she took pride in her hard work and saw it as a moral virtue. It also seems that Kate's work made her feel needed and important, and that it allowed her to keep her mind focussed on issues other than the desperate overall situation in which she and her family found themselves. In this way the act of working served as a survival mechanism for Kate during the Depression. Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 6; Dorsch, "You Just Did What Had to Be Done," 113.

32 Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 26 July 1940.

33. Ibid., 24 May 1937.

34. Ibid., 21 March 1938.

35. Ibid., 18 December 1934.

36. Ibid., 27 May 1935.

37. The chief thing Kate Graves' former neighb011.r~ W. Assaf, remembers about his mother is that she was a quiet person who never complained and who sacrificed her needs to those of the family. When Assaf s mother died of cancer in 1934, at age 45, Kate attended her funeral. "How she worked out here," said Kate, "and such a nice garden." Gssaf, 26; Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 4 May 1934.

38. There was one important distinction: Married women generated income, ideally, by selhg products produced at home, while only single women earned wages. The latter could do laundry, cook, sew and teach - in other words, perfonn a variety of productive and reproductive labour for wages. Their mothers, who did similar work at home, made an wen greater economic contribution to families and farms, but one not as easiiy measured in terms of hourly wages or the going price for eggs and butter.

39. Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 151-71; Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 12844.

40. Calculated from Britnell, W)teat 71-2 ; and A h GOV- - .

(- 1937)

41. Peacock, to 58; Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 160; MacRae and Scott, 7.

43. Kate Graves 1- to Georgina: 6 December 1932; 13 November 1934; 18 December 1934; 179,184; George E. Hamilton Diary.

44. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 5 May 1930.

45. George E. Hamilton Diary.

46. of of the pro- of Saskatchewan. 1954-55,

47. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 26 July 1937. For detailed descriptions of the butter-making process, see- 123; and Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 162 One of Van de Vorst's informants said that after making ten pounds of butter (which Kate often did), "you would ache in your back from standing up." Kate's hard work produd a superior product that would have brought the family more money than a lower grade of butter.

48. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 20 September 1925; 21 April 1932; 22 July 1932

50. Saskatchewan Women's Institute, # (Saskatoon: Saskatchewan Women's Institute, 1988)' 24. Also

see Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 151-71; Peacock, Wheat Farmer,; Wav- 123.

51. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 8 April 1931; 19 April 1933.

52 Ibid., 17 April 1937.

53. Kate Graves letter to Geo@na8 11 November 1938.

54. Ibid., 26 July 1937. Also see 3 September 1937, in which she said she paid for half of another milk cow and "claimed" part of a horse.

55. Ibid., 10 October 1939; 2 October 1940. It should be noted that Kate's poultry and dairy- related income was not sufLicient to meet all of the faxxuly's household needs. For the first two- thirds of the Depression, the family relied heavily on relief for food, fuel and clothing. Later, Kate and Tom's old age pension cheques made a critical contribution to the family economy. And some of the farm's wheat income, and no doubt Tom's blacksmithing money, paid for groceries. Kate says Tom used part of the 1938 and f 940 wheat cheques to pay accounts run up at the p c e l y store.

56. Ibid. 18 August 1938. Thomas told Kate grain prices were so low it would take three harvested bushels to pay for every bushel of seed he planted.

57. Van de Vorst, "A History of Fann Women's Work," I%, 167-9.

59. George E. Handton Diary. The diary provides an excellent account of his daily work activities; poultry care is not among them.

60. "Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations: Agriculture in Saskatchewan. Address by Honourable J.G. Taggart. December 16,1937," Saskatchewan Archives Board, Regina, Pamphlet File, Agriculture-Saskatchewan.

61. MacRae and Scott, In 7, 13-4.

63. Many men aka helped butcher the poultry.

64. "Report of visit of Messrs. Oliver, Coduane, Endicott, and Wilson," Edmund Oliver Papers; also see MacRae and Scott, In the- 13.

65. Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 61,145; Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 209.

66. Rokgs-Magnuswm, "Hidden Homesteaders," 179-80; Strong-Boag, "Pulling in Double Hamess," 411,416; Langford, "First Generation," 8,143-4,148,159,170-2.

67. A number of Canadian and Anterican scholars assume that most women controlled their earnings from eggs, butter and other a@cultud products. For example, Osterud, "Gender and the Transition to Capitalism," 22; Joan Jensen, to W o a (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 238; Van de Vorst, "History of Farm Women's Work," 151-69. However, it seems that prior to and during the Depression, the husbands of a significant number of women did not allow them to keep their earnings. A 1922 s m e y hund that only 17 per cent of Manitoba farm women had personal spending money. Langford, "First Generation," 142-4,171. Also see Strong-Boag, "Pulling in Double Harness," 411.

68. Langford, "First Generation and Lasting Impressions: The Gendered Identities of Prairie Homestead Women" (PhD. Diss., University of Alberta, 1994), 170. Also see Michelle Boivin, 'Tarm Women: Obtaining Legal and Economic Recognition of Their Work," in

in. Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (Ottawa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1987), 49-90.

69. For discussion concerning separate spheres ideology, see Comacchio, The B o a . . 20- 21,152-5; Rentice, et al., Canadian W p p l ~ , 1

ed. Ramsay Cook and Wendy 1976); Barbara Welter, "The Cult of T N ~ Womanhood: 1820-1860," -18-2 (SUNXI- I%), 151-74

70. Quoted in Fkentice, et d., -n W- 157.

71. These were middle-dass prescriptions, but came to be "the measure of respectability" for working+lass men and women as well. Cook and hiitchinson, The 6.

72. Langford, "First Generation," 41,de; Robert L. Griswold, "Anglo Women and Domestic Ideology in the American West in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," in . . Utomen. ed. L e d , W s s e l , Vicki L. Ruiz, and Janice Monk (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press; New York Harper C o b Publishers, 1988, 1990)# 15; Marilyn Barber, "Help for Farm Homes: The Campaign to End Housework Drudgery in Rural Saskatchewan in the 1920s," -canadensis1 (June 1985), 6-8; Eliane Leslau Silverman, "Womm and the Victorian Work Ethic on the Alberta Frontier: Rescription and Description," in The R& 19Saskatchewan.19Q ed. Howard Palmer and Donald Smith (Vancouver: Tantalus Research Limited, 1973), 93.

73. Jeffery Taylor, 1 1 Movement- Canadian Plains Research Center, 1994), 76-9.

74. Quoted in Taylor, . . 80.

76. Quoted in Taylor, . - 73.

- 77. While there is no consensus on how one defines the biurring of p d d spheres on Western Canadian farms in the early decades of the twentieth century, for the purposes of this thesis women's traditional sphere encompasses work that took place in the home and yard, including work associated with the garden, milk cows and poultry. Men's sphere encompasses work in the fields and work associated with horses, beef or range cattle and farm machinery. For a genuine blurring of spheres to occur, men and women w d d need to spend sustained amounts of time in each other's work realms. On the gendered aoss-over of work mles during the pioneer period, see Van de Vorst, "A History of Fann Women's Work in Manitoba," 35-67; Silverman, Women and the Victorian Work Ethic," 92-4; Langford, "First Generation," 65-8. As Langford notes, it was not a "two-way exchange," as most men only did men's work, while women did both men's and women's work

78. Although wdmen ventured into the public sphere when they sold poultry, dairy and garden products, these activities were home-based and traditionally considered women's work. Thus, they did not significantly blur gendered work lines. Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 11,58-9,128.

79. Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 82.

80. An artide which encapsulates separate spheres thinking in Western Canada in the 1930s is "The Home Beautiful," C v o a n d - W m May 1937,22. Writer Irving Gould profiles a farm family near Hemaruka, in drought-stricken southeastern Alberta. The husband works the fields, e-iects farm buildings and r&airs vehicles in his well-equipped shop, which is "the hub around which the entire farming operations turn." Meanwhile, his wife maintains a beautiful, cultured home environment amid soothing gardens.

81. Butter and egg money that many women once called their own was, of necessity, sacrificed to the needs of the farm and family during the Depression. So, although the economic value of women's work increased, one could say they actually lost economic power.

CHAPTER FOUR

Wow Fathex Says I Cannot Leave, They Need M e Very Much": Women's Response to Marginahation

Thus far we have observed that farm women's labour generally did not

buy them increased public recognition and power in the 1930s because

Saskatchewan society clung to traditional ideas about men's and women's

proper spheres. Now, let us see how Kate Graves and her peers responded to

their marginahation. How were assumptions about men's and women's work

roles manifested in Kate's f d y , and how did they affect the amount of power

she wielded in her household? It seems that this family granted women

authority in their particular sphere? but ensured that men retained their

dominant status vis-B-vis the farm and family.

Prairie farm women's response to their inequitable position took a variety

of forms during the Great Depression Many women knew the value of the

work they did and wrote the Prod- and other publications seeking

fairer treatment for farm women and greater acknowledgement for their work'

Some bridled at men's dominant economic position in society and the home. One

woman equated marriage with slavery and said a husband was not "a real fifty-

fifty partner."2 Other women believed they -eyed equal partnerships with

t h e husbands. To some, this meant that men's work and women's work

complemented each other and contributed jointly to the maintenance of the farm

and family. To others, equal partnership meant that husbands and wives

willingly performed work in each other's realms. One woman said she helped

outdoors when ha husband was away or busy, and 'T get help with washing

and other housework when he is not busy."3

Interestingly? the vast majority of women who voiced their opinions in

the press assumed that women's primary responsibilities were to their homes

and families. Even the loudest critics did not question this basic tenet of separate

spheres. Many women vigorously asserted the "sanctity of the family" and

women's maternal and domestic roles. 'Women! Your place is in the

home,"wrote one correqxmdent,4 r a female essayist said

there was:

no higher, holier or more important mission than the making of a happy home ... there is no public official, no professional man, whether he be lawyer, dodor, clergyman or businessman, so imp-t to civilization as the mother, the home-maker.5

Kate Graves certainly bought into prevalent ideas about men's and

women's work responsibilitiesP She expected both sexes in her family to follow

the separate spheres blueprint Women were to excel as homemakers and

mothers. Thus, her daughters and granddaughters were praised for carrying out

gender spedhc work like housework, sewing and childcare. "Emma is a great

little manager," she said of one of her daughters. "She is a good cook and can

sew nicely."' She recalled that her daughter Mary was "such an excellent

housekeepe~," and she hoped Mary's daughter Enid would "prove as good as

she grows older and has it to do. She will, I am sure."g She also commended Enid

for being "good in her way with childred"'

At the same time8 the blueprint dictated that men assume positions as

breadwinners and heads of households. In Kate's view8 they must work hard,

assume overall responsibility for the farm and family, and provide dependents

with adequate shelter and physical comforts. She praised her son Edward, her

husband, and her son-in-law Ed McCrea for being "god workers'8 and showing

"ambition8' "Ed is not one bit lay," she said.10 When Kate's son-in-law Bob

McCrea (Ed's brother) bought a large supply of groceries for his family8 Kate

declared that '%e is a good provider.""

Although Kate usually refrained from overtly &ticking family members

in her letters, she didn't hesitate to c o n d m them when they veered from the

model of the good homemaker or the good breadwinner. She believed her

daughter-in-law Dorothy to be a poor household manager who "does not h o w

the meaning of being economical,'' and she stripped Bob of his "good provider"

status when he developed alcohol and money problems:12

Bob is boozing pretty bad owing to that Beer Parlor. They need so badly a floor in their kitchen and have no W.C. (water closet) or any sewing machine. It is terrible and he is an idler..Such a man would drive me crazy. I like a worker ... It is sad for the wife and family.

Most men and women in Kate Graves' world held fast to their socially

constructed work roles throughout the 1930s. Although the men were no longer

the family's true breadwinners, they and the women in their lives behaved as

though they were. Obviously, it was important to these families to sustain the

status quo. Perhaps men's and women's gendered identities and self-esteem

depended upon i t Hence, they employed a number of strategies to ensure that

men's work remained apart from women's work, and that men essentially

retained their dominant status.

Firstly, men and women continued to perform presai'bed gender tasks.

We have seen the type of work that principally engaged women in Kate Graves'

circle. As for men, drought or no drought, they continued to get out there on the

harrows or the mower, doing what field work there was to be done. The fact

that some farmers in southem Saskatchewan reseeded their crops several times

in a row after they were blown out suggests that they were driven to do field

work against all odds and al l logic13 Other work the men in Kate's cirde

performed included repairing farm equipment, cutting weeds, fencing,

butchering pigs, and h a w water, coal and relief feed. Feeding, watering and

herding cattle and horses also appears to have been men's work. Men's work

responsibilities frequently took them to the neighbows and to town, where they

conducted business with other men - selling grain at the elevator, paying store

98

accounts and filling out relief and grain permit applications. Men seemed to have

easier access to transportation than women; women often relied on men to drive

them by car, wagon or buggy to town and elsewhere. Perhaps this is why men

often accompanied women to sell their poultry, eggs and butter, or like George

Hamilton, sold these products themselves.l*

Men rarely crossed gendered work lines, and if they did, it was in limited

ways. For instance, the men in Kate's immediate family ploughed the garden

and planted corn and potatoes, and Thomas and Edward sometimes milked the

family's cows. After her son left for Quebec, Kate wrote: "Edward was a good

milker and cared so nicely for cattle and horses. I never needed to worry when

he was at the helm."l5 Men's direct involvement in poultry seems to have been

limited mainly to December butcherings - men killed and pIucked outdoors and

women cleaned and pulled pin feathers indoo~s - and accompanying wives to

town to ship dressed poultry and sell eggs.16 If men weren't busy with their own

work, they sometimes "helped" women do the laundry. Edward sometimes

hauled water from the river and turned the handle on the clothes wringer- On a

few occasions, Thomas helped prepare food. 'q told your Pa to put bread in

oven," wrote Kate, "and he was baking it when we came home at elwen- Had

potatoes al l pared. He is a treasure."l7

Kate was pleased, and a trifle amused, when men in her family tackled

women's work When her daughter Jessie was sick, Kate observed that although

Jessie's husband Bob was "chief cook and bottle washer," it was a good thing

their teenage daughter was on hand.'* She also noted once that Tom was

mending one of his coats: 'This is the second one this afternoon, and he says

there is still a third for him to work at. I am sure you feel sorry for hia He says

he is so particular he has to do it hhse l f .19

A letter by Kate's son-in-law Matthew Wallace hints at what men in the

Graves family thought about crossing gendered work boundaries. Matthew,

who had been widowed for a year and was the father of twenty-year-old Enid

and eleven-year-old Sylvia, noted that Enid would be away for ten days, until

April 1. "I will be quite a cook by that time, don't you think? If Enid and Sylvia

go off and leave me I guess I will be able to get along."20 Matthew felt the need

to assert that he knew that it was his daughters' job to do the cooking, and to

joke about the fact that he would be doing women's work Perhaps he was

embarrassed to find himself in such a position. In fact, Kate's letters show that

Matthew often invited his relatives for dinner and, as Kate invariably pointed

out, was a good cook.

It was not the norm for men to occupy women's work sphere in this

family. The fact that Kate always commented on it when men aossed gender

work lines, that she painted Thomas as something of a character for mending

clothing, and that she and Matthew joked about men's attempts at women's

work shows that such things didn't happen often?' One particular comment by

Kate shows just how entrenched her ideas on men's and women's appropriate

responsibilities were. "Matthew had dinner with us last Friday," she said on

January 28,1936. "I thought if Mary could have seen his overcoat - needing

mending - he does his best though."= Even though Matthew's wife Mary was

dead, the expectation that she would be appalled at and feel responsible for the

condition of Matthew's coat was there. So was the assumption that a man

couldn't be expected to take care of of clothing and himself without a woman's

guidance.

The women in Kate's family occasionally made forays into men's work

sphere. Kate's daughters Ethel and Jessie sometimes ran the farm or ranch when

their husbands were away. When Ethel was in charge of the farm in the summer

of 1937, Kate noted that she had "lots of chores to do." In addition to caring for

141 chickens, "a little colt has to be brought up by millc in a pad"'3 Ethel was

also responsible for the farm the following summer when she was pregnant and

supposed to be cutting back on her work. When Jessie's husband Bob went to

Quebec with a train car load of horses to sell, Jessie wrote, "We miss him alot and

I have all the worry of the pasture cattle on my mind."24 Although Jessie had the

help of a male hired hand, and Ethel was aided by a teenage niece, the burden of

responsi'bility rested with them. This is not the same as saying they had ultimate

authority for the farm operation, however. There is a difference between having

work respom%ilities and having power, between temporarily managing a farm

and owning it." As will be discrtssed hter, the women in the family likely

enjoyed fewer overall economic and decision making privileges than their

husbands.

Although Kate noted the extra work required of women when they were

left to mind the farm, she did not praise them in the same way that she praised

men when they crossed into women's work camp. Perhaps Kate and other

women in her family took it for granted that they would assume men's

responsibilities when men were away. Kate seemed to think it was having a

"trusty hired man" on the ranch - not a wik -- that gave Bob McCrea the

freedom to travel around the countryside.26 Perhaps it was simply expected in

Kate's family that women would do men's work when men deemed it

necessary?'

Men could count on women to assume men's responsibilities when men

went off the farm, but women could not count on men to handle women's work

for any length of time.28 It seems from Kate's lettas that women appreciated

men's occasional help with meals, laundry and other women's work, and

interpreted it as a sign of though-ess towards women. Such help was

welcomed, but not expected. Men decided whether or not they would help out,

and if they were busy with men's work, or chose not to do women's work, that

was their prerogative. George Hamilton's diaries indicate that he helped with

laundry during the winter months, but not during the rest of the year when he

was busy with the aops. Tom Graves tended to only take up the sewing needle

in the winter time, when there was little outdoor work. And Kate's

granddaughter Enid (Wallace) Kolskog says Kate was fortunate that her men

folk did some garden work There were families where the men rarely set foot in

the garden:

There were husbands and there were husbands. Some sure helped, and o*ers took it for granted that the garden was where the woman was supposed to be. She was the boss in that area. Even if the men had time to pitch in and help with hoeing, they wouldn't think of doing it because that was for her to d0.29

Occasional exceptions aside, Kate and others in her family seemed to take

men's and women's segregated work respomiities for granted. They assumed

that farm women's principal place of work was the house and yard, and that

men's realm extended to the fields and beyond.30 They assumed that men would

conduct most of the business concerning the farm, and that men would work

and control the land. Sometimes Kate actually spoke of grain aops as belonging

to men.

It is not surprising, then, that women in Kate's family apparently did not

do field work or herd cattle. Using wives' and daughters' field labour would

have made economic sense; even if the farnily had to pay a female domestic to

replace the woman's work in the home, it would have been cheaper than hiring

a male fieldworker.31 But, the men in Kate's circle employed a number of

strategies which, m effect, kept women out of the field. Often, men exchanged

labour amongst themselves or hired male relatives to do the work. On many

occa~ions, Kate's aale relatives and other men in the neighbourhood banded

together to do each othem' field work. Sometimes complicated arrangements

were worked out between men to take care of outdoor tasks. One year, for

instance, Edward hired hjmsel£ out to do harvest work for a neighbow and

arranged for a male cousin to do the outdoor chores on Kate and Tom's farm m

exchange for a milk cow. At least two of Kate's -in-laws appear to have had

permanent or semi-permanent hired hands. Even though the families in Kate's

cirde were on relief and operated on the edge of sumival, they found the

resources to ensure that only men worked with wheat and cattle herds. Kate

noted on Apnl20'1936, that her son-in-law Bob had hired a man so his daughter

Marjorie "won't have to ride the range."32 And Kate's daughter Ethel wrote on

November 4,1934, that her family's aops had been poor for four or five years in

a row and that they required relief feed for the horses, pigs and chickens. But

somehow they managed to pay their grocery account at the local store and their

hired hand's wages "Cattle are not worth much but we will have to sell some to

pay a few debts that have to be settled. We sold a few horses but the money

won went to Tid qr...also our man."33 In Ethel's family, paying the hired man

was as much a priority as covering the grocery bill.34

Perhaps one reason people in Kate Graves' circle eschewed female field

labour was because they belonged to an established family/community network

that offered a plentiful supply of male workers.35 But there may have been more

to it than that. By not involving women in field work, these people were actually

going against a historical pattern. According to this pattern, farm familes in

Western Canada and elsewhere in North America used women field workers

when they were hurting economidy, and did not use them when they

prospered. Middle and upper strata farm women rarely engaged in field

labour.% When so many Saskatchewan farms became economically unstable

during the Great Depression, large numbers of women returned to the field.

Indeed, there were families in Kate's area and other prairie regions who relied

on women's unpaid work in the field during the Depre&m One woman in the

neighbowing municipality of Waverley did most of the family's stooking and

"helped" stack feed27 A woman who wrote the West- P r o d ~ s a i d many

women were "doing a man's work outside as well as looking after a home and

children..-simply because hubby hasn't got the money to hire anybody to do

it"38 And a Red Goss observer said there were farmers in southwestern

Saskatchewan "whose wives have driven teams in the field and handled spades

and pitch forks to aid in the struggle for existence."Jg However, it seems that

most people in Kate's vicinity, and M y her family, were reluctant to let go

of the desire to keep women back at the house.

The fact that Kate's family went to such lengths to ensure that fieldwork

remained a male preserve shows how important it must have been to them to

maintain gendered work identities. Perhaps the men's status as breadwinner-

bosses, and their mid-level position in the male agricultural hierarchy, was at

stake. The men in Kate's f d y may have needed to control the aspects of

farming which rural Saskatchewan deemed most important in order to think of

t h d v e s as masculine beings and dominant figures in their households. They

may have felt that relying on women's field labour made a man even less of a

''real" farmer than if he relied on his wife's chickens; thurgs would have to be

prew bad indeed for a decent man to allow his wife to drive teams and handle

spades. It seems the decision to exclude women from the field was less about

economics than it was about male pride.

Not that women would have been eager to add field work to their

enormous list of responsiities. In fact, the women in Kate's family may have

demonstrated agency by resisting men's work-* While men banded together to

get the farm chores and fieldwork done, women likewise worked together to

handle work in their sphere. Often Kate and Ethel, or one of Kate's other

daughters, spent the day working together, and sometimes Kate's daughter-in-

law Ida Graves or niece Maude Flick came to visit and work. *Maude visited us

from Thurs. am. until Wed. p.m.," Kate wrote on August 2,1938. "She was a

great help to me in canning peas and beans, and we did up apricots and

gooseberries and saskatoons."41 On many occasions, Kate and her daughters

hired female teenage relatives or other young women to help with housework,

poultry, and mdking. Even though money was scarce they, like their menfolk,

found enough to hire workers of their own sac. In September 1937, Kate and her

husband were nine d o h in debt on their relief bill at the grocery store, yet

Kate hired a neighbour girl for five weeks to help with milking and other chores.

The women in Kate Graves' family, and their men, must have been prepared to

do whatever it took to ensure that women's work got done by women. No

doubt it was as important to women's gendered egos to manage the home as it

was to men's to oversee the fields.

This brings us to the question of how much personal power Kate and the

women in her family wielded. Did their work and economic contributions

translate into authority within their households?* It appears that Kate and her

female relatives were entitled to make decisions in their particular realm. The

women controlled their work processes and made decisions concerning their

housework, poultry and gardens. For instance, in 1941 Kate told her daughter-

in-law Dorothy she could have all Kate's chickens in exchange for six eggs a day.

Kate was also in charge of hiring fexnale help. On April 13, 1939, she said: "Jessie

Burnard coming on 18th to work a month for me. I hope to clean house and

make garden.=I told her mother I could only give her $6 a rnonthm43 Sometimes

the women in Kate's family shared domestic workers. Women may also have

decided on the purchase of most household goods. Kate Mote on August 2,

1938, that she had obtained a cold pack canner from Eaton's catalogue, and on

May 28,1940, she said, T bought a twdnamer oil stove."" There is no

indication that Kate sought Tom's approval for her decisions regarding the

chickem, hinng domestic workers8 or her household purchases.

Men, meanwhile, enjoyed decision making authority in their sphere. Kate

indicates that it was Tom who bought the family's horses and made

arrangements with other men to handle men's outdoor chores and field work.

For example, on May 18,1940, she said he paid his son-in-law Ed to put in the

aop. and a year later she said he bought another horse to do field work. "This is

five he has bought."45

As noted earlier' men's work realm was greater in circumference and was

accorded more status than women's realm. Men travelled farther afield, making

decisions concerning the farm and proceeds of the grain crop (if there were any).

On September $1940, Kate wrote:

Your Pa went with Ed to Mankota to see the secretary treasurer of our municipality8 Mr. R H. Stinson. One has to get a permit before they can sell any wheat and Father paid Ed all up. You see Ed put in the seed and then combined it and drew our wheat to elevator.*

George Hamilton's diary indicates that he often worked, travekd to town, and

conducted business with male neighboms and relatives. "Bought Harry's farm,"

he noted on October 7'1929.47 The men in Kate's circle seem to have discussed

their decisions concerning the crops and the farm with their wives. Kate, Katey

and Ethel knew what fieldwork the men were doing, what state the crops were

in, and how the proceeds were being spent Kate obserrred several times that

Thomas had cashed the wheat cheque and paid various bills. Katey wrote on

March 20,1936, that her husband hauled wheat to the elevator because they

needed the money to pay for their daughter's post-secondary teaching

education. No doubt the women believed they were in econdc partnership

with their husbands8 and influenced decisions conceming the farm. But the fact

remains that they were the men's decisions to make. The men owned and

controlled the fields? and made decisions conceming the products of the fields.

This gave them more overall power than women.

The question of Kate's power relative to her husband naturally arises.

How equitable was her relationship with Tom when it came to major decisions

conceming the family and farm? This is a difficult question to answer. On the one

hand? Kate appears to have been a dynamic force in her household and marriage

- a strong-willed, competent woman who was certain of her opinions and who

actively participated in decisions concerning the farm. On the other hand, she

regarded the men in her family as heads of households who had ultimate

decision-making authority.48 She deferred to her husband on several occasions,

even though the issue at stake was important to her. And she never complained

about him or criticized his decisions. It seems as if there was a tension between

Kate's desire to daim authority and her desire to appear to be a proper,

submissive farm wife.

Kate's letters indicate that she and Tom often talked over issues

concaning the farm and family. For instance, in the summer and fall of 1937,

Kate and Tom frequently discussed Edward's move to Quebec. On July 26,1937,

Kate wrote:

When Edward wanted to go I thought we ought to buy one of his cows so my holstein would be more contented. And father and I each gave him ten dollaft (my idea and father thought it a good one). I said we might as well milk two as one39

Interestingly, Kate said buying We cow was her idea, but put it in

brackets. She took credit for the idea, but did not want to emphasize it too much.

Perhaps that would have been unseemly.

In subsequent letters, Kate mentioned the difficulty she and Tom were

having deciding whether or not to follow Edward. Once they decided to stay in

Saskatchewan, Kate wrote:

We will be starting out again and will have to live on our pension... $15 each will come to almost $1 a day and I feel we can do it No rent to pay. Just ourselves and Kate (a granddaughter). We want her with us, for we want her good ears to hear a . she can cany in coal and do many chores like carrying water for the hens. And father may be able to do a little work of a light nature.50

Kate's statement reveals the degree to which she and Tom discussed

arrangements concerning the farm, and the fact that Kate felt empowered to say

whether or not their plans were kasible. Kate's comments suggest that she and

her husband were a decision-making team and that she enjoyed considerable

agency in her marriage.

However, other comments undermine this impression. For instance, Kate

wrote on October 10,1939 that she and Tom planned to move into a new part of

the house and give their quarters to Edward's family. "Your pa decided we must

give them all this part I hated to give up my bedroom from 25 years, but one

must give in at times." Kate did not say so, but she was also relinquishing her

treasured pantry.51 She also wrote as though Tom had final say concerning the

timing of visits to their daughters Katey and Emma. And she said several times

over the course of the Depression that Tom had vetoed her wish to visit

Georgina in AIberta. "Your father says I cannot leave," she wrote in August

1932. "They need m e very much. Lots to attend to and a busy time."52 Kate

emphasized that she would like to see Georgina, but that Tom was probably

right. "I felt so sotry I could not go to see you..but your Father said I could not

leave now and there is all I can do one thing sure."53 Kate's statements give the

impression that she bowed graciously to her husband's will even when she was

unhappy with his decisions. They tempt one to think Kate had less power than

Tom in their marriage.

How do we reconcile the image of Kate Graves as the equal decision-

making partner with the image of Kate as the obedient wife?54 Knowing what

we do about Kate's nature and her values about men's and womenf s gendered

roles, we must be cautious about accepting some of her statements at face value.

In al l likelihood, Kate chose words which supported her image of herself as the

model (submissive) fann wife and Thomas as the model (dominant) farm

husband. Consider the times when Kate said Thomas would not let her visit

Georgi~. For all w e know, Kate and Tom discussed the topic together and

agreed that Kate should not go. Or Kate decided herself that she should not go,

and passed on aspects of her diswsion with Tom that supported her decision

Presenting thk decision as if it were Tom's allowed Kate to create the impression

that he was in charge and she was doing his bidding. This interpretation is

supported by the fact that many letters show Kate to be an independent person

who decided herself if and when she would visit people. There were times when

Kate could probably have gone to see Georgina, but chose not to fa her own

reasons.55 Tom's opinion does not appear to have been a factor on these

occasions. Nor did he present obstacles when Kate decided to visit various

female relatives in Saskatchewan for days or weeks at a time. In fact, Tom does

not appear in general to have been an authoritarian presence. Often when Kate

said she could not go to see Georgina, she added that she wished it were

otherwise. "I am not giving up hope of getting to see you and those dear little

grandchildren yet when times improve."" The underlying message was that, if

it were up to her, she would go. But Tom would not let her. Kate got to look

good in her own eyes. She got to assert her identity as a good mother who

wished to be with her daughter, and a good wife who submitted to her husband

and her domestic obligations. She subverted her own power in order to maintain

the facade of a socially acceptable marriage between a dominant husband and a

compliant wife. No matter what the reality, no matter whether Kate had

109

economic and decision-making agency in her household or not, the net effect

was the same. Overtly, she wielded little authority beyond her pmmibed

sphere. She allowed herself and those around her to believe that her man was in

charge-

In summary, Kate Graves and farm women like her made a critical

economic contribution to their families and farms during the Great Depression

They worked extremely hard and demonstrated increciiile r e s o ~ e s s in

their efforts to keep their loved ones and the farm economy afloat- Kate Graves,

for one, was proud of her labour and her ability to invest in a cow or two. Yet

farm women garnered few rewards in terms of public recognition and personal

power. The law ensured that, despite the work and money Kate Graves and

other women invested in their homes and farms' they were not full economic

partners with their husbands. Saskatchewan society in general discounted farm

women's work, or ascriibed it to men. Men's pride demanded that they continue

to be seen as breadwinner--bosses, in charge of fields, farms and families. This

appears to have been the case in Kate's own family, where women exercised

authority in the home sphere but not beyond. Some women called for

recognition and economic e t y for prairie farm women. But Kate Graves and

the majority of rural Saskatchewan women were not among them.57 They

strove to be good farm women, unobtrusively shouldering their domestic

workloads and upholding male power. Kate and her pee^^ knew that their work

was essential, but they hadn't the inclination or energy to challenge the

pahiardral system. They were bent on sustaining their families and ensuring

their own survival, and part of s d v i n g was not examining too critically the

status quo. Clingbg to traditional gender work roles promised women and men

a degree of stability in a world tumed upside down?

NOTES: CHAPTER FOUR

1. Scowby, "Divine Discantent," 63,1406; Strong-Boag, J& New D a 100-101.

2. Quoted in Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 65.

3. Strong-bag, New nab 101.

4. Quoted in Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 61.

5. Quoted in Wallace, "AU Else Must Wait," 80.

6. It is not surprising that Kate Graves held these views, as she grew up and raised her family in the second half of the nineteenth century, when separate spheres ideology was at its peak. As Cynthia Comacchio has noted, "a family model based on a gender-defined male- breadwinner ideal" survived in Canada, to a greater or iesser degree, into the mid-1950s and b e y d T h e I n f r n l t e &

. - 154-5.

7. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, Flintoft, Saskatchewan, 5 February 1933.

8. aid., 19 April 1933.

9. bid., 12 June 1936.

lo. Ibid., 14 September 1937; 17 March 1936.

1 1. Ibid., 10 January 1935.

12. Ibid., 14 September 1937; 17 March 1936. Kate's daughter Katey also judged women according to their abilities as domestic managers. See Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 20 March 1936.

13. "Report of visit of Messrs. Oliver, Cochrane, Endicott, and Wilson," Edmund Oliver P a p .

14. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 12 November 1936. "Ethel and Ed shipped some dressed poultry today. Ed took them to Assiniboia in his truck car. Ethel says she will be sure to ship them alive next time. So much work." Although Ed transported and sold the poultry, Ethel thought of the poultry as hers and decided what form the final product would take.

15. %id, 29 June 1937. Although Scowby and Van de Vont say milking was primarily a female responsibility in the 1930s, not all Saskatchewan farm women thought it was women's work. One mother thought it was "ddy-like," and forbade her daughters to touch cow's udders. They were allowed to crank the cream seperator and churn butter, however. Whilsmith, Hear the 174,118. 16. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 18 December 1934..

17. Ibid., 29 October 1931.

18. Ibid., 16 Aug 1932

19. Ibid., 27 D e c e m h r 1934.

20. Matthew Wallace letter to Georgina, 19 March 1934.

21. The fact that men in Kate's area rarely performed domestic work in the 1930s is supported by a scrapbook kept by Gertrude Wood, who lived on a fann near Glen Bain, north of McCord. The scrapbook features a magazine illustration of a smiling, aproned man drying dishes. At the bottom of the picture, Wood has written, "In Glen Bain?" "Happy Homes" Scrapbook, 1936, Saskatchewan Archives Board, Regina, Gertrude Wood Collection, R-E2009, Homemaker Original File.

22. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 28 January 1936.

23. Ibid, 12 June 1936.

24. Jessie (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, Milly, Saskatchewan, 35epternber 1937.

25. Langford, "Eirst Generation," 171-2,174.

26. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 12 November 1936. As late as the 1980s, North American farm women have tended to discount their non-domestic farm work, to iabe1 themselves mere "helpers" when they do men's work Boivin, "Farm Women"; Sachs, . .

%- 7.

27. See the excellent discussion on the ways in which the patriarchal system controls women's labour, particularly in agriculture, in Sachs, Tbp In- . . xi-xii: "A patriarchal division of labour operates in several ways. First, men rarely perform women's work. Since men's work is more important, they do not have to be involved in domestic work Second, men attempt to control their own malm through the exclusion of women In agricuitural production, however, a contradiction emerges for male farmers. On the one hand, men attempt to d u d e women from work in the agricultural realm. The hierarchical system between men fanners confers higher status to men who are able to afford to keep their wives out of agriculture. Wealthier farmers keep women out of the fields. On the other hand, many farmers are caught in a cost-price squeeze and are unable to keep women removed from agricultural production-.In these instances, men decide which work women perform."

28. Kate Graves often said she could not visit Georgina's family in Alberta because her husband and son needed her labour. Once, she said that she could not go until Y can have a housekeeper in my absence." In other words, the men d d not be expected to cook their own meals and tend to "women's work" long enough for her to be away for some time. Kate Graves letter to Ralph Griffiths, 23 May 1938, Kate Graves Family Papers.

29. Enid (Wallace) KoIskog telephone interview, 27 January 2000.

30. AIthough Kate assumed that farm women had dearly defined work responsibilities, she apparently did not object to them working at off-farm, non-domestic jobs, such as teaching. For example, Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 3 April 1933.

3 1. Strong-Boag, "Pulling in Double Harness," 410; Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 130. Wages for female help on farms were typically half those for male workers. In 1938, a female farm worker normally earned $10 a month, while a male earned $22 a month. Wallace, "All Else

Must Wait," 173-4.

32. Kate Graves letter to Georgina. 20 April 1936.

33. Ethel (Graves) letter to Georgi~, 4 November 1934.

34. As further evidence of the family's resourcefulness when it came to finding money to pay for male hired help, Kate notes that Ethel's husband Ed tried to get "the Gov't bonus to give his mem" She may have been referring to the federal Farm Placement Program, which subsidized the hiring of farm workers. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 1 December 1938; Wallace, "All Else Must Wait," 173-4.

35. However, it was not always the case that men were readily available to do outdoor chores and fieldwork for Kate and Tom Graves. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 4 November 1932; 6 September 1940.

36. Van de Vorst, "A History of Farm Women's Work," 82-6; Sachs,m~nvlslble F- . . . . 46,

55-6; Carl N. Degler, At Odds: W v an Rev- present (New York: Word University Press, l-), 406.

38. Quoted in Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 130.

39. "A General View of the Drought Area," Red Cross report, 6.

40. Langford, "First Generation," 171.

4 1. Kate Graves letter to Geoqina, 2 August 1938.

42. No doubt many family members saw and valued the work the women did Kate knew how hard her daughters worked, and vice versa. The children of Kate's daughter Emma (Graves) Hatlelid later appreciated their mother's work, although they saw her principally as their father Martin's helpmate: "In all his work he was ably supported by his wife whose resourcefulness in the lean years with apples, beans and codfish kept the family eating well, and whose ingenuity in turning second hand clothing into pretty dresses for the Christmas concert deLighted her daughters." to W- (Wood Mountain Historical Society, 1969) 210. The sources provide few direct clues as to how men in the famdy perceived the women's contributions during the -on

43. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 13 April 1939.

44, Ibid., 2 August 193628 May 1940.

45. Ibid., 24 March 1941.

46. Bid., 6 September 1940.

47. George E. Hamilton Diary.

48. For instance, even though Kate and her daughter Katey disapproved of Bob McCrea's

behaviour, they considered him (not his wife Jessie) to be responsible for financial and other decisions concerning his fimily. In 1938, Kate said she and Tom felt they must continue to board two of Bob's daughters. 'They were to pay $1 a week each this year. I told Bob we just had to have i t We have kept them for nothing before this, with the exception of some little gift (not money). Well, I hope Bob gets busy and hunts us up a little dough." It is interesting that Kate discussed the issue with Tom and then took responsibitity for arranging matters with Bob. Perhaps she was responsible for this arrangement because it fell within the domestic realm. Kate Graves letters to Georgina: 1 December 1938; 17 August 1939. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 20 March 1936.

49. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 26 July 1937.

50. Ibid., 24 January 1938.

5 1. Ibid., 10 October 1939.

52. Ibid., 16 August 1932.

53. Ibid., 2 September 1932

54. Kate's granddaughter Enid (Wallace) Kolskog believes that Thomas was the principal decision-maker in the marriage, "except I can see Grandma sticking up for something that she really wanted or believed in, that they needed. She wasn't a pushover, not by any means." Personal interview, 13-14 August 1998.

55. Her reasons often centred on lack of money or the need to care for her husband and family. These were not always legitimate excuses. For instance, Georgina's husband Bert Griffiths would have paid her train fare if she had gone in August 1932. Chapter five of this thesis explores in greater depth Kate's likely motivations for not going to see Georgina Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 16 August 1932

56. Ibid., 2 September 1932

57. Although many prairie farm women wrote the We- P m a n d other publications in the 1930s seeking equity, they were far outnumbered by women who maintained a pubhc silence. In 1925, the -had 15,000 women readers. Scowby, "Divine Discontent," 26. Even if every one of those readers wrote the newspaper during the Depression, they were few in number cornpad to the 164,000 rural women in Saskatchewan alone.

58. Comacchio, . . 125; Strong-hag, New Day, 137.

CHAPTERFIVE

?I Thirrk So Much of Edwardw

Kate Graves was thrilled on December 5,1932, when her son Edward

asked her to help him choose the fabric for a new, tailor-made suit. "Has to be

specially nice suit this time, for he is going to be married," she wrote Georgina

excitedly. "Just think of it! The last of eight to jump the broomstick."^

Thus began an eight and a half-year saga of joy, sorrow, anger and

betrayal that would demonstrate the profound sense of love and respons1Mity

Kate felt towards Edward, the lengths she would go to in order to support him

and his family, and the patriarchal notions that undergirded Graves family

relations during the Great Depression Kate's bond with Edward was a dominant

theme in her life throughout this period. Although she supported her other

children and relatives in many ways, she consistently invested more money,

energy and emotion in her only natural-born son.2 This strategy not only helped

Edward and his young family endure, but it reinforced assumptions about male

and female roles within the Graves family. Ultimately, it fed Kate's identity as a

good wife and mother, and sustained a family system that favoured males.

This drapter begins with a brief discussion of the central role family

played in getting Kate Graves and her kin through the Depression. It touches on

some of the family-related strategies employed by women in particular- From

there, the chapter moves into the full story of Kate and her husband's

relationship with Edward and his wik Dorothy, ham the younger couple's

marriage in 1933 t3umugh to the older paifs death in 1941. Entwined with this

narrative is a discussion of the key ways in which both couples benefited from

their relationship, the strains that developed between Kate and Dorothy, the

emotional loss Kate felt at being separated from her son part-way through the

-on, and the gendered impIications of the Graves family's strategies

concerning Edward and his wife. What, in the end, did these strategies mean for

Kate and the other women in her family?

Like thousands of other poverty-stricken Canadian familes, Kate Graves

and her kin pulled together to help each other though the Depmssion.3 We

have already seen that people in Kate's extended family often did work for each

other, or worked together, in the house and field. Family members also gave

each other direct economic support- Georgina and her husband lent money to

some of their Saskatchewan relatives, and Kate lent train fare to a grandson who

wanted to work for Georgkds family in Alberta. Kate's granddaughter Enid

used part of k wages as a domestic to buy clothes for her younger sister and to

pay a neighbour woman to do the family's washing. Kate's relatives in Quebec

occasionally sent her used clothing and money, which she distributed among the

family. Often, Kate gave her grandchildren coins for birthdays and doing chores.

Family members also gave each other food and other items. Tom Graves made

chairs for his children and other family members, and Kate gave her daughter

Jessie McCrea her sewing machine and bought clothes for Jessie's children when

they lived with her. Kate's son-in-law Bob McCrea gave her wild berries,

Georgina sent her garden seeds, and her other daughters often brought cream,

meat and garden vegetables when they visited.

Although both male and female kin aided the Graves family economically,

the task of numving family members physidy, socially, spiritually and

emotionally fell mainly to women -- as it did in a vast number of Canadian

homes in the 1930s.4 As we know from chapter three, the Graves women

physically supported their f d e s via their homemaking and childcare skills.

Equally critical were their efforts to guard family members' health. Women oftm

exchanged remedy suggestions, sought medical attention for loved ones, and

nursed ill family members. When Kate's daughter Jessie gave birth in late 1932,

and Kate's daughter Mary became ill with tuberculosis the following spring, it

was Kate who nursed them at her home. When Tom's health began to fail, it was

Kate who called the doctor and who reminded Thomas to take his medicine. And

when Kate and Tom were bedridden with influenza, it was Kate's daughters

who came to care for them. The women in Kate's family also nurtured family

members' spiritual lives by encouraging them to take an interest in church and

the Bible. Kate regularly attended church with several of her offspring and their

familiesI urged Georgina to join a church women's group, taught her

granddaughter Kate her bedtime prayers, and promised a new Bible to

grandchildren who memorized the Ten Commandments. socially, the women

sustained their families by organizing family picnics, reunions and dinners. No

individual's birthday or couple's wedding anniv- appears to have gone

uncelebrated. These occasions, along with the many letters, gifts and

photographs the women exchanged, senred to keep family members

c o ~ e c t e d . ~

Women in the Graves family seemed to take special pleasure in each

other's company.6 They often visited female friends, worked at community

suppers and attended women's meetings together. And they liked to visit each

other for days or weeks at a time. These visits were regarded as holidays; Kate

believed that they helped to keep her cheerful and healthy. And, W y H women

played a vital emotional role in the Graves family. They were its "tension

managers," offering sympathy, affection and advice to stressed k i n 7 They

listened to and identified with men who klt "blue and discouraged about failed

amps, consoled each other when Kate's daughter Mary died, and axpressed

pride, fondness and con- for various family membexs.8 Kate often told

Ceotgina how much she loved her, empathized with her workload, and advised

her on how to mother her children. Again, much of the Graves women's

emotional energy was directed at other female relatives.

This is not to say that aIl women in the Graves family enjoyed an equal

measure of affective support, or that they garnered more emotional

consideration than men. Kate and some of her daughters privately judged

Edward's wife Dorothy for not Living up to their idea of the proper wife and

mother. At the same time they were remarkably tolerant of Edward, even

though he fell short of the male ideal. The women's support for Edward was

unconditional; their support for Dorothy was anything but.

Let us retum now to the story of Kate, Tom, Edward and Dorothy.

Edward Graves married Dorothy Hamilton on January 19,1933, when he was

twentyfive and she was eighteen? From the very beghming, Kate and Tom

took a keen interest in and helped to bolster the young couple's finances. The

four of them considered moving a small house onto the farm for Edward and

Dorothy - Tom made an offer on the house by mail - but in the end they

decided to live together until they could afford to build an addition onto Kate

and Tom's house. It was not uncommon for young married couples and elderly

parents to share accommodation as a sunrival strategy during the Depressionlo

Depending on the province, four to nine per cent of households were multiple-

family in 1931, and historian Denyse Baillargeon found that most of the couples

in her sample of working class Monkalers lived with family members, usually

the husband's parents, for the first few months to two years of their rnarriage.11

It is interesting to note the patrilocal nature of these arrangements. The Graves

and many other Canadian f-es assumed the bride would throw her lot in

with the male side of the family. The fact that Dorothy and Edward did not move

in with her parents, who owned a larger farm a short distance away, suggests

that their choice of residence was based more on custom than pragmatism.

At first, Kate was pleased with her daughter-in-law and enjoyed her

company. She reported that they shared an interest in house plants and planned

to work in the garden together. Dorothy showed considerable promise as a

homemaker and wik. "She has mopped kitchen and now is hitting a pair of

socks for Edward," Kate wrote in 1933. "Very industrious always. A good knitter

and in time will be good at sewing."l2 Soon after, Kate noted that "Dorothy

makes good bread and pies, and some cakes are fine like chocolate cake. She is

great at darning, and mends nicely. I tell you Edward's clothes are kept in

order."lJ Kate thought Dorothy washed the fancy bedspreads and white sheets

she had received as wedding presents rather often, and five months after the

marriage, Kate had yet to see the grey flannelette sheets and used quilts she had

given Edward on the dothes line. Still, Dorothy was "kind and a great worker,"

and Kate was delighted when she gave her a cake with "Mother of Mine"

written on it for Motheis Day.14

Two years later, Kate's opinion of Dorothy had deteriorated considerably.

Edward continued to be "a comfort," but Dorothy was not always pleasant to

live with:

She has sulky spells and don't speak to me for hours. Always has them wash days. Then she feels better towards end of day and gets talkative. The Irish in her. Seems so childish, when we have not had a word of trouble. Just gets into a mood. I have been advised to take no notice of it, and I try to be pleasant. I never refuse to speak.15

Not surprisingly, the women's working relationship was sometimes strained.

Kate resented the fact that Dorothy disappeared upstairs on butter churning day.

"It is a lot of work for me and she won't turn her hand over if I churned all

hours."l6

By this time, Dorothy and Edward's son Gordon had joined the household

and Dorothy was pregnant with their second child. Kate and Tom were very

fond of their son's first born, and liked to hold him while Dorothy accomplished

her chores. "Gordon is so strong and full of via We are proud of him. He is a

dear boy, and his Grandpa has made him a fine wagod"'7 Kate and Tom's avid

interest in their grandchild was a major source of tension in the household,

however. Kate was stung when Dorothy accused them of spoiling Gordon. "She

plainly said she wished we would let her bring him up and so I a m more than

willing. I brought up quite a few. She has lots to learn. One thing she was never

taught respect for her elders. I never meddle with him."l8

Kate denied any msponsibility for the friction between herself and

Dorothy: "Never think for a moment I am hard with D. I have been so lenient

that she got thinking everything was hers here and was very independent and

openly wishing we would get ouif"'9 It appears that Dorothy expressed her

feelings openly, while Kate tried to maintain an equanimous exterior but fumed

inwardly. "I never start a quarrel, but it is born in me to not forget mean things

said by anyone unprovoked," Kate wrote five weeks after one heated

encounter.20 Kate believed Dorothy to be immature, grasping, aggressive and

prone to 'loud, uncontrolled" rants. She saw herself, on the other hand, as

controlled,~civilized and superior. 'q always think a sulky person must have an

inferiority complex and are to be pitied," she said.21

Kate was relieved when she and Tom finally moved into the newly

completed addition to their house in June 1935, two and a W years after

Dorothy and Edward's wedding. Although the two families continued to have

considerable contact -- they were separated by a single door, and Kate and Tom

continued to use the downstairs bedroom in Dorothy and Edward's section - relations between the women apparently improved.22 "They all seem to be

getting on fine together now that they have their own part of the house," wrote

Kate's daughter Katey in March 1936.23 Gordon and his younger brother Billy

visited Kate and Tom several times a day, -thy surprised Kate with a "very

pretty" cake for her seventieth birthday, and realizing once that Dorothy was

pressed to get her children ready for a visit to her parents, Kate invited the

young family in for dinner.

Kate did not refrain completely from criticizing Dorothy, however. She

mentally reproached her for not helping local women cook for a community

meal, and she subtly derided her mothering skills when she noted that Gordon

had a cold. 'No wonder. Barefoot one day and the next with heavy woolen

stockings and slippers on"24 On a windy spring day in 1937, Kate wrote that

"Dorothy picked this horrid day to wash all her quilts great and small," and that

the line broke and three of the quilts "wallowed in the dust"25 She apparently

shared her opinions on Dorothy's homemaking abilities with Katey, who said:

'morothy ... is a poor manager, but mother helps her by tending the babies

whenever asked."26

We must remember that we are only hearing Kate's side of the story. It

cannot have been easy for Dorothy to live under the eye of her mother-in-law

for years in a row. The two women had vastly different personalities and

interests. Dorothy was a jovial young woman with a hearty laugh and a

penchant for romance novels.z7 Kate was an elderly, sharp-minded woman who

liked to read newspapers and discus politics and world events. One senses that

Kate felt she had considerable experience to share with Dorothy in the way of

homemaking and life skills, but believed that Dorothy neither respected nor was

open to her wisdom.

Kate's granddaughter Enid, who h e w both women well, says they

should never have been thrust together - that it was inevitable that problems

would develop. The two familes were likely aware that their living situation was

far from ideal. Historian Veronica Strong-Boag says many Canadians in this

period 'Twlieved that living together in a two or three generation group was

fraught with danger ... Certainly there were enough concrete reasons in terms of

limited acammodation and finances, not to mention incompatible

temperaments, to make living together espedally di€ficult."28 As we shall see

later, however, there was more to the codlict between Kate and Dorothy than

aamped quarters and a dash of temperaments.

Problems aside, the elder and younger Graves both benefited from their

living arrangement. It saved Edward and Dorothy the cost of purchasing or

renting a separate househoId, and allowed both parties to share livestock,

household and farm equipment, and relief allotments for fuel and food. The

arrangement also had emotional advantages. It fed Kate and Tom's bond with

their son and his children, and it made the older pair feel good to know they

were aiding Edward financially. Historian James Snell says that many elderly

Canadians in the first half of the twentieth century "enjoyed the status and

power that came from their interaction with their sons and daughters or other

relatives - aiding them in 'getting a start,' sharing a home or farm ... or providing

less tangible assista..ce."29

Just how £inancially and emotionally intertwined the two f d e s were

became clear in 1937. M e t y in the Graves' home built throughout the spring as

the family realized that they were facing their worst year yet. On May 11, for the

first time, Kate provided a sustained description of the environmental

devastation the family was experiencing and their response to the loss of their

Edward is discouraged out and out. We have had a terrific dust storm all day and our crop is blowing out same as other people's and he says all the hard work and early rising going for naught, He would Iike to move right off. He wishes he was back in Franklin Centre or Peace River or some place with bees...We sure will find it hard to carry on if our wheat is al l gone.30

Kate expressed her own distress through that of Edward and Dorothy. "I do not

think people should stay on here. This is about enou gh...Dorothy says she is

going to walk out if she has no other way."31

A month later, the family's mood had switched to excited anticipation.

'Well, I can hardly tell you the latest news at our place," Kate wrote. "Edward

had me write to Colin B. Edwards and ask how chances were back there. We al l

felt we would like to go back if we could get a house to Live in, and Edward

wanted work"32 The years Kate had spent writing to and sustaining connections

with Quebec kin paid off. Word came that local farmers expected to reap

abundant hay and apple cropsI and that there were several farms available for

rent or purchase. "And Edward decided to go east," said Kate. "Go in our car-"33

At the end of June, tlurty-nine neighborn and friends gathered at Kate

and Tom's house for a farewell party for Edward and Dorothy. The young

couple stood in the doorway between the two parts of the house as their friends

presented them with an envelope containing $4.95. "Edward spoke so well,

thanking them and in a good dear voice," said Kate. 'We said just the right

words .. .He should have been an orator."3*

Kate derived comfort from the knowledge that their friends and relatives

supported Edward's decision to leave. '%verybody seems to think he has done

right to go when there seems no hope of getting any crop."35 Kate and her cirde

thought it made sense for Edward to leave drought-stricken southern

Saskatchewan, espedally since he would be back in "our native land" and dose

to helpful relatives.36 By leaving, he was proving his worth as a man. "He has

been a good, hard working man and he is tired of not being able to earn his

living and sick of breathing dust..and he did not like living on relief; said

Kate37 Said Katey: We is young and a very wiling worker."38 Far from seeing

Edward's leave-taking as an admission of defeat, Kate and her family saw it as

evidence of a desire to be a good breadwinner and Mprove his family's

fortunes. Interestingly Dorothy, who was pregnant with the couple's third child,

was cast as the suffering but supportive mate. Kate described her as "brave" and

"wibg," and Katey wrote:

Poor Dorothy. I felt sorry for her the day they were in town. She looks so pale and drawn. Her condition, I s u p , although she is not expecting till December. Her mother, Mrs. Hamilton (George) has two cancers on her breasts ...so Dorothy will hate to leave her like that. But they are both bound to g0.39

The departure of Edward, Dorothy and their two young sons in Kate and

Tom's 1926 Chevrolet left an aching void in the elderly couple's life. "Father has

come in several times but can't seem to settle down to anything and has gone

out again," Kate wrote the day after they left. "We miss the folks so much." Kate

mourned the loss of Edward and the "little boys" in particular.

We.were fond of them and they were so deeply attached to us. Gordon could not rest unless he knew where Grandpa was...At times when the wind was bad, he sat in here and sucked his thumb a lot or played about, and he and Billy scraped all my dishes when I made a cake or pudding.40

Over the next two months, Kate and Tom weighed whether or not they

should follow Edward to Franklin Centre. They were tom between remaining

on the farm in which they had invested so much energy and capital, and giving

their son the amount of financial and emotional support he seemed to need and

expect. A small part of Kate and Tom realized that their son was overly

dependent on them. "'Father says we can live much better without Edward than

he can live without us," Kate wrote on July 26,1937. But they found it very

difficult to deny him: "Edward now wants the horses to plow and work his

rented fann and the cows also. We have decided if w e stay here to keep the cows

and horses, and of course it bothers me to know that Edward needs them to

start fanning.""

Kate's letters from the summer of 1937 are among the most emotionally

intense of the collection. Clearly this was one of the lowest points of the

Depmssion for her, not because she experienced unparalleled environmental and

economic disaster, but because she was separated from her precious son She

was uncharacteristically rattled and indecisive. Y cannot be sure of anything

now," she said, and admitted to being "somewhat more disturbed in mind."Q

Kate's daughters were well aware of the loss and uncertainty she and Tom were

feeling, and did their best to advise and comfort them- After Edward and

Dorothy drove out of the yard, Ethel made a point of coming over for the

afternoon, and Katey visited several times in the following weeks. The daughters

seemed to believe that their parents were more emotionally reliant on Edward

than the reverse. Mother and Dad are so bound up in them," said Katey.43

Finally, Kate and Tom decided they would make the move. Thomas

would take a railway car loaded with the family's pssessions to Frankkt Centre,

Quebec, and Kate would follow later in the fall. But just before Tom departed,

Kate received a ''horrid" letter from Ella Stevenson, a relative with whom

Edward and Dorothy were staying, advising her "that Dorothy could not look

after me if I were sick - she had her hands full - and I had better think long and

deeply before I left my daughters and granddaughters and went eastemu The

incident fanned the old feelings of bitterness Kate felt towards Dorothy. She

believed that "Dorothy has been making a confidant of Ella," who had been

"mean" to and unappreciative of her own mother-in-law. "Ella...forgets it was

Mr and Mrs Stevenson who gave her and Fred the big start towards

prosperity."45

The popular p e s in the 19309 regularly raided the spectre of the "mother-

in-law bogey": the difficult female elder who interfered in younger family

member's lives.& But Kate tended to see herself and other elderly women in her

family as victims of heartless daughters-in-law. She felt betrayed by Dorothy.

She had done all she could for her son and his wife, and this was the thanks she

got. Much as they loved Edward, Kate and Tom decided they would not move

east aft= all. This incident shows that Tom backed up Kate emotionally and that

Kate was not a doormat who would knowingly put herself in a hostile situation;

not only did Kate refuse to go east, but she wrote Ella a retaliatory letter. Above

all. the inadent demonstrates the powerful role family dynamics played in the

course of this family's history.

Edward found himself in a sticky situation. Although he wished to mollify

Kate, he was no doubt conscious of his wife's and his host's feelings. He did not

succeed in changing his mothefs mind about staying in Saskatchewan, but he

easily amvinced her that he was on her side. Said Kate:

I am sorry for Edward. He wants us to go so much and says he will guarantee I get care if sick And he wrote in last letter that he never for one minute would have left here if he had thought I was not to go too. Dorothy is the mean one and underhanded.47

Kate placed the blame squarely on Dorothy. Edward, perhaps wishing to show

his mother that he was the head of his household, insisted that Dorothy had

agreed to "do whatever he said" on the matter. But Kate would have none of it.

'We know her. A very selfish woman she is."48

Kate discussed the issue with her daughta at length and was bolstered

by their allegiance. Two of her daughters even wrote letters to Ella supporting

her. "Girls are all of one opinion that I must not go East and 1 am persuaded I

never care to go and live with Dorothy or near Ella," Kate wrote on October 8,

1937.0~1 a self-pitying note, she added: "I think so much of Edward and know he

would like to have us there, but he may have his hands full and no time for his

old parents."49 Kate felt it was better to stay with her "good loving daughters

and granddaughters who would not want me to go and be under that Dorothy

agai~t."So It is interesting that she mentioned her daught-' wishes only after she

had made up her own mind to stay. Kate had been quite prepared to leave her

four daughters and numerous granddaughters in Saskatchewan, and to travel

farther than ever from her daughters in Alberta and British Columbia, in order

to be with her son Her letters expressed little regret at the thought of leaving

them. When faced with a choice between her son and "the girls,'' she chose the

former. When that option became unfeasible, she elected to see herself as the

fortunate mother surrounded by "good loving daughters and granddaughters."

Although they did not go to live with Edward, Kate and Tom followed

through on their plan to give him most of their possessions. In mid-September,

Tom left for Quebec in a railway car containing Kate's good cook stove, the

kitchen table and all of their farm livestock - including "p~x. two W W S . " ~ ~

Edward's side of the house was stripped bare. 1 miss everything," Kate wrote

the day after Tom left. UEven Lady, our dear old faithful dog went to Edward,

and some three dozen fowls."s2 Shipping the goods took most of Kate and

Tom's meagre resources, including her first old age pension chques. The

dominion government paid part of the cost, and Kate and DorothJ's father,

George Hamilton, split the mhder.53 Left with little money, no livestock and

few furnishings, Kate and Tom were willing to jeopardize their own ability to

fann in order to give their son every opportunity to succeed.

Not only that, but Tom was willing to risk his health to go to his son Kate

and her daughters worried at the thought of their frail paterfamilias, who was

seventy-four and had a weak heart, trav- for days in an unheated railway

car and being solely responsible for feediq, watering and guarding the

animals.s4 As it happens, Tom fended off ill-intentimed "rod riders" on at least

one occasion, and arrived in Fradch Centre desperately ilL55 "I have been very

anxious about him, as Edward wrote me father was not so welI," Kate told

G e o r g i ~ on November IS, 1937. "Edward wrote he found he had aged greatly

in last two years. I answered that I tried to make him understand last spring how

poorly father was, and he could not see itof'56 One wonders why Edward and

other family members allowed Tom to make the hip. But it appears that Tom

was detemxined to go. "Dad is so anxious to be with Edward and the little boys

again," wrote Katey. "He just seems to live for t h e n " 5 7

Kate and Tom had mixed feelings about supporting Edward's venture in

Quebec A letter Kate wrote on September 3,1937, shows that on the one hand

they were proud of the generosity they demonstrated towards their son and his

wife. 'We know they will find it hard sledding, and few would have given them

as much" On the other handf they begrudged the help they gave Dorothy. "It

seems a shame to give all we have to Edward, as Dorothy profits by it," said

Kate. Her bitterness towards her daughter-in-law knew no bounds: "She never

appreciates a thing we did. Like the leech's daughterf cried more, moreOf'58 Not

only that, but Kate judged Dorothy to be a poor wife for Edward - a "spender"

who squandered her husband's (and his parents') resmxes. 59

Part of Kate's animosity towards Dorothy sprang from deep-seated doubt

about Edward's business sense.40 Edward had rented an expensive farm for two

years, with hopes of buying it. Said Kate:

A nine thousand dollar farm and he has no capital at his back. Just brawn and muscle and a good man. He is a good worker and does want to get ahead. My best wishes are with them, but I cannot believe he will ever own the place.61

Kate pointed out that Edward would have to pay $325 a year in rent, plus at least

$200 in living expense, because "his wife knows nothing of being economical."62

Somehow, it was Domthfs fault that Edward was getting in over his head

financially. Somehow, Dorothy was to blame for the fact that Kate and Tom

chose to sacrifice themselves for their son. Rather than admit that Edward was

financially dependent on them, and that his ability to make business decisions

and support his family was £lawed, Kate scapegoated Dorothy. Kate could not

allow herself to see Edward as anything but "a good man."

Tom spent several months in Quebec recovering his health and "fixing

lots of things for Edward. Making a big trough and axe handles, pick handles,

etc"63 After Tom returned to Saskatchewan in late 1937, he and Kate went to

stay with their daughter Katey and her family for several months. "Katey is a

fine daughter," Kate wrote on January 24,1938. "Always in good humour and so

thoughtful of our comfort. It has been fine every way to have had this nice

winter together."64 Kate often referred to Katey and her other daughters as

"kind" and "good company." She knew that she could count on them to take

care of her and Tom emotionally and physically. Moreover, she expeded them

to do so. Evidently she and most women in her family conformed to the

widespread contemporary belief that it was up to daughters -- and daughters-in-

law - to care for elderly family membersP5

Kate forgave her son for not noticing how frail his father was, but one

wonders how easily she would have forgiven her daughters for not being

sensitive to their parents. The fact that she snapped at Georgina in the fall of

1937, when Tom was in Quebec and she was feeling lonely, indicates that she

expected her daughter to meet her emotional needs. "Your last letter was so

short, hardly deserves an answer. I would write a longer letter to anyone. I am

so alone now. Don't forget to tell me about the children and how you are.""

Dorothy certainly drew flak for not being as caring as Kate and her daughters

thought she should be. "Dorothy is not kind to Mother," observed Katey.67

Not only did Kate expect her daughters to be solicitous of her, but she

expected them to understand when she and Tom favoured Edward with their

affections, mcmey and physical presence. Georg i~ was informed that Kate was

writing her less often than usual because she was penning two letters a week to

Edward: "He seems anxious to get them, poor boy."68 Georgina was told her

letters were too short: "Edward writes me a much longer letter, usually two full

sheets of a tablet like this."69 And, she heard how delighted Kate was to receive a

birthday phone call from "our son" urging both her and Tom to come to Quebec

for sugaring. It seems the elderly couple had written Edward to say that Tom

might visit a second time70 In the meantime Georgina, who had not seen her

mother for thirteen years, was told repeatedly that Kate could not afford to

make the 640-kilometre train trip to see her because she had spent all her money

to ship Edward's things to Quebec71 And Tom refused to go. On May 23,1938,

Kate wrote: '

Father says he can't go anywhere. Wants to stay right here. He is missing Edward, you see. After 30 years together and looking to help and care, father and son were so attached and he misses his companionship. Edward could talk on so many subjects. He read and he was a cheerful companion, often putting the best look on a thing when something went vvrong.72

One wonders if Kate was actually speaking more of her own bond with Edward

than of Tom's relationship with him. It is clear that she both adored and

identified with her son. "Everybody around here knows Edward and I were

very much attached in every way," said Kate. "So many things we thought the

same about."73

In the years before Edward left, Kate often wrote that she could not visit

Georgina because she could not afford it or because she had to stay and take care

of Tom, Edward and his family. When Tom and Edward were in Quebec, she

said she could not visit because she did not have the money. When Tom

returned, she said they had neither the money nor the will to visit. But the fact is,

Kate found the resowas to finaxtce Edward and Tom's trips to Quebec, and

Seriotxsly considered sending Tom for a second visit. Whatever the excuse, the

message was that "our sonf' was more important than Gee*.

To explain such favouritism, we must look to the patrhmhal society in

which Kate Graves and her family lived. Many Canadians in this period believed

that men were superia to women, and sons were superior to daughters.74

Although Kate said she loved her daughters and would have liked a dozen, she

and the rest of the family regarded Edward as more equal than "the girIs."'S

They doted on him from the moment he was born in l9O7.76 Perhaps Kate and

Tom felt that, after seven daughters, their family was complete. This is precisely

how prominent Saskatchewan CCF supporter Gertrude S. Telford and her

husband felt when their son arrived in 1927, after the birth of two daughters.77

Many families made no secret of the fact that they f a v d boy children.

Edward and Dorothy hoped their own first child would be a boy, and Georgina's

private papers are full of poems and artides extolling "Mother's Boys."78 The

Graves men and women, like the vast majority of Canadians, unconsciously

accepted and perpetuated the notion that girls were second-best79

Although they missed Edward, Kate and Tom managed very well in his

absence. With the help of their pension and their daughters and their families,

they continued to farm. Kate's daughter Ethel gave them a dozen hens, and

Ethel and Kate's other relatives often gave them milk, butter and cream. They

bought a new mattress, a new McClary cook stove for "$44.75 in cash," and a

used S i e r sewing machine. Their son-in-law Ed McCrea did most of the

fieldwork and often drove them places, as they had no horses. Two of their

grandsons helped hoe potatoes, and their granddaughter Kate helped care for

the chickens and their two pigs.

Meanwhile, Edward wrote often to say that he was working hard and that

he missed his parents. Soon he hinted that he would like to come "home."

Perhaps he missed not only his parents' emotional and economic support, but

the network of dose male relatives and neighbows who once shared his

131

workload. Ultimately, Kate and Tom's doubts about Edward's ability to make a

go of it proved correct. In late 1939, Edward relinquished his farm, sold his

parents' stove and livestock to pay down his debts, traded the car and three

hundred dollars for a "V-8 Ford coach," and announced that he and his family

were heading back to Saskatchewan. A s soon as Tom heard the news, he began

building a new bedroom for Kate and himself in the "west part" of the house.

He and Kate hoped to prevent friction between the two families by giving

Edward's family the entire east section. "I want to have peace for Edward's

sake," Kate said. "He is dear to me."80 She dreaded Dorothy's return, however.

"She is large and aggressive as it were. ~ . " 8 *

When Edward and Dorothy arrived in early December 1939, Kate was so

excited that she was almost rude when she told Georgina for the umpteenth time

that she could not travel to see her. "Not possible to go out for a visit now.

Sorry, but I a m so busy. I w'd like to see you. Mother."B2 Neither Kate nor Tom

seemed to judge Edward harshly for his ill-fated *own in Quebec. The worst

Kate said was, 'We feel so sorry he did not bring cows. H e had to straighten up

with Floyd (Ella's son) and has little left"83 A few months later, she noted briefly

that she and Tom could have bought a radio if they hadn't had to pay so many

debts "for others" the previous falLu

Besides the fact that Edward had depleted his resources and missed his

parents, it made good sense for him to return to Saskatchewan when he did. The

drought had broken, Kate and Tom's farm was again producing grain and,

thanks to their old age pensions, the elderly couple were in a better position to

help their son than they were two years earlier.85 In addition, the family may

have thought it wise to locate Edward on the farm he was expected to inherit.

'This farm is to be his, of course," said Kate.86 Georgina and her s i s t e~ were

given to understand that, not only did Edward take first place in his mothefs

heart, but that he had first claim on his parents' land- KAte and Tom adhered to

the belief - common among Canadian farm families to the present day - that

land (and the economic power associated with it) should be passed down to sons

rather than daughters.87 It was assumed that Edward would get the fannf and

his sistem would get their mothefs dishes.88

No doubt the family reasoned that Edward deserved the farm because he

helped his parents work i t They discounted the fact that the daughters laboured

in the house and yard when their parents were establishing the farm, and that

they continued to support their parents physically and emotionally as they aged.

Just before she mentioned that Edward would get the farm, Kate described in

detail the excellent rare four of her daughters had given her when she was

seriously ill with influenza. Kate valued her daughters' work as the familjfs

nurtums, but did not consider rewarding them with a share of the family

Kate and Tom's lik with Dorothy and Edward soon m e d its former

pattern The elderly couple often cared for the younger pair's children, and

subsidized them economically. They gave them a stove and bought them a

barrel of coal oil. "We help them all we cart," said Kate.89 Family tensions also

began to build. In the fall of 1940, when Tom's health was parficdar1y poor,

Edward spent considerable time away from the farm working for neighbouring

farmers. Kate said Edward needed the money to buy a licence for the car. "But

he was needed at home," she fretted. "Your father had the worry of the whole

harvest on his shoulders."90 Another timef Kate noted:

Dorothy and Edward are not generous with helping us. She seems to demand all his time in a way. If he comes and sits down, generally calls or sends for him... It is nice to have Edward, but we feel he is bossed too much. It is her folks she thinks of. At times she is fine, and again won't t& Sort of sulks.~l

133

Things came to a head on April 21,1941. Kate reported that Dorothy attacked

her and Tom verbally and that, for once, she fought back

The chip was off @oroth.s) shoulder and she gave your parents an Irish tirade which did not sit wd. No one could talk or tell her anything, as she has the loud, uncontrolled Irish delivery. And since (then) we have no talk between us whatsoever. She has always tried to run the whole place and I am tired of i t We Scots are not what one may call quarrelsome, but boy we donf t get over it easy, or are we scared at all. You can't sit on a thistle. I guess we will be at outs for awhile. Edward and the children are in and out as uSual.92

Once again, we must remember that Kate's letters only give us her

version of events. They do not say what Dorothy was upset about on this, and

other, occasions. Nor do they tell us how Dorothy and Edward perceived their

life with Kate and Tom. What the letters do indicate is that Kate's relationship

with her son and his wife was imbued with considerable emotion, and that Kate

coped with her feelings in a variety of ways. The fact that she referred

disparagingly to Dorothy's ethnicity when descr i i their conaicts is suggestive

of more than simple prejudice. Perhaps Kate blamed Dorothy's behavim on

her Irishness because that was more palatable than admitting to herself that she

disliked Dorothy and was not the good Christian woman she purported to be.

Kate could not admit to herself that she was intensely jealous of Dorothy and

found it hard to share her beloved son with her. The letters also suggest that

Kate could not allow he& to see Edward as less than perfect. Incapable of

bemg angry with her son, she directed her frustrations at Dorothy. And her

weapons of choice were the pahiarchal notions that she had been steeped in

since birth and that surrounded her m 1930s rural Saskatchewan.

Kate's troubled relationship with Dorothy throws into relief her ideas

about women's familial roles. Kate believed that Dorothy was not a good female

family member because she did not fit the separate spheres template. She was

not a submissive wife, mother and daughter-in-law who provided her family

with a calm, nurturing environment. She bossed her husband, wasted his hard-

eamed money, was an inefficient and unhelpful worker, engaged in emotional

pyrotechnics, and was insensitive to her elders' needs. In fact, she was Kate's

perfect f a i l Everything that Kate could not tolerate in herself was proj'ected onto

her daughter-in-law. Focussing on Dorothy's supposed flaws allowed Kate to

believe that she, herself, was an ideal woman. She knew how women should

behave.

Meanwhile, Edward was excused for diverging from the model of the

dominant breadwinner male and for not being attentive to his parents. Although

Edward's family relied economically on Kate and Tom, the older couple

continued to see him as the hardworking well-intentioned, independent head of

his family. Kate would have liked Edward to help more around the farm, but she

did not judge him harshly for his slips. Rather, she and her daugh- blamed

Dorothy for pulling him away from his fitial duties. "Edward. ..seems to think a

lot of Mother and Dad," said Katey, "but his wife is so jealous if he shows it."93

Kate criticized Edward for taking off-farm work at harvest time (one of the few

occasions she expressed negative thoughts about him), but she also realized that

he had his priorities. A woman might be expected to put the well-being of her

elderly parents and the overall family first, but not a man. It was undestood that

a man needed to gamer a wage, and that he needed to look out for himself and

his immediate family.

Ultimately, the story of Kate, Tom, Edward and Dorothy shows the extent

to which gendered ideas c o l d Graves family relationships in the 1930s. Kate

and her husband felt compelled to devote an inordinate amount of emotion,

energy and money to Edward because he was a man. The strategies they used to

get him through the Depression -- from sharing their home with him, to

financing his migration east, to promising him the farm - were rooted in

patriarchal ideas about the relative value of men and women. Kate loved her

daughters and appreciated their emotional and physical support. She enjoyed

spending time with them and giving them small gifts. She praised them for

fdfUing their roles as good wives, mothers and daughters. But she did not value

them as much as she valued her son. 'The girls" were only doing what was

expected of women. Nor did she support the other principal woman in her son's

life: his wife Dorothy. Kate Graves was willing to devalue her daughters and

assail her daughter-in-law in order to elevate her son - and herself- Attacking

Dorothy allowed her to bolster her image of Edward as the ideal breadwinner

malef and her image of herself as the ideal mother, wife and homemaker. She

was not alone, of course. Thousands of Canadian women instinctively aligned

themselves with the males (and undermined the females) in their fadies in the

19309. No doubt, on some level they believed that this strategy would help them

and their hmilies survive.

1. Ibid., McCord, Saskatchewan, 6 December 1932.

2. It is interesting to note that Kate spoke of Edward as the last of her eight children to marry. Counting her foster son Charles W'iam FothergiU Graves, she actually had nine children Genealogical documents, Kate Graves Family Papers.

3. Comacchio, -e B o b . . 126-30-

4. Strong-Boag, J'he New Dav, 113.

5. On women's roles as "ritualists" who celebrated family occasions and sustained family connections, see Prentice et. al., W Q P I ~ I ~ ~ 162.

7. Pat Armstmqj and Hugh Armstrong, a Do- W w d -(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 67-8,100-1.

8. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgha, 4 November 1934.

9. Genealogical documents? Kate Graves Family Papers.

10. Comacchio, -a- . . 128; James Snell, 'The Family and the Working-Class Elderly in the First Half of the Twentieth Century?" in #

ed. Loli Chambers and Edgar-Andre Montigny 499-510.

11. Strong-Boag, m e w % 122, Baillargeon, 6%5,159.

12. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 3 April 1933.

13. Ibid., 2 May 1933.

14. Ibid., 15 May 1933. Note that Kate did not say she gave the sheets and quilts to both Edward and Dorothy.

15. Ibid., 18 March 1935.

16. Ibid., 27 May 1935.

17. Ibid., 18 December 1934.

18. Bid, 27 May 1935.

19. Ibid., 1 July 1935.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 21 April 1941; 18 March 1935.

22. Murray McCrea sketch of interior of Kate and Thomas Graves8 house, 14 July 2000. Personal collection of Cristine Bye.

23. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 20 March 1936.

24. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 17 June 1935.

25. Ibid., 17 April 1937.

26. Katey (Graves) Hatielid letter to Georgina, La Fleche, Sitskatchewan, 20 March 1936.

27. Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998; Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 15 April 1940.

28. Strong-Boag, The New Dav, 186.

29. Snell, The Family and the Working-Class Elderly," 500.

30. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 11 May 1937.

31. Ibid. h a decade's worth of letters, this is one of the very few times Kate speaks with frustration about the Depression. And then, she does it through Edward and Dorothy.

32 Ibid., Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 11 June 1937.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 29 June 1937.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., 3 September 1937.

37. Ibid., 19 June 1937.

38. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgha, Lafleche, Saskatchewan, 18 June 1937.

39. Ibid.

40. Kate Graves letter to Geotgina, 29 June 1937.

41. Ibid., 26 July 1937.

42. Ibid., 20 June 1937; 12 August 1937.

43. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letters to Georgina, Lafleche, Saskatchewan.

44. Kate Graves letters to Georgina, 3 September 1937.

45, Ibid.

46. Strong-Boag, D e New day^ 184.

47. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 23 September 1937.

48. Ibid., 3 September 1937.

49. Ibid., Wood Mountain, 8 October 1937.

50. Ibid., 23 September 1937.

51. Ibid., 3 September 1937.

5 2 Ibid., 14 September 1937.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., 15 November 1937; Anna (Graves) McFee letter to Georgina, New Westminster, British Columbia, 27 September 1937, Kate Graves Family Papers.

55. Wes Hatlelid telephone interview, 14 December 2000; Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal intenrim, 13-14 August 1998.

56. Kate Graves letter to Geotgina, 15 November 1937.

57. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafieche, Saskatchewan, 27 August 1937-

58. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 3 September 1937.

59. Ibid., 23 September l937.

60. Ibid., 26 July 1937; 3 September 1937; 14 September 1937.

61. Ibid., 14 September 1937.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., 28 October 1937.

64. bid., 28 October 1937.

65. Light and Pierson, rJo- 316; Snell, The Family and the Working-Class Elderly," 502

66. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 18 October 1937.

67. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, 27 August 1937.

68. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 3 September 1937.

69. Ibid., 31 January 1939.

70. Ibid., 24 March 1939.

71. Ibid, 3 September 1937,23 September 1937.

72 %id, 23 May 1938.

73. Ibid.

74. Strong-Boa& New Dw 8.

75. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, September 1932.

76. Georgina (Graves) Griffiths diaries, 1907-1909; Enid (Wallace) Kolskog personal interview, 13-14 August 1998. Although Kate spoke positively of her foster son Charles, who lived near Kate and Thomas' fann in Saskatchewan and visited them regularly, she did not mention him nearly as often or as affectionately as she did Edward. See Kate Graves letter, 18 March 1935.

77. Ann Leger-Anderson, "Marriage, Family, and the Ceoperative Ideal in Saskatchewan: The Telfords," in in Win- 8 - 305.

78. Kate Graves letter, 8 March 1934; See "Mother's Bays," "One Way to Rear a Boy," "Boys Make Men," 'The Boy of Yesteryear," and "My Baby No Longer," in Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths Scrapbook, Kate Graves Family Papers. Georgina kept this scrapbook throughout her adult life. She had three sons and three daughters. Also see a rural Ontario woman and her doctofs response to the birth of her fourth daughter, in 1928, in Light and Pierson, N&% Raad, 178.80.

79. Strong-Boa&- New 3,8,11.

80. Kate Graves letter to Georgirta, 10 October 1939.

81. Ibid., 25 September 1939.

82. Ibid., 5 December 1939.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid., 15 Aprrl1940.

85. For a discussion on the ways in which the old age pension empowered elderly Canadians to help their families in the 1930s and 1940~~ see Snell, 'The Family and the Working-Class Elderly," 506.

86. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 29 May 1939.

87. Sally Shortall, Warnen and Pow= (London: M a a d a n Press, and

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 1-45; Boivin, "Farm Women," 67.

88. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, 5 May 1941.

89. Ibid., 28 May 1940.

90. Ibid., 6 September 1940.

91. &id, 10 June 1940.

92 hid., 21 April 1941.

93. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, 27 August 1937.

CONCLUSION

uA Ve y Remulrrble Womm"

On the afternoon of May 2.1941, Kate Graves penned her last letter to

Georgina. She talkedf as she often did, of her relatives and her work But most of

the letter concerned her fears for her husband Tom. H e was very feeble and she

believed he would not recover. "Oh, how I long to have poor father better. He

was so splendid and knew just how to do things. He does not suffer pain, but oh,

so tired." Kate admitted to feeling exhausted herselE. '7 am tired out. My feet

seemed to play out yesterday."l

The next moming, Kate moved slowly around the kitchen, washing the

breakfast dishes and tidying up.2 The feeling of indigestion that had troubled

her off and on for years was back. Suddenly, it grew worse and she telephoned

her daughter Ethel and asked her to m e over. Then she sent a granddaughter

to the garden to fetch Dorothy. Several grandchildren watched anxiously as

Dorothy and Ethel applied hot water bottles to Kate's chest and back in an effort

to ease her pain.

''I am so cold," said Kate.

'=ow can you be cold when it is so hot in here?" Dorothy asked.

'Well, this is the death sweat"

"Oh, no, it can't be that."

"Yes. I have taken care of lots of people and I know what it is."

Kate told the women she would like to lie down upstairs. One of the

grandchildren ran to the workshop to fetch Tom, who hurried in and sat beside

her while Ethel and Dorothy went upstairs to pepare her bed.

"What can I do for you?" Tom asked.

"I a m dying," she said.

When Ethel returned a moment later, Tom said: "She is gone." Ethel

called. "Mother, Mother, you can't be dead" But Kate had relaxed, as if in sleep,

and the room was stiu

Kate Graves' death from heart problems at the age of seventy-five came

as a terriile shock to her chi ldren3 They had expected their wiry, spirited

mother to go on living for many years. Conscious and capable to the very end,

Kate was so central to her family's world that they could not imagine life without

her. In the following days and weeks, they struggled to come to terms with their

loss.

''It doesn't seem possible that Mother has gone," wrote Edward. 'q expect

to see her looking out the window every time I come home from town."*

"I miss her so much all the time," said EtheL "It seems hard to think with

all the daughters and sons Mother had, no one was there to hold her hand when

she passed away."5

'I>ear, dear Mother," said Katey. "She always said, 'Death always brings

regrets' but I don't want my children to feel too badly. I have the best children in

the world?"

Katey and Ethel wished they had stayed with Kate on the long nights

when Tom was so ill. Georgina wished she had journeyed to see her mother

before it was too late. Edward certainly had regrets. '"Poor boy," said Katey. "He

didn't realize his mother was so old and frail."' She added:

Edward has shed many bitter tears. He wishes he could make it up to Mother, all his thoughtlessness. But he thought Mother would live many years yet. I told him to be good to Father now and that would be doing what Mother wished. They are good to Father, but it was Mother who longed for their love.8

Kate's daughters tried not to dwell on old grievancesB however. Rather,

they focused on the esteem that Kate's family and community felt for her, and

her many fine qualities. They were proud of her domestic and mothering skills,

and the fact that she was so hard-working, youthful and well-liked. Katey said:

I think that Mother was happy to be well and able to keep up with her work 'ti1 the last. Her cans of meat, pickles, etc, her plans and garden and her flowers, and then she had so many friends, and she led the useful life of a woman 20 years younger..l think she was a very remarkable woman9

"Where could we girls have got a better mother?" asked E W l o

Kate's funeral was also a source of consolation. The United Church

minister told the congregation that she had lived "a long and useful life," and he

praised her for being a good mother, community member and Christian:

A kindly and devoted mother who brou@t her children up in the nurture and in the Admonition of the Lord, she saw to it that in her home,culture and religion were entwined in the fives of all. A devoted member of the Church of God, she possessed a depth of spiritual lik which was the envy of us all. She was a woman of deep convictions who never adjusted her views to be on the side of the majority. She took the Word of God as a guide in her methods of appraisal, in her approvals and condemnations. One of God's living letters, she made the community the purer and more invigorating by her purposeful and useful life.11

Although Tom was '%raveff and "bore up under his sorrow," Kate's

daughters noted that most family members cried at the funeral. "I know it

would have pleased mother to see how sorrowful her grandchildren as well as

her children present at the service felt," said Emma.12

It appears that Kate Graves' family and community saw her as she wished

to be seen - as a good woman who worked hard in her proper sphere. Her

minister lauded her moral rectitude and her uplifting influence on her home and

familyf while her family valued her as an emotional and physical nwhmr. Such

commendations were all Kate could have asked for. As we saw in chapter three,

she and her peers played a heightened role in sustaining the family economy

during the Great Depmssion. But their work did not translate into economic,

legal or public recognition because Saskatchewan society was intent on

maintaining the separate spheres model of male breadwinner-bosses and

domestically oriented female subordinates. Chapter four showed that Kate and

her family adhered to prevalent ideas about men's and women's work

responsibilities and pursued a number of strategies to sustain the status quo.

Thus, Kate did not gamer public recognition or official provider status in her

household, but retained her authority in domestic matters, worked with other

women in the house instead of the fields, and had the satisfaction of knowing

that she was a model farm wife.

In chapter five, we saw that Katef s gendered assumptions also helped her

to order her priorities in terms of dispensing emotional, economic and physical

suppart to. family members thtou~out the decade. Although she supported her

kin in many ways, and valued her relationship with h a daughters, she invested

mcst of her resources in her son because she internalized patriarchal notions

about male superiority. She discounted her daughters' familial contributions and

scapegoated her daughter-in-law in mder to uphold her son as the ideal male

and heftelf as the ideal mother. In the process, she sustained and perpetuated

assumptions about male and female f d y roles.

In the final analysis, Kate Graves' experience of the Great w o n

centred around her commitment to work and f&nily. She invested her energy

and identity in these areas, and they in turn sustained her. Amidst

environmental, economic and social upheaval, she focussed on the family and

upholding patriardzal notions about gender roles. Thus, it is no surprise that she

did not reap public recognition for her contributions. She did not seek such

recognition. The good farm woman's reward was the tears of affection and

145

remorse her family shed at her funeral, and the belief that she had raised

children who met society's definition of good women and men. "I think that

Mother was pleased that we all had our homes and children and husbands,"

wrote Katey soon after Kate's death Kate's legacy reflected the values that she

upheld and exemplified in iife. Said Katey:

God has been good to spare her to us all these years, and now we must be good and show that we deserved it, that is deserved such a mother. And we must remember that our families are our first consideration, and that if we do our best to bring our children up right we will be doing her wishes.13

In a sense, this thesis has been an attempt to give Kate Graves her due.

Most historians of the Great Depression, and of the prairies in general, have

peqxtuated the notion that it was men's activities in the public realm that really

counted. A great deal of the literature focuses on the plight of single transient

men and the actions of a handful of politicians- Ordinary Nal women's

contriitiom have been largely ignored- By drawing on Kate's own words, this

thesis reminds us of the presence and importance of women in the largely

private arena of domestic work and family life. Not only were women like Kate

Graves present, but they made a huge difference in the lives of their families,

farms, and rural prairie society. The thesis joins a small coterie of scholarly works

which make visible ordinary prairie women of the 19308. It differs from these

few works in certain regards, however- Wendy Wallace depicts Saskatchewan

women in general as victims who retreated from feminism, while scholars like

Veronica Strong-Boag and Qvista Scowby depict many prairie farm women as

matemal feminists who recognized and actively sought recognition for their

work via the pages of the rural press. This thesis suggests that the vast majority

of Saskatchewan farm women maintained a public silence on their contributions

during the 19309 and were not outspoken feminists, but were active agents in

their homes and society nonetheless. By examining Kate's lik, we h g m to see

how individual women and families coped with the -on, and organized

their lives along gendered lines, on the ground. The thesis shows that this

woman - and many like her - were not only visible and important individuals,

but they were highly complex. Kate cannot be stereotyped as a victim or a hero.

The reality of her life lay somewhere in between, and in the end, cannot be fully

grasped. All the historian can do is read her letters, try to puzzle out how she

saw her lik and the world around her, and attempt to recreate and explain her

experiences of the Great -on. This thesis ultimately contributes to our

overall understanding of the Depression by bringing private memory into the

realm of public history. It reminds us that the decade were as much about

individuals' lived experiences and coping strategxes as it was about public protest

Kate encourages us to see small daily deeds like preserving fruit, stretching egg

money and nurturing family members for what they were: vital acts of

resistance in catastrophic times.

The story of Kate Graves and her family does not end with her death in

May 1941. Two months after Kate died, Georgina finally travelled to McCord to

visit the father and siblings she had not seen for nineteen years. Tom died soon

after, on July 13,1941, at the age of seventy-seven. The newspaper obituary

mentioned his marriage of fifty-five years to Kate, his decision to homestead in

Saskatchewan, his blacksmith and carpentry work, and his "kindly, genial

disposition."l4 Edward assumed ownership of the farm. Five years later, on

September 25,1946, he suffered a fatal heart attack The suddenness of his death

at the age of thirty-nine stunned his family and community. "A very sad thmg

happened this am.," Ethel wrote in her diary. "Edward passed on to his

heavenly home. He was so young to die. Dorothy is brave but feels her loss very

hard to bear."== Obituaries in the Frankljn Centre and McCord-area n e w s p a F

both mentioned Edward and Dorothy's two-year stay in Quebec. The latter

newspaper observed that "the esteem in which Edward was held in the

community was made manifest by the large congregation that attended the last

rites."l6 Dorothy and her five young children stayed on the farm for another

five years, with Ethel's husband Ed McCrea and other male relatives tendLng to

field work. Dorothy re-married in 1953 and the family settled in Manitoba. She

sold the farm to Ed in 1958, and he sold it to his youngest son Murray in 1965.

The next year, Murray tore dawn Kate and Tom's house; part of the wooden

floor (including the trap door that once led to the cellar where Kate stored her

butter, eggs and preserves) was left intact and became a barnyard fence. This

weathered fence, the original barn and Tom's long-vacant arpentry shop still

stand. So do a number of carragana bushes and maple trees that revived after

the Depression. The farm was home to Murray's four children into the

and it supports Murray (who turned sixty-four in September 2001) and his wife

Norma to'this day." As for Georgina, she preserved her mother's letters from

the Depression until her death at Coronation, A h r b 8 in 1973. Her three

daughters -Jean (Griffiths) Checkel, Anne (Griffiths) Rodvang and Muriel

(GrZfiths) Bye - kept the collection and passed it along to this author with the

understanding that it could contn'bute to historians' knowledge of their

grandmothefs, and other prairie women's, experience of the Great Depression.

Ultimately, the story of Kate Graves and her family is one of suffering and

survival. It is the tale of the Great Depression, writ small. Most members of

Kate's extended family lived to see the end of the Depression and to lead

productive lives that nurtured further generations. Some family members

endured great losses d- this period and in succedng years. Edward's heart

attack suggests the enormous toll the Depression took on him. The fact that

Dorothy, who had spent most of her marriage coping with economic hardship

and stressful relations with her mother-in-law, went on to raise five children by

haself speaks to her resiliency and resourcefulness. Some family members, like

Kate, did not quite make it to the end of the Depression Nevertheless, Kate

ensured that her family survived. Not only that, but she inadvertently saw to it

that her own story would endure. The letters she sent her daughter in Alberta

helped to sustain Georgina in the 1930s, and made possible the survival of

G e o r g i d s children and her children's children They held out the possibility that,

one day, a great-granddaughter would produce from them a memory of an

ordinary-yet-remarkable Saskatchewan fann woman.

1. Kate Graves letter to Georgina, 2 May 1941.

2. This description of the evenl of May 3,1941, is taken from: Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, 5 May 1941; Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to GeoT&iM, 12 May 1941.

3. Kate Graves' death certificate said she died of "coronary thrombosis," and that she suffered from "previous mild attacks of angina." Doctors told Kate's family that a heart condition had caused Kate's recurring attacks of "indigestionwand pain in her arm and side. Province of Saskatchewan Record of Registration of Death, 3 May 1941, Rural Municipality of Mankota, No. 4s.

4. Edward Graves letter to Georgina, 27 May 1941, Kate Graves Family Papers.

5. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, 12 May 1941.

6. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, Lafleche, 18 May 1941.

7. bid., 5 May 1941.

8. Ibid, Lafleche, 18 May 1941.

9. Ibid.

10. Ethel (Graves) McCrea letter to Georgina, 10 June 1941.

11. P.G. McCready, "Funeral Oration for Kate Graves," 5 May 1941, Kate Graves Family Papers.

12. Emma (Graves) Hatlelid letter to Georgina, 6 May 1941, Kate Graves Family Papers.

13. Katey (Graves) Hatlelid, Lafleche, 18 May 1941.

14. The Late Thomas E. Graves," Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths scrapbook.

15. Ethel (Graves) McCrea diary, 1946-1949, Kate Graves Family Papers.

16. "Obituary: The Late Thomas E. Graves," 1946; "Franklin Centre," Gleaner. 9 October 1946. Georgina Edith (Graves) Griffiths scrapbook.

17. Gordon Graves phone interview, 7 November 1998; Enid (Wallace) Kolskog interview, 16 September 2001; Allen McCrea personal interview, 14 July 2000; Murray McCrea phone interview, 17 September 2001.

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MANUSCRI!T COLLECIlONS AND ARCHIVAL

Kate Graves Family Papers. Letters, diaries, photographs, genealogical documents, scrapbook. The papers principally consist of letters from Kate Graves to Geo- Edith (Graves) Griffiths, McCord, Saskatchewan. 1925,1930-1941. Personal coUection of Cristine Bye.

McCord and District Museum. McCord, Saskatchewan George E. Hamilton Diary. 1921-1932. . . P r m e of #g 1 7 7 of the.

Rural Municipality of Mankota, No. 45. Mankota, Saskatchewan. Province of Saskatchewan Records of Registration of Death. 1926-1941. Relief Ledgexs. 1930-1947.

R d Municipality of Waverlq, No. 44. Glentworth, Saskatchewan. Minutes of Council Meetings. 1929-1945

Saskatchewan Archives Board, Saskatoon. Homestead Files. Canada. Department of the Interior. Land Patents

Branch. 1858791.1858795.1859898.1859902. McNaughton Papers. AID. Files 16,22. United Church of Canada. Edmund Oliver Papers* XVILD.14.c.

Saskatchewan Archives Board, Regina. Drought File. Red Cross Society Reports. 1936. SHSl01. Gerhude Wood Collection. R-E2009. Homemaker Original File. Pamphlet File. Agrid~Saskatchewan. Department of Agriculture.

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Gordon Graves. Edmonton, Alberta. Telephone interview. 7 November 1998.

Wes Hatlelid. Calgary, h r t a . Telephone interview. 14 December 2000.

Enid (Wallace) KoIskog. Edmonton, Alberta. Personal interview. 13-14 August 1998. Telephone interviews. 27 January, 22000. 16 September 2001.

AUen McCrea. McCord, Saskatchewan. Personal interview. 14 July 2000. Elbow, Saskatchewan. Telephone interview. 15 August 2000.

Murray McCrea. McCord, Saskatchewan. Telephone interviews. 20 May 2000. 17 September 2001.

Les Wilson. Assidmia, Saskatchewan. Telephone interview. 12 March 2000.

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