Remembering Natalie Zemon Davis

• Published in: Labour 2024-03, Vol.93 (93), p.17-21
• Main Authors: Strong-Boag, Veronica, Kealey, Linda, Stewart, Mary Lynn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artisans; Conway, Jill Ker; Davis, Natalie Zemon; Deaths; Feminists; Historians; Labor; Legislatures; Mothers; Personal profiles; Queens; Social history; University professors; Unpaid; Women; Women historians
• ISSN: 0700-3862; 1911-4842
• DOI: 10.52975/llt.2024v93.003

Natalie's spirited insistence on the significance of women's labour and resistance, whether as witches, weavers, writers, mothers, or queens, signalled the promise of the New Social History. While my adviser mused that my thesis (1975) would probably be sufficient in incorporating women into the national story, Natalie's recovery of New France founder Marie de l'Incarnation for History 348 - like her subsequent book, Women on the Margins (1985) - inserted Canada into a global story of women and work, both paid and unpaid. Today, more than 50 years after I met Natalie, I know that my doctoral thesis, published as The Parliament of Women: The National Council of Women of Canada, 1893-1929 (1976), and later contributions such as The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada, 1919-1939 (1988), Losing Ground: The Effects of Government Cut-Backs on Women in BC, 20002005; Report for the BC Federation of Labour ^2005) (with Gillian Creese), my directorship of the editorial board for l/lt (1983-86), and A Liberal-Labour Lady: The Times and Life of Mary Ellen Spear Smith (2022) owe much to a tiny enchantress who found a northern home after she and her husband, Chandler (himself another generous mentor), defied the US House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s. Later, a group of women's historians at the University of New Brunswick, where I taught, submitted a nomination for a joint honorary degree to recognize their collaboration, and in 2005 it came to fruition.