Bettina Bradbury

In this illuminating history of Montreal, readers will discover the links between identity, place, and historical moment as they meet vagrant women, sailors in port, unemployed men of the Great Depression, elite families, shopkeepers, reformers, notaries, and social workers.

The diversity of women’s lives as wives then as widows negotiating the law, patriarchy, family relationships, and the economy in 19th-century Montreal come alive in this first major study of widows in Canada.

This extraordinary book skillfully blends diverse historical evidence to tell the harrowing story of Caroline Kearney and her struggles against the paternalistic inheritance laws of the nineteenth century colonial world.