More Than a Footnote-ebook : Canadian Women You Should Know
“We have told only half the stories of how our world was shaped.”
There are women throughout Canada’s history who when faced with a locked door, have looked for a key—or a battering ram. Award-winning writer Karin Wells tells the stories of women like the fierce and iconoclastic Mina Benson Hubbard, who finished the mission to map northern Labrador that had killed her explorer husband, and Vera Peters, MD, who revolutionized treatments for Hodgkins lymphoma and breast cancer. Or the painter Paraskeva Clark, child of the Bolshevik Revolution, who rattled staid Toronto when she took Norman Bethune as a lover and spoke out for art as a tool of social change. And have you heard of Charlotte Small, a Métis woman who canoed and trekked 42,000 km—more than three times further than the American explorers Lewis and Clark—and had five babies along the way?
Some were outrageous, some were unassuming, most were not polite, but they all ignored the voices that said women could not paddle a canoe, program a computer, understand the universe, or cure a disease. They lived big lives—often at great cost—and they made a difference.
Praise & Recognition
“The book makes fascinating reading, not least of all because Wells writes so well… Like her documentaries, her book is incredibly well researched and her prose sings, bringing these mostly forgotten women to life.”
The Peterborough ExaminerMany books about the history of Canada tend to focus on the contributions of men, making it appear that women had only a minor role in the formation of this country. In More than a Footnote: Canadian Women You Should Know, Karin Wells fills in the gaps in Canada’s history with stories of women who made a difference in this country, from artists to mathematicians, giving readers a better understanding of some of the people who helped to build Canadian society. Wells is a CBC documentary producer and three-time recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalists documentary award. She has worked as an actor, a schoolteacher and briefly as a line worker at a pea factory before pursuing a career as a lawyer. In 2011, she was inducted into the University of Ottawa’s Common Law Honour Society. She was born in the U.K., grew up in British Columbia and later moved to southwest Ontario. More Than a Footnote highlights women, but not just the famous and accomplished. While several chapters are about women who were well-known in their fields, others are accounts of women whose accomplishments were largely unknown outside their immediate circles.
The book begins with the story of Mina Benson Hubbard Ellis, who set out in the early 20th century to map Labrador after her husband died in that same attempt. Cellist Zara Nelsova, meanwhile, reinvented herself to participate in making music, while Beatrix (Trixie) Helen Worsley became the first person, male or female, to graduate with a PhD from Cambridge University in the newly created discipline of computer science. Female scientists, three Métis women married to white men, a westerner in China during the Communist revolution, a Japanese-Canadian broadcaster and a woman overseeing a creative and revenue-generating mat-weaving project in Labrador are some of the other accounts in this book. Although several of the chapters in More Than a Footnote deal with women in the sciences, the variety of subject matter shows that women have had an influence over a wide range of fields. Even if their contribution was mainly to help guide their husbands through the Canadian wilderness and make sure they survived the harsh conditions, these women helped establish communities and set examples for future generations to follow. To some extent the chapters are connected, some more naturally than others. For example, Mina Benson Hubbard Ellis arranged for Zara Nelsova’s father to receive a cello for his teenage daughter, connecting the first chapter very closely to the second. Other connections are much more tenuous, and the author soon abandons her attempt to link the different subjects to each other. Despite that change, however, the overall theme helps to unite the different chapters.
More Than a Footnote is a well-written and compelling account of women who have made a difference in this country. Photographs scattered throughout the text help to provide a background for the stories, and the author’s introduction gives readers insight into her process of choosing and researching her subjects. It’s a good choice for anyone interested in learning more about women’s contributions to Canadian society.
Winnipeg Free Press"Karin Wells fills in the gaps in Canada’s history with stories of women who made a difference in this country, from artists to mathematicians, giving readers a better understanding of some of the people who helped to build Canadian society."
Winnipeg Free PressDetails
Publication Date: October 4, 2022
Genre: Adult Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
Product Format: E-book – EPUB
Pages: 328
ISBN: 978-1-77260-267-8
Weight: 0
![Karin Wells](http://secondstorypress.ca/cdn/shop/collections/1000px_KARIN_WELLS_headshot.jpg?v=1686713187&width=1000)
About the Author
Karin Wells
Karin Wells grew up in BC and now lives in southern Ontario. She is best known as a CBC radio documentary maker and is a three time recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalists documentary award. Her work has been heard on radio networks around the world and has been recognized by the United Nations. Wells worked – briefly – as a line worker in a pea factory, a school teacher, and an actor. She is also a lawyer and in 2011 was inducted into the University of Ottawa’s Common Law Honour Society.
Wells has documented the lives of influential (but often overlooked) Canadian women in her books: The Abortion Caravan: When women shut down government in the battle for the right to choose (finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and winner of the Ontario Historical Society's Alison Prentice Award), More Than a Footnote: Canadian women you should know and the forthcoming Women Who Woke Up the Law.
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