Mary Anne Poutanen | McGill University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Mary Anne Poutanen

Histoire sociale, May 1, 2024

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, Oct 1, 2006

In this period, Montreal was the most unhealthy city in Canada owing to widespread poverty, abysm... more In this period, Montreal was the most unhealthy city in Canada owing to widespread poverty, abysmal living conditions, inadequate public health, and a dependence upon private charities to provide health and welfare services. While Montreal's Protestant school board assumed a pivotal role in the war on tuberculosis by early identification of consumptive pupils, educating those in treatment, and prevention, these initiatives were tempered by a conservative view that equated poverty with moral degeneration. School board minutes provide a window onto commissioners' construction of health, the nature of the relationship between a school and its community, and the factors which influenced their decisions. Résumé. A cette epoque-là, Montréal était la ville la plus insalubre au Canada en raison notamment d'une grande pauvreté, de conditions de vie tout à fait épouvantables, d'un système de santé publique mal adapté à la réalité auxquels il fallait ajouter une dépendance aux oeuvres de bienfaisance privées qui fournissaient des services de santé et d'aide sociale. La commission scolaire protestante de Montréal jouait un rôle essentiel dans la guerre contre la tuberculose en identifiant le plus tôt possible les élèves tuberculeux, en éduquant ceux en traitment et en mettant l'accent sur la prévention. Cependant ces initiatives étaient freinées par le conservatisme des commissaires qui mettaient la pauvreté sur le même pied que la dégénérescence morale. Les procès verbaux de la commission scolaire offrent un aperçu de l'interprétation de la santé par les commissaires, de la nature des relations entre l'école et la communauté et des facteurs qui influençaient leurs décisions.

BRILL eBooks, Oct 26, 2011

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jul 19, 2022

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2015

Beyond Brutal Passions has been long awaited by scholars of intimate relations and urban spaces a... more Beyond Brutal Passions has been long awaited by scholars of intimate relations and urban spaces alike. An evolution of Mary Anne Poutanen's 1997 doctoral dissertation, the study makes a comprehensive analysis of Montreal's court records between 1810 and 1842 to examine prostitution and its links to vagrancy, petty theft, and alcohol consumption. The result is a dense, detailed, and highly readable exploration of the interconnected nature of family, economy, and social regulation in the lives of women engaged in sex work. The study begins by establishing the ''social geography of prostitution'' in Montreal. Poutanen shows that, rather than being concentrated in red-light districts, sex work was ''ubiquitous,'' practised in homes, single rooms, abandoned buildings, and public spaces throughout the city. She then turns her focus to residential (brothel) and street prostitution, and the importance of community to both. She argues that women engaged in sex work, whether temporarily or as a career, were less marginalized than integrated. Brothels were often home-based family businesses, which allowed women to combine paid work and child care; streetwalkers, who were considered ''undeserving'' prospects for charitable aid, banded together for subsistence and survival. In all cases, prostitutes' livelihood and safety depended on their relationships with neighbours, police, and other representatives of the court system, which were ''multifaceted'' and in constant negotiation. In Part Two, Poutanen examines the ''interplay between [women's] experiences and their agency'' as these multifaceted relationships played out within the legal system. Supported by quantitative data on frequency of arrests, she contends that between 1810 and 1842, Montreal's elites shifted their emphasis from eradication and rehabilitation to the regulation of prostitution, and criminal punishment for the women involved. She places this shift squarely within the humanities 205

http://www.atlas.cieq.ca/index.php?page=RMacLoedMAPoutanenSchooling for rural Protestant settlers... more http://www.atlas.cieq.ca/index.php?page=RMacLoedMAPoutanenSchooling for rural Protestant settlers prior to the seminal education legislation of the 1840s was largely community-driven, although local families responded to government initiatives to fund their schools. With the rise of public education, rural Protestants took full opportunity of available governance structures, creating school boards that stood independent from those of the Catholic majority. Protestant boards presided over the establishment of one-room school houses, academies, and later consolidated schools and regional high schools. These schools had to be supplied with teachers, for whom work in remote villages was often highly challenging, and such teaching had to conform to a carefully negotiated Protestant pedagogy. By the twentieth century, as rural Protestant communities began to dwindle in size, boards adopted new strategies to provide children with schooling, from busing to building residences to creating hu...

Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, 2021

Cet article relate la vie privée dans une éminente maison bourgeoise de l'âge d'or de Mon... more Cet article relate la vie privée dans une éminente maison bourgeoise de l'âge d'or de Montréal, telle qu'elle s'est révélée sous l'éclairage brutal de la publicité occasionnée par une violente fusillade. Nous y montrons comment les morts tragiques d'une mère et de son fils ont renforcé de fragiles connexions de classe entre la propriété et la richesse, les relations familiales et l'image de la famille. En se basant sur des journaux intimes, des photographies et des articles de journaux, ainsi que sur des romans et des poésies publiés, nous avançons l'idée que la famille exposait l'architecture, autant les espaces de son propre foyer que l'architecture monumentale publique de la ville, pour se plier aux diktats d'un impératif paradoxal : l'intimité devait être ouvertement montrée, les problèmes familiaux privés joués dans des rituels publics. Les survivants de la famille ont rapidement entamé une série de manoeuvres pour réduire au secr...

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2007

Urban History Review

Notarized inventories provide an important window onto the interiors of public houses, the image ... more Notarized inventories provide an important window onto the interiors of public houses, the image that keepers sought to project of their businesses and of themselves, and the type of guests they wanted to attract. In this micro history, I examine the degree of differentiation amongst three widows operating modest businesses located in highly trafficked Montreal neighbourhoods, in particular, the composition of their domestic capital, the business strategies they employed, and if they achieved social mobility. We know from earlier studies that movables were significant assets for earning a living, often critical to the survival of a widowed, separated, or abandoned woman. My argument goes further. I contend that women attempted, and some were able, to convert movables into immovable property, assets that were more secure and versatile. While publicans displayed a wide array of skills, statuses, and achievements, these three cases focus on the critical threshold, that interesting set ...

Historical Studies in Education / Revue d'histoire de l'éducation, 2003

This study explores the complex relationships from 1863 to 1945 between the Board of School Trust... more This study explores the complex relationships from 1863 to 1945 between the Board of School Trustees of Lochaber and Gore, its teachers, and parents, to reveal how these different parties influenced, resisted, and consented to changes in local schooling. Thus, the analysis moves away from a social control model which has dominated the literature on schooling in Quebec to reveal the local dynamics at work in the community. The Protestants of Lochaber and Gore were a microcosm of the larger Protestant community in Quebec. All of the problems associated with rural education in poor regions across Quebec, such as teacher transiency, widespread poverty and a modest tax base, the primitive nature of one-room schoolhouses, and conflict between the seasonal demands of agriculture and school time, existed here. This investigation is based on historical documents from the Archives of the Western Quebec School Board in addition to newspaper accounts and local histories.