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The Lady Lumberjack: an annotated collection of Dorothea Mitchell's writings Edited by Michel S. Beaulieu and Ronald N. Harpelle. Thunder Bay: Northern and Regional Studies Series, Vol. 12, Centre for Northern Studies, Lakehead University, 2005. xviii + 145 pp. $23.39 softcover. ISBN 1-895939-26-7. ISSN 1183-6857.
Dorothea Mitchell (1877-1976) was one of many sturdy, spirited adventurers who undertook the trek from England to Canada at the start of the twentieth century. In 1904 she landed in Halifax and gradually made her way to Hamilton, Toronto, and eventually the rugged regions of Northwestern Ontario. Michel Beaulieu and Ronald Harpelle utilize a number of Mitchell's works to provide a much-needed first-hand female perspective of the pioneer experience. Because she wrote about her extraordinary life in such matter-of-fact terms, however, her contributions to the feminist movement (and to literature more generally) has been overlooked in the broader historical record. The work of Beaulieu and Harpelle does much to correct this oversight.
The editors divide Lady Lumberjack into four parts: an introduction, a biographical sketch, and two distinct groupings of Mitchell's writing. The first set focuses on a piece entitled "Just when does a writing career start?" in which Mitchell briefly discusses her early foray into the craft which began when she was only a teenager. This set also includes by far the most important piece in the entire collection, a reprint of her original lady lumberjack monograph of 1968. Here Mitchell provides an account of her time in Hamilton, then in Silver Mountain in 1909, and subsequently Port Arthur, beginning in 1921. The fluctuations of the Canadian economy serve as backdrop and impetus to her...