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Join us for a zoom presentation of Liberty Street & Chatelaine Magazine: Inside the World of Canadian Women's Mass Market Feminism in the 60's -- our Perth County Reads 2026 event.
Did you know that Chatelaine magazine was a source of political, legal, and social information for Canadian women in the 50s & 60s, tucked in between the recipes and housecleaning tips?
Join Dr. Valerie Korinek, author of Roughing it in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties, as she explores the ways in which Chatelaine played a role as 'mass market feminism' in that era.
If you've read our PC Reads 2026 novel, Liberty Street by Heather Marshall, you'll know how important Chatelaine reporting was to that story! Find out how much Marshall's characters were based in fact in this compelling Zoom presentation by a Canadian expert on Chatelaine.
OCT 22 | 7:00 - 8:00 PM | via Zoom
Registration is required to receive the Zoom link prior to the presentation.
SPEAKER BIO: Valerie J. Korinek is the A.S. Morton Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. An expert in gender, sexualities and cultural history, she is the author or editor of four books including, Roughing it in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine in the Fifties and Sixties. Most recently, she published the award-winning book Prairie Fairies: A History of Queer Communities and People in Western Canada, 1930-1985. She is currently working on a history of same sex marriage in Canada, and its international impact, entitled Love + Litigation= Marriage.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Roughing it in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine in the Fifties and Sixties profiles the feminist world created within Canada’s largest, mass-market women’s magazine. Covering editorials and articles, fiction, service features, advertisements and cover art, Roughing it in the Suburbs reveals the sustained feminist messaging in Chatelaine under editor Doris Anderson. Readers from coast to coast were eager to read this engaging feminist magazine and numbers of subscribers grew steadily. An additional appeal was the engagement of readers, who created a readership community of women, via their letters to the editor, and their participation in the magazine’s contests, where they responded and critiqued the magazine’s materials. From those letters it was clear how important this magazine was to middle and working class women as housewives, mothers, students, and professionals. For some it was a lifeline as they navigated changing ideas of women’s roles in families, society, and the workplace, for others it was a source of routine entertainment and household tips. Roughing It in the Suburbs won the Lauria Jamieson Prize from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women in 2001.
