MCQ Views and Voices

From Burton to Barton, part 21: Sainte Brigitte's Daughters

February 08, 2022 CASE-MCQ Season 2 Episode 21
MCQ Views and Voices
From Burton to Barton, part 21: Sainte Brigitte's Daughters
Show Notes

In this episode, co-hosts Julie Miller and François Roy look at the Irish and bilingual history of  Sainte Brigitte on the south shore, going back to the first settler in the 1830s, John O'Sullivan.  This episode focuses  on some of the women of the parish, but Julie starts by going back even further to tell the story of the saint in whose honour the parish was named.  In the 1800s and first half of the 1900s, if women did not want to marry and have children, they had very few choices; one of the few options open to them was to become a nun, or a teacher, or both.  As Julie says, when looking into the history of women, sometimes you have to interpret the silences, and their lives raise as many questions as they answer.