The Lady Lumberjack

Go to associated films: Michel S. Beaulieu and Ronald N. Harpelle, eds. The Lady Lumberjack: An Annotated Collection of the Writings of Dorothea Mitchell (Thunder Bay: Lakehead University Centre for Northern Studies, v. 12, 2005). "Historians often have identified Susanna Moodie or Catherine Parr Traill as advocates for women’s rights, but Beaulieu and Harpelle argue emphatically that Mitchell’s contributions are equally important. Taken as a whole, Lady Lumberjack is as entertaining as it is insightful. Dorothea Mitchell was a gifted writer, her prose at times resembling that of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx. In all likelihood readers will find themselves missing Mitchell long after they have finished reading the book. This unassuming woman captivates one with her humorous shenanigans while, at the same time, astounding one with her no-nonsense approach to everyday matters typically considered the liberty of men. Lady Lumberjack is a serious contribution to women’s history, with huge potential to inform novice and seasoned academics alike. Mitchell’s writings are ripe with examples of emerging ethnic and racial tensions, national pride and shifting gender roles. Such broader themes need only be teased from the pages. Beaulieu and Harpelle have ably shown the numbers ways in which Dorothea Mitchell stood as a symbol for all that women could achieve." Cheryl Desroches, Queen’s University Dorothea Mitchell was a Canadian Pioneer of the first order. She did things that pioneering women have always done, but her pioneer experience was made more difficult by the fact that she was a single woman. Unlike other unsung heroines of the early twentieth century, we know of Dorothea's accomplishments because she wrote about them. This collection serves to introduce Dorothea Mitchell as a a latter day Susanna Moodie or Catherine Parr Traill. The contents of this volume are comparable to Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada and Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush not only because Dorothea Mitchell is able to describe life as a British immigrant woman on the Canadian frontier, but because she provides a refreshing glimpse at the place of women in Canadian society during the first decades of the twentieth century. Dorothea Mitchell, the "Lady Lumberjack", was a remarkable individual whose accomplishments as a writer and pioneer of women's rights have been largely overlooked.