An imaginative exploration of power and the public and private lives of Congrgation superiors.

Gray focuses on the social, administrative, political, and spiritual dimensions of the lives of three Congregation superiors - Marie Barbier, Marie-Josephe Maugue-Garreau, and Marie Raizenne. By exploring the implications of the hierarchies of power within the convent and providing a thorough analysis of the convent's relationship with the social, religious, and governmental structures that surrounded it - taking into account both medieval and Catholic Reformation Europe and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Canada - Gray reveals the paradoxes inherent in the position of a female superior...

In 1913, Oxford-educated Margaret Gascoigne left England for Montreal in search of new opportunities. In 1915 she established a small school for six students in the study of her downtown Montreal home - the modest but aspiring beginning of what would become known as The Study. Presenting lively images, oral testimonies, and material gleaned from the school s archives, No Ordinary School explores the evolution of The Study through world wars, the Great Depression, the Quiet Revolution, and many stages of feminism, from its predominantly English Montreal origins into the bilingual and...