Diane Tye

Gender, resistance and play: Bachelorette parties in atlantic canada

Abstract — This article explores the multivalent messages of the bachelorette, whose popularity in Atlantic Canada, where the study is set, is eclipsing other premarriage customs, such as the bridal shower. It argues that while the bachelorette may be read as a hyperbolisation and enforcement of a narrow conception of women’s possible roles, it also can be understood as resistance to culturally constructed gender values. Through “implicit coding” that includes trivialization (how can something called a “bachelorette” be taken seriously?), appropriation of the male model (the stag party), juxtaposition to the shower that outfits the bride for her role as a homemaker, and the use of humour to both distract and subvert, the bachelorette challenges the patriarchal category of “woman.”

“A Poor Man's Meal”

Abstract Part of an early trade triangle that linked Atlantic Canada to the West Indies through the exchange of fish, molasses was integral to the survival of some of the regions earliest settlers. Throughout the nineteenth century, molasses was a common ingredient in everyday and festive baking, a sweetener in tea, and a part of many remedies. Most commonly, molasses was served on bread as an accompaniment to, or a substitute for, a meal. Molasses filled you up when there was little or nothing else to eat. This article explores stories Atlantic Canadians tell themselves about themselves through molasses. Noting past and present links to geographically distinct social hierarchies and power relations, it documents the importance of molasses for Atlantic Canadians. It reflects on how memory and popular culture come together around molasses to transform poverty and nostalgia into iconic past landscapes.

“The Call of the Ice”: Tragedy and Vernacular Responses of Resistance, Heroic Reconstruction, and Reclamation

On March 8, 2001, Jessie Elliott, Adam Wall, and Adrian (AJ) Sullivan, three teenagers from the small coastal Newfoundland community of Pouch Cove, drowned. Initial reports, which were later contested, suggested that the boys’ lives were lost while jumping from one ice pan to another, in a traditional follow-the-leader or “chicken” type game called “copying.” Early accounts indicated that as the boys leaped from one unstable piece of ice to the next, a large wave came up dragging one of them into the freezing water. The teenager’s companions tried to help pull him back up, only to be swept out themselves into the churning seas. As darkness fell that evening, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary together with the Canadian Coast Guard combed the cove, first as a search and rescue mission, and later in an effort to recover the bodies of the three drowned boys. The next morning, the Coast Guard retrieved one of the bodies and three days later the community held a funeral for Jessie Elliott in the local church.