Grandma McAlister’s Diary: Reading Between the Lines

Registration link:

 

When Agnes McAlister found a roasting chicken on her doorstep in 1950, she gave thanks to God for His provision. Married to a Pentecostal minister, raising her children in rural Alberta, caring for aging parents, and hosting travellers in her home, McAlister lived well below the poverty line and prayed to God that he would meet her needs.

In this talk, Laurentian University historian Linda Ambrose will tell us about how she used one woman’s diary to draw conclusions about women, religion, and rural life through the life writing of a woman preacher, school teacher, wife, and mother. This grandmother’s diary has more to say about faith and family life than first meets the eye.