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Ella
Anderson was born at Cole's Island, currently the location of
the Radio Canada shortwave broadcasting towers that dominate this section
of the Tantramar Marshes. She attended school in Sackville and attended
Acadia University in Wolfville, NS for one year. She then followed
the not uncommon route of finding employment in industrial towns in
New England, taking up work in a watch factory in Waltham, Massachusetts,
for a number of years before returning to Cole's Island to live
with her parents. Ella Anderson's diary, as with that of Alice
Bulmer noted earlier in this exhibition, provides a glimpse into the
world of a rural New Brunswick woman at mid-twentieth century. The
diary is interesting for its recording of the daily rural round, as
well as for its indications of changes in the mobility and economic
role of rural women. The diary suggests increased economic and travel
independence, perhaps occasioned by greater economic security and better
access to automobiles. Her diaries record going 'to town'
(meaning Sackville), to Amherst and Moncton for 'shopping',
'a dress fitting', 'church' and 'to go to a movie'.
In addition, there are frequent references to the women of the household
selling eggs in Sackville as well as to the various trips of males
in the Anderson household. While the diary is an important record of
household life on the Tantramar marshes, it is also a means of assessing
the changing gendered mobilities of the day: in some months, male members
of the household made twice as many off-farm trips as female members
and males travelled as widely as Halifax, Saint John and Prince Edward
Island, compared to Ella's local travel destinations of Sackville,
Amherst and Moncton. |
