File f34 - Graham, Ann Herrick, nee Hunt

File consists of a recording of Ann Graham. Topics of the conversation include experience of isolation in Quebec Francophone community; personal growth through forced self-reliance. Volunteer organisation of English-language lending library; contrast of amateur challenge with banal work as regular library aide. Special interest in children's literature, employment in public school system. Major illness, 1977. Resumption, reassessment of career together with satisfying volunteer work with the elderly; recognition that society values most the salaried worker; inclination to follow volunteer interests, conflicting desire that her work be recognized as socially productive. Personal history: 3-year general BA at Queen's; clipping-service work for Dupont Corporation; difficulty in becoming pregnant; YWCA and local community library services; birth of first daughter, 1960. Scarcity of libraries in Quebec prior to 1960s; fees exacted for public education beyond elementary school level, numerous grade-school drop-outs in consequence. Educated family background, natural assumption she would attend university. Husband's job transfer to USA; subject's ambivalent feelings about removal from Quebec; desire for civic participation, acquisition of US citizenship. Fast pace, avid materialism of American life-style. Mother as teacher, Queen's graduate (1923). Enjoyable time at Queen's, limited graduation outlook; opinion that female stereotyping was and still is strong; disappointment that liberated daughters tend to lose ambition during teens; strength of female sexual drive. Anger at removing with husband to US, even though it was a conscious choice, a wise decision.//Happy marriage; support received from school community during illness. Advisability of living in the present, learning not to postpone pleasure. Interest in 'Haven' support system for persons dealing with life-threatening illnesses; desire to continue work with children and the elderly. Women's movement as it benefits the young, incurs guilt in mothers who have finished raising their children; My Mother, Myself; Passages. Sexual hang-ups of subject's educated mother, inability to prepare subject for menstruation; lack of sex education in subject's upbringing contrasted with wealth of material now available; Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. Subject's handling of own daughters. Opinion that women discuss emotional issues more readily than men; early envy of male freedom qualified later by realisation of male repression, restrictions; male liberation groups. Comparison of Quebec, sexual revolutions: both difficult, both bound to resolve themselves into something healthier. Anglophone enthusiasm for acquiring French language in Quebec; regret at having lived in Quebec in a WASP ghetto. Absence of class­consciousness at Queen's. North American political, social causelessness following WWII; similar lull after 1960s. Budgeted upbringing during Depression; mother's ability to afford maid, freedom from children. WWII rationing: social equality, cohesion, happiness. Changes witnessed in Quebec: expansion of education into technical fields; successful family-planning practice, prompting women to reconsider traditional Catholic roles. Assassination of John F. Kennedy.