Women of Courage—15 Cape Breton Lives in Their Own Words

edited by Ronald Caplan
HERE ARE 15 WOMEN'S LIVES that leap with energy, humour, pathos, and power. Hard work, high spirits, and abiding love are threads through their unforgettable stories.
“These spoken lives in Women of Courage are reminders of the thousands of women who have been the underpinning of Cape Breton Island—women we too rarely remember but who have been responsible for the island we speak of with pride.”—Ronald Caplan
 Mary Sarah MacNeil of Long Island: We’d have to wash the dishes—we couldn’t reach the dishes on the table. Have to take the dishes over to the end of the table, and put your basin on the chair, wash your dishes, and put them back on the table. Then my sister Margaret would stand on the chair, and I’d hand her the dishes, she’d put them up in the cupboard. Taking them down, she’d stand on the chair and hand them to me, and I’d put them on the table.
Clara Buffett of Glace Bay, on Hilda Wright: Nothing scandalized her, that human beings were capable of doing. The scandal was that we were not doing anything about it.