In this episode of The English-Language Education in Quebec podcast, we travel back to the mid-19th century to explore the experiences of young, English-speaking women from Quebec’s Eastern Townships who moved to Montreal to study at the McGill Normal School. What motivated families to send their daughters away for teacher training? What did a teaching diploma mean for women at a time when professional opportunities were limited? And how might education have opened possibilities for social mobility, travel, work, and new forms of independence?
Lina Shoumarova speaks with historians Mary Anne Poutanen and Rod MacLeod, co-authors of a chapter on women from the Townships who attended the McGill Normal School between 1857 and 1865, published in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and the World (2024).
Drawing on rich archival and genealogical sources, they discuss the lives of women such as Mary-Luella Herrick and Maria Machin, the emergence of formal teacher training, the opportunities and constraints women encountered, and the importance of taking women’s agency seriously when reconstructing lives from the historical record.
Suggested reference for this podcast episode:
Shoumarova, L. (Host) & Poutanen, M. A., & MacLeod, R. (Guests). (2026, April 21). From the Eastern Townships to McGill: Women, Education, and Opportunity in 19th-Century Quebec [Audio podcast episode]. In The English-Language Education in Quebec Podcast. ILET Research Hub/QUESCREN.
About the podcast guests
Mary Anne Poutanen recently retired from teaching at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and from Concordia University’s Department of History. She has received awards for her book Beyond Brutal Passions: Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal and for a co-authored monograph with Rod MacLeod, A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801-1998. A member of the Montreal History Group, Mary Anne’s current research focuses on women who ran public houses and retail businesses in mid-19th-century in the city. Her next project, with Elizabeth Kirkland, studies female domestic workers in Montreal between 1840 and 1920.
Portrait image by Chloé Charbo
Rod MacLeod is a social historian specializing in Quebec’s Anglo-Protestant communities and their institutions, including schools, museums, hospitals, and cemeteries. With Mary Anne Poutanen he wrote A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801-1998, several articles on education, and a graphic novel. He is the editor of the two-volume Montreal: The History of a North American City and of the quarterly magazine Quebec Heritage News.
Portrait image by Elena Cerrolaza
