Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario

A rich and complex portrait of the agricultural fair, in which rural women’s identities and activities take centre stage.

Cultivating Community explores women’s critical involvement in agricultural fairs’ growth and prosperity in Ontario throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examining women’s roles as society members, exhibitors, performers, volunteers, and fairgoers, the book shows how women used fairs to present different versions of rural womanhood.