Labouring on the Margins: Representations of Edwardian Domestic Servants in Western Canadian Living History Museums

Since their popularization in the mid-twentieth century, living history museums in Canada have provided the public with a (necessarily) simplified representation of life in a previous era. Many western Canadian sites represent domestic life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through house museums, which can include servant characters. Domestic servants in western Canada during this period were typically young, single, workingclass women, many of whom were also recent immigrants. Excluded from structures of power, their daily lives and perspectives were sparsely documented. This study investigates how living history sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba portray the marginalized women who worked as servants between 1890 and 1920, and what these representations mean for our understanding of marginalized histories, living history, and public history in western Canada. In line with its concentration on working-class individuals, it primarily focuses on the perspectives of the front-line historical interpreters who play these roles, seeking to understand these representations and acts of public history from the bottom up. This study finds that the way these living history interpreters are treated by their museums has a profound influence on the way the past is depicted at each of these four sites, particularly the pasts of working-class women. This project employs four museums as case studies: Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria, British Columbia; Fort Edmonton Park in Edmonton, Alberta; Government House in Regina, Saskatchewan; and Dalnavert Museum and Visitors’ Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Its methodology combines archival research, oral history, public history, and museum studies to examine public representations of a marginalized history. Based on oral history interviews with ten historical interpreters and three program developers, it illustrates the critical role of the\n museum as workplace in determining how servants are portrayed in living history. Throughout these four case studies, it demonstrates the necessity for training, research, feedback, supervision, and safety protocols in order to support interpreters (frequently young women earning minimum wage themselves) in playing these challenging and vulnerable roles and creating well-informed, multifaceted, and engaging performances of these women and their era. The stories of women, working-class people, and recent immigrants are still frequently under-represented in public history. The care and attention with which these marginalized women are depicted at Craigdarroch Castle and Government House demonstrate these sites’ ethical commitment to both the well-being of their interpreters and the sensitive, accurate portrayal and valuation of these long-overlooked lives. In contrast, the lack of support and care for the interpreters who play these characters at Dalnavert Museum and Fort Edmonton Park frequently results in uneven and inaccurate performances, mental and emotional strain for these interpreters, and the diminution of the importance of these marginalized figures and their contemporaries in western Canadian history and society.

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