Revivals and roller rinks : religion, leisure, and identity in late-nineteenth-century small-town Ontario / Lynne Marks.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Based primarily on a study of the towns of Thorold, Campbellford, and Ingersoll this investigation seeks as well to determine the nature of commonalities and differences in patterns of participation in religious and leisure activities within both middle- and working-class families.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

With good writing and good research, Marks makes a large social sweep through three small Protestant towns in Ontario, surveying their church-going, classes, respectable and not so respectable people, and amusements. Her study is about how value systems worked in practice in those towns, where, as usual, they were more complicated than they might at first appear. Marks notes that even in Protestant Ontario young single men were not conspicuous for church-going. Once outside the orbit of their parents they gravitated to male associations, clubs, and sports. Thus, church congregations tended to be substantially female. However, when young men married, their wives, their children, their social responsibilities tended to bring them back into the fold of the church. Marks is appropriately chary about crediting this to the wives. This is not just a study of religion; it is also an analysis of the interaction of men and women, a good history of gender relations. Mercifully free of jargon (or almost: "unproblematized" bothers one), this book is well worth time and trouble; it is a vigorous and lively read. All levels. P. B. Waite Dalhousie University