"Keep your seats and face facts": western Canadian women's discussion of birth control in the 1920s.

Written evidence of "ordinary" Canadians discussing in the first decades of this century the motives for and the means of limiting family size is rare. The letters on this subject that were printed in The Western Producer in 1927 are therefore of special interest. In placing them in context one is reminded that the struggle to control fertility-far from being a product of the post-World-War-I1 age-has a long history. R6sum6. Les Canadiens ccordinaires* des premieres decennies du vingtieme siecle n'ont laisse que de rares hits-tkmoins Yegard de la limitation des naissances dans les familles et des moyens d'y parvenir. Ainsi, les lettres 1 ce sujet publiees dans Western Producer en 1927 possedent un inter& tout particulier. En les remettant dans leur contexte, on se rend compte de nouveau que la lutte pour r6gler les problhmes de fertilit6-loin de provenir de Yepoque qui suivit la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale-existe depuis fort longtemps. In September 1927 a prairie woman sent the editor of The Western Producer a poignant plea for help. "I am 31, the mother of 7 children, eldest 11 years, and youngest 8 months, not at all strong, and owing to farm conditions, very heavily in debt. I would like to have any informal tion I can get re birth control." "I, too, am greatly interested in the subject," wrote a second woman in October, "-have a family of three in three years-that's reason enough for such literature." The same request was made by a third: "I am a mother of five children, oldest being 7 years. I am 25 years old. We live on the farm, but owing to sickness we haven't got on very well."l Because the sale, distribution, and advertisement of contraceptives was illegal, Canadian women were understandably discreet in broaching the birth control issue. Angus McLaren, Department of History, University of Victoria, P. 0. Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2. CBMHIBCHM 1 Volume 8: 1991 / p. 189-201