Magda Fahrni – författare

Health crises such as the SARS epidemic and H1N1 have rekindled interest among historians, medical authorities, and government officials in the 1918 influenza pandemic, a crisis that swept the globe in the wake of the First World War and killed approximately 50 million people.Epidemic Encounters zeroes in on Canada, where one-third of the population took ill and fifty-five thousand people died, to consider the various ways in which this country was affected by the pandemic. How did military and medical authorities, health care workers, and ordinary citizens respond? What role did social inequalities play in determining who survived? To answer these questions as they pertained to both local and national contexts, the contributors explore a number of key themes and topics, including the experiences of nurses and Aboriginal peoples, public letter writing in Montreal, the place of the epidemic within industrial modernity, and the relationship between mourning and interwar spiritualism. In the process, they offer new insights into medical history's usefulness in the struggle against epidemic disease.

The reconstruction of Canadian society in the wake of the Second World War had an enormous impact on all aspects of public and private life. For families in Montreal, reconstruction plans included a stable home life hinged on social and economic security, female suffrage, welfare-state measures, and a reasonable cost of living. In Household Politics, Magda Fahrni examines postwar reconstruction from a variety of angles in order to fully convey its significance in the 1940s as differences of class, gender, language, religion, and region naturally produced differing perspectives. Reconstruction was not simply a matter of official policy. Although the government set many of the parameters for public debate, federal projects did not inspire a postwar consensus, and families alternatively embraced, negotiated, or opposed government plans. Through in-depth research from a wide variety of sources, Fahrni brings together family history, social history, and political history to look at a wide variety of Montreal families – French-speaking and English-speaking; Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish - making Household Politics a particularly unique and erudite study.

The reconstruction of Canadian society in the wake of the Second World War had an enormous impact on all aspects of public and private life. For families in Montreal, reconstruction plans included a stable home life hinged on social and economic security, female suffrage, welfare-state measures, and a reasonable cost of living. In Household Politics, Magda Fahrni examines postwar reconstruction from a variety of angles in order to fully convey its significance in the 1940s as differences of class, gender, language, religion, and region naturally produced differing perspectives. Reconstruction was not simply a matter of official policy. Although the government set many of the parameters for public debate, federal projects did not inspire a postwar consensus, and families alternatively embraced, negotiated, or opposed government plans. Through in-depth research from a wide variety of sources, Fahrni brings together family history, social history, and political history to look at a wide variety of Montreal families – French-speaking and English-speaking; Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish - making Household Politics a particularly unique and erudite study.