Acknowledgements

IN 1993 I first wrote an abstract sketching out some dimensions of this study for a conference paper proposal. The paper was not accepted. Undeterred, I’ve continued to work on this topic ever since although many other projects and responsibilities have intervened. I am grateful to the many people who helped me over many years and I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. I would like to first acknowledge and thank my researchers at the Universities of Calgary, Alberta and elsewhere (some of whom will likely have forgotten that they helped me with this project): Alana Bourque, Kristin Burnett, Peter Fortna, Patricia Gordon, Laurel Halladay, Michel Hogue, Kenneth J. Hughes (of Ottawa, not to be confused with an old friend of the same name in Winnipeg), Pernille Jakobsen, Nadine Kozak, Siri Louie, Melanie Methot, Ted McCoy, Jill St. Germaine, and Char Smith. While I did not have a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada standard research grant specifically for this project, some of the research from two others (one on Alberta women and another on Great Plains gender and land distribution history) spilled over and was lapped up by this project and I am very grateful for these grants. The study was also enriched by the assistance, comments, suggestions and leads of many friends, colleagues and archivists including Judith Beattie, Mary Eggermont, Keith Goulet, Alice Kehoe, Maureen Lux, Bryan Palmer, Donald B. Smith, David E. Wilkins, H.C. Wolfart. Thanks to my father Roger Colenso Carter, Saskatoon, for his comments on a final draft. Special thanks to the Calgary Institute for the Humanities of the University of Calgary that provided important intellectual and physical space during the year I spent there as a fellow. I am grateful to Rev. John Pilling for permission to use the Records of the Anglican Diocese of Calgary at the University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections. Thanks to Sean England and Scott Anderson for their careful editorial work, and to Lesley Erickson for compiling the bibliography. Thanks to Erna Dominey and Peter Midgley for their assistance with the many tasks involved in preparing the final version of the manuscript; thanks also to the anonymous readers of the original submission for their comments and to Moira Calder for the index.

I have given papers based on this research on many occasions over the years and have found several to be significant moments in helping me formulate my ideas and engage with audiences. Thanks to Adele Perry and other organizers of the 2002 conference “Manitoba, Canada, Empire: A Day of History in Honor of John Kendle,” to Joan Sangster for asking me to give the 2003 W.L. Morton Lecture at Trent University, to Georgina Taylor for asking me to speak at the Saskatoon Campus of First Nations University in the spring of 2007 and to Joanna Dean for the invitation to give the 2007 Shannon Lecture in History at Carleton University.

Earlier versions of some of this material has appeared in two articles: “Creating ‘Semi-Widows” and ‘Supernumerary Wives’: Prohibiting Polygamy in Prairie Canada’s Aboriginal Communities to 1900,” in Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada’s Colonial Past,” ed., Katie Pickles and Myra Rutherdale (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005), 131–59; and “‘Complicated and Clouded’: The Federal Administration of First Nations Marriage and Divorce Among the First Nations of Western Canada, 1887–1906,” in Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West Through Women’s History, ed. Sarah Carter, Lesley Erickson, Patricia Roome and Char Smith (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005): 151–78. I am grateful for permission to reprint this material.

Special thanks as always to my partner, Walter Hildebrandt, for his support and comments during the many years of this project and I hope he hasn’t tired of (hearing about) monogamy. The book is dedicated to my mother, Mary Y. Carter, who had a long career as a lawyer, magistrate and judge in Saskatoon and was herself a “pioneer” in family law in Western Canada.