Religion, Family, and Community in Victorian Canada: The Colbys of Carrollcroft

While we know a great deal about the role religion played in institutions in Victorian Canada, its place in home and family life has remained relatively unexplored. Drawing on a treasure trove of family papers and material culture, Marguerite Van Die depicts religion as "lived experience" in a portrait of an emblematic Protestant middle-class family in Quebec's Eastern Townships. The Colbys were members of Canada's emerging economic elite, active in the local community, public life, and politics. Their lives offer rich insights into the construction and practice of domestic religion and the moral and social legislation of early post-Confederation Canada. Taking a multidisciplinary approach that locates the home rather than the church as the primary site of religious change, Van Die concludes that the origins and continuity of Protestant religion in Victorian Canada depended on a unique set of socioeconomic and cultural forces.Van Die is a sympathetic and perceptive observer and a gifted and deft interpreter. In her examination of the Colbys of Carrollcroft she draws attention to the links connecting domestic religion and private life, business concerns, and social change in one family's life over three generations.