Mapping the Margins: The Family and Social Discipline in Canada, 1700-1975

This volume carries the striking image of two elderly female inmates of a Montreal church home. What combination of social, economic, and familial circumstances led to the exclusion of these particular women from their circle of kin relationships? Were they rendered marginal because their society had constructed a “structure of dependency” that stigmatized the elderly as deviant by virtue of their age and perceived lack of usefulness, or did these two women represent the aberrant minority - traditionally less than 10 per cent of the aged - who were placed in institutions?