Our readings this week focused on gender, family and sexuality, as the readings illuminate the importance of homogeneity within the spheres of gender, family and sexuality in Canada.  Differences and deviants from these ideal norms, prescribed by Canadians, needed to be noticed and dealt with.  Emphasis and encouragement at all levels of people’s lives ensured that people were conforming on family, gender and sexuality ideals.  In Under the President’s Gaze: Sexuality and Morality at a Canadian University During the Second World War, a man named Johann Schmidt was accused for being a deviant person because one of his writings eluded to homosexual thoughts and desires. The university in which he was enrolled in, was an institution that was to maintain and ingrain socially normal values.  They needed to re-establish good values that may have been skewed during their times in their homes.  “This crisis in the family life [due to World War II], many believed, foretold the ruin of Canadian society.” So the university Schmidt was enrolled in, needed to uphold the “normal” values in order to protect the family structure.  If he were not to be heterosexual then the ‘normal family’ would not be possible.[1]  The homogeneity of sexual and gender ideals was on the basis to protect and uphold the family structure, which prevented societal upheaval. In Single Parenthood in the Past: Canadian Census Categories, 1891-1951 and the ‘Normal’ Family, the census was a tool of identifying the single parents as non-homogeneous to the ‘normal’ Canadian values. The single parent family was noted and was different than the nuclear family, which constituted the reason to keep tabs on the lone parent families in Canada. “Canadians understanding of past families that have marginalized or hidden single-parent families, while constructing two parent families as normal.”[2]  The family became the center in which the perfect normal values of heterosexuality and gender flowed out of.  The families that were not inside the normality, needed to be recorded and observed, as they defied values and would not help a healthy society in years to come.  Homogeneity of Canadian ideals on gender and sexuality come to fruition and normalcy through an ideal ‘normal’ family setting.

[1] Gidney, “Under the President’s Gaze: Sexuality and Morality at a Canadian University During the Second World War,” Canadian Historical Review, 82, 1 (March, 2001): 36-54.

[2] Bradbury, “Single Parenthood in the Past: Canadian Census Categories, 1891-1951 and the ‘Normal’ Family,” Historical Methods, 33, 4 (Fall, 2000): 211-217.