Katherine Hughes (1876–1925) was a self-confessed Canadian imperialist turned Irish republican activist. The granddaughter of Irish emigrants, Hughes challenged the traditional gender roles of her era to pursue a multi-faceted career as ‘a teacher on a Mohawk reserve, a newspaperwoman, a biographer, the first provincial archivist of Alberta, the private secretary to the premier of Alberta, a Government of Alberta public servant stationed abroad, and a professional propagandist and political organizer for the Irish independence movement during the Irish Revolution’ (p. 17). This study of Hughes's life and times provides a valuable insight into the fortunes and loyalties of the Irish diaspora, particularly in Canada, as well as the social history of modern Canadian women.
Hughes left few personal papers such as letters or diaries. Thus, one of the main challenges in researching this biography was the limitations of the sources available to document her unusual life and transformative political journey. That Ó Siadhail has managed to write such a satisfying account is testament to his dogged research and questioning of the extant sources to elicit possible interpretations of her actions and motives.
The book is divided into three sections, each examining a different stage in Hughes's life. The first part sketches her early years growing up in Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) by tracing her family background and her education at a convent school and a teacher-training college. Ó Siadhail situates Hughes and her family within the wider context of the province and its Irish-Canadian community in the late nineteenth century. Like other Irish Catholics in P.E.I., the Hughes family was loyal to the British crown and supported the empire. Unlike many of their Catholic neighbours, they left the island and moved west. In the second part of the book, Ó Siadhail documents Hughes's rising fortunes as a professional career woman in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, as well as her efforts as a Catholic lay activist with a penchant for causes.
The final section of the book, which covers the period 1913–25, focuses on her endeavours as an Irish republican activist. Despite her Irish heritage, Hughes came to Irish nationalism via London, where she began working in 1913 as administrative assistant and secretary at the newly-opened Office of the Agent General for Alberta, which promoted trade and immigration. As part of her job, she visited Ireland for the first time in the summer of 1914 and fell under its spell. Later that year she wrote an article for a Gaelic League publication, in which she signed her name Caitlín Ní Aodha and urged the Irish diaspora to buy Irish. Through her involvement in the Gaelic League in London, she met Pádraic Ó Conaire, a leading writer of twentieth-century literature in Irish, and the pair collaborated in writing a play entitled The cherry bird. Whether this creative partnership extended to a romantic relationship is open to speculation. In any case, Hughes returned to Canada in 1915.
For much of the final decade of her life, Hughes promoted the cause of Irish independence in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand through her publications, speaking engagements and organisational work, for example, with the Irish National Bureau in Washington, D.C., the Self-Determination for Ireland Leagues, and the 1922 Irish World Race Congress in Paris. She supported Éamon de Valera's opposition to the 1921 Anglo–Irish Treaty but was disheartened by ‘the split within Ireland and among Irish activists abroad’. Her career and health failing, she spent the final years of her life in the United States where she dubbed herself ‘a once-upon-a-time Canadian’ (p. 243).
This biography of Hughes provides a persuasive answer to Ó Siadhail's question: ‘What inspired a young educated P.E.I. woman, who was successful and accomplished in her native country in the era before female suffrage, to embark on a journey that would transform her from Canadian political insider to Irish political rebel and outcast?’ (p. 19). It also proves that L. M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of green gables, was not the only notable woman to emerge from P.E.I.
This is the second award-winning book by Ó Siadhail to feature Hughes. His historical research also sparked the novel, Beirt bhan mhisniúla (2011), in which he imaginatively recreates the relationship and collaboration between Hughes and Ó Conaire. The biography won the 2016 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing, which acknowledges excellence in Atlantic Canadian writing and publishing, while the novel was named the 2010 literary novel of the year by Oireachtas na Gaeilge.
