Of Kith and Kin traces the changing forms and meanings of family in the territory that now comprises Canada, from the first contacts between Indigenous peoples and French explorers, traders, missionaries, and settlers in northeastern North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present.

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Writing of Family History in Canada 1: Indigenous Families and French Settler Families, 1500-1750 2: Families in British North America, 1750-1840 3: The Industrial Revolution in Canada, 1840-1889 4: Families and the State, 1840-1914 5: Two World Wars, the Great Depression, and a Mixed Social Economy of Welfare, 1914-1945 6: Thirty Glorious Years? Families and the Postwar Settlement, 1945-1975 7: Metamorphosis and Persistence: Interrogating the Nuclear Family, 1975-2005 Conclusion: Twenty-First-Century Families Notes Selected Works Index

"Magda Fahrni's Of Kith and Kin is essential reading for students, general readers, and historians alike who are interested in the history of the family in Canada. Fahrni has written an engaging history that highlights the variety of family experience over time in relation to larger questions, such as the role of the Canadian state in shaping these experiences. Of Kith and Kin sets a new standard for cutting edge syntheses of major fields in Canadian history." --Mona Gleason, University of British Columbia "A brilliant, exemplary and beautifully written history. An outstanding contribution to many fields, it draws widely and deeply on diverse sources in French and English. With a rigorous critical approach, Fahrni's account exposes the complex interactions of material living conditions, prevailing ideologies and laws, and larger political processes of conquest, colonization, and settlement that have shaped families and Canadian political and economic life." -- Meg Luxton, York University "Despite the nostalgia that frequently surrounds them, families in former times were as diverse, complicated, and potentially fractious as they are today. Of Kith and Kin is as much a 'history of us'-the broad sweep of Canadian history seen through the revealing and universally relatable lens of family-as it is the first published book to offer a sustained, rigorous, and accessible history of family life in this country." --Peter Gossage, Concordia University "This lively and highly anticipated study of the family in the territory that is now Canada brings histories of Indigenous and settler communities, Quebec and English Canada, and public and private life into stimulating conversation with each other. Magda Fahrni's characteristically thoughtful analysis, ranging over a period of six centuries, reminds us that family history-shaped by gender, race, class, and age-is also inextricably bound up with broad political processes including colonialism, migration, and war." --Kristine Alexander, University of Lethbridge

Covers five centuries of Canadian history. Draws on English-language, French-language, and Indigenous historiographies. Connects political and economic history to social and cultural history, linking public and private life.

Magda Fahrni is an associate professor of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she teaches women's history, family history, and the history of twentieth-century Quebec and Canada. She is the author of Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction, which won the Clio-Quebec Prize by the Canadian Historical Association and was a finalist for the John A. Macdonald Prize of the Canadian Historical Association. She is also the co-author of Canadian Women: A History 3rd edition.

Covers five centuries of Canadian history. Draws on English-language, French-language, and Indigenous historiographies. Connects political and economic history to social and cultural history, linking public and private life.