The Life and Letters of Annie Leake Tuttle: Working for the Best (Life Writing, 7)

Annie Leake Tuttle was born in Nova Scotia in 1839 and died there in 1934, yet her search for education and self-support took her far afield. During her life she filled important positions from Newfoundland to British Columbia, as an educator of teachers and as the matron of a Methodist rescue home for Chinese immigrant women who had worked as prostitutes. Her autobiography paints a vivid picture of the joys and hardships of growing up on a pioneer farm and documents her spiritual and educational quests and conquests. In addition, readers see the independence and strength of character that enable Annie Tuttle to take on family obligations that fall to an unmarried daughter and sister, and to meet the challenges of step-motherhood, the adjustments of aging and ultimately the prospect of death.

Marilyn Färdig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle’s autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that “One above” was always “working for the best,” helping her in the work she was intended to do.

In The Life of Annie Leake Tuttle: Working for the Best, we find a rich collection of the writings of an articulate woman who shows herself to be both ordinary and extraordinary. It is a fascinating chronicle of the spiritual and secular life of an independent and spirited woman in early Canada.

Marily Färdig Whiteley is an independent scholar who has taught at universities in Canada and the United States, and has been a staff member at the United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives.