Heroic and Imperfect Efforts

Twenty-five years ago, I was a graduate student attending a conference, where a reputable senior scholar showed an emphatic interest in some questions I asked from the audience. Following his talk, he sought me out. The next day, he approached me again, this time insisting we meet for coffee. I knew that professors rarely showed such unrelenting interest in students and their ideas. Finding his behaviour rather odd and being more interested in spending a sunny afternoon outside, I refused his invitation. Only decades later did I understand how vulnerable I might have been, when stories surfaced about his serial sexual pursuit of young women.

Decades before my conference encounter, Bonnie Robichaud went to her first day as a cleaner at CFB North Bay, in Ontario. As she explains in It Should Be Easy to Fix, she was a young immigrant and the married mother of five; full-time employment, with steady hours and good pay, was a relief after years of precarious...