"We know a lot about how men were having fun and there were lots of leisure activities for men, but what about women?"

That is the question Guelph author Rebecca Beausaert set out to answer in her new book Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914.

Often when people think of women from southern Ontario during the turn of the 20th century they might picture boring, quiet and meek women.

But through Beausaert's research into what women from Dresden, Tillsonburg and Elora, were …