I am looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in the Tri-U program and supervise graduate students undertaking research on Canadian, rural, agricultural, or gender history.
What Canada Ate
Dr. Beausaert is the co-founder and co-director of What Canada Ate, an online archive of digitized historical cookbooks and student-curated exhibits, created in partnership with Archival & Special Collections at the University of Guelph in 2018.
Scanned image of cookbook cover, Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825-1949, by Elizabeth Driver, courtesy of What Canada Ate.
Introducing Dr. Rebecca Beausaert
The Tri-U History Program is excited to announce that Dr. Rebecca Beausaert was appointed as Assistant Professor and the Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professor in Rural History (see below) at the University of Guelph beginning July 1.
"It's terrific news!" says Dr. Adam Crerar, the Tri-U Director. "For years, the Tri-U has been one of the leading centres for the study of rural history in Canada. The appointment of Dr. Beausaert—an award-winning teacher and a leading researcher in the subject—means that we can build on this strength and that the field will be in excellent hands for years to come."
Dr. Beausaert is a specialist in Canadian social and cultural history and holds a Ph.D. in History from York University. She has strong connections to the Tri-U program, having been an adjunct professor at the University of Guelph and part-time faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University for over ten years.
For Professor Beausaert’s contributions to student learning, she received the Sessional and CLA Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Arts in 2015 and the Canadian Historical Association's Teaching Prize (Early or Alternative Career - Canadian History) in 2023.
Dr. Beausaert's Research
Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914 (University of Manitoba Press, 2024), was Dr. Beausaert’s first book. It assesses how women engaged with leisure in the southern Ontario communities of Dresden, Tillsonburg, and Elora during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Her current research project examines women's labour on tobacco farms in southwestern Ontario between the 1940s and 1980s.
Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History
The University of Guelph's rural history research challenges simplistic, urban-centric views of the past. Historians study rural men, women, and communities from their own perspectives, exploring their efforts to shape society. This field encompasses both agricultural and non-agricultural life, including social, political, and economic aspects.
In October 2013, the University of Guelph announced the College of Arts Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History at an event with the Redelmeier family. At the time, the Guelph library also received 60 years’ worth of farm records and other material from the Redelmeier’s dairy farm near Richmond Hill, Ontario with the hope that the story of one farm and one family would inform generations to come. Recently retired Professor Catharine Wilson, F. R. S. C., was the first historian to hold the Professorship and now Dr. Beausaert takes up the work.
Read the rest of the original story @Guelph
Ruth Redelmeier (centre) is pictured with other family members and Guelph university staff on October 15, 2013, on the occasion of the announcement of the Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professorship in Rural History.
Rural History Roundtable
One of the activities of the professorship is to coordinate The Rural History Roundtable speaker series with Fall and Winter sessions. This series features lectures by renowned international scholars and offers graduate students a platform to share their latest research. The lectures are open to the public and hosted on Guelph’s campus, but also often available on Zoom. To get a taste of the series, see the lecture topics from Winter 2025. The list of speakers for the 2025-26 session will be announced shortly through the Roundtable website.