Abstract
This article examines the life stories of three men who fathered children during Canada’s 1949-1961 baby boom. Drawn from a sample of thirty-five interviews, these particular cases offer rich comparisons, across ethnic and class lines, of what these men valued most about their fathering years. At the conclusion of his interviews, Rutherdale asked his participants to reflect on the socially and historically significant role of fatherhood and how they thought it had changed since the baby-boom period. To this end, he considers the ways that these men, especially when recalling their leisure time at home, engaged in nostalgic reminiscences. This was, as Rutherdale notes, markedly different from how they recalled their roles as providers; the intensification of the male breadwinner ideology, during this period of economic growth, impacted remembering. Taken together, Rutherdale offers intriguing examples of how memory navigates the boundaries between fact and fiction, and between fathers as “providers” with real regrets about the past and fathers as “nostalgic” family men who longed for what they imagined as an ideal past.
