Domestic Goods:

Visions of life in the fifties often spring from America: supermarkets, freeways, huge gleaming cars, pink washer dryers, automated households. For the first time historian Joy Parr searches behind the generalizations about the prodigality of this era to look for a specifically Canadian consumer life. Focusing on the records left by consumers and manufacturers, and relying on interviews and letters from many Canadian women who married in the decade after the war, she reveals exactly how and why Canadian homemakers distinguished themselves from the consumer frenzy of their southern neighbours.Domestic Goods is primarily concerned with furniture and appliances. For Parr, the problems of design, production, and consumption demand an analysis of the intertwining of the political, economic, and aesthetic. The international style of 'high modernism' reflected the postwar dream of free trade. The desire for economic self-sufficiency influenced the creation of the tools Canadians would have in their homes. But while manufacturers devised new plans for the consumer, depression-era frugality, a conscious modesty, and their shared aspirationsJoy Parr is the author of 'Domestic Goods:', published 1999 under ISBN 9780802079473 and ISBN 0802079474.