Emily Stowe was a pioneer in the feminist movement – one of the first women in Ontario to attend medical school, one of the first to demand the right to vote. Her story is certainly worth telling, and Sydell Waxman does a competent job in Changing the Pattern. Stowe’s parents were farmers, but they were also educated Quakers. When the Rebellion of 1837 came, six-year-old Emily watched her family and neighbours hide rebels from government forces. One great-uncle, a magistrate, was arrested. As Waxman notes, Emily learned from this that governments could be challenged.

Stowe became a teacher, then the first female principal of a Canadian elementary school. Her initial application to the University of Toronto medical school was refused because women were not admitted, and she did not study medicine there until she was 40. By then she was a married woman with three children, an invalid husband, and medical training acquired in the United States. She practiced medicine for 13 years before she was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Ironically, this happened only because she was tried in the death of a patient. She also played an active role in the women’s suffrage movement, and was instrumental in establishing Women’s College Hospital.

Changing the Pattern is laid out in one-page vignettes, with brief sidebars that provide biographical and wider cultural information. There are plenty of photos. Linda Potts’s line-drawings are done in a mid-20th-century commercial-art style that looks anachronistic and will eventually date the book, but this will not bother most readers.

Waxman vividly shows the gauntlet of abuse that early feminists were subjected to whenever they challenged the status quo. But Changing the Pattern is overtly didactic – it feels more like a classroom resource book than one that would be read for pleasure. For that reason, the classroom is likely to be its main habitat.