Helen joseph armstrong biography of alberta

Absences in the historical record are often as compelling as the existing evidence, something I discovered in the process of writing and directing my first biography on film. I found that absence can become a space for speculation, for turning over the surviving historical fragments and trying to visualize the pieces that somehow went missing.

This kind of speculation can rapidly escalate into obsession, as I discovered about five years ago when I began catching occasional glimpses of a woman who would later become as familiar to me as the members of my own family.

Her name was Helen Armstrong, a working-class housewife and mother of four who rose to the front ranks of labour leadership during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, one of the largest worker uprisings in Canadian history.

She would become the subject of my documentary, The Notorious Mrs.

Armstrong, but not before I undertook a journey into the past that would take me all over North America and back more than e