I found this book to be a bit of a head-scratcher. I have no idea of the book's provenance, how Anne McDonald came across it, or how she decided it was worth the public's eyes. I'm happy she did make this decision, however.

The author's diary, Mercy Anne Coles, the daughter of Prince Edward Island delegate George Coles, spent some months traveling with her parents to the Confederation Conference in 1864, and gives us some bland AND spicy details behind the creation of Canada the country. McDonald shows her research chops, peppering the narrative with just enough footnotes to bring us along without feeling like an alien to the whole affair. If Miss Coles had been a larger figure in Canadian history, we most likely would have had excerpts from other correspondence to fill in some blanks, but had she been that larger figure, the diary would have been tucked away in a box in a museum instead of been given the proper airing the public deserves.

Four stars.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free advance reading copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review. This has not affected my opinion.

One could probably say that this book wasn't for me: I've never been to Canada, nor have I ever even heard its history properly. Of course, I looked up a brief summary of events online before reading this book, but it's not the same. I have no concept of how Canada was formed. And yet, I expected this book to be interesting because it's a diary of a real young lady who lived in the 1860's - and I am always fascinated by real stories of people who lived in times long past. But I was somewhat disappointed, as her actual diary passages are really short. There is a lot of background and commentary, and it's done well and researched, but I felt like it was a little far fetched. The author kept drawing conclusions about how Mercy, the author of the diary, felt about complicated things, basing it all off like three sentences each time, and I just couldn't see it. I couldn't see her taking all that interest in flirting with the people there, or her excitement or anything. All I saw were very short passages of text. Although I guess it's correct to say that the author researched everything and was much more invested in this story than I was. Still, I think if you are interested in the history of Canada, this is a great resource, especially because it's one of those few untold histories of it, as it's written by a woman.

I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook through NetGalley in exchange to an honest review. This has not affected my opinion.

What an interesting look at a time and events that I didn't know much about! I loved seeing the way things unfolded. Very unique, especially since the narration was from the viewpoint of a young woman in a very male dominated time.

Fascinating diary of Mercy Coles . Detailing gossip and social commentary. It's a part travelogue giving detailed descriptive descriptions of her family's travels across Canada and through these parts of the U.S states of Ohio,Pennsylvania and New York and their return trip home to PEI, Canada. The traveling was done October 5,1864 to November 17,1864. After New York they traveled to Boston on their way back to Prince Edward Island. The research that was done to make this book come alive is to be applauded as it makes it all the better.
Pub Date 18 Jul 2017
Thank you to NetGalley and Dundurn for a review copy in exchange for my honest review.

Did not read. It was archived prematurely before I had downloaded it.

Miss Confederation is the diary of Mercy Coles who traveled with her parents for the Canadian Confederation Conference in 1864. It's a great piece of Canadian history. The diary is printed in its entirety for the first time. Coles is a candid diarist and the editor adds interesting commentary to fill in the gaps.

At the end of my Grade 11 year, one of my final projects was a Multimedia Presentation on a topic of my choice. Loving history, I decided to focus on Canadian confederation, particularly what I called "The Mothers of Confederation", really, the women who made confederation happen, in contrast to the Fathers of Confederation.

One of the women I researched and who became a Mother in my books was Mercy Coles. Her diary gives us a rare glimpse into what the conferences discussing Canadian confederation were really like, from a unique perspective. As McDonald comments, "It is the only full account of these events from a woman’s perspective. Further, it’s not tied to political ideals or machinations. It is a record caught at the moment history was being made, without the veneer or gloss that passing time creates." So you can imagine my excitement when I found Miss Confederation on NetGalley, by one of my fave publishers!

I have never read McDonald's work before, but she does a really superb job through Miss Confederation. She gives a well-rounded view and explanation of the conferences, and a descriptive and well-researched account from Mercy's diary itself. Not only that, but McDonald takes us beyond the pages of Mercy's diary to the people, places and spots of the entries. McDonald gives character descriptions for the people mentioned in Mercy's diary, allowing us to 'meet' Mercy's friends, just as she did over 150 years ago. The way McDonald handled perusing through Mercy's diary was really fantastic, and I enjoyed the commentary on John A. and Mercy especially. (Hello! Who doesn't love John A?!)

Overall, Miss Confederation is a delicious book for us female history nerds to curl up with on a rainy day. It's empowering and it's incredible to take a look at a woman who shaped Confederation in her own way. Without Mercy, where would we be? Most likely, Confederation would be just another history event told entirely by men. While this isn't inherently evil, it's refreshing and encouraging to study history from a different angle. As McDonald concludes, "Who we love and loved, who loves us and when; these are some of the essential ingredients of our lives. We live longer and happier lives when we have good connections with people. The research is clear: our relationships with others, and how we live, affect the tenor, the health, even the very span of our lives. How can we possibly understand our history if we don’t look at the relationships of individuals, and their connections with people? That John A. Macdonald or Leonard Tilley may have been interested in Mercy Coles, that she may have been in them, or that she thought they were in her, makes those ever-important social events in Charlottetown and Quebec all the more crucial to know from other perspectives, not only those of the men known to history." Well said, Anne. Well said.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest review.

There's something so so fascinating about the birth of a country - how it starts out, the people that make it, those who stand out for going against the grain, doing things we now either take for granted or would never consider. At a time when it was really a man's world, where politics were certainly not the playground for women, stories like that of Mercy Coles is even more interesting than ever.

I'm a history buff and have dozens of books on Canada's history. I visited as many historical sites as I could when there and even visited Charlottetown but I hadn't noticed quite what an significant role someone here had played in its history.

The use of the diaries and the special insight this book gives is amazing and I can only imagine the level of research the author did to get this story in this easily accessible format. Stories like this could be lost to history if people didn't write them down and bring them to life and for me that's exactly what Anne McDonald has done

I will post this in July close to Canada Day for the anniversary