Explore posts on people and organizations!
This section introduces readers to both champions and opponents of suffrage extension. This may mean little more than the bare bones story of an individual or organization, although at least one bibliographic reference is included. As with other posts, we limit contributions to 500 words, a length sufficient we hope to introduce the subject without pretending to be comprehensive. We have begun with better-known contributors to campaigns. We welcome additions. If readers have special family or other knowledge about participants, we would be particularly happy to include it as part of the recovery to which this site is dedicated.
Youth Activism: the Case of Canadian Brigette DePape
by Veronica Strong-Boag
Canada has a long history of youthful protesters. In the 19th century, girls and young women demanded entry into Canadian colleges and universities. The youth of many first feminists should not be forgotten. Student doctors, such as Bishop’s Octavia Grace Ritchie (-England), Queen’s Elizabeth Smith (-Shortt), and Toronto’s Augusta Stowe (-Gullen) repudiated pervasive misogyny in their medical programs in the 1880s and went on to campaign for women’s rights (Hacker). Later on, generations of youthful activists honed their skills in groups such as the Student Christian Movement, the Council of Young Canadians, and the Student Union for Peace Action. Some found inspiration in political parties, notably but not only those of the left.
Christian Reformers: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
by Sharon Anne Cook
Founded in 1874 to counter the evils of alcohol, the Canadian Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) rapidly grew into a multi-faceted organization that championed various forms of childhood and adult education, homes for abandoned and ‘fallen’, poor, and orphaned women and children, humane care of the indigent aged, residences and ‘Travelers’ Aid’ for single working women, women’s hospitals, coffee houses, and reading rooms, traveling lecturers and missionaries.
Buffy Sainte-Marie
by Veronica Strong-Boag
Canadian-born, Indigenous activist and artist Buffy Sainte-Marie has championed democracy for over half a century. In 1963, her anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier” condemned the Vietnam War. In 2013, she stood before the Manitoba legislature to endorse Idle No More. Sainte-Marie’s remarkable life began in very difficult circumstances on the Piapot Cree reserve in Saskatchewan. Like many other poor children, especially those from Canada’s Indigenous communities after World War Two (Strong-Boag), she was adopted out, in her case to a family with a mother with Micmac ancestry in Massachusetts, U.S.A.
New Woman, New North: The Arctic Journey of Agnes Deans Cameron
by Tiffany Johnstone
As the 19th century drew to a close, the completion of the western portion of the C.P.R., along with the Klondike Gold Rush, spurred international interest in remote regions of Canada. In particular, well-known U.S. authors and journalists such as Hamlin Garland, Jack London, and W.H.H. Murray wrote about the Canadian northwest as a kind of mythic last frontier in which American (and by extension Canadian) men could somehow test their masculinity and relive frontier individualism (Bloom; Doyle).
Angela Merkel: The Iron Mother
by Veronica Strong-Boag
Angela Merkel, the first female Chancellor of Germany (since 2005) and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is generally regarded as the most powerful woman in Europe and, given the power of Germany, one of the most powerful in the world. She has regularly topped Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s most powerful women.
A Double Life: The Legacy of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake
by Tiffany Johnstone
On March 10th, 1913, flags were lowered as Vancouver came to a stand still for the largest funeral in the city’s history. Huge crowds lined Georgia Street to witness the passage of E. Pauline Johnson’s coffin. Vancouver was saying goodbye to an icon. An internationally renowned poet and performance artist, Johnson played the difficult roles of defining Canada on the world stage and of making a place for women and First Nations people on that stage at the turn of the 20th century.
Rose Henderson
by Peter Campbell
Little is known about the early life of Rose Henderson, who was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1871. Arriving in North America in 1885, she married accountant Charles Henderson and seemed destined to settle into an unremarkable and respectable life in Montréal, Québec. When her husband died suddenly in January 1904 Henderson was still a young woman in her mid-30s, the mother of one daughter, Ida. Encountering poverty-stricken young people during Sunday School visits following her husband’s death, Henderson became committed to improving the lives of disadvantaged women and children.
Mary Ellen Spear Smith
by Veronica Strong-Boag
This first female member of the British Columbia Legislature and the first female cabinet minister in the British Commonwealth has often been overlooked by both the public and by scholars. She should not be. In many ways Mary Ellen Smith is the archetypal political representative of Canada’s first feminist movement. Her near oblivion until her designation as a National Historic Person in Canada in 2006 only confirmed the need to recover the activist generation that substantially enlarged the Canadian electorate and put so-called ‘women’s issues’ legislatively centre-front in the 1920s.
Tammy Baldwin
by Kelsey Wrightson
In the American Federal election on the 6th of November 2012, Tammy Baldwin was elected as Senator for the State of Wisconsin. Her victory is remarkable because she defeated well-liked Republican Senator Tommy Thompson. Even more importantly, she is also the first woman to represent Wisconsin in the Senate and the first openly gay Senator.