Herstory on the Streets of Ottawa

I'm back in Ottawa (second time in a week) for meetings and I decided to go for a walk after being cooped up in the plane for 4 and a half hours. Ottawa is under a ton of construction as our nation's capital gets ready for the big 150 next year which  means you can't get close to much for the time being. I sailed on by the War Memorial and as I approached the familiar side of the street to get to the underpass to go to Rideau Centre, there was a public exhibition mounted in front of the old train station where we did our final presentation at the GGCLC in 2012.

 The first thing I see is a giant poster that says "A Greater Sisterhood: The Women's Rights Struggles in Canada." Then I look around and see the faces of so many women mounted over about a half block - and not just white women. Indigenous women, francophone women, black women, Asian women depicted from all eras in diverse areas of expertise. Some I knew, some I didn't and now I have a whole bunch of new heroines to look up to. 

 These sisters are serious trail blazers contributing not only to Canadian society but to the world.
  • Beverly McLachlin - first woman to be named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the first woman to hold that position in a Commonwealth country
  • Rosemary Brown - first black woman to be elected to the provincial legislature (BC) and also ran for leader of the NDP. "Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it."
  • Adrienne Clarkson - journalist and first Chinese Canadian to hold the position. I had the opportunity to see her speak at the end of our socioeconomic boot camp at the GGCLC in 2012. 
  • Buffy St. Marie - singer/songwriter and activist for indigenous rights
  • Roberta Bondar - Canada's first female astronaut and the world's first neurologist in space
  • Sheila Watt-Cloutier - Inuit activist and chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council 2002-2006
  • Mary Two-Axe Early - activst for the rights of First Nations Women - she was stripped of her status because she married a non-Indian man - in 1985 she became the first woman to regain her status
  • Ellen Fairclough - Canada's first female federal cabinet minister. She introduced legislation that reduced racial discrimination in our immigration policies.
  • Jeanne Sauve - first female cabinet minister from Quebec and first female speaker of the House of Commons AND first female appointed Governor General in 1984. Wow.
  • Kim Campbell - Canada's first female Prime Minister (and UBC alumni)
  • Florence Bird - chair of the Federal Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1967
  • Madeleine Parent - Quebec labour activist and a founding member of the Confederation of Canadian Unions.
  • Canadian Women's Army Corps - 25k + women served in WWII leading to the integration of women in our armed forces
  • Veronica Foster - the face of the nearly 1 million women who worked in plants and factories during WWII
  • Fanny "Bobby" Rosenfeld - advocate for women's participation in sports and a gold and silver medalist at the 1928 Olympics
  • Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw - founder of medical director of Canada's first birth control clinic in Hamilton. The illegal clinic operated until 1966 and contraception was decriminalized in 1969. This one made me cry. We owe a lot to women like Dr. Bagshaw. 
  • Nellie McClung - key woman in the Canadian suffragette movement
  • Violet McNaughton - founding president of the Saskatchewan Women Grain Growers and helped get (white) women the vote in Saskatchewan in 1916
  • Marie Lacoste Gerin-Lajoie - founded the Federation nationale Saint-Jean-Baptistery to mobilize francophone women for political reform.
  • Agnes McPhail - first woman elected to the House of Commons
  • Canada's Nursing Sisters - 2000+ nurses served overseas during WWI and became some of the first women to vote in country after all military personnel (including nurses) were given that right in 1917
  • Therese Casgrain - president of the League for Women's Rights and the leader of the Quebec wing of the CCF
  • Viola Desmond - refused to leave a whites-only section of a movie theatre in November Scotia helping pave the way for civil rights in Canada
  • Louise Arbour - chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague
What an incredible array of women. .

Herstory brought to you by Canada Heritage and Library and Archives Canada. I encourage you to visit this display if you are in Ottawa.




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