• Welcome
  • Community Service
  • About
  • Speaking Events
  • Blog
  • Press
  • Publications
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Contact

Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, Ph.D.

~ History Provides Context

Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, Ph.D.

Tag Archives: Judy LaMarsh

Celebrating Great Canadian Women on International Women’s Day

01 Tue Mar 2016

Posted by Bonnie Reilly Schmidt in Canadian History, Society, Women in History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Women's Parliament, Aimee Semple McPherson, Canadian Women, Chatelaine Magazine, Doris Anderson, International Women's Day, Judy LaMarsh, Kathleen Klondike Kate Ryan, Lois Beckett, Manitoba Political Equality League, Sault Ste. Marie Police, Stelco Steel, Women in the RCMP, Women's Suffrage

International Women’s Day is a day set aside to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day during International Women’s Year in 1975, establishing March 8 as the day member states celebrate women.

International Year of the Woman

This year, March 8 is particularly significant because it marks the centenary of the date women first gained the right to vote in Canada. In 1916, Manitoba became the first province to grant women the suffrage in provincial elections, along with the right to hold public office. Women have come a long way since then. For the first time in Canadian history, women now hold half of the federal Cabinet positions in the House of Commons.

To celebrate, here are just some of the women who have helped to make Canada great and who have influenced and inspired me:

Doris Anderson (1921-2007)

Anderson was the editor of Chatelaine magazine from 1957-1977. As an activist, Anderson played an important role in championing women’s rights and advocating for social change through her editorials and the magazine’s content. Anderson’s editorials in particular were instrumental in applying pressure on the federal government to establish a Royal Commission to investigate the status of women in Canada. She also lobbied for the inclusion of women’s rights in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1981. Under her tenure as editor, Chatelaine’s readership rose to over one million.[1]

Doris Anderson Source: CBC News

Doris Anderson
Source: CBC News

The Women of the Stelco Steel Company (1943-1981)

During WWII, Stelco Steel in Hamilton, Ontario supplied steel for the building of ships, shells, and army transports. One of the largest steel producers in Canada, Stelco lost 1,500 men to the war. To fill the employment gap, the company hired women who worked in some of the toughest sections of the mill, including the blast furnaces. After the war, all of the women were fired. Between 1961 and 1977, no women were hired womens-rights1[1]at all. Only twenty-eight women, working in the tin mill and the cafeteria, were employed at Stelco while 13,000 men worked for the company. The disparity was challenged when five women launched a sex discrimination complaint against the company with the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1979. The women won their case and Stelco was forced to hire 180 women, all of whom lost their jobs during massive layoffs by Stelco in 1981.[2]

Julia Verlyn (Judy) LaMarsh (1924-1980)

In 1963, Judy LaMarsh was just the second woman in Canadian history to be appointed to a federal Cabinet position. As a minister, LaMarsh was instrumental in pressuring her cabinet colleagues to establish a Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada. She was also responsible for the implementation

Judy LaMarsh

Judy LaMarsh

of the Canada Pension Plan, designing Canada’s Medicare system, creating the Broadcasting Act, and overseeing Canada’s centennial celebrations as Secretary of State in 1967.[3] LaMarsh died of cancer in 1980, but her legacy lives on in the medical and social benefits that all Canadians enjoy today.

Kathleen “Klondike Kate” Ryan (1868-1932)

Ryan was the first white woman to arrive in Whitehorse in 1898 during the Yukon Gold Rush, mushing some 600 miles on foot along the Stikine Trail to get there. She established a successful restaurant business and regularly invested in gold. In 1900, Ryan was hired by the North-West Mounted Police as a matron to assist in the care of female prisoners. She was later appointed as a “Constable Special” to work as a gold inspector monitoring female smugglers. Ryan was so esteemed by the RCMP that when she died in Vancouver in 1932, the police force provided an honour guard for her funeral, a rare privilege that few women have been afforded.[4]

Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944)

Aimee Semple McPherson Source: Foursquare Church International

Aimee Semple McPherson
Source: Foursquare Church International

A missionary, radio broadcaster, evangelist, and author, Aimee McPherson was born in the small farming community of Salford, Ontario. McPherson’s evangelistic work landed her in Los Angeles where she established one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world, Angelus Temple, in 1923. During the Depression, McPherson’s temple fed and clothed thousands of homeless and destitute in Los Angeles. But she is best remembered for her colourful preaching and unconventional approach to spreading her “old-time gospel” message. McPherson was ahead of her time. She used radio broadcasts, stage plays, magazines, newspapers, and even a float in the Tournament of Roses parade to draw people to church and to God, methods that would become commonplace later in the century.

The Women of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Troop 17 (1974-1975)

In September 1974, thirty-two women arrived at the RCMP’s academy in Regina, Saskatchewan to begin training as the first women to join the RCMP. Although the RCMP signed up all thirty-two women at exactly the same time so no one woman would be able to claim that she was “the first,” the members of Troop 17 broke ground as the first female figures of authority in Canada’s national police force.

Female Troop Parade Square

Constable Lois Beckett, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (1949-1968)

Lois Beckett served as a constable with the Sault Ste. Marie Police Force between 1949 and 1968. Although she held the rank of constable during those years, she was paid less than men of the same rank. She was also denied membership in the force’s association because she was a woman. Beckett sued the police force and the association for discrimination. In response, the department dismissed her from her duties as a constable and reclassified her as a clerk-typist. In 1968, her case went to the Ontario Supreme Court where Justice R. Fergusson ruled against Beckett, arguing that she should be paid less than her male colleagues because, as a woman, she did not perform the same duties as men and did not have dependents to provide for. To Fergusson, the lower rate of pay was justified since it conformed to “all the rules of civilization, economics, family life and common sense.”[5] Nevertheless, her demands for equal pay and equal rights brought the issue before politicians and the public, opening the door for women’s rights as police officers.

The Women of the Manitoba Political Equality League (1912-1916)

On January 28, 1914, members of Manitoba’s Political Equality League staged a “A Women’s Parliament” at the Walker Theatre in Winnipeg. The satire starred suffragist Nellie McClung as the premier of a mythical province where women were the political leaders and men were asking for the right to vote. The women acted out a parliamentary debate discussing why men should be denied the vote, using the same arguments Manitoba’s politicians employed. But it was McClung’s thinly-disguised parody of the province’s long-time premier Rodmond Roblin that brought the house down. The satire was a brilliant strategy that placed the issue of voting rights into proper perspective for many Manitobans. In 1916, exactly two years to the day after the mock parliament was first performed, Manitoba women became the first in Canada to exercise their right to vote in provincial elections and to hold public office.[6]

Executive members of the League following the passage of the suffrage bill in Manitoba, 1916. Source: Manitoba Archives

Executive members of the League following the passage of the suffrage bill in Manitoba, 1916.
Source: Manitoba Archives

 

[1] Eberts, Mary. “‘Write It For the Women’: Doris Anderson, the Changemaker.” Canadian Woman Studies 26:2 (Summer/Fall 2007): 6-13.

[2] Meg Luxton and June Corman, “Getting to Work: The Challenge of the Women Back Into Stelco Campaign,” Labour/Le Travail 28 (Fall 1991).

[3] LaMarsh, Judy, Memoirs of a Bird in a Gilded Cage (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1968).

[4] Edmonds, William Lewis, “The Woman Called Klondike Kate,” Maclean’s (15 December 1922); Brennan, T. Ann, The Real Klondike Kate (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 1990).

[5] Doris Anderson, “The Strange Case of Policewoman Beckett,” Chatelaine 41:4 (April 1968): 3.

[6] http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/mcclung-played-the-crowd-like-a-vaudevillian-241934181.html.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Good Day for Canadian Women

04 Wed Nov 2015

Posted by Bonnie Reilly Schmidt in Society, Women in History, Women in the News

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cabinet Ministers, Ellen Fairclough, Judy LaMarsh, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Women and Merit, Women in Cabinet

As I watched fifteen female members of parliament being sworn in today as part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, I was thinking of two of their predecessors who also made political history. Ellen Fairclough (1905-2004) and Judy LaMarsh (1924-1980) were the first women to serve as federal cabinet ministers in Canada.

Ellen Fairclough

Ellen Fairclough

Fairclough was elected as a member of parliament for the riding of Hamilton West in 1950. She was the first Canadian woman to hold a cabinet post when Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed her as Secretary of State in 1957. The next year she held the portfolio of Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Under her direction, immigration legislation was reformed making Canada’s laws more progressive and less discriminatory against immigrants and refugees.

Judy LaMarsh, Member of Parliament for Niagara Falls, was the second woman in Canadian history to be appointed to a cabinet position. In 1963, Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson assigned her the portfolio of Minister of National Health and Welfare. LaMarsh was responsible for some of Canada’s most innovative social legislation during her tenure in office. She implemented the Canada Pension Plan, a national health care system, the Broadcasting Act, oversaw the country’s Centennial Year celebrations, and served as secretary of state from 1965-1968.

Judy LaMarsh

Judy LaMarsh

Both women were the only female members of their respective cabinets during their time in office. In contrast, the women who were sworn in today will be joined by fourteen female colleagues, an occurrence that both Fairclough and LaMarsh could only dream of.

Our new prime minister’s promise to create a cabinet that is more representative of the Canadian population has been criticized by many. Of course, questions of merit arise any time people start discussing women in powerful positions. Old arguments about affirmative action usually surface and the abilities of women who are given political power on an equal basis with men are often called into question.

(For more on the issue of merit see http://www.chatelaine.com/living/politics/justin-trudeaus-new-cabinet-is-a-dream-team-and-heres-why/.)

But the women who were sworn in today challenge assumptions of tokenism. They have backgrounds in international trade, United Nations peacekeeping, public relations, communications, law, medicine, worker’s compensation, Paralympic sport, medical geography, indigenous rights, political organization, and environmental protection, to name just a few. One, Kirsty Duncan, jointly holds a Nobel Prize for her participation on an intergovernmental panel on climate change.

Patricia Hajdu, Minister of the Status of Women (Source: @PattyHajdu)

Patricia Hajdu, Minister of the Status of Women

Yes, many of the rookie cabinet ministers will make mistakes and stumble as they learn their jobs and wrestle with some fairly daunting issues. But they’ll do so because they’re human, not because they’re women. “Government by cabinet is back,” according to Trudeau, and for the first time in Canadian history women will equally share in the burden of running the country.

Fifty-eight years ago, Judy LaMarsh recalled having to curtsey to the Governor General before taking her oath of office in 1963. Today the curtsies were dispensed with as the new ministers assumed their rightful place in leading our nation. It’s an exciting day for Canadian women, one that is long overdue.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Remembering the Journey: Judy LaMarsh

21 Wed Jan 2015

Posted by Bonnie Reilly Schmidt in Social Justice, Women in History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Judy LaMarsh, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, Women's rights in the 1970s

A number of women were instrumental in achieving the gains made by activists in the women’s movement during the 1960s and 70s. Their activism on behalf of women’s rights laid the groundwork for many of the social, economic, and political rights that Canadian women enjoy today.

Judy LaMarsh was one of these women. LaMarsh served as a member of the Canadian Women’s Army Corps from 1943-1946, obtaining the rank of sergeant. She trained as a lawyer following the war, entering politics in 1960 and winning her first seat in 1963 as a member of Parliament for the riding of Niagara Falls, Ontario. LaMarsh held a number of portfolios under the leadership of Liberal prime minister Lester B. Pearson, her most important being Secretary of State from 1965-68. She was only the second woman in Canadian history to hold a Cabinet post.

portrait%20judy%20lamarsh%202[1]

Judy LaMarsh (1924-1980)

LaMarsh proved to be an important ally within the government for the Canadian women’s movement. She had been quietly encouraging Pearson to establish a Royal Commission on the Status of Women since taking office. In her memoirs, LaMarsh claimed that Pearson had been prepared to accept her advice in 1965 until she publicly mentioned the need for a Royal Commission at a national women’s meeting. It was a comment that was vehemently attacked in the press by a number of male journalists. According to LaMarsh, “Pearson backed off as if stung with a nettle.”[1]

LaMarsh repeatedly raised the issue with him afterwards, but Pearson remained obdurate. It was not until 1967 that a door opened for LaMarsh to revisit the issue with the prime minister. On 5 January, journalist Barry Craig of the Toronto Globe and Mail published a threat made during an interview by Laura Sabia of the Committee for the Equality of Women in Canada (CEWC). Sabia impulsively told Craig that three million women were prepared to march on Parliament Hill to demand a Royal Commission if the government failed to meet its demands. LaMarsh later recalled that Pearson was “sufficiently frightened” by the prospect and wanted to re-open talks with the CEWC.[2]

Three days after Sabia’s threat was published, LaMarsh strategically delivered a public response, via the media, meant to appease the prime minister and members of the Cabinet. She warned the CEWC about its strident tone, cautioning that the “Prime Minister and the Cabinet are men as other men and if you have harpies harping at them you will just get their backs up and they won’t do anything. I think the women have made their point and they should just wait a few weeks and see what happens.”[3] By appearing to offer a more reasoned approach to the issue by publicly castigating the “harpies,” LaMarsh was pandering to male concepts of women and their proper role in society.

The tactic worked because it allowed Pearson to appear to be making an informed, rather than a reactive, decision. Some feminists later noted that LaMarsh’s pressure tactics inside the Cabinet were more important in gaining a Royal Commission than Sabia’s threatened march on Parliament Hill.[4] The approach that was the most influential has been a question of debate for decades. The answer is probably that both tactics were successful because on 16 February 1967, a Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was created.

2015: The Fortieth Anniversary of the United Nations’

International Women’s Year, 1975

 

[1] Judy LaMarsh, Memoirs of a Bird in a Gilded Cage (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968), 301. [2] Morris, “‘Determination and Thoroughness’,” 15. [3] Rudy Platiel, “Stop harping about a royal commission, Judy LaMarsh warns women’s group,” The Globe and Mail, 09 January 1967, 13. [4] Cerise Morris, “‘Determination and Thoroughness’: The Movement for a Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada,” Atlantis 5:2 (Spring 1980): 16.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...
Follow Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, Ph.D. on WordPress.com

Twitter

  • View @breillyschmidt’s profile on Twitter

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, Ph.D.
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Bonnie Reilly Schmidt, Ph.D.
    • Customise
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: