Canada’s Would be British Suffragette Leader

Barbara Wylie, From WSPU. She was on her way in September 1912 to convert Canadians to the cause, taking the Empress of Ireland (which would soon sink, I think).

Well, earlier I referred to Barbara Wylie as a rogue suffragette for the brazen way she promoted militant values in the speeches, when all the other visiting suffragists were much more careful to tone down  their rhetoric.

But she wasn’t rogue. She was sent by the WSPU as their representative.  They mentioned it in their magazine. Of course, one wonders why they sent her away to the colonies at all.

A short biographical paragraph about her I found on the Net from a book on the Suffragettes says she stayed in Canada from 1912-14, but not true, as I saw another article where she entertained a US journalist in her London home in August 1913. And she becomes spokesperson for the WSPU for a short while in 1914, with the Pankhursts in Jail again.

She had been the head of the Glasgow  branch of WSPU (some say Edinburgh) and then she came to London. She was one of the suffragettes put in jail for civil disobedience, window smashing in 1912, but apparently she was allowed out due to her mother’s ill health (ie. her parents had pull.)

She came to Canada as a brother was a MLS in Saskatchewan. (Perhaps she had dreams of becoming THE Suffrage Leader in Canada, as there was a vacuum, but that didn`t pan out.)

Anyway, Wylie figures in my story Threshold Girl. I fidget with dates, tho, bringing her to Montreal in May of 1912.  Flora Nicholson and Edith Nicholson go to see her speak in a church but miss the actual speech. I use dialogue from the Montreal Daily Star account in the book, the account I have on a news clipping belonging to Edith.  Yes, Wylie was militant, as in unapologetic about the more violent acts of the suffragettes, including attacks on the Prime Minister.

And the WSPU magazine, Votes for Women, figures in the follow up Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. Edith reads the article about women being tortured in jail and gets inspired to act out on an injustice in her own life, a perceived injustice.

Canada’s official women suffrage history centers on the Famous Five out west, Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung and those others  And like Carrie Derick in Montreal, who founded the Montreal Suffrage Association in 1912 maybe after  meeting Wylie, their women’s rights activism is all tied in with murkier things, like eugenics and temperance and moral and social reform.

Emily Murphy also got into the ‘war on drugs’ business, in the 20′s, a decade later than the Americans, but with the same racist slant.

That’s probably why they didn’t teach about suffrage movement  in City schools in my day.

As I’ve written, the Nicholsons of Richmond were tea-totalling Presbyterians, but only father Norman ever wrote about the dangers of drink. The women seemed more intent on getting all they  could out of life for themselves, love, nice clothes, great jobs, lots of travel, the right to earn a proper living, suffragettes in the truest form, wanting the same rights as the men.

There were not interested in social welfare per se, but as teachers in the big city, they were thrown head-long into the problem and given hands on experience.

Biology and Ambition, the epistolary novel about Marion Nicholson’s early life reveals that this future union leader just wanted an even playing field. She was willing to work for the rest. (Boy, would she have made a great suffragette!)

Anyway, the press covered Miss Wylie (that was the point and she was so PRETTY! sic) in Toronto her speech is reported on and in Calgary I found an article that makes fun of her militancy, light of it.

Actually, a ‘snippet’ tour I just took of Google Books shows that Miss Wylie has left a legacy as a suffragette, in the scholarship, mentioned in Dame Pankhurst’s 1930′s autobiography.

And her Canadian tour aroused interest, at least converting women journalists to the cause. One account said she received a cold shoulder in the East but a nicer reception out West. After the Calgary talk, a suffrage association was started up, so even with the mocking, it worked. And she was active in BC. Her brother, the MLA, pushed for women suffrage in Saskatchewan.

Anglo Enclaves and Such

Unknown man and women. Tighsolas. I think this may be Henry Watters and sisters. Why? Because the only picture of Henry I have (had, I lost it) was a photocopy of a microfilm obituary. And I recall he looked like this, deep set eyes. I found his obit in the New England Journal of Medicine. He studied in the US, his medical studies anyway after being graduated (they used the right term) from St. Francis College. He interned in 1905 at Newton. (I have letters from him when he is starting his practice, working for free for poor people.) He was on the Board of Trustees of Newton Hospital. Died at 56 in 1937. (He’s buried in Melbourne.)

I’ve continued my tour of 1910 Montreal, St-Antoine and I finally found my anglo enclave, on streets around Belmont (Imperial?) that no longer exist. Well, Belmont, is gone too, I think. It is under Place Bonaventure. (McGill Normal School was on Belmont in 1905 when Marion was at college. It was a real hole apparently. Flora was much much luckier to be at Macdonald.
“Everyone hates the Normal,” Marion wrote in a letter from school.

And I found my Jewish/Italian Enclave just north and east of Royal Arthur, (St-Felix) just south of Dorchester, again where the Ville Marie now is.

Lots of Russian Jews who had just arrived. In 1910. The worker in one family, a tailor.

I found the richest guy in the area, a jeweller for a store, maybe Birks. Anglo. Made 1800 that past year, he said. The only decent salary in the entire area.

And I found more Italian Presbyterians. All cabinet makers. And some Americans who were written down as Negroes. (Porter.)And Chinese men who worked as launderers, who’d been in Canada since the 70′s and 80′s. The Railroad!

And I found one Greek, a peanut salesman, working for peanuts, 480. a year, but that’s just 20 dollars less than Norman Nicholson makes in 1912 in Hearst, Ontario on the Transcontinental Railway after the Liberals lose the Free Trade Election.

And then I stumbled on an entire page of people who didn’t work. I noticed they were written down as “inmates,” then I noticed they were all Irish Catholics, most elderly, in their 60′s and 70′s, one 16 and one 95.

M. Bridges Havre on La Gauchetiere. Must mean haven. Hopefully not a workhouse. They still had those in England in 1910.

My husband asked why I cared about finding these Protestants and Jews. Because they were the families of the kids attending Marion and Flo’s Schools. They were the reason the Nicholson women got jobs in the city and why the Flo wrote at graduation time: ‘We have the Montreal Board at our mercy.”

I still haven’t found anyone working at Dominion Textile. I found some tobacco workers, though.

Marion’s Multicultural School

Well, I am exploring the 1910 Montreal Jewish community for my book, Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in that pivotal era, when I came across a 1910 Gazette article that combines information about the Jewish Community with information about Marion’s school board.

A back to school HEADLINE in September 1910 says that 30 percent of the students in the Protestant System are Jewish.

The article says that there is a 2000 pupil increase in the Protestant Board in 1910 due to annexation of two wards.

The article says that there is a shuffling of male Principals in four schools, and they are still looking for a Principal for William Lunn, although a senior woman teacher is filling in for the interim. (BIG SIC). Flora goes to teach there in 1912 and that school certainly has male principal at that time, although, he is Canadian and NOT ENGLISH, as in British, which makes Margaret, Flora’s mom, very happy.

Luckily, few teachers in the board have resigned in 1910. Well, Marion sure didn’t. Marion’s school, Royal Arthur, partially burned down in 1909, but luckily the new building was ready for 1910. Still, there was overcrowding in some schools as new buildings were being finished.

Apparently, many Protestant students were bussed a long way into the city.

And I’m going to quote this last bit, even though Google news archives says no copying.. but it’s too good to paraphrase, so I have gone to McGill and looked it up myself on the microfilm…Phew that was a tiring trip and those machines at McGill, so antiquated, but as an alumus, I am allowed to use the library.

“The Montreal schools, judging from impressions gained from the principals, on the opening day yesterday will this year be even more cosmopolitain than ever. The percentage of Hebrew children in the schools will be more than thirty, some of the schools in the poorer districts, such as Dufferin containing few of any other creed. The children at the schools are of many races and a pleasing feature is the eagerness shown by Montreal’s new citizens to place their children where they could get as fair a start in life as childen of the others. Many of the children who applied for admittance could scarcely speak English,and the teachers had in some cases a difficult task, hardly knowing how to deal with these foreign youngsters.”

Well, I like this paragraph. It reads like a March of Time, without the pictures.
But it paints a picture of a 1910 Montreal filling up with immigrants (despite what the Immigration Officials told the NYT.)

Here’s a link to the Google archive page, so you don’t have to go downtown to the McLennan Library at McGill.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MokjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-YQFAAAAIBAJ&dq=royal%20arthur%20school&pg=6624%2C602353

And this 30 percent number is why, at this time, there’s a controversy going on regarding school board representation. I have to read up more, but it seems to me that Board were changing over from an appointed Board to an elected Board and many people didn’t want the Jewish Parents to participate. Stay tuned.