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.

1912 in Boston, via the Nicholsons

Well,  a final piece to the puzzle that will be my ebook Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl - about a college girl in 1911/12, the Titanic Era.

Threshold Girl tells the story of Flora Nicholson, of Richmond Quebec and her year at Macdonald Teachers College and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster will tell the story of her older sister, Edith, already a teacher in Montreal, who loses her ‘great love’ in 1910 in an infamous hotel fire in Cornwall. The two stories overlap – and there`s the trick.

As it happens, Edith and Marion Nicholson, both older sisters of Flora, visit cousin Henry Watters in Newton Center Massachusetts in August 1912.

They visit Norumbega Park and go to a ball game on August 14. I found an ad for the same ball game in a now defunct Boston newspaper, placed under an ad for a Burlesque House.

Baseball wasn’t classy in 1910! Indeed, this newspaper,the Evening Transcript doesn’t cover the games. The sports page has news about tennis, sailing and even lawn bowling.

Now this April 14 newspaper is a real find for me. Because within its pages is a long article on a eugenics conference in London England.

Henry`s House, I think so. Today.

At the end of Threshold Girl I have Edith take Flora to a suffragette meeting in Montreal, where Carrie Derick, suffragist and biologist, is presiding. It’s a meeting of the Montreal Council of Women.

Edith points Derick out and tells Flora “She has many strange ideas.”

You see, Derick, a botanist, was a supporter of the eugenics movement.

So, here I can have Edith read the article and then ask her cousin, Dr. Henry Watters, his opinion.

It’s a great article. Ironically, it begins by saying that the most vocal opponents of this new fad, eugenics, are the Germans.  The Americans aren’t too keen either, (although their President was all for it, I believe.) Anyway there is some wonderfully weird stuff in this article, some of it pertinent to today, I mean with respect to how people view  scientific inquiry. (We have NOT come a long way, Baby!)

And better, right beside is an article about Canada: Our Up and Coming Neighbour: How Canada is Becoming a World Power. (Yea, right.)

The same edition has an advertisement for prime real estate in Montreal, on Ste. Catherine. So it is clear, the border is not as defined as it is today. The Nicholsons had many Massachusetts relations.

The reason the US is more skeptical about the eugenics movement, it is claimed, is because Americans marry for love, while Britons still marry for money and status. (The story of the Nicholson women (a true story based on real letters) reveals that money played a  BIG part in all middle class marriages. In fact, money and marriage is a key theme in my Spinster Story, for Edith`s beau is murdered trying to make enough money to marry her.

All so weird. Henry, if he likes baseball, wasn`t for eugenics. (or at least he won`t be for the purposes of my story).

Hmm. I will have to place them in a box seat though. I can`t imagine Edith sitting with the mob.

Funny, back then (and through the century) poor people went to baseball games. Now only the wealthy can afford to go and pay 10.00 for a hot dog, etc.)

It`s been years since I went to a game. To see the Expos, in the late 80`s I think. The roof was up and we were boiling. I had kids then and it cost a fortune, all the drinks. As a teen I went to Jarry Park and spent about 2.00 max!

I think I will have Edith ask Henry how much baseball players earn. He`will say Ì think they work for the  beer.

Now, I MUST get to writing the new outline of Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.  I still want the book to end when Edith faints in front of a painting of a woman breastfeeding mumbling to herself, I will never marry. I will never have children.

And that takes place on May 6, 1910, the day King Edward dies, (I think) so I am going to go back and forth in time.

Maternity, Mary Riter Hamilton. On exhibit in Montreal in 1912, but I`m making it 1910.

Religion and Politics and Power: 1912, 2012

Margaret Nicholson and Norman Nicholson in the garden at Tighsolas in Richmond Quebec. Norman in Masonic regalia (I have the sword!). The Presbyterians did not approve of the Masons, because they kept secrets from their wives. But not to be a Mason was social and business suicide for Norman.

Well, in a letter from 1909,Norman writes this to his wife Margaret:

You must have hit Uncle Alec hard when you mentioned about ‘milking cows and making fires’ and when you said St-Paul has been dead a long time and there have been many changes in the world since St. Paul’s time. I think women’s suffrage is one of the changes that will happen in the near future. Too absurd to think that a woman cannot exercise her franchise with as much intelligence as some of the male sex. And that they are making this so hard is so many countries when you have to drag some of these supposedly intelligent men to the polls as you would cattle. I think ladies taking an interest in politics could study out which side to take. I am giving you this speech as an extra.

It shows that Norman supported his wife (and vice versa as it happens) during hard times, even from his lonely post on the Canadian Transcontinental Railway in Northern Ontario.  But it also shows something else, that in those days,  religion was used as a tool to argue both for and against women getting the vote.

The sword. It is in my living room. (The family got it back through a strange coincidence.)

Last week I turned on the TV to a discussion on Meet the Press about religion’s place in politics. This is now an ongoing debate in the US, where once the establishment, at least, believed in the separation of church and state.

The American Right Wing is recognized as the “Religious” faction, although it appears a somewhat unholy alliance between Big Business and Evangelicals. And they are as anxious to change the social agenda as much as the political one.

As usual, it was argued that the Civil Rights Movement was a religious movement, “so if mixing religion and politics  was ‘good’ in that case, (everyone, left and right agrees) why can’t it be a good thing now?

( I think Salon had an article last year with the same argument. But I wish someone would bring up the Suffragette Movement, in this debate, because I think that movement better reflects what is going on today than the Civil Rights Movement. The Suffragette movement was an unholy alliance, too, between factions, business and social and political. And the Pankhurst’s et al handled these disparate parts with some savvy

Corset advert in April 19 Votes for Women Magazine.

Anyway, as it happens, the April 19, 1912 edition of Votes for Women has a rousing report on the debate by the National Union of Teachers, with the unfortunate acronym of NUT. For my book Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl, I will have Edith get her hands on a copy.

In Threshold Girl Edith takes sister Flora to hear a British suffragette speak, that’s  in early May.  As it also happens, right beside the article on the Teachers is a letter to the editor, from an Alberta Minister!! So perfect. Edith is thinking of quitting her job at her missionary school. The school is run by a man, Paul Villard.

Even though the Alberta Minister is living ‘near the Klondyke Trail’ he is definitely the working man’s proselytizer.

In Threshold Girl I show that some business people didn’t want women to get the vote because it was thought they’d vote for the removal of tarifs on cotton, so they could cheaper clothing. The Nicholsons were staunch Liberals, in large part because they felt their livelihood depended on it. They were sort of right.

Dear Editors of Votes for Women,

Last year, when I was working in London and occasionally had the privilege of speaking at Suffrge meetings held by the various societies, I frequently came across the view that the Bible strongly taught the subordinate position of women. St. Paul especially came in for a great deal of censure, and, as I would suggest, quite undeservedly. I always feel myself that the imperfections we notice in the Old Testament, which was written all the way through by men considerably in advance of their respective generations, show us more clearly than anything else the need for the higher conceptions in the New, and the careful student of the Bible may notice that the higher the revelation man received of God’s character the higher the honor paid to women hood.

In Christ people recognise that the ideal was reached in the matter, but it is often felt that St. Paul was somewhat retrograde. This is probably due to the fact that some of his letters to definite communities, written in reply to certain particular questions from those communities, contain advice which he thought suited to the particular occasions. To say that these statements that he sanctioned the subordinate position of women is scarcely fair. Another test I have often heard quoted against St. Paul is 1 Cor. Xi.2: “The head of a woman is the man.” I confess that at first sight these words seem to have hav only one possibly  significance, but ‘authority’ is beginning at the present time to have a meaning which our grandfathers were not familiar, but meaning which Christ and St. Paul both understood very clearly.

To our grandfathers, the word ‘authority’ almost implied the arbitrary right of one individual to treat another as he pleased. To Christ, to St. Paul, to some in authority in the governments of the present time, and to all, it can be hoped, in governments of the future, the word implies the obligation and privilege of one individual to do all in his power for those over whom he may be placed.

The difference is enormous.

I would now point out that the words ‘the head of the women is the man’ immediately follow the words “the head of every man is Christ.”

If these two sentences are taken together in this context, it would be clear, that Man in his attitude to women is to emulate Christ’s attitude to Man. Surely this is no base ideal.

I suppose it is gradually becoming recognised, that the three things that hinder the human race are race and colour prejudice, the inequality of sex and the differences between capital and labour.

In St. Paul’s day the prejudices between Jew and Gentile correspond with colour and race prejudices of the day,the struggle between bond and force correspond to our struggles between capital and labour.

The question of male and female has never come up asa practical question, but St. Paul was idealist enough to see that these prejudices and inequalities were never part of the divine scheme for the world.

And at the end of Galatiana number 3, he made this statement,which one could not but admire if it had been  made in the 20^th century, but when we realise that it was written about 48 AD we cannot but be astounded. The words are these: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

To remove these artificial divisions is the object of those who are now working for International Peace and for the Emancipation of Womanhood and for the welfare of all the labouring classes – St Paul’s Programme.

I have been today reading a little book which has just reached me in my log shack a few miles fro the Klondyke Trail. It is entitled Christ and Labour and in it eleven Labour members, whose speeches were delivered in Browning Hall during the second Labour Week, all avow that they intend to use their ‘authority: to give statutory effect to principles  of Christ’s teaching; and I believe it would be fair to St. Paul to say he has sketched out the lines of which this may be effective than to regard him as one who would lend his sanction to old customs out of which are rapidly growing, such as the subordinate position of women.

(Rev) W. L Seymour Dallas MA. Paddle River, Alberta, N.W. Canada.

(I checked. He doesn’t appear to have gone down in history.)

Fire of Genius

The Lauriers. Library and Archives Canada Image.

This snippet is from Maclean’s 1911 “the Four Lauriers” an essay that claims that there are at least four sides to the Laurier personality: the Laurier in ‘hostile’ Ontario; the Laurier in Quebec; the Laurier in Parliament; and the Laurier in his private office. This part is the Quebec part: Laurier would lose the election that year. In my novel Flo in the City, I have Margaret see him at the 1908 Tercentenary. She did attend, but was more interested in the Prince, I think.

The second Laurier that claims attention is the Laurier in Quebec. He has all those other heroes of that hero worshipping province , Lafontaine, Cartier, Mercier, Champlain, beaten a mile. Leaving the navy and individual politics out of the question, he unites all qualities the French demand of their public men, grace, distinction, eloquence and stage presence. He is a man to turn and look at in any company in the world. He might be taken for a great poet, a great actor, a great statesman. And any guess would be a good one, for he needs to be all three in his business. At all events, it is Quebec’s boast that you couldn’t mistake him for a little man anywhere. He is greater than the clergy; greater than that mauvais sujet Henri Bourassa; greater even than Quebec, for he thinks in half continents and Quebec thinks only for herself.

His name is music in the Quebec believer’s ear, for after all is said and done it is a French name and honor to Laurier is honor to the race. Envious people say that what Laurier gets in Quebec is divine homage such as the ancient Romans paid their emperors…

Sir Wilfrid himself is not without a sense of his own value with his own people. Being twitted once by a platform opponent, he quoted the words of a French philosopher, who, when asked what he thought of himself, replied “Very little when I judge; very much when I compare.”

Sir Wilfrid loves his Quebec and his Quebec loves him. And of all places in it he loves most its quaint old capital city, which was the beginning of Canada. The reason Sir Wilfrid loves Quebec is because it is soaked in history. Every foot of it is sacred ground; every inch of it teems with sentiment. The world is ruled by sentiment and there is no place in the world where sentiment is better conserved and oftener used than in Quebec. Politicians have to grasp this point at the start or they don’t go far – in Quebec. In Ontario they call it rhetoric and sniff at it, in Quebec they speak of it as the fire of genius and warm themselves at it. Sir Wilfrid is a great orator of the kind Quebec likes. Critics say that his English is better than his French – and that may be.

Sunday, Sunday

The Mount Royal Look Out 1910 (Valentine and son’s postcard)

In a previous installment of Flo in the City, my story based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, my social studies website about the 1910 era in Canada, I had one of the ‘characters’, Marion, a new teacher, write her lesson plan for the Monday on a Sunday in 1908.

In a 1913 letter, she remarks that she roasted a chicken ‘and on a Sunday.’

The Nicholsons were Presbyterians and very religious. Marion’s daughter, also Marion and my late mother in law, recalls that as a child in the 20′s, Sunday was a very quiet day at Tighsolas, as the kids couldn’t do anything.

Hmm. Margaret Nicholson went to church every day, and often twice a day. After all, there wasn’t much else to do in the house but work. And sermons were entertaining, and if the Minister was a dud, you still met neighbours and heard all the news at church.

In 1907, the Canadian Parliament passed the Lord’s Day Act. This is one case, where the leftist unions representing working people and religious institutions came together to try to give people a day of rest.

The United States hadn’t yet passed a such a law. In the 1909 Delineator, there’s an article. “Saving Sunday for America.” This Lord’s Day issue concerns both the man who carries ‘a dinner pail’ and the man who carries a Bible, says the article. The ordinary man, it seems, is merely inconvenienced. “I was up in Montreal the other day, where they’ve passed that blessed Lord’s Day Act, and do you know, I couldn’t buy a smoke in town. I was making something of a blow about it in the hotel lobby and when a young fellow stepped up to me and said, “Say, look here. Do you want to work seven days a week? ‘No,” I turned on him. “What has that got to do with it?” “Well,” he said.”I’m a cigar clerk and neither do I.”

It has been only since the 1990′s that large stores in Montreal have kept longer hours and stayed open Sunday. We still have few 24 establishments like in the US. Still, the parking lots of the mega shopping malls are now filled to the brim on Sundays. Shopping has become a leisure activity, one that is both ‘free’ and ‘expensive’, if you know what I mean. And with debit cards, and credit cards, money is almost always available. My father’s excuse for not spending on the weekends, “I didn’t get to the bank in time on Friday,” no longer stands up.

And in Quebec, we’ve just got rid of a rule that insists grocery stores keep no more than 6 people on staff on Sunday. They had to, because customers complained about the slow service. Many many people shop for food on Sundays, these days. We are a true 24/7 society, with more and more people working shifts.

Ironically, every since I can remember, Montreal has been ‘sin city’ where the entertainment establishments have stayed open late into the early morning hours. Toronto was always labelled Toronto the GOOD for its stubborn adherence to the Lord’s Day Act throughout the century.

Of course, the Lord’s Day Act contains an inherent Catch 22. If people are freed up on Sunday, not having to work, they need someplace to go for fun and leisure, like Dominion Park or the Nickel, and people are needed to run these entertainment establishments.

In Nickelodeons or Motion Picture Houses, apart from the people taking tickets, there was always a piano player and usually a speaker or explainer before and after the film – and sometimes even during the film. In French establishments the person was called a Bonmenteur and he was something of a cultural translator.

Today, in good economies at least, it’s students who take up the slack, taking tickets and doling out overpriced junk food at the local Odeon. It’s a perfect marriage of convenience, but only works if a student can keep up his or her grades.