University Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada 9780228009900

Table of contents :
Cover
UNIVERSITY WOMEN
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
FIGURES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
1 Educated Women Schooling the Daughters of the New Dominion
2 Sex and Race in Education The Campaign for Coeducation
3 Separate and Different Women’s Colleges and Self-Support
4 Becoming Undergraduates Rights and Responsibilities of College Life
5 An Insurrection of Women Deans, Suffrage, and Self-Government
6 Furies and Flappers Toward Academic Separation
Conclusion
APPENDIX 1 Admission Dates by University
APPENDIX 2 First Women Graduates
APPENDIX 3 Women’s Colleges with University Affiliation
APPENDIX 4 First Residences and Deans of Women
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

UNIVERSITY WOMEN

CARLETON LIBRARY SERIES The Carleton Library Series publishes books about Canadian economics, geography, history, politics, public policy, society and culture, and related topics, in the form of leading new scholarship and reprints of classics in these fields. The series is funded by Carleton University, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, and is under the guidance of the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board, which consists of faculty members of Carleton University. Suggestions and proposals for manuscripts and new editions of classic works are welcome and may be directed to the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board c/o the Library, Carleton University, Ottawa k1s 5b6, at [email protected], or on the web at www.carleton.ca/cls. CLS board members: John Clarke, Ross Eaman, Jennifer Henderson, Paul Litt, Laura Macdonald, Jody Mason, Stanley Winer, Barry Wright 243 The Hand of God Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925–1971 Michael Gauvreau 244 Report on Social Security for Canada (New Edition) Leonard Marsh 245 Like Everyone Else but Different The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, Second Edition Morton Weinfeld with Randal F. Schnoor and Michelle Shames 246 Beardmore The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History Douglas Hunter 247 Stanley’s Dream The Medical Expedition to Easter Island Jacalyn Duffin 248 Change and Continuity Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium Edited by Mark P. Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli, and Olena Lyubchenko 249 Home Feelings Liberal Citizenship and the Canadian Reading Camp Movement Jody Mason

250 The Art of Sharing The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces since Confederation Mary Janigan 251 Recognition and Revelation Short Nonfiction Writings Margaret Laurence Edited by Nora Foster Stovel 252 Anxious Days and Tearful Nights Canadian War Wives during the Great War Martha Hanna 253 Take a Number How Citizens’ Encounters with Government Shape Political Engagement Elisabeth Gidengil 254 Mrs Dalgairns’s Kitchen Rediscovering “The Practice of Cookery” Edited by Mary F. Williamson 255 Blacks in Canada A History, Third Edition Robin W. Winks 256 Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia Education and Modernity in Ontario Josh Cole 257 University Women A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada Sara Z. MacDonald

Sara Z . MacDonald

UNIVERSITY WOMEN A Histor y of Wom en and High er Education in Canada c a r l e t o n l i br a r y s e r i e s 257

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston | London | Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021 isbn 978-0-2280-0863-7 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-0864-4 (paper) isbn 978-0-2280-0990-0 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-0991-7 (epub) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2021 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

l i br a ry a n d a rc h i v e s c a na da c ata l o gu i ng i n p u bl ic at ion Title: University women : a history of women and higher education in Canada / Sara Z. MacDonald. Names: MacDonald, Sara Z., author. Series: Carleton library series ; 257. Description: Series statement: Carleton library series ; 257 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210261420 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210261528 | isbn 9780228008637 (hardcover) | isbn 9780228008644 (softcover) | isbn 9780228009900 (pdf) | isbn 9780228009917 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Women college students—Canada—History. | lcsh: Women in higher education—Canada—History. | lcsh: College students—Canada— History. | lcsh: Education, Higher—Canada—History. Classification: lcc lc1571.c2 m33 2021 | ddc 378.1/98220971—dc23

For A nn a an d Z o e

CONTENTS

figures ix

acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 Educated Women Schooling the Daughters of the New Dominion 12

2 Sex and Race in Education The Campaign for Coeducation 67

3 Separate and Different Women’s Colleges and Self-Support 111

4 Becoming Undergraduates Rights and Responsibilities of College Life 146

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CONTENTS

5 An Insurrection of Women Deans, Suffrage, and Self-Government 192

6 Furies and Flappers Toward Academic Separation 233 Conclusion 270

appendix 1 Admission Dates by University 279 appendix 2 First Women Graduates 281 appendix 3 Women’s Colleges with University Affiliation 283

appendix 4 First Residences and Deans of Women 285

notes 287

bibliogr aphy 359

index 393

FIGURES

1 .1 Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy, Mistress of Liberal Arts (mla)

1.2

1.3

2 .1

2.2

2.3

3 .1

3.2

3.3

4 .1

graduates, 1867. Picture Collection, Accession no. 2007.07/917, Mount Allison University Archives. | 27 Grace Annie Lockhart, Mount Allison Class of 1875. Picture Collection, Accession no. 2007.07/161, Mount Allison University Archives. | 38 First Women Graduates in Medicine, Queen’s Class of 1884. Queen’s Picture Collection, V28 Con–1884–1, Queen’s University Archives. | 59 J.W. Bengough, “A Valentine to Dr W.,” Grip Magazine, 11 February 1882. Image courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. | 88 J.W. Bengough, “The Learned Doctor Welcoming Ladies to the Provincial University,” Grip Magazine, 11 October 1884. Image courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. | 98 Ladies’ Reading Room, Birge-Carnegie Library, Victoria College, Toronto, circa 1910. 1991.161, item 624, Victoria University Archives (Toronto). | 99 Home Economics Clothing Class, Manitoba Agricultural College, 1914. Faculty of Human Ecology fonds (A1986–042) pc 49, box 1, file 4, item 13, University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. | 126 Class at Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison Ladies’ College, circa 1885. Picture Collection, Accession no. 2007.07/1157, Mount Allison University Archives. | 129 Home Economics Food Lab, Manitoba Agricultural College, 1914. Faculty of Human Ecology fonds (A1986–042) pc 49, box 1, file 4, item 6, University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections. | 133 Students being lectured by Chancellor O.C.S. Wallace, McMaster University, Toronto, 1904. McMaster University Photograph Collection, box 14, envelope 8, item 8–3, Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library. | 149

x

FIGURES

4 . 2 Women’s Debating Team, Mount Allison, 1917. Picture Collec-

4.3

4.4 4.5

4.6 4.7 5 .1 5.2

5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

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tion, Accession no. 2007.07/2036, Mount Allison University Archives. | 152 Juniors in the Snow, Photo album of Class of 1916, 1913–18. Eva Bessie Lockhart fonds, 1969.002–loc/22, Esther Clark Wright Archives at Acadia University. | 157 Students at main door of University College, 1910. Fonds 1244, William James Family, Item 1889, City of Toronto Archives. | 164 Students at play [students in the Men’s Residence, between 1897 and 1902]. Alexander Isbester Family fonds, C 267–1–0–1–14, I0020539, Archives of Ontario. | 168 Initiation Scrap, Victoria College, Toronto, circa 1910. 1987.018, item 1, Victoria University Archives (Toronto). | 173 Skating Pond, Mount Allison, circa 1901. Picture Collection, Accession no. 2007.07/59, Mount Allison University Archives. | 182 Female Students, University of Toronto. Fonds 1244, William James Family, Item 705D, City of Toronto Archives. | 196 Esther Clark and Lillian Chase in their residence room, Photo Album of Acadia University, 1913–16. Eva Bessie Lockhart fonds, 1969.002–loc/21, Esther Clark Wright Archives at Acadia University. | 203 Annesley Hall Residents and Staff, Victoria College, Toronto, circa 1907. 1991.161, item 413, Victoria University Archives (Toronto). | 209 “The Insurrection of the Women,” The Varsity, 24 March 1919. Image courtesy of The Varsity. | 214 Four Victoria University Women Students, Toronto, circa 1920. 1987.240, item 1, Victoria University Archives (Toronto). | 216 Ladies’ Hockey Team, Wesley College, Manitoba, circa 1919. Ilo McHaffie Photograph Collection 1.2.63, University of Winnipeg Archives. | 220 Thanksgiving Day, Wesley College, Manitoba, 13 October 1919. Ilo McHaffie Photograph Collection 1.2.6, University of Winnipeg Archives. | 222

FIGURES

xi

5 . 8 J.L. Sheard, “The Last Man,” in Stan. Murray and Jos. Sheard, Var-

6 .1

6.2 6.3

6.4

sity in Cartoon (Toronto: Bryant Press [1910]), University of Toronto Archives. | 232 Women in the pool at the Household Science Building, Toronto, 1915. John Boyd numbered photographs, C 7–3 Item 11769, I0003510, Archives of Ontario. | 242 University of Toronto Students, 1928. Fonds 1244, William James Family, item 2534, City of Toronto Archives. | 246 Procession of Women Graduates, Dalhousie, 1926. Dalhousie University Photograph Collection, pci, box 8, folder 7, item 2, Dalhousie University Archives. | 251 A physics lab in progress, McMaster University, Toronto, circa 1899. 86–160, Canadian Baptist Archives. | 259

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the fall of 1959, my mother got on a train to the west coast to attend university, the first in her family to do so. Her own mother anxiously saw her off, proud but also a little envious. She herself had left school early, like many girls of her time, because her family needed her to work. I’ve thought of my mother and grandmothers often when writing this book, about the historical conditions that shape different lives, the opportunities denied and opportunities gained. I owe more than I can say to my parents, Robert Hugh MacDonald and Joanna Ostrow MacDonald, who both died in 2018. They were writers and readers, and showed me, in their different ways, how the past can be an exciting and real venture into other people’s lives. I am deeply grateful for my family, my wonderful family, small but mighty as my daughters say: Diana MacDonald, Phoebe Henighan, Stephen Henighan, Lorena Leija, Julian Henighan, Leonora Henighan, Jenny MacDonald, David McLennan, and Jordan Courchesne. I am fortunate to share my life with another historian, my husband David Leeson, who listens patiently while I rage at Goldwin Smith, helps me talk through ideas, and gives me coffee and good advice. This book is dedicated to my darling girls, Anna Burke and Zoe Burke, who inspire me and give me joy every single day. You all made sure I finished this book, and your support means everything to me. The Department of History at Laurentian University is a good place to work, and my fellow historians are also my friends. I thank my colleagues, especially Rose-May Démoré, who kept us all going, and Linda Ambrose, Janice Liedl, and Todd Webb, who generously shared knowledge, sources, and encouragement. I thank my friends Shelbey Krahn, Lisa Pasternak, Martin Horn, and Patty Ross for getting me though some dark days. During the period of moving boxes and upheaval that marked my mother’s illness, I thank my friends David Borwick, Karyn Curtis, Karen Good, and Sue Neilson for their help

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and good company. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support I have received in the form of research grants from the Laurentian University Research Fund. Ryan Wildgoose was an excellent research assistant during several summers. I am indebted to the students at Laurentian over the years, many of whom were the first in their families to attend university. I also wish to acknowledge the late E. Lisa Panayotidis for influencing the ideas of this book in countless ways. Lisa’s interdisciplinary research pushed the history of higher education into new and exciting areas, and I benefited greatly from her generosity and enthusiasm for scholarship. I thank the staff at the J.N. Desmarais Library at Laurentian University, particularly in the interlibrary loan department, for their expertise and good humour in meeting my steady requests for obscure nineteenth-century newspapers. Archivists and librarians across the country responded promptly to my many requests for documents, both in person and by email, and during the Covid-19 pandemic went to extra trouble to retrieve images for me under difficult circumstances. I am grateful to the staff at the Esther Clark Wright Archives at Acadia University, Archives of Ontario, Canadian Baptist Archives, Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Library, Dalhousie University Archives, Library and Archives Canada, Mount Allison University Archives, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Queen’s University Archives, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Toronto Reference Library, Trinity College Archives, University of Manitoba Archives, University of New Brunswick Archives, University of Toronto Archives, University of Winnipeg Archives, University Women’s Club of Toronto, Victoria University Library, and Western University Archives. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and obtain their permission to reproduce material. The author welcomes any further information so that this material may be credited appropriately in reprints or future editions. I wish to thank the editorial staff at McGill-Queen’s University Press, and am grateful to Kyla Madden and Kate Merriman for their expert guidance. Earlier versions of sections of this book were published previously. I thank the editors of Historical Studies

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xv

in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation, Mona Gleason and Penney Clark, for permission to reuse the following articles: Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], “Women of Newfangle: Co-Education, Racial Discourse, and Women’s Rights in Victorian Ontario,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 19, no. 1 (2007): 111–33; and Sara Z. MacDonald, “An Insurrection of Women: Deans of Women and Student Government after the Great War,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 31, no. 1 (2019): 45–65. I also thank the editor, Paul Stortz, and the publisher, Taylor and Francis, for permission to reuse the chapter, Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], “Becoming Undergraduates: Women and University Culture in Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in Women in Higher Education, 1850– 1970: International Perspectives, edited by E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz (New York: Routledge, 2016), 97–118.

UNIVERSITY WOMEN

INTRODUCTION

For a woman to enter college was to enter a man’s world. k at i e h a l l m a r s t e r s , Acadia class of 1891

S

hortly before classes began in the fall of 1879, a teacher from the Maritimes, Lavinia C. Read, wrote to the principal of Queen’s College in Ontario. Read had heard that Queen’s might be admitting women, and she was a good student, a normal school graduate with first-class certificates qualifying her to teach in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. “Are Latin and Greek both required or do you accept the Modern Languages in place of Greek?” Read asked anxiously. “I hope I am not mistaken in supposing that the College is open to women for study as well as for examinations.”1 She was not mistaken – in 1876 Queen’s had admitted its first woman student – but as the principal noted ominously in his response, Greek was required for a degree. Lavinia Read never went to Queen’s, or to any other university. At the time she posted her letter, there were just two women attending university in all of Canada.2 The reasons why Read wanted to go to university, and the reasons why she could not, have shaped the research for this book. Lavinia Read was not able to get into Queen’s, but her daughter, Helen Marjorie Bates, attended Acadia, played on the women’s basketball team, and graduated with her ba in 1912.3 In her own lifetime, Read would see all the universities in English Canada open their doors to women. Coeducation quickly became the normative form of

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university education in Canada, following a pattern similar to that in the United States, where coeducational colleges extended westward following the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. In Britain as well, the new civic universities at Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, and Sheffield granted women access to their academic privileges, and by 1895, all the provincial universities in England, Scotland, and Wales were admitting women to degrees. Yet the education of women in Canada diverges in a significant way, one that is central to the history I examine in the following chapters. The Canadian movement did not result in a tradition of separate women’s colleges, such as Girton at Cambridge, or the prestigious Seven Sisters colleges in the American northeast that included Barnard, Vassar, and Smith. These colleges were among the elite in both countries, and they strove to maintain equal standards for women who were otherwise unable to attend Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. In Canada, I argue, the campaign for equal education, for access to the same academic standards and degrees, became entirely submerged into the more radical objective of university coeducation. It was not higher education in itself, but rather the question of coeducation, access to the same universities, the same degrees, and even the same classrooms, that became one of the most hotly contested demands of the women’s movements. Coeducation at established men’s universities in the nineteenth century was perceived to be far more subversive of gender relations than education at women’s colleges, which at least in theory could reinforce the separate spheres of men and women. That women might study the same subjects, and might contend with men for scholarships and class standing, raised the possibility that women could compete successfully with men in public life. If women proved themselves capable of being undergraduates, then what would prevent them from demanding access to the professions or other middle-class occupations? It was this inherent radicalism, the potential to challenge separate spheres ideology, that made the question of university coeducation so controversial. From the beginning, coeducation was tied not only to the much larger issue of women’s work, but also more explicitly to competition with men for employment.

Introduction

3

The movement for women’s higher education was divided by the essential tension between the demand for equal standards and the argument that women’s distinct needs could best be met by different models of university provision. Those who favoured equal education asserted that it would allow women to compete with men and give them access to men’s professions. Reformers from the second camp tended to assume that higher education for women was good in and of itself, that it did not necessarily require the same intellectual rigour as men’s education, and that it should be designed to prepare them either to return to the domestic sphere as wives and mothers or to seek positions as teachers. While some campaigners believed it was essential to maintain the same standards, and would have advised Lavinia Read to start studying Greek, others stressed the need for more immediate and practical options by adopting separate models of higher education. This debate over the advantages of separate versus coeducational institutions has formed a primary theme in the historiography of women’s education. In 1974, Jill Ker Conway challenged the widespread belief that universal coeducation would result in equity for women students in their intellectual goals, research activity, or professional opportunities. Conway defended the role of separate colleges, maintaining that they promoted the creation of women’s knowledge within a supportive intellectual community. 4 During the 1970s and 1980s, historians in the United States charted the initial struggle for access in the nineteenth century and concluded that hostility to the presence of women resulted in growing segregation on most coeducational campuses.5 Since the 1990s, studies of women in higher education in Britain, Germany, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the United States, have explored this history through the lens of gender, and revealed that both curricular and extracurricular worlds in coeducational universities increasingly became separated, and the activities of women restricted.6 In Canada, historians have uncovered these patterns of segregation within individual institutions, and studies of McGill, Mount Allison, Toronto, Queen’s, Dalhousie, and British Columbia, have shown that women students, excluded from most

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men’s organizations, formed separate student societies and created subcultures of their own.7 From the perspective of the twenty-first century, scholars have returned to the issue first raised by Conway, and have condemned coeducation for contributing to the discrimination still facing women in academia. In her study of Ireland, Judith Harford argues that the promise of coeducation remains unfulfilled, since once admitted, women students and academics were disempowered within a university structure dominated by men. Harford maintains, by contrast, that the early women’s colleges, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, exposed women to a rigorous academic curriculum and prepared them to take on a more active role in nineteenth-century society.8 The work of Elizabeth Smyth on women religious in Canada supports Harford’s conclusion, revealing that the commitment of sister-professors to sustaining independent communities of women in academia provided unique and valuable opportunities for leadership.9 Similarly, Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson have compared separate and coeducational universities in late-twentieth century America, and have concluded that coeducation has not necessarily brought educational equity. Physical access to men’s universities, they argue, has not meant that policies or institutional structures were changed to provide a more inclusive environment for women. Like Harford and Smyth, Miller-Bernal and Poulson see women’s colleges as positive influences for women students and faculty; and they maintain that these institutions promote gender equity, challenge men’s hegemony, and address deeply rooted aspects of sexism within higher education.10 Historians of higher education in Canada more recently have explored the ways in which women negotiated their sense of separation within the newly coeducational universities. Alyson E. King and Catherine Gidney have shown that women in residences were supervised to a greater degree than men living on campus, but the interwar system of moral regulation involved the complex interaction of deans, dons, and student councils. The deans of women hoped to work through student government in the residences, and the students often challenged the rules in response to changes in

Introduction

5

social customs after the war.11 Gidney also has analyzed the growth of health services and the expansion of employment for women as administrators, nutritionists, and health-care professionals. Gidney contends that administrators assumed that a healthy body was a necessary precondition to the development of a moral life, and thought that healthy students, and future citizens, could be produced by rigorous training in the habits of cleanliness, sexual hygiene, and good posture.12 The work of E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz has employed the concept of contested space to examine how undergraduates expressed the often-contradictory meanings of their college experiences, suggesting that university yearbooks, rituals, and even an illustrated campus map reveal gendered differences. They maintain that women students challenged societal expectations of appropriate behaviour and used group activities such as initiation rituals to reconstruct narratives, assert their independence, and participate more fully in university life.13 Building on the work of these scholars, this book attempts to synthesize the disparate regional and institutional histories of universities across English Canada, tracing the patterns that emerge in the history of women’s admission into men’s universities, as well as the impact of this immense change on the development of higher education between 1870 and 1930.14 The first half of the book focuses on the campaigns to demand access for women and explores the challenges facing the separate model as a viable academic alternative. The second half looks at what happened in these universities after the women arrived, the rapid integration of women and their impact on men’s undergraduate culture, and the complex changes in higher education in the early twentieth century that led to increased academic separation. My research parameters have been guided by the decision to consider the fifteen Victorian universities that admitted women to the rank of undergraduates: Mount Allison in Sackville, New Brunswick (1872); Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario (1876); Victoria in Cobourg, Ontario (1877); Acadia in Wolfville, Nova Scotia (1880); Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia (1881); University College at the University of Toronto in Ontario (1884); McGill in Montreal, Quebec (1884); Trinity in Toronto, Ontario (1886); New Brunswick

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in Fredericton, New Brunswick (1886); Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba (1886); McMaster in Toronto, Ontario (1887); King’s College in Windsor, Nova Scotia (1893); St Francis Xavier in Antigonish, Nova Scotia (1894); Western in London, Ontario (1895); and Bishop’s in Lennoxville, Quebec (1903).15 During the period covered by this book, the experience of schooling at all levels was determined by social class, and, for some, curtailed completely by their race or Indigeneity. At a time when most people in Canada were unable to attend more than the first year or two of high school, access to higher education was severely limited, improving only gradually as the number of universities and degree options expanded in the years before the Second World War. In 1871–72, for example, the total enrolment in Canadian universities was 1,561 students, all men, of whom only 240 graduated: of these, 112 received degrees in arts and science, 106 degrees in medicine, and 22 degrees in law. By 1930–31, there were 34,119 full-time enrolments of women and men: the majority, 16,828, in arts and science, and the rest in a wide range of professional programs that now included commerce, agriculture, architecture, dentistry, engineering, forestry, household science, library science, nursing, pharmacy, social work, and veterinary medicine.16 The analysis of students at Queen’s between 1895 and 1900 by Chad Gaffield, Lynne Marks, and Susan Laskin, reveals that 31 per cent had fathers who were farmers, 16 per cent were working class, and the remainder were dispersed among middle-class occupations such as clergymen, merchants, doctors, manufacturers, and other professionals. While the percentage from farming or working-class families was lower for women than men, indicating that parents were more willing to make sacrifices for sons than for daughters, both women and men sought university education to improve their career opportunities during a decade of rapid social and economic change.17 Within that small population of those privileged to seek higher education, the numbers of women undergraduates in Canada grew significantly. In 1901, women constituted 12 per cent of the full-time university enrolment, and by 1930, the percentage had risen to 23 per cent. The percentage of women in arts and science increased from 25 per cent in 1901 to 33 per cent in 1930.18

Introduction

7

The impact of coeducation on the development of women’s education frames the central question addressed by this study: Did the rapid adoption of coeducation work for or against the interests of women? Canadian advocates became convinced that access to equal education could only be achieved by access to men’s universities, and ultimately, of course, they were right. Yet the history that unfolds is much more complex. Change in higher education cannot be seen as a triumphant story of progress, a simple list of trailblazers and firsts, of doors being thrown open and staying open.19 This book argues that the impact for women can only be assessed by separating the initial period of integration from the subsequent backlash that resulted, in the longer term, in the restriction of opportunities for women students, researchers, and faculty. For the first generations of women students, the small Victorian university was not always a pleasant or welcoming environment; but in spite of these challenges, coeducation made it possible for women to become undergraduates, to perform and embody the identity of university students – an identity that had previously been reserved for men only. In the first decades following their admission, women embraced the academic opportunities open to them and fully asserted their rights to the same responsibilities and privileges as university men. For these women, coeducation was a transformative experience. The bachelor’s degree then was more central, and the lines between science and arts subjects were less rigidly defined, giving women more choice in their course of study. Women anticipated that their university degrees would enable them, like men, to be accepted into the professional classes. Some went into medicine and qualified as physicians, but the majority took courses in arts and science and received the bachelor’s degree. The early battles for admission, and the undergraduate experience they themselves remembered, created a conviction among university women that equal education was synonymous with coeducation, and a suspicion that the establishment of separate women’s colleges would reverse the progress they had made. The promise of equal education, however, was not fulfilled in the longer term. Many women had hoped that their degrees would soon make other choices possible. They were attracted into the sciences, studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology, and

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sought employment as journalists, civil servants, lab assistants, and researchers. As new kinds of work became available in the commercial and business sectors, women had trusted that a bachelor’s degree would provide the general foundation they needed to access a wide variety of middle-class jobs in banks, business offices, real estate firms, hospitals, or municipal government; that the professional gentleman would soon have its equivalent in the university woman. Yet by the early twentieth century, their growing presence on Canadian campuses had sparked a backlash against coeducation, resulting in efforts to separate women into feminized academic programs, place them under closer moral supervision, and discourage them from pursuing studies in the burgeoning fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These setbacks, combined with complex changes in higher education – a shift in expectations for professional education, the growth of specialized research, and the movement of the sciences away from arts faculties – resulted in the increasing marginalization of women within the diversified universities of the twentieth century. My approach to this question has been informed by gender theory. Joan Wallach Scott has argued that men and women have articulated their understanding of sexual difference historically, and relationships of power have been constructed by these perceived distinctions between the sexes. Knowledge about sexual difference is always relative, and during periods of significant historical change, the meanings of gender have been disputed as part of the struggle for power.20 In her study of ideology in Victorian Britain, Mary Poovey has shown that ideas were always open to dispute, and representations of gender were frequently contested, the sites at which struggles for authority occurred and concepts defining gender roles were at once constructed and challenged.21 Inspired by the work of Judith Butler, scholars have suggested that gender is performative, and its idealized meanings are constructed through deliberately performed acts and signs. Women in the public sphere have reacted historically to opposition by performing their selves, often exploiting weaknesses in gender ideology that over time have created new possibilities for women’s roles.22 In her recent study of

Introduction

9

nonviolence, Butler has maintained that the idea of “reality” can function in discourse as an intractable force against radical change, shutting down our ability to imagine a new way for humans to live together. Butler states, “Sometimes ‘reality’ is used to debunk as childish or unknowledgeable points of view that actually are holding out a more radical possibility of equality or freedom or democracy or justice, which means stepping out of a settled understanding.”23 The early debates over women’s education increasingly became defined by race, and reformers played a central role in the formation of a feminist ideology that served to reinforce Anglo-Canadian colonialism. The discourse of separate spheres functioned as the kind of intractable opposition to reform identified by Butler, delineating what gender roles “ought to be” and ignoring the rapidly changing social reality that characterized nineteenth-century life. This prescriptive tendency in Victorian thought allowed writers to assert the importance of the intellect in organizing reality, but failed to distinguish between abstract theories and the realities of modern society. The ideal of the angel in the home contradicted the actual experience of most women, but that did not make it any less effective in framing hegemonic beliefs.24 The novelist Anthony Trollope was able to dismiss the movement for women’s higher education by holding that separate spheres were just a matter of common sense. “It is a man’s right in the world to be a man,” Trollope claimed in 1868, “and his duty to take upon his shoulders the great weight of the labour of the world, so that women may, as far as possible, be relieved from burdens too heavy for their strength.”25 This discourse negated the very real legal and economic disabilities suffered by women, particularly when those disabilities were multiplied by race and class. For Social Darwinists following Herbert Spencer, evolutionary theory gave pseudo-scientific authority to the organization of middle-class domesticity and bolstered the reproductive function of the white Anglo-American or British mother.26 To adopt Butler’s analysis, by declaring that separate spheres actually represented reality, Trollope and Spencer were closing down the possibility that society could be organized differently and dismissing the more radical vision of reformers that women could support themselves

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through rewarding work. In challenging separate spheres, however, reformers themselves exploited racial ideas, harnessing Lamarckian theory to promote the admission of women to universities as a step in evolutionary advancement, arguing that by transmitting their acquired intelligence, educated Anglo-Canadian women would be essential to the ongoing work of nation building. My goal in this book is to connect discourse to transformative social action; to explore issues of race and gender at the popular level of ideology, beliefs, and attitudes; and to uncover the process that links ideas to meaningful social change.27 I have tried to capture the discourse of university women within their diaries, photograph albums, memoirs, interview transcripts, and letters, as well as in their many contributions to newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks. The voices of early graduates allow them to emerge from shadowy corners like figures in a colourized film. The glimpses they provide, I believe, reveal this period to have been an exhilarating moment of opportunity for women in higher education. As brand new students, women at coeducational universities confronted head-on the assumption that undergraduate identity was inherently masculine. They quickly developed a sense of belonging and claimed their right to assume the same roles and privileges as men on campus. Refusing to occupy the special category of lady students, they chose instead to demonstrate that they could conduct themselves as undergraduates. They found rooms in boarding houses, skated and tobogganed with other students, petitioned their colleges for meeting space of their own, and formed literary societies to gain the skills they needed for the public sphere. Most importantly, they followed their passion for learning, moving eagerly into the sciences, mathematics, and medicine as well as humanities subjects like classics, philosophy, modern languages, and English literature. By doing so, they were often accused of being unwomanly, but they were conscious that their performance of these roles expanded and recast the definition of who could be an undergraduate, a scientist, or a professor. Women entering universities pushed the boundaries of gendered identity to accommodate exciting new possibilities after graduation, confident that they were ready for professional life.

Introduction

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Bessie Scott Lewis, nearing the end of her first year at University College, recorded in her diary, “Wore my gown for first time! It didn’t seem at all strange to do so.”28 It was the spring of 1890, and she and her classmates had just returned from the gown maker in the city, the first women of the college to order and wear their own academic gowns. Over a century later, I opened an oversized archival box to find this same long black gown, carefully preserved and donated to the archive by Scott’s daughter, Edith Clement, who herself had worn it when she attended university.29 Academic dress was a recognition that students had entered the rank of undergraduates. Incoming students first ritually donned their caps and gowns during the ceremony marking the opening of term and from then on were required to wear the gown in class and around campus. Often deemed a cumbersome tradition by men students, the cap and gown was dearly prized by women, an outward sign of their new status as undergraduates. The fight for coeducation became integral to the social memory of university women, shaping their collective sense of the past and their shared perception of the struggles of the pioneer students who went before them.30 “As I think of the women in college during my time,” Estelle Cook Webster observed of the 1890s, “most of them were older than the average college women of today, many of them had been teachers and all had come with a fixed purpose as to a career; all were deadly in earnest and all had high ambitions.”31 In the towns and cities of the new Dominion, women campaigned steadily for access to their local university, and in each community, they sought to build alliances with board members, professors, and provincial leaders in public education. These reformers became convinced that only a degree intended for men would provide the key to social change for women, first to advance them in the teaching profession, and then to open up countless new opportunities in the expanding business and commercial sectors. The idea of coeducation emerged as a symbol of social progress, providing university women with a unifying identity and an earnest, ambitious conviction that they had rights and responsibilities in the public world equal to those of men.

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Schooling the Daughters of the New Dominion Higher education of women – What is it? It is the higher education of women to fit them for the higher spheres of action, whether they be political, professional, or social – the same education that men need under the same circumstances. gr ac e a n n i e l o c k h a r t daw s on, Address, Mount Allison Ladies’ College, 1896

T

he Hamilton correspondent to the Toronto Globe was surprised at the attentive audience that packed the Mechanics’ Hall to hear Lucy Stone, the American reformer, lecture on the subject of women’s rights. “Nobody expected that Miss Lucy, or indeed any other woman, could so bravely and eloquently appear before a large number of people and speak uninterruptedly for two hours in promulgating this rather strange and modern reformation.”1 In 1855, Stone spoke in both Hamilton and Toronto, imploring her listeners to consider the urgent need for women to gain employment and the right to vote. The following year The Globe’s editorial was less charitable about the new movement for women’s rights, claiming that the absurd demands of a party of strong-minded women south of the

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border would never make much headway in Canada. “We are believers in ‘woman’s sphere,’” The Globe concluded confidently.2 Many Canadians would have agreed with The Globe that the proper sphere of woman was the home, and the best interests of society were served by the dedication of wives and mothers to domestic concerns. Yet over the next two decades, newspapers and periodicals frequently featured articles discussing the legal and economic problems of women, and the “woman question” became one of the great public issues of the day. The movement for women’s education gained adherents from a wide spectrum of public opinion; people who remained wary of women’s suffrage or divorce could endorse the benefits of intellectual training for their daughters. As Nova Scotia’s superintendent of education, A.S. Hunt, stated in 1872, “The opening of our colleges and academies to females, is sure to give a great impetus to the general educational interests of the country, for although an educated father may sometimes neglect the education of his children, we may be sure that an educated mother never will.”3 Much of the energy for this movement came from Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans who established girls’ academies, often in affiliation with their denominational universities. It was a time of institutional growth, and the churches entered into these ventures in a spirit of optimism, combining Victorian faith in progress with the ethos of evangelicalism. For Canadian Protestants, the goal of women’s education derived from an evangelical emphasis on individual responsibility, as intellectual training could counter idleness and vanity and give purpose to a life otherwise wasted in frivolous pursuits. From this perspective, every person had the right to intellectual and moral development, and the mother’s role in the family could only be enriched by the cultivation of such qualities as self-reliance, energy, and fortitude. 4 For some reformers, the evangelical ethos was complemented by the more radical belief that the roles of the sexes were determined by custom alone, and the fulfillment of individual potential, in women as well as men, was a key element in social progress. Between 1872 and 1881, five Canadian universities – Mount Allison, Queen’s, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie – admitted women to their

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rank of undergraduates. Cast in a framework that articulated the intellectual and moral basis of university education, rather than its usefulness in preparing women for middle-class work, the initial movement of the 1870s raised little controversy in Canada. Advocates presented women’s right to higher education as an essentially progressive development that would be beneficial for the new Dominion. The more radical potential of coeducation, however, was inherent to the admission of women; in local communities, women recognized the advantages of university studies as a means of improving their prospects for work outside the home. It was a period of social and economic transition, when many families looked to older children for the addition of paid wages, and a growing number of young women searched for respectable employment. While the first few Canadian universities to admit women did so for reasons that did not explicitly challenge separate spheres, coeducation from the beginning held out the promise of equal access to education and professional qualifications.

Equal or Different? The Movements in Britain and America The ideas of Canadian reformers were formed by vigorous public debates over women’s education in Britain and the United States: Should their education be separate and different, or should it seek to be the same as that of men? In Serious Proposal to the Ladies, first published in 1694, Mary Astell promoted the idea of a seminary, or secular convent, where women could study and devote their time to reading, conversation, and good works in the company of other like-minded scholars. Astell imagined what could have been a women’s college, but her unfortunate choice of the word “monastery” to describe the proposed retreat sparked fear of Catholicism and extinguished her support at court.5 Later Enlightenment writers drew on Lockean empiricism to argue that human nature was open to change and improvement, that women, like men, were capable of reasoned reflection and could benefit both morally and intellectually from advanced education. A number of reformers identified the right of women to an independent intellectual life; whether or not they should receive the same education as men, in the same manner,

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became a matter of deep dissension. Conservatives such as Hannah More supported a more formal system of schooling designed for girls and assumed that classical education, particularly the methodical teaching of Latin and Greek, was suitable only for boys.6 Radical thinkers, influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft, recognized the role of education in creating difference between the sexes and urged coeducation on these grounds. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, Wollstonecraft argued forcefully that girls should be educated together with boys. She dismissed as nonsense JeanJacques Rousseau’s view that women should be educated only to please and manipulate men, a theory he illustrated by creating the inane character of Sophie in Emile.7 Wollstonecraft insisted that girls needed to be taught to strengthen their own understanding, not to become objects of desire by adopting a grovelling, outward obedience to please men while cultivating the use of cunning to subvert them. “To render also the social compact truly equitable,” Wollstonecraft wrote, “and in order to spread those enlightening principles, which alone can ameliorate the fate of man, women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men.”8 John Stuart Mill published his influential statement on women’s rights, The Subjection of Women, in 1869. In his previous work, On Liberty, Mill had argued for the greatest individual liberty of action that was consistent with the protection and well-being of all members of human society.9 Mill applied this claim for individual freedom to the relations between the sexes, maintaining that while some men experienced subordination based on their race, class, religion, or nationality, all women were excluded from exercising human rights on the grounds of their sex alone. In the opening paragraph, he stated emphatically that the legal subordination of one sex to the other was wrong in itself and had become one of the chief hindrances to human improvement. Mill claimed the rights of both men and women to liberty and justice, a plea for the full realization of human potential that explicitly rejected the basis of separate spheres ideology, namely, the idea of natural or innate differences. “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing,” he wrote, “the

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result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.”10 By suggesting that gendered differences were learned rather than innate, Mill gave reformers a powerful weapon; if women could benefit from the same education as men, then they could also put it to the same use as a means of self-support. The initial challenge for reformers was to improve girls’ secondary schooling and establish training programs for women teachers. Emily Davies, the founder of Girton College, Cambridge, presented the issue succinctly: “If neither governesses nor mothers know, how can they teach? So long as education is not provided for them, how can it be provided by them?”11 In 1848, two institutions were founded in London to train women for positions as governesses: Queen’s College, established by evangelical Christian Socialists within the Church of England, and the more ambitious Bedford College, governed by a board of Nonconformist men and women. Although Bedford later became a member college of the University of London, initially both Queen’s and Bedford offered secondary rather than higher education in an attempt to mitigate their students’ earlier deficiencies.12 In 1865, Cambridge University opened its local secondary school examinations to girls throughout England, providing an external standard and helping prepare women adequately for higher education. During the late 1860s, the Ladies’ Educational Association movement spread quickly throughout England and Scotland and pioneered successful strategies to promote women’s education, including planning lecture series, raising money for scholarships, and lobbying for university access.13 While the hope for equality was most closely tied to campaigns for access to elite men’s universities – what Vera Brittain later described as “the contest for the equal citizenship of the mind”14 – some reformers believed that a women’s college, along the lines first imagined by Astell, could be separate and yet maintain rigorous standards. In the United States, a variety of women’s seminaries had emerged to meet the rapidly changing needs of middle-class families. Young women who attended Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke Seminary, established in 1837, or Wells Seminary, founded in 1868, became qualified to teach, providing them with a respectable way to earn

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their own living as a strategic alternative to early marriage.15 For Lucy Stone, it was important that a true women’s college be clearly distinguished from the many “petty ‘female colleges’” that were proliferating by mid-century.16 The first women’s college, Vassar, opened in 1865 in the state of New York, establishing a tradition of elite women’s higher education in the American northeast, later associated with the group of colleges known as the “Seven Sisters.” Vassar was followed by Smith and Wellesley in 1875, Bryn Mawr in 1885, Mount Holyoke, which gained collegiate status in 1888, and Barnard, affiliated with Columbia, in 1889. Women were not permitted into classes at Yale and Princeton until 1969, but separate classes for women were organized at Harvard beginning in 1879 at the Harvard Annex, later Radcliffe, which was chartered as a college for women in 1894.17 In Britain, access to Oxford and Cambridge became the primary goal uniting disparate branches of the women’s movement. In this cause, advocates of women’s rights joined forces with other reformers who were determined to modernize the curriculum and adapt Oxford and Cambridge to the requirements of the expanding middle classes.18 In 1869, Emily Davies opened a small residential college near Cambridge, later called Girton, with the fixed purpose that her students take the identical course of study as Cambridge undergraduates. She was convinced that women had to have the same education as men if they were ever to gain acceptance at Cambridge and insisted that her students at Girton study Latin and Greek to prepare for the “Little-Go” examinations. In 1871, reformers Henry Sidgwick, Anne Jemima Clough, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett started a second residential venture, later Newnham Hall. In contrast to the position taken by Davies, the Newnham group saw the LittleGo as a roadblock that disqualified most women from entering the course and defeated the more urgent objective of quickly meeting the need for teachers. For Davies, the principle of equal education was essential, even if it delayed the entrance of women into paid work. Neither Girton nor Newnham received any formal recognition from the university, and initially students had to make arrangements with each examiner individually in order to sit for examinations. Women

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were not eligible for degrees, and Girton and Newnham primarily served as houses where students could live and study while working toward certificates from their colleges. The tension among reformers at Cambridge over whether women’s education should be equal to or different from that of men was indicative of larger divisions within the movement internationally.19 Similar colleges or “women’s societies” were founded at Oxford, first Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College in 1879, then St Hugh’s in 1886 and St Hilda’s in 1893. In the north, the Manchester and Salford College for Women was opened in 1877 and affiliated with Owens College (later Manchester University) in 1883, and Queen Margaret College was created in 1883 and affiliated with the University of Glasgow in 1892.20 In Ireland, reformers also pursued a policy of separate but equal. They formed the first women’s colleges as a preliminary step in their larger campaign to access Irish universities – for Protestants, the Ladies’ Collegiate School (later Victoria College Belfast) in 1859 and Alexandra College Dublin in 1866, and for Catholics, the Dominican College Eccles Street in 1882, and the Ursuline St Angela’s College Cork in 1887. In 1879, the Royal University of Ireland was established as an examining body whose degrees were open to women, allowing both Catholic and Protestant women’s colleges to provide degree courses. The Irish Association of Women Graduates continued to lobby for access to all universities, including Trinity College Dublin, and women finally were admitted to degree programs in arts and medicine at Trinity in 1904. Following the passage of the Irish Universities Act of 1908, the new National University of Ireland was coeducational, but had the negative effect of diminishing the women’s colleges, which were unable to gain recognized status to allow their students to sit for degree examinations of the university.21 For many reformers, however, university coeducation was the only model that could ensure equality in academic standards and provision. The Anglo-American women’s movement had retained this ambition since its inception in 1848, and leading members, including Lucy Stone, continued to press for admission into men’s classes. The coeducational model became a common form of provision after the Civil War, particularly in the more recently

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settled Midwestern and western states; between 1853 and 1861, twenty-nine small, coeducational colleges opened in such states as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, usually sponsored by minor rural denominations. Originated by settlers, these institutions existed to meet community needs, allowing parents to keep sons and daughters together and encourage them to find marriage partners within the faith.22 By 1870, eight state universities were admitting women into coeducational degree programs, including Iowa in 1855, Wisconsin in 1863, and Michigan in 1870. In 1872, following a private endowment, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, opened its classes to women.23 After the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862, land-grant colleges were chartered in many states, and these new institutions adopted coeducation for both economic and ideological reasons. The acceptance of coeducation during the 1870s at universities such as Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas was in keeping with the perception that the land-grant culture was more progressive and truly democratic than that of the conservative and elitist institutions of the east. This assumption of egalitarianism was sustained by the rhetoric of populism, which emphasized the role of farmers’ daughters in ensuring the economic viability of the family farm, promoting agricultural education and domestic science as key aspects of a modernized and relevant curriculum.24 Opportunities for Black women remained limited throughout the nineteenth century, and racial divisions inherent to the women’s movement intensified after the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in 1868 and 1870.25 Reformers sought to improve the education of Black women at all levels, and they recognized in particular the urgent call for trained teachers. The first significant advance came in 1867, when Howard in the District of Columbia opened as a coeducational university accepting Black as well as white students, attracting the majority of its women students into the teaching training program. In 1881, Spelman was founded in Atlanta, Georgia, to train teachers and missionaries, becoming the first institution exclusively for Black women to provide college level courses. Women also were admitted into most Black colleges and universities as they were established, although at coeducational

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institutions like Fisk in Nashville, or Morgan in Baltimore, women tended to follow separate courses of study in teaching or domestic science. In 1890, the second Morrill Act, which stipulated federal allocations for Black universities within the land-grant system, aided the growth of colleges offering liberal arts education and professional training to Black men and women. Yet Black women continued to represent a tiny minority in higher education, particularly in liberal arts colleges. Oberlin and Howard remained unusual in admitting both white and Black students, and it was not until after 1900 that small numbers of Black women began to enrol in such coeducational universities as Chicago or Cornell, or at separate women’s colleges like Wellesley and Smith.26 In Britain, in 1878 the University of London, then an examining body rather than a teaching institution, became the first to admit women to its degrees. From the 1870s, new university colleges, later termed civic or “red brick” universities, were introduced at Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, and Sheffield to prepare students for London’s external degree examinations, and, as they applied for their own university charters, they followed London in guaranteeing women access to their academic privileges. By 1895, all the provincial universities in England, Scotland, and Wales were admitting women to most of their programs and degrees, generally with the exceptions of divinity, medicine, and engineering. The universities in Scotland, St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, admitted women following the Universities (Scotland) Act of 1889.27 The nineteenth-century movements for women’s education resulted in the establishment of a variety of forms of provision: independent women’s colleges such as Vassar and Smith; women’s colleges affiliated with men’s universities, like Girton at Cambridge and Barnard at Columbia, usually termed “coordinate colleges” in the United States; and coeducational universities that admitted both men and women into the same classes, such as Nebraska and Colorado. Coeducation became the most common model in America, but in England, 40 per cent of all women undergraduates attended one of the separate colleges at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of London.28 In Canada the idea of coeducation was much

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more likely to take root at small denominational colleges, such as the Methodist Mount Allison, which had ties to similar evangelical institutions in the United States. By contrast, the association of coeducation with American populism gave it little credibility at McGill, Trinity, and Toronto, where attitudes were shaped by the monastic tradition of Oxford and Cambridge and the professoriate identified themselves as belonging to what Tamson Pietsch has termed the British academic world.29 While most reformers tended to associate equal education with access to the degrees offered by men’s universities, an influential group pursued the idea that a women’s college could be both separate and equal in terms of its academic standards. Independent women’s colleges were expensive to maintain; they struggled with limited faculties and inadequate libraries and laboratories; and their high fees made them less accessible to lower-middleclass women seeking university education, particularly those who supported themselves or their dependents. Within the hierarchy of the elite men’s universities, moreover, the coordinate women’s colleges were not considered equal to those of the men. At Harvard, Radcliffe graduates initially received certificates; after 1894, they earned Radcliffe degrees signed by the presidents of both Harvard and Radcliffe. Graduates of the women’s colleges at Oxford were not admitted to degrees until 1920; at Cambridge women did not receive full membership until 1948, and earlier attempts to gain degrees in 1897 and 1921 had resulted in violent demonstrations from men undergraduates. Separate colleges represent an important tradition in the development of higher education, providing women with the opportunity to study, research, and teach in a supportive and collegial community. In Canada, however, reformers focused on gaining access to men’s universities, and the hope of equal education for women became submerged into the movement for coeducation.

Advances in Girls’ Schooling The chief stumbling block for reformers was the difficulty in preparing young women for university matriculation. Universities required students to pass matriculation examinations in classical literature,

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Greek grammar, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and English before they could register as undergraduates, and boys studied for this hurdle by taking the preparatory course offered by grammar schools, and later by high schools and collegiate institutes.30 While often rigorous in their standards, Victorian girls’ academies and ladies’ schools emphasized the liberal arts: modern languages, English literary studies, mathematics, history, biology, and geography, as well as training in embroidery, painting, and music. They only offered Latin in their advanced courses, and Greek, if available, normally was optional.31 Yet scholars have suggested that this mixture of academic and cultural goals has a complex significance in the history of women’s schooling, and the artistic courses should not be dismissed as purely ornamental. The study of fine art was associated with “accomplishments” and domesticity, but the curriculum provided graduates with skills they could teach and a respectable avenue of paid employment. For women painters and musicians, the schools could offer a rare opportunity to develop their artistic abilities within a supportive environment. The cultural orientation of the curriculum also promoted the early study of literature in English during a period when men’s universities generally regarded it as a poor substitute for classics.32 Marjorie R. Theobald’s observations on the ladies’ schools of colonial Australia are equally applicable to colonial Canada. The idea of the accomplished woman was compatible with educational excellence, and these schools afforded some women the space and income to remain outside the common estate of marriage, to strengthen their religious faith, and to acquire cultural knowledge at a time when state options for advanced girls’ education were in short supply.33 An organized women’s movement did not emerge in Canada until the late 1870s, yet during the years that spanned Confederation, higher education for women became one of the multiple strands of reform that gained public attention and included temperance, married women’s property reform, and the expansion of taxsupported public schooling. The economy of British North America became more complex, towns grew, more people earned their livelihood in business or manufacturing, and the railway, printing technologies, and the telegraph transformed the speed of

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communication. Accompanying this new commercial climate was a growing awareness of social issues and a shift within evangelical Protestantism toward the recognition of individual responsibility for the common good of society. At the community level, women organized church-based groups, such as missionary, temperance, and literary societies, which often became forums for the discussion of other social and moral causes and provided an organizational base for further activism.34 For middle-class, professional, and farming families, secondary education for both boys and girls became a useful strategy in meeting the changing requirements of a wage-based, commercial economy. Most of the colonies had established grammar schools on the British model to prepare the sons of the elite for university matriculation or for further training in one of the learned professions – law, medicine, or divinity. The early grammar school curriculum focused intensively on Latin and Greek, the classical attainments deemed the mark of an educated gentleman. Yet as the public school systems spread, grammar schools began to respond to local communities by offering a more varied liberal education and by teaching more vocational subjects such as bookkeeping, commercial arithmetic, and surveying. By the 1860s, some grammar schools were admitting girls as well as boys, and these girls were using their grammar school education to obtain their teacher’s certificates. The study of the classics, mathematics, and commercial subjects, traditionally reserved for boys, was opened to girls more through expedience than any radical shift in thought. Not only was girls’ enrolment necessary to keep the numbers up and the schools open, but parents were quick to recognize the practical benefits that could be obtained by improving their daughters’ education.35 This rising concern over girls’ schooling was reflected in a new range of private options. For those parents who could afford it, by mid-century there were Protestant and Catholic boarding schools where girls could study both academic and cultural subjects. The interest of the Protestant churches in girls’ education derived from both materialistic and evangelical impulses; faith in the benefits of institutional growth and family status combined with an emphasis

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on intellectual training as a way to prevent idleness and vanity.36 “An educated woman should attract all hearts and minds,” the Methodist Christian Guardian concluded after the graduation ceremony at Wesleyan Female College in 1879. “The quiet influence of educated women could be of more influence than the ranting of the female preacher or politician.”37 The Wesleyan and the Episcopal Methodist churches took a leading role in providing education for girls and young women. One of the earliest ventures was Upper Canada Academy in Cobourg. Established in 1836, the academy maintained a separate female department, where girls were taught English grammar, geography, arithmetic, and astronomy, as well as French, composition, music, painting, and drawing. In 1841, Upper Canada Academy was given university status and became an institution for men only, renamed Victoria College. Other Methodist institutions followed, including the ladies’ department of Belleville Seminary, later Albert College (1857), Wesleyan Female College in Hamilton (1861), Brookhurst Academy in Cobourg (1872), Ontario Ladies’ College in Whitby (1874), and Alma College in St Thomas (1877). In the Maritime region, Methodists founded Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy in 1854 in Sackville, with the hope that the school’s central location would draw students from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as well as New Brunswick.38 Other Protestant churches followed a similar pattern. In 1861, the Baptists created Grand Pré Seminary for girls in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and then in 1872 transferred girls’ education to Horton Academy; in 1879, this department became the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary. Ontario Baptists formed the Canadian Literary Institute, later Woodstock College, in 1860, with a separate ladies’ department. In 1888, the ladies’ department was transferred to Toronto and became Moulton Ladies’ College.39 Presbyterians had endorsed coeducation at the secondary level as early as 1842 by accepting girls into Pictou Academy, the leading grammar school in Nova Scotia. Later in the century, they conducted three separate institutions for young women: Ottawa Ladies’ College (1869), Brantford Young Ladies’ College (1874), and Halifax Ladies’ College (1887). Anglican girls’ academies often aspired to the patronage of more elite families,

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including Hellmuth Ladies’ College at London, and Bishop Strachan School at Toronto, both opened in 1867, and the Church School for Girls, Edgehill, in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1891. 40 Catholic girls had increasing access to secondary education at the convent academies established by orders of women religious. In 1847, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loretto Sisters) opened a convent academy within their Toronto motherhouse; over the following decades the order expanded to operate boarding and day schools alongside their convents throughout Ontario, including Hamilton, Guelph, and Niagara Falls. The Loretto schools initially taught traditional liberal arts subjects, but by the late 1870s, they began to reflect the priorities of the new public high schools and offer preparation for matriculation. Similarly, in 1854 the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph opened a convent academy in Toronto, St Joseph’s Academy, followed by other schools in St Catharines, Thorold, Barrie, and Oshawa. Like the Loretto Sisters, the Sisters of St Joseph offered a rigorous matriculation course and adapted their curriculum to suit the requirements of the provincial department of education, including certification in teaching and business studies. 41 In Bytown, later renamed Ottawa, in 1849 the Grey Nuns of the Cross created the Sisters of Charity convent school, and subsequently Bruyère College. In 1869, the Grey Nuns started St Mary’s Academy in Winnipeg, which was transferred to the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in 1874. The Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame operated convent academies across Canada, and by the 1890s, many were offering commercial courses, including stenography, typewriting, and bookkeeping. Among the more prominent academies in Nova Scotia, the Sisters of Charity of Halifax founded Mount St Vincent Academy in Halifax in 1873, and the Congregation of Notre Dame opened Mount St Bernard’s Young Ladies’ Academy in Antigonish in 1883. By the end of the century, women religious also represented the majority of teachers in the publicly funded Roman Catholic schools, and congregations sent teaching sisters to attend normal schools and encouraged their ongoing professional training. Catholic convent academies were flexible in adapting to change, offering domestic science and agricultural science in response to

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provincial government funding, and affiliating their business and music programs with outside institutions to enable their students to obtain certification. 42 In the Protestant academies, the lines between primary, secondary, and even collegiate levels of education often were blurred, and students could range in age from girls as young as seven to women in their early twenties. Wesleyan Female College and Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy, for example, granted the mla diploma, Mistress of Liberal Arts, to young women who completed their advanced courses. By the early 1870s, the provincial governments had taken control of many of the old grammar schools, transforming them into public high schools and collegiate institutes. Some became coeducational from the beginning, but access for girls still varied by province. In New Brunswick, girls were ensured the right to attend public secondary schools by the Common Schools Act of 1871, yet in Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario, many secondary schools were reluctant to adopt coeducation, and some boards chose to establish separate schools, such as the Montreal High School for Girls. 43 The campaign to improve the education of women and girls was spurred on by the development of public schooling and the sudden rise in the demand for teachers. Communities often looked to unmarried women or widows in their search for teachers, but most girls had limited educational opportunities to qualify themselves to teach, even with a third-class licence. Eric W. Sager has shown that public school teaching quickly became the most highly paid and respectable work available to women. The process of feminization at the elementary level was rapid and enduring; by 1871, more than 61 per cent of teachers in Canada were women, and by 1915, the percentage had increased to 83.44 It had been common for women to operate small private schools to support their families, and these schools had differed in quality depending on the teachers’ own background and qualifications. In some areas, the public school had been preceded by this kind of private-venture school, usually operated as a family business by a married couple or the schoolmistress alone, and women’s employment in the new state-supported systems was a natural continuation of local practice. Women were recruited to teach in the new public schools for

( 1 .1 )

Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy offered the Mistress of Liberal Arts diploma, a three-year course of literature and science similar to the collegiate course offered to boys, with the significant exception of Greek. The closely knit Methodist community in Sackville encouraged interaction between the academy and the university, and even before women were formally admitted in 1872, senior girls walked over to the college to take some of their classes with the men undergraduates.

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various other reasons: the call for teachers was constant, women were considered to be inherently suited to teach young children, and school board trustees were attracted to their availability, as well as to their comparatively lower salaries.45 Most importantly, women themselves sought out these positions. “Females in far larger proportions are suited to the work,” one teacher argued in 1871, “and from a consciousness of their adaptation to it continue to teach and love the profession, while by far the greater number of males, conscious of the want of adaptation to the work they have assumed – not chosen – quit the profession for something more genial.”46 A key aspect of this development was the establishment of provincial normal schools, teacher-training institutions that were designed to improve and standardize the instruction in the public school systems. The first normal school was opened in Toronto in 1847, followed during the 1850s by others in Canada East (later Quebec), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Although some, such as the New Brunswick Training School for Teachers, initially refused to admit women, by 1860 normal schools across British North America had become coeducational and usually enrolled more women than men. In Nova Scotia, women were actively recruited to attend the new provincial normal school at Truro. After 1854, the superintendent of education, Alexander Forrester, gave lecture tours throughout the province in which he encouraged young women to enrol. 47 The Department of Education established the Manitoba Normal School in 1882 in Winnipeg to train Protestant teachers, and by 1886, women represented 49 per cent of all teachers in the new province.48 These provincial institutions often drew on the teaching resources of other local academies and colleges. In Montreal, McGill Normal School, founded in 1857, was conducted by McGill University on behalf of the province and directed by its principal, J. William Dawson. Dawson later credited the normal school with initiating the movement for women’s education in the province; “in many important respects,” he claimed in 1881, it was “a college for women.”49 Normal schools were closely related to the growth of the provincial school systems, and women seeking positions in both public and Roman Catholic boards attended in growing numbers.

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Before the 1870s, the normal schools were the first institutions to educate adult men and women in the same classrooms, and as such, they provided reformers with an early example of coeducation beyond the secondary schools. The establishment of public schooling made education more available to the working classes and the poor, but this expansion was accompanied by increased racism that resulted in the exclusion of many children. Following the passage of the Indian Act of 1876 and its subsequent amendments, Indigenous children were prohibited from attending provincial public schools and sent to church-run residential schools, contracted out by the federal government and negligently managed by the Department of Indian Affairs. Modelled on industrial and correctional schools and designed to assimilate, residential schools became appalling institutions of abuse, suffering, disease, and neglect. Many Indigenous communities already had day schools located on their reserves, such as the Six Nations of Grand River, and they struggled to maintain some local control, appoint their own teachers, and include Indigenous language in the classroom.50 In Ontario and Nova Scotia, most school boards established separate schools for Black children after the mid-nineteenth century, and the discrepancies in qualifications and salaries that plagued all women teachers were multiplied for Black women. Most of these segregated schools remained within the provincial systems, yet they were chronically underfunded, and Black women teachers usually received the lowest salaries in their boards. Black teachers were restricted from attending some of the normal schools, including the provincial institution at Truro in Nova Scotia, and some school districts even prohibited Black children from enrolling in the local high school or collegiate institute. Without these opportunities for more advanced education, Black women often had no choice but to teach with lowerclass certificates, or to obtain special permissive licences.51 Through racism and lack of access to secondary schooling, opportunities for advanced education for Black and Indigenous children remained severely limited until well into the twentieth century. As the occupation of teaching professionalized during the late nineteenth century, there was a widening gap between the salaries

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and qualifications of men and those of women. Kristina R. Llewellyn and Elizabeth M. Smyth have observed that the feminization of teaching was a movement of primarily white, Protestant, unmarried women supporting the development of public schooling, but women’s numerical dominance in this new system did not not translate into a status commensurate to men teachers.52 Women dominated the lower forms in the public schools, while boards preferred to hire men to teach in the new high schools and collegiate institutes, as well as to occupy administrative positions. Traditionally, grammar school masters had been clergymen and university graduates, and this image of masculine respectability was carried over into the popular conception of the collegiate institute teacher. In 1890, for example, women constituted only 13.1 per cent of secondary school teachers in Ontario.53 The provincial school systems relied on an increasingly stratified teaching force, using levels of certification to regulate opportunities for advancement as well as salaries. Moving up from the lowest level, usually termed the third-class certificate, required a combination of years of teaching experience and passing a provincially developed examination. In Nova Scotia, white women were eligible to study for first-class licences at the provincial normal school after 1869, but were prohibited from taking the examination for the highest level, the academic licence, and therefore were ineligible to teach in the new secondary schools. Young women teachers were more likely to be hired in remote rural and village schools, where isolation and rough conditions made it difficult for school trustees to attract qualified candidates. The necessity of finding staff for rural schools frequently led to boards making concessions or hiring the candidates with the lowest qualification, and provincial authorities often issued permissive licences to allow women to teach. Even when men and women with the same qualifications taught at the elementary level, most boards ensured that the man would receive a different title with a higher rate of pay, and rural trustees were notoriously frugal, commonly bargaining down teacher salaries.54 Among women teachers, in both public and private schools, there was a growing consensus that they could only achieve respect in their occupation if they themselves gained access to more advanced

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levels of education. “The disparity between the salaries of male and female teachers, must often arrest the attention of thinking persons,” a woman teacher noted in 1871.55 Similarly, another Nova Scotia teacher, Isabella Chalmers, urged in 1877, “I think it is not too much to say, that the problem of both our position and prospects in the future can only be solved by ourselves; if we, as teachers, do not improve ourselves, all the bolstering up in the world will not improve our position.”56 University degrees were not yet mandatory for secondary school teaching, but public school boards sought out men who were university graduates, and a degree was an important factor in advancement. Ladies’ colleges and girls’ academies also increasingly preferred to hire teachers with university degrees; the board of Halifax Ladies’ College, for example, decided when it opened in 1887 that all teachers must if possible hold a university degree.57 Susan Gelman has shown how closely connected these factors were for women: access to degrees meant access to secondary school positions, and these jobs meant higher wages. Once women were able to earn university degrees, there was a steady rise in the number of women secondary school teachers. In Ontario, between 1900 and 1910, the percentage of women secondary school teachers increased from 17.3 to 37.1 per cent of the total, and in 1920 reached 51.2 per cent.58 Although women had difficulty qualifying to teach in public secondary schools, private girls’ academies had long provided employment to professional schoolmistresses, and increasingly preferred staff with normal school qualifications. In many cases, earlier teachers had received their own education at American institutions before returning to provide leadership in their communities. For example, Alice Shaw, Grand Pré Seminary’s first principal, was one of several young women from Nova Scotia who attended Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts during the 1850s, and, once home, worked with other Mount Holyoke graduates to establish academies for girls in the Maritimes. Shaw’s career at Grand Pré was brief – she left to marry the Baptist minister Alfred Chipman in 1862 – but her school, modelled on Mount Holyoke, provided the foundation for young women in Horton Academy, and subsequently, for their admission into Acadia University.59

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The Methodist schoolmistress Mary Electa Adams played a significant role in the histories of both Mount Allison and Victoria, two of the earliest universities to respond to the needs of women students. Adams attended Montpelier Academy in Vermont, where she studied classics and advanced mathematics, before returning to Upper Canada in 1841 to finish her education at the new Cobourg Ladies’ Seminary. She became head of the female branch of Wesleyan Academy, soon to be Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy, in Sackville, New Brunswick, in 1854, and then principal of Wesleyan Female College in Hamilton in 1861. From 1872 to 1880, Adams ran her own school, Brookhurst Academy, in Cobourg, before accepting her last position as lady principal of Ontario Ladies’ College at Whitby in 1880. At all these schools, Adams maintained high academic standards, insisting on disciplined habits of study and encouraging her students to take their education seriously.60 Commenting on Adams’ work at Ontario Ladies’ College, one observer wrote, “Her thorough culture, aptness to teach, unostentatious dignity, and sterling character, made her a potent factor in moulding the intellectual and moral characters of the pupils.”61 The new market for qualified teachers, and the expansion of the provincial school systems, accelerated the movement for women’s higher education in Canada. The emergence of teaching as a profession for women motivated efforts to improve girls’ education at the secondary level, in public high schools and collegiate institutes, as well as in the many church run academies and ladies’ colleges. In Roman Catholic education, women religious dominated the teaching force, both in convent academies and publicly funded provincial schools. At all these schools, women provided leadership, introducing rigorous academic standards, pushing for access to matriculation examinations, and ultimately campaigning for admission into university classrooms.

Pioneering Coeducation Universities in Victorian Canada offered a broad foundation in the liberal arts, and their courses were designed to form young men into educated gentlemen who would become leaders in the professions, commerce, and politics. Based on the British model, Canadian

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universities in general regarded their role to be the transmission of humanistic values within a Christian framework. Apart from theology, most universities had only a faculty of arts, although some also had affiliated schools of law and medicine. The experience of undergraduate life itself was considered to play an important role in the formation of professional identity, as students prepared for their work in the public sphere by participating in debates and student politics. The course of study leading to the bachelor’s degree – normally called the ba at this time – required undergraduates to take courses in both science and arts: classics, mathematics, and philosophy, as well as chemistry and natural history, which included botany, zoology, and geology. By the 1870s, the universities were in a process of transition, responding to significant changes in the intellectual and political environment in which they operated. The opening of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, modelled on the German research university, attracted scientists in Canada to the idea that university professors could be committed to independent research as much to the instruction of undergraduates. Gradually, the ba degree began to expand to include new courses in physics, biochemistry, history, modern languages, and English literature. Yet even as universities became increasingly specialized, the sciences usually continued in faculties of arts, or in combined faculties of arts and science, and only in the 1920s did the bsc begin to emerge as a distinct degree granted to students who specialized in mathematics or science rather than arts.62 Women entered an academic world shaped by religion, and at most universities, it was the world of evangelical Protestantism. The religious revivals of the mid-Victorian years inspired the foundation of denominational colleges, optimistic ventures intended to ground higher education in Christian values and teach young men to recognize that knowledge formed a unified truth in God. As Michael Gauvreau states, all Protestant denominations, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican, were profoundly influenced by evangelicalism, and theology was not so much a fixed doctrine as a pervasive body of beliefs and assumptions concerning God, the individual, and society.63 At the heart of this creed was a deep commitment to the conversion

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and salvation of society. In the movement to admit women to higher education, this commitment to individual and social salvation worked in their favour. For clergymen wrestling with the implications of Darwinian science and biblical criticism, the admission of women seemed initially like a safe innovation; in the evangelical world view, the educated woman could become a potent force for moral change within her family and community. While each university had distinct provincial and local concerns, it is significant that Mount Allison, Queen’s, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie, the first five universities to admit women, all had ties to the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. Anglicans too embraced the moral appeal of women’s higher education, but McGill, Trinity, and St John’s at Manitoba tenaciously adhered to the model of a separate women’s college. They envisioned their colleges as masculine communities – with high-church associations in the case of Trinity – and most closely identified with the customs of Britain’s ancient universities, particularly Cambridge. 64 In Catholic higher education, independent universities such as St Francis Xavier and Ottawa, as well as those Catholic colleges within federated structures like St Boniface at Manitoba and St Michael’s at Toronto, were established to provide higher education for priests and Catholic lay leaders. The congregations of men who made up their faculty and boards could not accept coeducation, and orders of women religious, such as the Congregation of Notre Dame at St Francis Xavier, founded colleges for women, often in connection with their convent academies, undertaking an essential role in the provision and expansion of Catholic women’s education. 65 In sharp contrast to the circuitous and ad hoc approach adopted by other universities, at Mount Allison Wesleyan College the decision to admit women to the full rank of undergraduates was unequivocal. In 1872, far in advance of other Canadian and British universities, the Mount Allison senate voted in favour of admitting women, granting them all three rights of undergraduates: to matriculate, attend lectures, and register in a course of study leading to a degree. The minutes of the college board recorded, “Ladies having regularly matriculated and completed the course of study prescribed by this

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board shall be entitled to receive the degrees in the arts and faculties upon the same terms and conditions as are now or may hereafter be imposed upon male students of the College.”66 As the profound departure of Mount Allison became more widely known, two other Maritime universities made the public commitment that they too would admit women: the Baptist Acadia College in 1880, and the non-denominational Dalhousie College in 1881. Campaigners found powerful allies among faculty and board members, and the transition to coeducation at these institutions was regarded as both a progressive and practical response to social change. In each community, the driving force came from schoolmistresses and public school teachers invested in the expanding network of normal schools, high schools, and private academies, women who sought to raise the standards of their own profession and to improve the quality and provision of education for their students. The Wesleyan Methodists operated three educational ventures in Sackville, New Brunswick: Mount Allison Academy for boys, Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy for girls, and Mount Allison Wesleyan College for men, which opened with faculties of arts and theology and the power to grant degrees in 1862. The students at the two academies and the college had considerable opportunity to interact; brothers, sisters, and cousins were permitted to visit each other, and there were weekly public receptions, where the young men were invited to the girls’ academy for conversation and promenading to music up and down the halls. The professors, teachers, and students of the three institutions formed a tightly knit community in Sackville.67 In 1871, a correspondent to the Provincial Wesleyan praised the work of the interconnected institutions and urged other Methodists to send their children: “The close and home-like associations which prevail – the increased facilities for comfortable residence – the careful moral supervision should have their proper weight with the parents and guardians of our Methodist youth and others.”68 Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy offered a three-year course leading to a Mistress of Liberal Arts diploma, based on the systematic study of literature and science first introduced by Mary Electa Adams. On Adams’ insistence, the graduating program had been made similar

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to the collegiate course for boys, with the difference that the study of Greek and Latin was optional, and girls normally substituted French and German for the classical languages. Shortly after the opening of the university, senior girls in the graduating program started to be allowed to walk over and take some classes, such as French, alongside the men. The presence of young women from the academy in the men’s classes seems to have been accepted as another example of the two schools and the university working toward a common educational purpose with limited resources.69 By the early 1870s, the principal of Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy, James R. Inch, was in favour of a formal collaboration with the university, and he was supported by other members of the faculty, including Charles Stewart, a professor of theology, who had a bright young daughter, Harriet Starr Stewart, studying at the academy. On 26 May 1872, the Mount Allison board and senate approved the motion, introduced by Inch and seconded by Stewart, that women be permitted to matriculate and proceed to degrees at Mount Allison College. The decision to become coeducational was taken at a time when women could not earn a degree at any university in Britain or Canada, but Inch and others at Mount Allison were sensitive to the currents of change affecting public schooling and teaching in the Maritime region. Before coming to Mount Allison to teach at the boys’ academy in 1854, Inch had attended the provincial normal school in Saint John and worked as a public school teacher.70 In 1860, Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy had been unsuccessful in applying for a provincial grant to train teachers and have its students obtain school teaching licences without having to attend normal school. A decade later, Mount Allison College was experiencing a severe financial crisis, caused by the loss of the provincial subsidy following New Brunswick’s Common Schools Act of 1871, which established public secondary schooling for boys and girls.71 The board of Mount Allison also likely had been influenced by the rapid spread of coeducation at the small denominational and land grant colleges in the United States. Inch and the president, David Allison, knew that similar American institutions short of funds had recently adopted coeducation, including Allison’s own alma mater,

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Wesleyan University in Connecticut, which had admitted women in 1871. In 1878, Inch would replace Allison as university president, following Allison’s appointment as superintendent of education for Nova Scotia. Like the rural denominations south of the border, the Methodists in New Brunswick expected their educational institutions to meet community needs, and the admission of women to degrees found strong support among faculty and parents, who regarded it as formalizing an existing practice rather than the abrupt introduction of a new and controversial policy.72 The Provincial Wesleyan welcomed the news, observing that while progressive, this was not a new decision, since ladies had been maintaining their ground in the college classes for years.73 A letter to the editor phrased it eloquently: “Fairly abreast, if not somewhat in advance of the spirit of the age the Mount Allison Wesleyan College has before it a glorious career of future usefulness, and cannot fail to reap its own well deserved reward.”74 Grace Annie Lockhart was the first woman to graduate with a university degree in Canada, receiving the bs degree, Bachelor of Science and English Literature, from Mount Allison in 1875. Lockhart had completed the Mistress of Liberal Arts diploma in 1874, and then spent her final year registered as an undergraduate at the university in the bs course. The bs was a three-year liberal arts degree, and after 1867 it was considered of lesser rigour than the ba degree, which required four years of study and both Latin and Greek. As a student at the girls’ academy since 1871, Lockhart had not taken Greek and therefore was unable to enrol in the full arts course.75 Like many early graduates, Lockhart became active in community organizations and believed strongly in the importance of women’s contribution to social reform. In an address to the ladies’ college graduates in 1896, Lockhart commented on the benefits of women gaining equal suffrage with men, and stressed the value of equal university education to society. “Higher education of women – What is it?” she asked. “It is the higher education of women to fit them for the higher spheres of action, whether they be political, professional, or social – the same education that men need under the same circumstances.”76

(1.2)

In this photo of the class of 1875 at Mount Allison College, Grace Annie Lockhart is the only graduate not wearing a gown or holding a mortarboard, a privilege that the university’s second woman graduate, Harriet Starr Stewart, would insist upon. Lockhart was the first woman to graduate with a degree in Canada, earning a three-year Bachelor of Science and English Literature. The man sitting on her right, John Leard Dawson, would become her husband in 1881.

Lockhart had been unable to take the ba degree because of her lack of Greek. Harriet Starr Stewart, the daughter of Charles Stewart, had the advantage of knowing she was going to be able to attend university, and prepared for matriculation by studying Greek at the boys’ academy. In 1878, Stewart passed the matriculation examination and enrolled in the four-year arts course at Mount Allison. In 1882, she became the first woman in Canada to complete the four-year arts course and graduate

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with a ba degree. Stewart graduated with an ma degree in 1885.77 As she remembered it, both her father and Inch had pushed her to enter the university course after she graduated from the academy. She also received encouragement from other faculty members at Mount Allison, commenting later in her life, “The professors were keen to see the girls get started.”78 The student newspaper, The Argosy, expressed its pride in Stewart’s distinction and the honour she brought to Mount Allison.79 Although there were very few women attending university classes during the first decade of official coeducation, their feeling of being outsiders was lessened by the close sense of community between the girls’ academy and the college. Most undergraduate women matriculated into the college from the girls’ academy – renamed Mount Allison Ladies’ College in 1886 – and this connection was strengthened by the fact that women attending the university could also continue to live there in residence. Stewart remembered enjoying her undergraduate years; the classes were small, and as a family member of a professor, she knew everyone on campus.80 Women began occupying a few seats at Mount Allison at a time when the debate over women’s higher education was still in its early stage, and few in Canada had started to question the full implications of university coeducation. The Argosy supported the admission of women, but suggested that the destiny of most graduates was to marry, joking in 1877 that the university should offer an ffw, “Fit For Wives” course, to train them to be competent cooks and housekeepers.81 During the 1870s, supporters adopted the liberal view that the right of individuals to self-improvement was natural, an enhancement assumed to benefit the family and the wider church community. For administrators at Mount Allison, the intrinsic value of university education simply could be detached from the specific application of that training to the working world. At the closing of the session for 1879–80, the Chignecto Post reported on speeches given by Allison and Inch, both of whom praised the intellectual ability of women as a quality that would enhance the private sphere. Allison stated that “Any women’s best and highest sphere he conceived to be aiding some good, honest, faithful man in discharging the duties of life.”82 While Allison believed the university had no right to deny

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knowledge and mental power to women, the practical uses and ends of that education had a bearing only on men’s social and political life. Inch congratulated Mount Allison for boldly opening its doors to all irrespective of sex, and then avoided any discussion of the purposes to which university degrees might be applied. “Dr Inch, referring to the prevalency of the belief that the female sex is inferior to the male in intellectual vigor, said that years of experience had taught him that young ladies can compete with the sterner sex in either intellectual acuteness or the power of acquisition.”83 In these terms, higher education for women was both a symptom and a cause of human progress, and evangelical faith in the ultimate perfection of human society propelled the movement forward. Apart from the progressive rhetoric used on public occasions, there were practical issues that connected Mount Allison’s decision to the demand for public school teachers. Following the announcement in 1872, the Nova Scotia Journal of Education printed a letter from Harriet Arey, a normal school teacher in Wisconsin and graduate of Oberlin College, stating somewhat disingenuously that it had come to be acknowledged on all hands that women had as much right as men to the highest form of education. “The door to all the higher walks of education should be opened to woman,” Arey claimed, “because she has a right to that higher organization, so to speak, which an education gives; that increased power of discrimination; that basis of sounder judgment; that keener insight into all things that appeal to her mental powers.” 84 Nova Scotia’s superintendent of education, A.S. Hunt, gave a similar message in his address to the provincial teachers’ association later that summer. Hunt argued that the province’s academies and universities ought to be opened to women, who, as future mothers, would have the responsibility of raising young children. Exhibiting his familiarity with Lamarckian evolutionary theory, which suggested women could pass along acquired intellectual capacity to their children, the superintendent argued that a mother’s influence went beyond the moral and into the physiological. The intellectual faculties, Hunt maintained, were believed to be transmitted more from the mother than from the father.85 For all his talk of motherhood, Hunt

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was concerned to raise the education level of the large numbers of women going into public school teaching. In 1871, Hunt had worried that women were degrading the new profession because they were unqualified to teach the more advanced branches in public schools. He had warned, “The unavoidable inference from these facts is, that the present great disparity in numbers between Male and Female Teachers is operating unfavourably upon the public welfare.”86 As president of Mount Allison, and later as superintendent of education for New Brunswick, James Inch would continue to advance education for women teachers. In 1880, Inch initiated the admission of women into the University of Halifax, a short-lived institution created by the provincial government in 1876, which had failed by 1881. This was an attempt by Nova Scotia’s Methodists and Presbyterians to establish a central university, and its senate members included Inch and Allison of Mount Allison, James Ross of Dalhousie, and George Munro Grant, of Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario. The university was intended to be a central examining and degree-granting body for the province, without teaching facilities, modelled on the University of London. In 1880, following approval of a motion by Inch, the University of Halifax announced that women were to be admitted to its examinations and degrees – a decision indicating not only agreement on the senate, but the dawning consensus among Maritime university leaders that women’s education was both progressive and financially prudent. Harriet Starr Stewart, though she graduated from Mount Allison in 1882, took the junior examinations at the University of Halifax when they were opened to women in July 1880, and placed in the first division. During his tenure as provincial superintendent from 1891 to 1909, Inch steadily tried to raise the standard of public school teaching, particularly at the secondary level, establishing examination regulations for university matriculation and for admission to the normal school.87 Although Mount Allison’s vote for coeducation was an expression of faith and optimism, it was also a highly pragmatic response to the needs of the community. Similar developments were underway in Cobourg, Ontario, at the University of Victoria College, another Methodist institution. By the early 1870s, young women in Cobourg had good access to secondary

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schooling, both at the newly coeducational high school after 1871 (designated a collegiate institute the following year) and at a private girls’ school, Brookhurst Academy, which was opened the same year by Mary Electa Adams. As she had done at Mount Allison, Adams designed a systematic program of study in science and literature for her senior students. She greatly admired Girton, just recently founded at Cambridge, and hoped to develop Brookhurst on the same model, as a college for women affiliated with Victoria. Victoria had a long-standing agreement that the old Cobourg grammar school would serve as a preparatory department of the university; this relationship continued after it became a coeducational high school, and the privilege of writing Victoria’s matriculation examination was extended to the girls as well as to the boys. The young women who passed the matriculation examination, however, were not permitted to attend classes at the university. To further this plan, Adams arranged for some of the faculty members at Victoria, including her nephew Arthur P. Coleman, to come to Brookhurst to give special classes to her advanced students. Brookhurst was located close to the Victoria campus, and the women there also interacted socially with undergraduates, as the men regularly attended musical evenings and other entertainments hosted by the academy.88 While Victoria University hesitated to allow women into classes at its college in Cobourg, its affiliated medical department, the Toronto School of Medicine, agreed to permit two women, Emily Howard Stowe and Jenny Kidd Trout, to attend classes in the fall of 1871. Stowe and Trout had successfully passed the matriculation examination of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in April 1871.89 Stowe had already earned a medical degree from the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, Homeopathic, in 1867, and had opened a practice in Toronto, primarily treating women patients. In 1869, however, the Ontario legislature granted sole authority to license practitioners to the new College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which passed a regulation requiring that doctors who had trained in the United States, like Stowe, were required to take a matriculation examination before a council of the college and attend at least one session of lectures at an Ontario medical school before qualifying for licensing.90

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Stowe and Trout registered as students in the medical department at Victoria, and attended classes together at the Toronto School of Medicine during the 1871–72 session.91 They experienced escalating harassment from the men students, who placed body parts on their seats, wrote offensive graffiti on their desks, and drew caricatures of them on the walls, behaviour which the professors either condoned or encouraged. Years later, in 1879, Trout told Elizabeth Smith, who also wished to become a doctor, that she and Stowe had received permission to attend lectures on the promise that whatever occurred they would make no complaint. “She narrated circumstances to me appalling,” Smith recorded in her diary after meeting Trout: “Through a hole in a wall between the lecture room & an anteroom they kept the vigils over their seats in the lecture room & if the students had played any tricks such as laying parts of a body in their chairs they then would send to the janitor to have them removed – They would write nauseous stuff on the desks & draw caricatures on the walls.”92 The more antagonistic professors, supported by the students, even attempted to have Stowe and Trout expelled, but the women, showing their “class tickets” as proof of payment, contended that they had no power to eject them, and threatened to sue the medical school for breach of contract if they did not receive the lectures for which they had paid.93 Stowe and Trout stayed for only the one session, and the Toronto School of Medicine did not admit women again until the end of the decade. Although Stowe was now qualified to take the licensing examination of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, she did not do so; as a woman who had attended a homeopathic medical school she may well have been wary of the hostility of examiners to her on both counts. Stowe continued to practise without a licence, and then adopted legal action, arranging for a writ of Mandamus to be served on the registrar of the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. In July 1880, Stowe’s registration in the college was approved by vote at the annual meeting of the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.94 After completing one session as a medical student at Victoria, Jenny Kidd Trout left Canada and went to Philadelphia to complete her studies at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1875,

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the year she graduated, Trout returned to Toronto, passed the final examination of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and obtained a licence to practise medicine in Ontario. Before retiring early due to her own ill health, Trout operated a successful practice for women, specializing in electrotherapeutic techniques for nervous disorders, and mentoring other young women who were preparing to study medicine.95 After meeting Trout, Elizabeth Smith reflected, “I left her much elated in spirit … resolved to go through my profession and do in what measure I may be able the work that she has done.”96 Smith, along with Stowe’s daughter, Augusta Stowe, passed the matriculation examination of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1879. Augusta Stowe registered at Victoria and completed the full course at the Toronto School of Medicine. Conditions in the lecture hall had not improved; the only woman in her classes, she remembered being taunted and insulted by the other students, and every day leaving the school in tears. In her own words, “similar to all pioneers, the pathway of the girl graduate was not strewn with roses.”97 In 1883, Augusta Stowe received an md from Victoria, becoming the first woman to graduate from a Canadian medical school, as well as the first woman to graduate from Victoria. Smith decided instead on attending the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Kingston, and after considerable challenges, including expulsion, eventually graduated with the md from Queen’s College in 1884.98 The introduction of women into the classrooms at the Toronto School of Medicine in 1871 had resulted in vindictive behaviour from men students and professors, and may have made other faculty at Victoria cautious about further coeducation. In Cobourg, Mary Electa Adams continued for several years unsuccessfully to push administrators to admit her Brookhurst students into classes at Victoria College. While some Victoria professors agreed to give lectures at the girls’ academy, it was not until 1876 that Adams finally received permission from Victoria’s president, Samuel S. Nelles, to send young women in her most advanced class to Victoria to take courses there as special students. As the Canada Educational Directory announced in 1876, “Young ladies are admitted to the lectures in logic, mental philosophy and the natural sciences, in Victoria College,

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the former under the direction of the President, and the latter, of Dr Haanel. Classes in the natural sciences thus have the benefit of the apparatus of the college.”99 The first such Brookhurst student, Mary Crossen, attended lectures in moral science and logic, physics, and chemistry at Victoria during the 1876–77 session. Nelles personally conducted Crossen through a secluded door leading from his private residence into his lecture room.100 Earlier in his life, Samuel Nelles had expressed reservations about the suitability of advanced study for girls – he once annoyed Adams by publicly cautioning her students against Latin and trigonometry – but he was receptive to change, and had been impressed by recent reports of women’s academic ability at Mount Allison. Nelles also had served as president of the Ontario Teachers’ Association in 1869 and 1870 and was knowledgeable about the transformation taking place within the public school system.101 In his address to the association in 1869, Nelles had observed that the rights of women and their education was one of the great questions of the day, and that teachers ought to have well-considered views with which to influence the public mind.102 Believing that women’s natural sphere was the household, Nelles maintained that their higher education would be a positive development for the family, and he remained skeptical that coeducation would be the best way to provide it. “While I would not debar woman from the advantages of instruction in any branch of learning,” he reflected years later, “I think that provision should somewhere be made for distinct courses of training, specially adapted to the wants and aptitudes of woman.”103 Mary Crossen did not matriculate, and she took university classes only as a special student in her final year, before graduating jointly from Brookhurst and Victoria in 1877 with a Mistress of English Literature certificate. But that fall, four more women from Brookhurst attended lectures at Victoria, and one of them, Barbara M. Foote, passed the matriculation examination and was registered as an undergraduate – the register of students for 1877–78 noted that Foote was the “First Lady Matriculant.”104 In addition to the candidates trained by Adams at Brookhurst, a number of girls at the Cobourg Collegiate Institute also began to prepare for Victoria’s

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matriculation examination, where the principal, D.C. McHenry, was strongly in favour of university coeducation. McHenry believed that higher education for women would be in the best interests of the teaching profession, and his encouragement extended to the staff as well as students. In 1879, Adeline Shenick, a teacher at the collegiate, became the second woman to matriculate into Victoria. Shenick took summer classes in science taught by the sympathetic chemistry and physics professor Eugene Haanel, then the following year left Cobourg to accept a position at the Ottawa normal school. She continued to study extramurally while teaching, and received a bsc degree from Victoria in 1887.105 While Adams had been successful in opening classes at Victoria to the students at Brookhurst, she was unable to transform her academy into a women’s college on the Cambridge model. Brookhurst could not compete with the public coeducational collegiate institute, and Adams closed her school in 1880, largely for financial reasons. Adams had gained support for a women’s college among Victoria’s faculty, but there was opposition from members of the senate and board, men who knew that coeducation already had been adopted at Mount Allison, as well as many Methodist colleges in the United States. Board members were wary of acquiring the expense of a separate women’s college, and there also may have been academic grounds for the rejection of Adams’ proposal to affiliate Brookhurst. Adams’ conception of an ideal program of study for women included an orientation toward modern languages, music, and fine art that was very different from Victoria’s liberal arts degree, which, like other universities at the time, focused on classics, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences.106 “I wish to see a modified university course including music for those who have the talent,” Adams wrote in 1880, “Fine Arts for aspirants after the course, opportunity for obtaining a speaking knowledge of modern languages, and a refined home withal to develop in.”107 Unlike Emily Davies at Girton, who insisted that her students take exactly the same subjects as men, Adams aligned herself with the reformers who believed that women’s higher education should be tailored to their own needs and designed to give them competency in subjects they could then teach.108

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Yet the appearance of some Brookhurst students in Victoria’s classes after 1876 had established the fact that the university was now open to the admission of women. The first woman to complete a full undergraduate course at Victoria was Nellie C. Greenwood. Greenwood matriculated in science in 1880, and received her bsc degree in 1884. The bsc offered by Victoria after 1875 was a fouryear course that combined theoretical and practical science with a broadly based liberal arts education.109 Greenwood had attended a coeducational high school in Bath, Maine, which had prepared a number of women to matriculate. She had not taken Greek, and this made her ineligible for admission into most universities. After her graduation from high school in 1880, Greenwood’s father, who had a family connection to Victoria’s first principal, Egerton Ryerson, had chosen Victoria because he was aware women would be accepted and that Greek was an optional subject for matriculation. A gifted student, Greenwood was only sixteen when she enrolled. She excelled in math and found studying at Victoria “a realm of pure delight,”110 in spite of the fact that she spent most of her first year at university sitting alone in Haanel’s office. Much to her relief, she was joined in the fall of 1881 by Clara C. Field and Cassy Munson, who had been encouraged to matriculate by D.C. McHenry at the Cobourg Collegiate Institute.111 As Greenwood remembered it, she and her classmates were welcomed, receiving nothing but courtesy and kindness from both faculty and students. “With the woman student body now increased to three,” she later wrote, “it was felt that the lonesome feeling had passed forever – and when the number ran up to seven it was felt that women had a definite and permanent place in the undergraduate life of Victoria.”112 The presence of Nellie Greenwood at first excited what Acta Victoriana described as “great amazement,”113 but finding her to be young, lady-like, and unobtrusive, the undergraduates publicly declared they were proud of their college’s progressive stand. This pride likely was augmented by the fact that their rival, the University of Toronto, still stubbornly resisted coeducation. In 1881, a contributor to Acta Victoriana criticized the recent refusal of the Toronto senate to admit women into classes at University College, and argued that while

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it had little practical application, higher education gave women the benefit of a well-filled and cultivated mind. He claimed, “An educated woman should be able to exert a powerful influence in forming the young mind, and imparting wise ideas and cultivated tastes.”114 In 1883, Augusta Stowe graduated from Victoria, accepting her md amid applause that belied her harsh experience at the Toronto School of Medicine. Greenwood, who watched the ceremony, noted proudly that Stowe was gracious and charming in appearance, and received an ovation from the Cobourg audience.115 A year later, Greenwood herself appeared at convocation, and the crowd in Victoria Hall applauded with great enthusiasm until she left the stage. Acta Victoriana noted that Greenwood’s graduation marked a new era in the history of Victoria College and hoped she would be but the first of many to avail themselves of the university’s advantages. Julia Darling Haanel, whose husband, Eugene Haanel, had first welcomed Brookhurst students into his science classes, also received the bsc ad eundem, having attended college in the United States before her marriage.116 The first women to register at Victoria, as at Mount Allison, were in most cases already part of the tightly knit Methodist society of the university. “All the women I knew at Victoria had relatives either among the students or professors or both,” Greenwood noted in her memoirs.117 The Presbyterian Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario, unlike Mount Allison and Victoria, was not affiliated with a girls’ academy, and girls were not admitted into the Kingston Collegiate Institute, formerly the local grammar school, until 1877. The university was closely associated with preparatory training for boys, as since 1862, the Kingston grammar school had been affiliated with Queen’s, and its arts professors had served as school visitors.118 There were some faculty members at Queen’s who were sympathetic to the cause of higher education for women, but their efforts were initially confined to providing separate classes at the college. In 1869, they formed a committee at Queen’s to organize a Ladies’ Educational Association, modelled on similar associations recently set up in Scotland. During part of the session that winter, J. Clark Murray, the young professor of moral and mental philosophy, offered a course for women three times a week in the study of the English language. Murray’s lectures

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were well attended, attracting twenty-two women, and the work done by these students, he reported, was highly satisfactory. In April 1870, the committee recommended to the Queen’s senate that the experiment be continued on a larger scale in the future, and separate classes for women be offered during the regular session.119 The board of trustees approved, but made it clear that the women would be considered special students rather than undergraduates. They would not matriculate, were to be recorded in a separate register, and would pay a different fee for use of the library. They were also to their pay tuition directly to the professors, whose lectures were not to interfere with “the proper discharge of ordinary professorial duties.”120 For the next two years, during the 1870–71 and 1871–72 sessions, Queen’s offered “classes for ladies” in English language, rhetoric and logic, and natural history.121 The board was disappointed in the overall enrolment. At the closing convocation in the spring of 1871, Murray defended the project, arguing that the enrolments were not overly low in light of Kingston’s small population, and observed that the real problem lay in “the want of the preparatory training which boys receive at the high school.”122 A letter to the Kingston Daily News in 1870 had pointed out the same impediment: girls had little access to secondary schooling in the city, and the opening of the grammar school to young women was a much more pressing need. “It seems like commencing at the top of the ladder for young ladies to go to College without previously having been at a Grammar School,” the writer had observed.123 At the opening of the session in 1871, Murray expressed his support more fully in a public address, “The Higher Education of Woman,” later published as a pamphlet. Murray had attended the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in 1863 had come to Canada to accept the position in philosophy at Queen’s. His wife, Margaret Polson Murray, was an active reformer who supported the Ladies’ Educational Movement and wrote and organized on behalf of women’s causes.124 Echoing John Stuart Mill’s recently published Subjection of Women, Murray stated that in recent years a vindication of women’s rights had produced nobler ideas of women’s mission and the range of their duties. He insisted that the restriction of women to a limited sphere,

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and their exclusion from the means of superior education, was without foundation in natural justice; every human being had the natural and inalienable right to self-support and individual fulfillment. In Murray’s view, it was imperative that higher education be opened to women on an equal basis to men, since only universities could provide them with both a practical route to employment and a means of attaining the highest intellectual culture. “For all thoughtful men it is becoming one of the most earnest problems of modern society,” he urged, “whether the demands of the highest Christian civilization are satisfied by the social position which has been hitherto assigned to women.”125 Murray left Kingston shortly afterward, in 1872, to take up the chair of moral philosophy at McGill, and Queen’s discontinued its special classes for women. Once in Montreal, Murray continued to promote coeducation at the university level, pushing for the admission of women into McGill and frequently butting heads over the issue with his principal, J. William Dawson.126 In 1875, the Queen’s Journal suggested that Queen’s again establish a series of afternoon lectures for women, commenting that the young women of Kingston were less favoured than their sisters in Montreal and Toronto, who by then had access to courses organized by the Ladies’ Educational Association.127 Members of the Kingston community recognized that the most serious obstacle was the lack of secondary schooling for girls. In 1876, Elizabeth de St Rémy, the headmistress of a Kingston ladies’ school, Sterling House, wrote a letter to the Queen’s senate to ask if she and twelve other women might be admitted to classes. According to D.H. Marshall, who was appointed the new professor of physics at Queen’s in 1882, the senate discussed this letter and decided to permit de St Rémy and some of her students to enter the college. As he described it later, “On the Senate looking over the statues it was found that in them there was nothing to keep ladies out, and Miss St Rémy was written to to that effect.”128 The senate minutes of 13 October 1876 recorded that in “reference to an application from Miss de St Rémy, the Senate sanctioned the admission into the classes of chemistry and logic of such young ladies as she might send under suitable superintendence.”129 Since girls in Kingston still could not go to the collegiate institute, de St Rémy appears to have been seeking

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some form of affiliation with Queen’s for Sterling House, probably with the plan of helping her senior students prepare for matriculation or for admission to normal school. De St Rémy’s mother, Caroline, had operated a girls’ school in Toronto and Kingston, and her two sisters, Harriet and Theresa, also became teachers; after Caroline’s death in 1869, de St Rémy continued to operate the school in Kingston, which by 1877 had been named Sterling House and moved to Queen’s Street.130 De St Rémy believed that girls needed to be prepared to support themselves in an increasingly uncertain economic climate. In an article published in 1881 in the Canada Educational Monthly, she urged fathers to ensure that their daughters received some form of training that could be of professional and marketable value. The idea of a man feeling himself lowered in his own eyes if he was unable to provide for the women in his family no longer fit their modern society, she wrote: “whether he has or has not the prospect of providing for them, they should also possess the power of providing for themselves.”131 Although the senate had agreed to de St Rémy’s request, none of the Sterling House students actually showed up in the chemistry or logic classes at Queen’s. It is possible that de St Rémy’s plans were forestalled by the announcement that girls would soon be admitted into the Kingston Collegiate Institute. In January 1877, the collegiate institute established a separate department for girls, with the initial intention of preparing them to pass the provincial high school entrance examinations. The new principal, A.P. Knight, supported women’s higher education; in 1879, as an examiner for the medical matriculation, he would encourage Elizabeth Smith to apply to Royal College – he was, she noted, “a believer in lady doctors”132 – and, following the expulsion of women from the Queen’s medical school in 1883, would join the campaign to establish the Kingston Women’s Medical College. In March 1878, Knight informed the Kingston press that since enough students were now qualified, a collegiate division would be added to the girls’ department, and subjects equivalent to the preparatory course for boys would be offered, including Greek and Latin, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, French, and English literature.133 Elizabeth de St Rémy herself, however, attended classes at Queen’s during the 1876–77 session, enrolling in a course on logic taught by

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John Watson, the new professor of logic, metaphysics, and ethics, who had replaced Murray. While de St Rémy enrolled for only one session, and took only this one course, significantly, she attended as a first-year undergraduate rather than as a special student. On 1 February 1876, de St Rémy had matriculated in arts and been admitted to the university’s “rank of undergraduates”; her name was duly recorded in the register of students and in the list of undergraduates in the faculty of arts for the 1876–77 session subsequently published in the calendar.134 The register normally indicated the name of each student’s preparatory school or college, but de St Rémy’s entry noted instead that she had been prepared for matriculation privately by her father, Edward John de St Rémy, who had been a grammar school master of French at Upper Canada College and the Kingston Collegiate Institute.135 De St Rémy had passed the subjects of the matriculation examination, including Greek and Latin, and was permitted by the senate to attend lectures in the same classrooms as the men. This permission was not accompanied by a list of conditions, such as the creation of a separate register or special classes, as had been the case in 1870. The implications of the university’s decision were debated publicly that winter. If women were permitted to matriculate and attend regular classes, were women also entitled to proceed to degrees at Queen’s? In December 1876, the Queen’s Journal responded to an article in the Toronto Telegram that announced that Queen’s had admitted women, protesting that no such change had been introduced, as only one “enterprising lady” had attended Watson’s class in logic. Anticipating an argument that would become popular in the 1880s, the Journal claimed that women should not be eligible for full undergraduate privileges because university degrees had reference solely to public life, and recommended instead that a separate women’s college be opened in Kingston that could provide the education best suited to their proper sphere of action.136 This editorial in turn provoked a quick response, and in January the Journal featured a long letter from Aliquis, the masculine declension for “someone” in Latin, confirming that the senate, in fact, had opened some of its classrooms to women, and a considerable number were anxious to benefit as soon as they were able to prepare

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for matriculation. Referring to Murray’s earlier arguments, Aliquis protested that women had the right to mental discipline, intellectual enjoyment, and lucrative employment, asking, “Why should not each and all of these advantages be afforded to young women to whom God has given the ability and the will to use them to good purpose?”137 Aliquis was supported in the following issue by Watson, who shared Murray’s faith in women’s capacity and scolded the Journal’s editor for sounding a “distinctly illiberal note.”138 Watson stated emphatically that he could see no reason for withholding the ba degree from any woman who was able to meet the requirements set for men. The Journal did not back down, and the debate continued until March, with the editor repeating that his objection was not to women’s higher education but to women pursuing degrees as the end of the system of university training.139 Although Watson accused the students of being out of step with the times, the debate in the Journal foreshadowed the central opposition to coeducation that was only then just beginning to gather around Daniel Wilson at the University of Toronto and J. William Dawson at McGill. The question of what, exactly, Queen’s decision actually entailed would be settled by the public statements of its administrators. The first endorsement came from the new chancellor, John Cook, a leading Presbyterian minister, founding trustee, and former principal of Queen’s. In his installation address at convocation in April 1877, Cook made the sweeping announcement to a large audience that the senate and board had opened all the benefits of the university course to women, and Queen’s would soon have “fair girlgraduates.”140 These benefits apparently were to include the medical school; Elizabeth Smith, then a young teacher studying for medical matriculation, that same month was informed by the registrar that there would be no objection to women attending lectures at Royal College.141 Further confirmation came from the new principal, George Monro Grant, who took up his appointment at Queen’s in December 1877. After attending the University of Glasgow during the 1850s, in 1863 Grant had become minister of a prominent Presbyterian church, St Matthew’s in Halifax, where he had been instrumental in the establishment of the University of Halifax and served on its

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senate, and on Dalhousie’s board of governors.142 At the time of his appointment to Queen’s in 1877, Grant was involved in discussions with the Presbyterian community about establishing a ladies’ college in Halifax. Following his arrival in Kingston, he tried unsuccessfully to introduce a system of examinations at Queen’s for students at the Brantford Young Ladies’ College, which wished to raise its standards by instituting courses leading to matriculation.143 In 1879, Grant gave an address, “Education and Co-Education,” to the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association. While acknowledging that women’s sphere was domestic – the “great majority of women will be wives and mothers”144 – Grant argued that the true aim of education was not to store the mind with facts but to discipline the mind itself, and, as such, women were as entitled as men to receive this thorough mental training. Dismissing separate colleges as expensive and impractical, he asserted that women should be admitted into existing universities. “Why not?” Grant asked with his characteristic frankness. “It is best to imitate nature, and nature by sending boys and girls to the same family has ordained that they should grow up together in mutual honour and helpfulness.”145 Grant assumed that the influence of educated women would be wielded most effectively within the home, but like Murray and Watson, he also acknowledged that women had the right to cultivate their faculties for their own sake and to earn their own livelihoods. Neatly twisting Herbert Spencer’s law of progress, that all progress conformed to a pattern evolving from the simple into the complex,146 Grant interpreted a widening role for women as a sign of positive, rather than negative change. He concluded, “In an advanced civilization, then, you will no more be able to class all women as simply wives than to class all men as simply husbands.”147 Grant would later explain, in a speech given in 1884, that the decision for coeducation at Queen’s had been taken before his time, by men who recognized that a thorough mental training could be had only in a properly equipped university, and as a matter of simple justice, women should be entitled to receive it. Alluding to Elizabeth de St Rémy’s application, Grant stated, “they believed that a small number earnestly desired the privilege, and, as one in particular

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applied for admission, they were unwilling that injustice should be done to a minority or even to one.”148 In spite of the encouragement of Cook and Grant, there was no rush of women into the lecture halls at Queen’s. Girls in Kingston had only recently been admitted into the collegiate institute, and they required time to prepare for matriculation, and in particular, to study Greek. In 1879, Lavinia Read, whose letter was included in the introduction, contacted Grant about admission regulations, but was informed, “We require Greek for a degree.”149 The Queen’s Journal pointed out that Cook’s address did not seem to have had much effect in encouraging women to apply, and the editor recommended that the university set aside a private parlour in the college’s new buildings should these long-expected women ever appear in the college.150 Then in October 1880, five women, Annie Fowler, Laura Allen, Alice McGillivray, Annie Dickson, and Jennie Greaves, were admitted to Queen’s as undergraduates in arts. The Journal reported, to its surprise, the discovery in the halls of a “flock of a – a – a – freshwomen, I suppose we must call them.”151 Of the five, only Annie Dickson had studied privately; the other four stand as a testament to the opening of secondary schooling to girls. Both Laura Allen and Jennie Greaves had attended Kingston Collegiate Institute, McGillivray had been educated at Brantford Collegiate Institute, and Annie Fowler had prepared for matriculation at Fredericton High School in New Brunswick. Eliza Fitzgerald joined them the following year. Fitzgerald had graduated from the St Catharines Collegiate Institute and matriculated with first-class honours at the University of Toronto in 1879, but repeatedly had been denied admission to lectures at University College.152 The Journal was cautiously supportive, stating that the best plan still would be an endowed state university for women alone, but in the meantime, coeducation was the honourable option, and the system should have a fair trial.153 In his closing address for the 1880–81 session, Grant stated that the problem of university education for women had been solved the only way it could be without incurring vast and unnecessary expense. “Well,” he concluded, “we have thrown Queen’s open to all who desire a university education, and so far our confidence has been

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vindicated. The simple explanation is that our students are ladies and gentlemen.”154 At the annual university banquet to mark the end of the session, J.R. Wightman of the Kingston collegiate gave the toast to sister institutions, and to applause, congratulated Queen’s on opening her doors to young lady students. Elizabeth de St Rémy, whose students at Sterling House had been responsible for the flower arrangements, was notable among the ladies present, wearing, the Queen’s College Journal recorded, “crimson satin petticoat and gray silk overskirt.”155 Queen’s soon took an even more controversial step, and admitted women into coeducational classes at its affiliated medical school, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston. The venture started in 1880, in response to applications from women, as a special summer course from April to September, a halfhearted measure to which Emily Stowe objected. After both Elizabeth Smith and Augusta Stowe matriculated in 1879, Emily Stowe cautioned Smith against going to Kingston, writing that the value of separate or summer courses would be greatly reduced in the eyes of the medical profession by the fact that students would not have the same access to hospitals or the same opportunities to dissect.156 Stowe’s own experience had made her a forceful advocate for equal education, and she distrusted plans for separate courses where women students would not be following the exact same standards of training as men. Later that year, Stowe’s credentials were challenged publicly when she was put on trial in Toronto for attempting to procure an abortion, for which she was acquitted, and Stowe then herself resorted to legal action to force the College of Physicians and Surgeons to recognize her as a licensed practitioner. Following her mother’s advice, Augusta Stowe registered in the Toronto School of Medicine through Victoria, and stuck it out alone there rather than transfer to the summer program at Queen’s. “No person can study as well then as in cold weather,” Stowe warned Smith, “you cannot dissect, and by the profession generally they would never be recognized as of equal value with the winter courses.”157 Jenny Kidd Trout, however, did not share Stowe’s misgivings about the summer course. Indicating the divergence of opinion that would widen between them over the issue of equal education of women, Trout commented to Smith that she

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disapproved of Augusta Stowe continuing to attend classes alone in the Toronto school when she could instead join other women in the summer program; “a very surprising thing to me for a woman to do when the door is open to Ladies at Kingston.”158 From Queen’s point of view, separate lectures proved too costly, as only four women had enrolled in the summer course: Elizabeth R. Beatty, Alice McGillivray (who had switched from arts), Elizabeth Smith, and Annie E. Dickson. In the fall of 1881, the university permitted six women to attend regular classes at Royal College: the four from the summer session, joined by two new students, Helen E. Reynolds and Margaret A. Corlis.159 The women attended most of their classes along with the men students, although they were provided with separate dissecting, cloak, and waiting rooms, and a separate classroom adjacent to the general classroom where they could take jurisprudence, obstetrics, anatomy, and part of physiology, subjects deemed particularly sensitive. By this time, coeducation seemed to be firmly established at Queen’s, with six women taking classes in medicine at Royal College, and six enrolled as undergraduates in the faculty of arts.160 For their classes in practical and theoretical chemistry and botany, the medical students walked up the hill to Queen’s to join the undergraduates in the college building, creating a prominent group of women in the science classes, where their entrance into the room always inspired a great commotion among the men. “The Botany class saluted us with much clapping on our entrance, dreadful!” Smith noted.161 Yet the victory was only temporary. In 1882, as the following chapter details, a storm of opposition to medical coeducation erupted among professors and men students. Women students were expelled from Royal College and required first to transfer to separate classes, and then to one of two separate colleges established in 1883, the Kingston Women’s Medical College and the Women’s Medical College of Toronto, later renamed the Ontario Medical College for Women. In 1884, Queen’s conferred degrees on its first women graduates, two in arts and three in medicine. The three medical graduates, Beatty, McGillivray, and Smith, had been obliged to complete their studies at the new Kingston Women’s Medical College. After deep

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consideration, the Queen’s senate decided that the lady graduates could appear at convocation in the same academic dress as the men.162 Grant expressed his conviction that the system of coeducation in arts had been proved a success, and he praised the two arts graduates, Eliza Fitzgerald and Annie Fowler, for having been model students who would confer honour on their university. He presented Fitzgerald and Fowler, the first women to earn the ba degree at Queen’s, with a special commemorative pin made by Tiffany’s in New York, a gift from the new chancellor, Sir Sanford Fleming.163 Fitzgerald achieved the added distinction of graduating with the gold medal for the highest standing in classics, and John Fletcher, the professor of classics, commented, “There are now in Canada not only girl graduates but Queen’s is sending out lady graduates who can translate at sight.”164 The atmosphere at convocation was festive, and the laudatory remarks of administrators belied the tension caused by coeducation within the university during the past two years, a tension that had focused, in particular, on the presence of women in the Queen’s medical school. The three medical graduates did not receive Tiffany pins. In the Maritimes, Acadia and Dalhousie experienced growing public pressure to follow Mount Allison in becoming coeducational. By the late 1870s, David Allison had become provincial superintendent of education for Nova Scotia, and his views were supported by staff at the provincial normal school in Truro, including J.B. Hall and Frank Eaton, both on the board of the Baptist Acadia College in Wolfville. Acadia followed a similar pattern, where the drive for admission came from teachers and senior students of its affiliated girls’ school, the female department of Horton Academy. Horton offered some coeducational classes, and boys and girls in the senior collegiate course took most subjects together.165 The older students also participated in activities on the university campus. In 1874, for example, the Acadia Athenaeum reported that the undergraduates had invited young men and women from Horton to attend a meeting of the Collegiate Debating Society. The Athenaeum declared the evening to be a great success, adding, “we doubt not, that such meetings will be efficacious in generating and perpetuating a kindly feeling and community of interests among the members of the several institutions.”166

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Elizabeth R. Beatty, Alice McGillivray, and Elizabeth Smith graduated with md degrees from Queen’s in 1884. Following a storm of controversy over coeducational classes at the medical school, the Queen’s senate debated whether or not the women could appear on stage in cap and gown. In her diary, Smith wrote of McGillivray, “Mrs Mac the wonder, short haired, fearlessness in her wide open eyes, with a reputation for dislike of housekeeping, & a great ability for study.”

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Horton girls were not allowed to prepare for matriculation, and separate classes leading to the examination were provided at Acadia for the boys only. Ellen Freeman Trotter, who later became the first dean of women at McMaster, graduated from Horton in 1878. She recalled the frustration she and other girls in the collegiate course felt as they walked to the gates of the university with their matriculating classmates, only to stop and watch the boys step through, unable “to share the larger learning beyond.” According to Trotter, several young women from this group then approached the president, Artemus W. Sawyer, for permission to attend certain lectures at Acadia along with the undergraduates. Sawyer granted permission but warned the women not to get over-confident: “You must not consider yourselves members of the College, young ladies,” he told them.167 Although there was strong opposition among the faculty, Sawyer himself, as well as some board members like Hall and Eaton, favoured the admission of women to Acadia. Sawyer, who had been a teacher, was confident that the change would be fundamentally progressive; he later described the development of women’s education as a slow struggle toward a worthy cause, which awakened in young women “the beginning of new life of larger and more beneficent purposes.”168 In 1874, Sawyer had recommended in his annual report that women be admitted into the university, and the board had referred the issue to a committee for further consideration.169 The following year, the Acadia Athenaeum backed the president in “A Plea for Woman,” arguing that women had the responsibility to make the best use of their faculties and do the highest work of which they were capable, whether or not they went out into the world. The editor urged, “In proportion as every true woman has felt the effects of her studies, all the relations of society will feel her greater power thus attained, and with a class of educated women sprinkled among the different communities, how great would be the improvement.”170 The Athenaeum printed letters urging the board to admit women; one graduate, writing from Edinburgh, criticized the waste at Acadia in having the girls in the senior classes at Horton take separate classes in subjects that were already being taught to undergraduates at the university. He asked, “In a College where the class rooms are not

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over-crowded, why should not ladies be found?”171 The argument for financial viability was persuasive, as in 1879, the Horton female department was renamed the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary and moved into an impressive new residential building on the Acadia College campus. The following year, the University of Halifax announced that women were to be admitted to its examinations and degrees, prompting board members at Acadia to reopen the matter of coeducation in their own university.172 In the fall of 1880, Sawyer allowed three women to matriculate and register as undergraduates in the first-year class at Acadia. At the end of the session, the board made the admission of women official, informing the Baptist Convention in 1881, “Thus the privileges of the College will henceforth be open to the sons and daughters of the land, and on the same conditions.”173 The Acadia Athenaeum proudly announced that the college doors had been thrown open to ladies. The editor expressed his hope that, as numbers grew, soon there would be a lady for each gentleman. In 1881, a further five women matriculated into first year, and the Athenaeum reported that the pronunciation of vicissem in Latin class – sounding remarkably like “we kiss ‘em” – caused the freshmen to tremble and the ladies to blush.174 One of these early students, Clara Belle Marshall, won the history prize in her second year and graduated with a ba in 1884, becoming the first woman graduate of Acadia. The Acadia Ladies’ Seminary continued to operate as a girls’ academy until 1926, and also served as a residence for women undergraduates attending the university.175 The Athenaeum viewed Acadia’s decision as progressive, urging Baptist parents in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to send their daughters to Wolfville, and reporting on the admittance of women into other universities. “One of the most pressing duties devolving upon those in the denomination who have daughters,” the editor wrote in 1880, “is to give them the advantages of mental training now placed within easy reach, and thereby receive ample returns for all their contributions.”176 At Dalhousie in Halifax, there was support for the admission of women among board members, including George Monro Grant and John William Ritchie, and from the principal, James Ross, and the

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chairman of the board, Sir William Young. As at Queen’s, Victoria, and Acadia, the catalyst for change came from local women, most of whom were teachers. In this cause, women again received backing from sympathetic staff at the provincial normal school in Truro, who helped the strongest graduates prepare for university matriculation. During the 1870s, girls in Halifax had very limited options for secondary education; the new Halifax High School, opened in 1879, did not admit girls until 1885, and Halifax Ladies’ College was not established until 1887. Dalhousie had reopened in 1863 after a lengthy period of dormancy, and though non-denominational, it retained close ties to the Presbyterian community through its faculty and board members. Ross had been a minister and a schoolmaster before becoming principal. He was engaged in reform activities through his church, and was alert to the interest in women’s higher education. As early as 1870, in his opening address, Ross had suggested that a separate women’s college might be constructed just south of the main Dalhousie building, an expensive proposal rejected by Young.177 The Dalhousie Gazette adopted a position in favour of coeducation, in 1878 urging every enlightened inhabitant of the province to join them, and warning, “until our lady friends stand in these class-rooms and halls, as full Dalhousie Students, we will not remit our efforts.”178 By the end of the decade, Ross also supported the more pragmatic plan of coeducation. In 1883, he told the Toronto Globe, “The only practical means that I can think of for securing for women the benefits of a liberal education is to provide them with the means of obtaining it by opening the class rooms of all educational institutions for their admission on perfectly equal terms with the other sex.”179 In 1881, the principal of the normal school, J.B. Calkin, sent a letter to Ross on behalf of several women students who were preparing for matriculation, asking permission for them to attend Dalhousie and inquiring if they could compete for the Munro bursaries.180 Ross submitted the letter to the board, which after some deliberation voted to admit women. Compared to the ambiguity at Queen’s, the Dalhousie governors constructed a detailed motion that left no doubt about what this decision entailed. “Be it therefore resolved, that female students shall hereafter be entitled to attend lectures

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and after passing the prescribed examinations to be admitted as undergraduates of this College and to compete for and take all such prizes honors exhibitions and bursaries as are now open to male students and to take all such degrees as are now granted by the College to male students; so that hereafter there shall be no distinction in regard to College work between male and female students.”181 To underscore its commitment to coeducation, the board’s decision was copied into the minutes of the senate in October under the heading “Resolution of Governors Proclaiming the Equality of the Sexes.”182 Lillie B. Calkin and Margaret Newcombe, both recent normal school graduates, matriculated that fall into first-year arts with Munro bursaries.183 At the opening of the 1881–82 session, Ross and Young were effusive in their remarks, Ross commenting on the challenge of making staid, stern bachelors out of bright, lively young ladies, and Young joking that he would prefer to call them “masters of hearts.”184 At the end of the year, Ross again drew attention to Calkin and Newcombe, praising the women for having “nobly vindicated their claim to intellectual equality with their masculine competitors.”185 Eliza Ritchie, who started as a general student in 1882 and graduated in 1887, recalled that the transition to coeducation at Dalhousie had been accomplished with good sense and right feeling, and no other institution had been so open-handed in its treatment of the young girl who wished to learn. “In no grudging spirit were the College doors opened to her,” Ritchie claimed: “no fight, inch by inch, had to be fought, as in other places, before she received the full benefit of a liberal education.”186 Newcombe agreed, reflecting, “it was not a grudging but a full and free permission that was finally granted.”187 Not all members of the university community welcomed the change. Clara W. Seely, who enrolled in 1888, remembered things somewhat differently than Ritchie and Newcombe. “The professors were of course very gentlemanly and courteous, but at least two of them had been bitterly opposed to the admittance of women, and one almost if not quite ignored us in the lecture room.”188 By 1884, three more women had registered as undergraduates and others from Halifax were taking courses as non-degree students. In 1885, Margaret Newcombe received her ba and became Dalhousie’s

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first woman graduate. The enrolment of women undergraduates remained low.189 In spite of growing interest among women in higher education, the problem of access to secondary schooling remained a significant impediment. Dalhousie’s decision to become coeducational had been announced in the press, and, as Ross had assured convocation in 1881, he had received letters from all over the province, and even Ontario, from those wanting to enter. Yet most young women still could not meet the requirements for matriculation. Robert Laing, who had replaced Grant as minister of St Matthew’s in Halifax, and would later become president of Halifax Ladies’ College, had struck a more sober note in his address at the opening of the session. While predicting that the admission of women was the beginning of a new and better era, Laing pointed out that Halifax still had no public high school for girls where young women could actually be prepared for college.190

 During the 1870s, supporters argued that university training had intrinsic worth, and the most progressive-minded among them claimed that all human beings, men and women alike, had a natural right to the full realization of their individual potential. The goal of this early movement had been simply to provide access to higher education; whether or not coeducation offered the best form of provision was rarely the focus of the debate, nor, as the Queen’s Journal warned, was the ultimate purpose of university training truly considered other than in abstract terms. At the denominational universities, the admission of women did not seem at first to challenge separate spheres, as the appearance of girls from the nearby academy in a few university classes rested on an older tradition of collaboration. Coeducation became a cost-effective way to provide for daughters as well as sons; it could be seen as a continuation of earlier forms of schooling in an environment that reinforced the bonds of family and church among young people. In their addresses, administrators at Mount Allison, Queen’s, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie maintained that the educated woman would elevate her

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roles as wife and mother, and her intellectual influence would shape the Christian households of the new Dominion. The admission of women was accomplished in a spirit of optimism, but grounded by a calculated measure of expedience. While coeducation was justified by references to the benefits of education for women, universities also were cognizant of the material changes brought about by the rise of public education, the new market economy, and the shifting financial priorities of many Canadian families. For the Protestant colleges, allowing women to attend classes was integral to more sweeping changes that gave their small institutions a stake in the future. There were inherent contradictions, however, to the assumption that higher education would simply yield better mothers and offer what The Argosy had referred to as a “Fit For Wives” course. The local requests for access had come from women who recognized the value of university training in getting employment, and many of the early applicants became teachers in girls’ academies, high schools, and collegiate institutes. Elizabeth de St Rémy had known this, arguing that young women in modern society had to be educated to earn their own living, for if they failed to marry, they would have to provide for themselves. Women found support among other educators in the provincial school systems, men like McHenry at the Cobourg collegiate and Calkin at the Truro normal school. At the Ontario Teachers’ Association convention in 1879, McHenry gave an address in which he dismissed arguments against university coeducation, pointing out that “the higher education of women is intimately associated with the best interests of the teaching profession.”191 Following his address, the association passed a resolution favouring “the removal of any remaining obstacles to the full admission of women to university degrees.”192 Unlike higher education in itself, which could be achieved within a separate college, admittance to the same degree course as men was closely linked to women’s work, or more specifically, to new professional opportunities for women. If degrees were designed for use in public life, and women were best suited to remain in their own sphere, then why educate women in men’s universities? To Eliza Fitzgerald, Adeline Shenick, and Margaret Newcombe the

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answer would have been obvious: a university degree improved their chances of employment, just as it did for men. The demand for women’s education increased steadily; exactly how that demand would best be met, in separate or coeducational classrooms, was to spark a fundamental debate in the following decade.

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SEX AND RACE IN EDUCATION

The Campaign for Coeducation Woman, as mother of the race, has a greater magnitude of responsibility than she yet realizes. x .y. z . [Emily Howard Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” circa 1877–78

I

n the early 1880s, coeducation could still be seen as an experiment. At Mount Allison, Queen’s, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie a few conspicuous women had attended the same lectures, studied the same curricula, and graduated with the same degrees as men. The enrolment numbers remained small – only thirty-five women in total were attending Canadian universities in 1881–821 – but the very fact that these young women were entering the academic world opened up the possibility for further reform. An organized women’s movement developed, and as its focus sharpened on the goal of suffrage, access to the provincial universities in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba became the first, most significant struggle in the larger campaign. In response, a more sustained opposition to coeducation emerged, and the confrontation played out publicly over the admission of women to University College, the non-denominational college of the University of Toronto. During this period, University College housed all the courses in arts and science for the ba degree awarded by the provincially funded University of Toronto.2 Led by the prominent

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writer and publisher Goldwin Smith, opponents argued that the province should establish a separate college for women, while the growing circle of reformers who coalesced around the Toronto Women’s Literary Club maintained that equal education could be achieved only by gaining full access to men’s universities. Looking back in the 1930s, Nellie Spence explained why she and other campaigners became so fixed on the goal of coeducation, rejecting outright any further discussion of a separate women’s college. “Now, apart from the fact that there was no probability of ‘the wealthy province of Ontario’ building such a College for many a long year, there was the doubt that, even if it were built, women would receive the same advantages as men students,” Spence stated. “To-day a separate college for women would probably be safe enough, but that was not the case in 1883. Without co-education, it was felt, victory would be only half won.”3 Reformers assumed that vulnerable middle-class women were the group that would most benefit from wider access to education, and they adopted John Stuart Mill’s position, articulated in 1869 in The Subjection of Women, that women had the inherent right to realize their individual potential and gain the means of self-support. Yet in the new climate of the 1880s, this liberating ideology, with its apparently limitless potential for social progress, was abruptly undercut by evolutionary theory, and discussions of women’s role in society increasingly became defined by race. On both sides, writers turned to scientific and medical fields to bolster their arguments, and the influence of racial ideas shifted the ground in the debates over higher education in a fundamental way. The image of ideal womanhood became much more explicitly associated with that of a white Anglo-American or British mother, whose reproductive function made her a key participant in what Social Darwinists termed racial advancement. The division of labour exemplified by the middle classes, theorists maintained, was equally the cause and the result of evolutionary progress; by sheltering their wives within the home, men exhibited the most advanced form of “civilized” human behaviour. The impact of these ideas on women’s movements was significant. If separate spheres represented a highly

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evolved society, then all changes to women’s status had to be assessed for their effect on reproductive fitness. That women should receive some form of higher education was accepted widely; that they should receive the identical education as men could now be cast as a radical and potentially dangerous experiment. In their efforts to mobilize a campaign against this formidable opposition, reformers were presented with a new problem: how to counter convincingly the arguments that university coeducation would result in the degeneration of Anglo-Canadian society? Advocates met this challenge by promoting a distinct position on the woman question, one that linked the goals of women’s higher education and professional work to more sweeping preoccupations with colonial progress. As Joan Sangster has maintained, the political thought of Canadian suffragists was as diverse as the people drawn into activism; multiple versions of equality and differing political visions characterized any discussion of the women’s movements from the nineteenth century onward. The vote itself was a contested concept that inspired some suffragists to work toward social equality, others to focus on the benefits to individuals, and still others to use it as a means to regulate the lives of those they deemed inferior based on ethnicity, race, colonialism, and class. 4 To contradict the accusation that coeducation led to sterility, reformers turned evolutionary discourse to their own purposes, asserting instead that educated white women in Canada, like their pioneering foremothers, were needed to take up the work of building civilization. In this new ideal of Canadian womanhood, access to men’s education meant access to the true work of civilization, and coeducation was transformed into a moral imperative central to the meaning of progress.

Women of Newfangle The women’s movements of the nineteenth century were intellectually driven by egalitarian philosophy, but from the earliest stage, their development was shaped by complex intersections of race and gender. In Britain and America, the evangelical abolitionist societies of the early part of the century established the groundwork for feminism until the divisive politics of the 1860s caused the

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movements to splinter. After the passing of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, the issue of race became a deciding factor in the organization of American feminism. In Canada, the antislavery campaign among white reformers did not spark a parallel women’s movement, and Black women initiated the earliest activities for women’s rights. By 1854, Black women had formed two literary societies, one in Chatham and one in Windsor, both of which combined educational interests with activism for temperance and abolitionism. Literary societies allowed women to organize at the local level, mixing culture with social reform, and in some cases serving as starting points for more overt political activity. Much of the leadership came from Mary Ann Shadd, an American abolitionist who lived in Canada West between 1851 and 1863. During this time, Shadd operated schools in Sandwich and Chatham and worked as publisher, newspaper editor, and public speaker to challenge racial injustice and segregation.5 Under her editorship between 1853 and 1859, the Provincial Freeman provided a forum for the discussion of political concerns, including women’s rights.6 Adopting the strategy introduced in the 1850s by Black women, the Anglo-Canadian women’s movement started life in 1877 as the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, founded by Emily Stowe. In 1883, the club was reconstituted as the Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association and men were accepted as members. In 1889, after a lull in activities, the organization was renamed the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association. The early identity of these movements as literary clubs was not an attempt to disguise the feminist aims of the membership; rather their literary, educational, and political aims were closely connected, as members believed that a liberal education was a necessary preparation for public life.7 The Toronto Women’s Literary Club made the connection between higher education and women’s advancement explicit in its constitution. The preamble announced, “a few ladies in the City of Toronto … [have] banded themselves together to form an association for intellectual culture, where they can secure a free interchange of thought and feeling upon every subject that pertains to woman’s higher education, including her moral and physical welfare.”8 The club met at Stowe’s house and

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offered an eclectic program at its weekly meetings, hosting cultural activities, such as musical entertainment and poetry reading, and including discussions of women’s suffrage, temperance, and access to higher education. The members also lobbied for specific reforms, pressing the municipal and provincial governments to improve working conditions for women clerks and factory workers in Toronto and campaigning for the municipal franchise, which was won for unmarried women in 1884.9 As president, Stowe publicized the cause of women’s rights, particularly the need for equal education and the entrance of women into the professions, travelling throughout the province to give public addresses and writing to the newspapers under such pseudonyms as X.Y.Z. and Reformer.10 She believed that access to men’s education was a necessary first step toward suffrage, and shrewdly recognized the potential of coeducation to open the public sphere to women. In her own search for employment as a young teacher, Stowe had attempted to improve her qualifications by attending university. In 1853, she had been refused admission into arts at Victoria College in Cobourg, and subsequently had enrolled in the Toronto normal school. A decade later, Stowe had decided to pursue a second career as a physician. This time, the Toronto School of Medicine had refused her application for admission, forcing her to seek medical training in the United States. In 1871, Stowe finally had been admitted to the Toronto School of Medicine, through Victoria College, in order to qualify to practise in Ontario, but, along with Jenny Kidd Trout, had experienced harassment from her classmates and professors.11 The Toronto Women’s Literary Club served as an intellectual hub for Anglo-Canadian feminists. The debate over the woman question relied on the participation of such prominent writers as the journalist Sarah Anne Curzon and the novelist Agnes Maule Machar. The club also attracted influential reformers, including J.W. Bengough, political cartoonist and editor of Grip Magazine, whose wife, Helena (Nellie) Siddall Bengough, was an active member,12 and William Houston, Ontario’s legislative librarian. Both men would play key roles in publicizing the association’s campaign to admit women into lectures at University College. This circle intersected with the visionary cast

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of social critics and non-conformists discussed by Ramsay Cook in The Regenerators, most of whom added university coeducation to the list of progressive causes they championed in English Canada.13 Canadian newspapers and periodicals began to publish a growing number of articles discussing the issue of women’s rights, and reformers took every opportunity to engage their opponents. The debates over the woman question reflect the rise of aggressive imperialism and a shift toward evolutionary discourse in popular forums. In both Britain and North America, colonialism formed an important context for the discussion of women’s rights. White women found that colonialism improved their educational and employment opportunities by providing them with an ever-enlarging forum of activity as missionaries, educators, and medical professionals, who could portray themselves as civilizers, key players in the ongoing mission of bringing civilization to colonized peoples.14 Some feminists began to use popular eugenic ideas to support their own position. Reformers seized on the potential of Lamarckian evolutionary theory, in particular, which held that acquired characteristics, such as an increase in intellectual capacity, could be passed on from mother to daughter only. Lamarckian thinking reinforced the argument that women’s education would improve the mental powers of future generations and, in the words of eugenicists, ensure racial progress and imperial strength. The fact that some evolutionists accepted the possibility of adaptation through environmental change suggested to them that although gender difference was biological, it was also mutable, and that evolution, in fact, accounted for many of the differences between the sexes.15 The racial theories that fostered imperial expansion, however, also threatened the women’s movements by claiming that the very existence of separate spheres was evidence of an advanced society. Herbert Spencer, in his influential essay “Progress: Its Law and Cause,” argued that all progress, whether biological or social, conformed to an identical pattern, transforming from a chaotic homogeneity to an ordered heterogeneity, or in other words, evolving from the simple into the complex.16 In Spencer’s view, the lowest, most “barbaric” social groups exhibited the least formal relations

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between the sexes, while the highest were ones in which women were restricted to domestic duties, enabling them to produce more offspring, and thus gaining in the struggle for existence. In The Principles of Sociology, Spencer maintained that the moral progress of humankind towards higher social types was clearly demonstrated by the position of women within domestic institutions.17 Following Spencer, evolutionists stressed that the division of societies into separate men’s and women’s spheres, and the protection of wives within the home, were characteristics of racial evolution. In 1884, for example, John Maclean in The Week wrote that Spencer was the final authority in the battle against the women’s movement. “The ‘woman’s rights’ theory is on the face of it in flat contradiction to the modern doctrine and practice of the division of labour,” Maclean claimed. “Instead of tending to assimilate the work of the woman to that of the man, the world’s progress will on the contrary bring us to still further division of labour between the two, and will mark still more deeply the distinctive characteristics of each.”18 The evolutionists argued that all white women had a profound duty to ensure their own reproductive fitness, but it was middle-class women in particular whom they charged with the precious task of preserving the race. Any extensive change in their education that fitted women for businesses, the professions, or politics, they warned, would be detrimental to the further evolution of civilized nations.19 In 1873, Edward H. Clarke, a physician and former Harvard professor, published an explicit attack on university coeducation, Sex in Education; or, a Fair Chance for the Girls. Dismissing Mill, Clarke stated that abstract egalitarian ideas of individual rights had nothing to do with solving the question of woman’s proper sphere, which must be grounded firmly in the science of physiology. The efforts of reformers to provide equal education ignored the inescapable fact that women and men, though similar in intellectual power, were entirely different in their reproductive systems, and that girls invited neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other nervous derangements if they followed the same method of training as boys. Citing Spencer, Clarke maintained that the physical system could not do two different things well at once; a young woman who overexerted her brain during her college years

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was thereby diverting force needed by her immature reproductive system, and was risking sterility through undeveloped ovaries. “The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs,” Clarke cautioned. “It cannot do more than its share without depriving other organs of that exercise and nourishment which are essential to their health and vigor.”20 Clarke was concerned, in particular, with the reproductive fitness of white middle-class women, who, as mothers, he believed were responsible for transmitting the finest attributes of American civilization. “The highest wisdom will secure the survival and propagation of the fittest,” Clarke concluded. “Physiology teaches that this result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to be secured, not by an identical education, or an identical co-education of the sexes, but by a special and appropriate education, that shall produce a just and harmonious development of every part.”21 Clarke made extensive use of writings by Henry Maudsley, an English psychiatrist, physician, and professor at University College, London, who himself had been deeply influenced by Spencer’s theory of evolutionary progress through natural selection.22 Like Clarke, Maudsley was hostile to the current campaign to admit women into his university, or into his profession, and a year after the appearance of Sex in Education, he publicized his own condemnation of equal education in the Fortnightly Review. In “Sex in Mind and Education,” Maudsley endorsed the writings of Clarke and several other American physicians, agreeing that since the human body could not bear both excessive mental activity and strenuous physical exertion, a method of higher education designed for men would put too much strain on the reproductive systems of young women. Maudsley cautioned British advocates of women’s rights that they were risking the price of “a puny, enfeebled, and sickly race,”23 and should heed the warnings of American doctors concerning the dangers of an education that prepared women for men’s careers. He claimed to have been struck with amazement by Mill’s assertion, in The Subjection of Women, that women’s nature was an artificial thing rather than the inevitable product of her sexual function. “A system of education adapted to women should have regard to the peculiarities of their constitution,” Maudsley stated, “to the special functions in life for which they are

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destined, and to the range and kind of practical activity, mental and bodily, to which they would seem to be foreordained by the sexual organization of body and mind.”24 The publication of Sex in Education ignited an intense and prolonged controversy. The book was widely read, the first edition sold out in a week, and an additional sixteen editions were published over the next fifteen years.25 Reformers in both countries, including Julia Ward Howe and Emily Davies, quickly organized public refutations. In 1874, Howe edited a response entitled Sex and Education, in which she assembled essays from reformers and educators, and included positive testimony in favour of coeducation from administrators at Michigan, Antioch, and Oberlin. “Despite Dr Clarke’s prominent position in this community,” she noted tartly, “we do not feel compelled to regard him as the supreme authority on the subjects of which he treats.”26 As Howe and other contributors perceptively pointed out, Clarke’s attack on coeducation was more polemic than scientific, and his examples from women’s colleges concerning the ill health of graduates were insufficient and misleading. One of the long-term impacts of Sex in Education was to convince academic women of the need to conduct their own research, to compile alternative data in defence of their right to equal education.27 In Britain, Davies believed that reformers should try to meet Maudsley and Clarke on their own ground, and at her request, a reply was published in the Fortnightly Review by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, England’s first women doctor. In her response to Maudsley, Anderson denied that normal young women required rest from either physical or mental work during menstruation, pointing out astutely that nobody expected their domestic servants to work less at these times. “It is, we are convinced, a great exaggeration to imply that women of average health are periodically incapacitated from serious work by the facts of their organization,” she argued.28 In Canada, articles in the Sanitary Journal and the Canada Lancet appeared in 1874 publicizing Clarke’s thesis, and his book was discussed widely in the newspapers. Doctors condemned coeducation over the age of thirteen, warning that women were differently constituted, and as such, should be educated for a different sphere.29 “The brain of the female must not be crowded,” the Sanitary Journal

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advised, “especially at certain periods, it should have almost absolute rest, or proper and complete sexual development will be seriously interfered with, and actual disease will be likely to follow; and the fresh, blooming, and promising girls will be blighted at the very threshold of womanhood.”30 In the fall, Clarke’s ideas were debated vigorously at the annual convention of the Ontario Teachers’ Association, following a controversial paper by J.M. Buchan, a high school inspector from Brantford. Repeating Clarke’s fears about coeducation, Buchan argued that women would lower the standard of the universities because the female mind lacked initiative, originality, and capacity for abstract thought. In the discussion that followed, Goldwin Smith, then serving as the president of the association, declined to give his opinion, saying only that he lacked experience of mixed education and would inquire into the success of coeducation at Cornell.31 At the end of the decade, Clarke’s allegations were still provocative for educators; in 1879, John Millar, headmaster of St Thomas Collegiate Institute, gave a paper to the County of Elgin Teachers’ Association in which he defended university coeducation and argued that recent statistics on the health of young women effectively refuted the conclusions of Sex in Education.32 Goldwin Smith’s reticence on this subject at the teachers’ convention was unusual, if not disingenuous. By 1874, he was already an outspoken opponent of the women’s movement, and over the next three decades, would become the foremost critic of coeducation in Canada. Before moving to Toronto in 1871, Smith had held the chair of modern history at Oxford, and then had left Britain in 1868 to take a position at Cornell, the newly founded land-grant university in Ithaca, New York. Smith’s brief time in the United States had not been happy, and he disliked many American developments after the Civil War, not least of which was the trend toward university coeducation. He strongly opposed Cornell’s decision to admit women in 1870, warning its president that the introduction of coeducation would cause the university to sink to the rank of a high school, and this issue was believed widely to be the reason for his departure. In Toronto, Smith married Harriet Elizabeth Boulton, a wealthy widow, and over the next four decades pursued a comfortable life of letters

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on her estate, the Grange.33 Although he rejected the materialist elements of Social Darwinism, with the implication that humans were under the control of mere physical law, Smith nevertheless endorsed the idea of evolution as an explanation of the historical progress of human civilization. He wholeheartedly believed that Britain had the most highly evolved of all human societies, and, like the evolutionists, argued that the existence of a separate sphere for women was both the cause and result of racial advancement.34 For this reason, Smith supported the establishment of separate women’s colleges, and in the early 1870s, taught courses of lectures on English history for both the Toronto and the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Associations. Initially a free-trade liberal of the Manchester school, Smith was deeply hostile to the position taken by John Stuart Mill; The Subjection of Women, Smith claimed, was a “most pernicious book.”35 If successful, he warned, the women’s movement would bring about nothing less than a revolution. “Such a revolution,” he maintained, “will be at once unparalleled in importance and unprecedented in kind. Unparalleled in importance, because female character and domestic morality lie so completely at the root of civilization, that they may almost be said to be civilization itself.”36 The rhetoric of James R. Inch of Mount Allison and James Ross of Dalhousie had extolled the value of university studies for the educated wife and mother, but Smith argued that the main outcome of coeducation, in fact, was to direct women’s aspirations away from marriage. “We seem destined to have some of our Canadian maidens turned into counterparts of the Third Sex, declining maternity, and knowing how to avoid it,” he warned in 1884.37 Reiterating Clarke’s fears of sterility in educated women, Smith dismissed the idea that coeducation might lead to sexual promiscuity; on the contrary, he charged, those young ladies “are as safe as icebergs.”38 For Smith, the link between coeducation and economic competition was clear, and he accused every spinster who entered the professions of depriving bread to some married woman and her children.39 During the campaign to admit women into University College, Smith kept up a steady bombardment, particularly in his new journal, The Week, where he sparred with Curzon, Houston, and

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other members of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club in the editorial pages. 40 Smith was convinced that coeducation would corrupt the natural relations between the sexes; instead of being man’s helpmate, woman would become his competitor, and in this lay the true danger to the future of Anglo-Canadian society. “For our own part,” he wrote, “we avow a mistrust of the movement as part of a general attempt to efface the line which the hand of nature has traced between the sexes, and to turn woman from the partner into the competitor of man.”41 In Smith’s opinion, men were the active force in the advancement of civilization, while women were only the passive element in social change, reaping the benefits of centuries of racial progress. “The material civilization which women in common with men enjoy, has been produced mainly by male labour;” he maintained, “though, of course, man could no more have continued to labour without his helpmate than he could have propagated his race without his wife.”42 Clarke’s attack on coeducation, and Smith’s inf luential dissemination of it, represented a formidable opposition to Canada’s emerging women’s movement. In common with other feminists, members of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club used Mill’s liberal discourse, rejecting the authority of custom to define the scope of women’s work, and arguing that true improvement in the human condition could be brought about only by the full realization of individual potential. Emily Stowe made this case in a letter to the editor of The Globe in 1877: “In the world of work let her be as free to choose her vocation as is man,” she urged. “Nothing could be more absurd and demoralizing than that ‘society’ should limit the sphere of woman’s action or usefulness.”43 Similarly, Sarah Anne Curzon informed the editor of The World that the practice of paying women teachers less than men was fundamentally unjust and rooted in women’s lack of political and economic power. Curzon stated, “We who support women’s suffrage say that it is, in this way, that the same estimate of woman that has denied her the rights of property has also belittled the value of her labor and made her remuneration low.”44 Yet the popularity of evolutionary theory threatened to discredit Mill’s assertion that separate spheres could be dismissed as the product of custom alone. How, then, could they reconcile the

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goal of individual liberty with new ideas about reproductive fitness and social evolution, to argue effectively for the rights of individual women without denying their collective responsibility for the advancement of Anglo-Canadian civilization? The solution lay in the degree to which reformers could adapt evolutionary discourse to further their own cause. Rather than accept the theory that women’s contribution was solely reproductive – that they were, as Smith claimed, merely passive recipients of the benefits of men’s progress – Canadian reformers argued that women had an active, vital role to play in the ongoing work of colonialism. The very existence of a women’s movement could be seen as proof that national life was evolving to a higher level. “Woman, as mother of the race,” Stowe proclaimed, “has a greater magnitude of responsibility than she yet realizes.”45 As Curzon put it, “The period thus rounded has been fruitful of many and unexpected changes in the history of humanity, but it is doubtful whether any of them have been of more importance than those immediately relating to woman.”46 Egalitarian ideals were tempered by priorities based on class and race; the campaign for equality in education and employment implicitly embraced only white women of the middle-classes, who would choose their vocation from among the options open to professional men. Improvements in women’s economic status, therefore, depended largely on this specific group gaining access to men’s academic privileges. Calling for the doors of Canada’s universities to be opened to women, Stowe argued that men had usurped the educational advantages resulting from the country’s development, advantages to which their sisters and mothers had a just and equal right. “We ask only the same freedom in selection, and the same privileges in preparation,” she claimed.47 One woman put it more bluntly in a letter to the Evening Telegram: “I, as a Toronto girl, and one who would gladly avail myself of this higher education, am forced to feel that I belong to an oppressed class. No reason other than sex can be assigned for my exclusion from the institutions where my brothers are welcomed.”48 By insisting that the work of middle-class women would be essential to the development of society, advocates connected the question of university coeducation to larger discussions of the Dominion’s

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future as an imperial nation, and, more specifically, the historical contributions of Anglo-Canadian women to colonialism. Reformers were inspired by a sense of mission, a commitment to the spread of pan-Britannic nationalism expressed with growing vigour by a new group of imperialists, which included George Monro Grant of Queen’s and others in the circle of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club. 49 In letters to The Globe in 1877, Stowe defended the strong-minded woman as a figure to be admired rather than despised, arguing that the strong woman was simply the counterpart of the self-reliant and independent man, who, by succeeding in life through industry and tenacity of purpose, had earned the title of Canada’s true gentleman. The strong-minded woman represented the best of Canadian womanhood, Stowe stressed, exhibiting the moral commitment to hard work passed down through the generations from the earliest settlers. In this line of argument, weak sisters who opposed reform could be accused of betraying their foremothers. Stowe concluded, “When a woman thus petted and pampered denounces wholesale the noble and gifted pioneer women, of both the old and new world, who have been long and nobly fighting the battle for equal rights, it requires not only a strong mind, but a broad and benevolent woman to forgive her.”50 At the root of Stowe’s political philosophy was the faith that her own moral and intellectual qualities, and those of women like her, bestowed the right, even the obligation, to participate in the public sphere. She dismissed the contention that the ability to govern was based on superiority of physical strength; this was a barbarous relic of the past that had been entirely faded by the progressive “blaze of civilization.”51 Agnes Maule Machar and Sarah Anne Curzon also were interested in the use of history to celebrate the pioneering work of their ancestors, and they exploited those historical constructions to attack the current limitations on women’s citizenship.52 In 1875, Machar published a critique of Clarke’s Sex in Education in the Canadian Monthly. Machar had received a classical education from her father, a principal of Queen’s, and attended Coté House, a girls’ academy in Montreal run by Hannah Willard Lyman. Although she lived in Kingston, Machar was an honorary member of the Toronto

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Women’s Literary Club and regularly contributed essays and poetry to its meetings, and she had a wide range of friends among prominent intellectuals and reformers, including Grant.53 After reviewing Clarke’s main argument, and the rebuttals by Howe and Anderson, Machar concluded that the evidence available from universities already admitting women discredited his assertions, and coeducation had produced favourable moral, intellectual, and physical results. “Would it not be a real benefit to society,” Machar urged, “were every girl encouraged to learn thoroughly some one kind of real work, be it profession, art, or handicraft; something which would bring her not only subsistence, but interesting occupation should she have to travel the journey of life alone.”54 The virtue of work and its link to coeducation became a central theme in Machar’s writing, and she gave her readers a vision of women as dynamic, active forces, responding to the urgent imperative to build for a new Canadian nation.55 In an essay of 1879, Machar described the essential secret of progress to be this higher ideal of womanhood. “Having, then, one great secret of progress – a higher ideal of the capabilities and functions of woman hood generally acknowledged,” she wrote, “it is worth while considering how this ideal can be best realized, and what the effect … will be on the happiness and welfare of woman herself, and through her of the race of which she is so important a trainer.”56 Public discussion of women’s rights increased, peaking with the “Newfangle” debates in the Canadian Monthly in 1879. In May, the Monthly published a provocative article, “The Woman Question,” which argued that since a woman had the right to enter any employment or profession, she had the right to suffrage. “She can never shape her own career, never be the arbiter of her own destiny, so long as she has no voice in framing the laws under which she lives, and to which she is amenable.”57 A response, “Some Newfangle Notions,” appeared in July by “A Woman of Newfangle,” who introduced herself as an aged inhabitant of the thriving agricultural township of Newfangle. Extolling the masculine virtues of the pioneers who had carved their community out of the bush, the article argued that only men had the right or the capacity to govern what they alone had created. “Who have dug the canals, built the

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railways, the steamboats, the wharves, the light-houses?” the writer asked. “Women live in and enjoy the township of Newfangle, but men have created it.”58 Asserting that pioneering men had been the active force in civilization, constructing a sheltered refuge in which to protect their women, the writer warned that women should not interfere with the public concerns of the township: “Take away, tomorrow, the work of men, and Newfangle relapses into the barbarism from which men brought it out.”59 In the next issue, a “Non-Resident” of Newfangle protested that this version of masculine progress was false, because it took both men and women to make a world, and to do the world’s work. “Let both have full opportunity to do all they can and will, and the more efficient workers that both can supply, the better, surely, will it be for each, and for the world at large.”60 At the heart of the Newfangle debates, which continued over four more issues, was disagreement over the meaning of progress, whether the entrance of women into higher education and professional work would ensure or hinder the progress of Anglo-Canadian society.61 For members of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, national feeling was explicitly connected to women’s rights; rooted in the historic struggle of Loyalist women to carve their homes out of the wilderness, it was invigorated by the faith that women, once unfettered by sexual prejudice, could carry that pioneering spirit into the work of the modern age. “Who can doubt,” Machar asked in 1875, “that if our Canadian young women, as a class, should become truly cultivated, earnest, high-toned, full of the noble ambition to devote life to noble work for noble ends, a very few years would strikingly demonstrate their influence in raising our young men, as a class, to a very much higher plane than that which they at present occupy?”62 As the Newfangle debates ended, the Canadian Monthly published Grant’s forceful defence of Queen’s decision to admit women, “Education and Co-Education.” Dismissing Clarke’s fear of overstrain as exaggerated, Grant urged that university coeducation represented a significant step in the progress of the race. Unlike most evolutionists who used Spencer’s “law of progress” to argue that society had evolved toward separate spheres, Grant instead insisted that equality for women would be characteristic of a more fully evolved civilization;

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that the women’s movement, in fact, was a symptom of the highest, most complex society. “All savages are alike,” he claimed. “The more advanced the civilization the greater variety among individuals. There is a higher unity, but the uniformity has gone.”63 By exploiting evolutionary theory in the cause of coeducation, reformers were promoting a blueprint for social change in which middle-class women became active and essential participants in Anglo-Canadian progress.

Strong-Minded Women Achieving coeducation at the University of Toronto was a particularly prized goal. Toronto was by far the largest university in Canada: in 1881–82, University College, the institution’s teaching college, had an enrolment of 355 undergraduates in arts and science, compared to 184 at Queen’s, 165 at McGill, 143 at Victoria, 116 at Dalhousie, 92 at Trinity, 65 at Manitoba, 58 at Acadia, 48 at Mount Allison, and 44 at New Brunswick.64 In addition, Toronto had the distinction of being the provincial university of Ontario, which meant that fees were lower, and this, in combination with its location and nondenominational status, made University College attractive for many women wishing to study for a degree. Jennie Stork Hill, a member of the first group to be admitted, later remembered the significance they attached to the victory: “The University of Toronto was regarded as the stronghold of education in Ontario, and until it was conquered the proponents of co-education still felt that women still lacked full opportunity for the highest development.”65 As in Kingston and Montreal, women in Toronto were inspired by the success of the Ladies’ Educational Association movement in Britain. The Toronto Ladies’ Educational Association was established in 1869, primarily by faculty wives, with the goals of providing lectures in science and literature, holding examinations and granting certificates of standing, establishing scholarships, and “promoting the diffusion of higher education among women.”66 Until 1877, the Toronto association offered a series of lectures each winter, taught by faculty members from University College, as well as other educators in the city such as Goldwin Smith. The courses in mental and moral philosophy, English literature, and zoology were

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taken seriously; classes were large, and each series was followed by written examinations that could provide a standardized level of attainment, and certificates of standing were issued to successful students. The Toronto association pushed for the establishment of a provincial women’s college, affiliated with the University of Toronto and located on the same campus as University College, and the inclusion of annual examinations was intended to prepare women for matriculation.67 The Toronto Ladies’ Educational Association also lobbied to gain access for women to the university’s entrance examination. Since 1871, women had been permitted to take the matriculation examination set by Victoria College, but the examination of the University of Toronto remained closed to them. The first victory came in 1877, when the Toronto senate agreed to allow women to write the matriculation examination, on the condition that a separate system of examinations be established and that each location have a local committee with members available to make suitable arrangements for young women travelling from a distance. The successful candidates would be entitled to a certificate, signed by the vicechancellor and registrar of the university, of having passed, or for an honours candidate, of her standing in the class lists for women.68 Two young women immediately seized the opportunity, successfully taking the honour examination in June 1877. Having achieved this goal, the Toronto Ladies’ Educational Association disbanded, and its management was transferred to a women’s committee that directed its energies toward gaining admission to the university itself.69 In the years following this decision, women candidates were in a paradoxical situation: they could matriculate into the University of Toronto, but they could not attend lectures at University College, hold any scholarships they might win in the entrance examinations, or graduate with a degree. The Toronto Globe commented on the contradictions of this new policy, pointing out – with some prophesy – that it was only a matter of time before the presence of young ladies at examinations forced the “vexed question” of coeducation out into the open. It was highly probable, the Globe warned, that a female candidate would soon win a scholarship; university regulations

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required all candidates who obtained scholarships to declare their intention to proceed to a degree in arts, and, most problematically, to attend lectures at University College for the following academic year. By deferring the larger issue of coeducation, Toronto in fact had opened the door for an ever-increasing number of matriculated women for whom gaining the full rights of undergraduates, including attendance, was the next logical step. As the Globe concluded, “There is no reason a priori why a girl should not be entitled to hold a scholarship when she wins one, just as a boy is allowed to do; on the contrary, so long as she is allowed to come up at all, there is every reason why she should not be placed under any disability in either one way or another.”70 Between 1877 and 1884, eighty-two candidates passed the new women’s matriculation examination, and became, at least officially, eligible to attend the University of Toronto.71 Caught by a fundamental illogicality of its position, the university senate gradually began to succumb to pressure in a piecemeal way, in 1880, deciding first that women could keep the money for scholarships without attending lectures, and then, most significantly, in 1881, that they had the right to proceed to degrees at the University of Toronto. As the Canada Educational Monthly noted, the decision was another triumph for advocates of coeducation in their push for a common standard of education for both sexes.72 In one important respect, the senate again stopped short of allowing full privileges to women. The senate added a crucial proviso, disingenuously worded, in its minutes: “That in the Faculty of Arts the Examinations together with the Medals and Prizes, the Certificates of Honor, Scholarships and Degrees, shall be open to women on the same conditions as to men, excepting that it shall not be imperative on them to attend lectures in an affiliated College.”73 This meant that while women could matriculate and proceed toward a degree at the University of Toronto, as at the short-lived University of Halifax, they would have to prepare for the final examinations on their own since they still would not be permitted to attend lectures at the college. Given the expense and difficulty of studying privately, the decisions of the senate were cold comfort to women who wished to earn degrees at the University of Toronto. At University College,

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the college council and the president, Daniel Wilson, maintained a determined resistance to the admission of women to classes. Wilson had been professor of history and English literature at the college since 1853. Largely self-taught, he had received an honorary lld from St Andrews in 1851, after establishing his reputation as a scholar in Scottish archeology.74 “All think ‘better not,’ all but one say ‘certainly not,’” Wilson reported of a typical council meeting when the fraught issue again was discussed.75 In 1882, the council resolved to oppose the change: “The College Council are prepared to give their heartiest co-operation in any well-considered plan for securing the advantages of higher education for women, and will be prepared, to the fullest extent of their ability to bear a part in such education, if a college for ladies is provided; but the Council, after mature consideration, are satisfied that the co-education of young men and women in large numbers, in the same college, is open to grave objections, and they feel it to be their duty to adhere to the practice of the College from its foundation.”76 While Wilson and other council members had supported the Ladies’ Educational Association, they were not prepared to risk educating women in the competitive environment of a men’s university. Over the next seven years, Wilson remained immovable in his conviction that the sexes had different needs and goals in higher education, and that only a women’s college on the model of Cambridge and Oxford would be suitable at Toronto. He told Eliza Fitzgerald, the brilliant student who would later graduate from Queen’s, “The higher education of women will be most successfully prosecuted in institutions exclusively set apart for them, with modifications specially adapted to their requirements and aims in life, as well as to the physical and intellectual differences that distinguish the sexes.”77 Wilson was a friend of Goldwin Smith, and he shared the view that competition between the sexes would distort the natural role of woman as man’s helpmate, and therefore cripple the future of the new nation. “It is in the highest interests, not of true womanhood only, but of Canada’s true manhood also, that I have urged for years the crowning of our Provincial educational system by the establishment of a college for women,” he stated in 1884.78 Wilson

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also was concerned that young girls would be tainted by their contact with men, and his experience of undergraduate behaviour at Toronto left him less than confident in the moral standards of students. He was worried in particular that the men would take advantage of the opportunities outside of classes to socialize too freely and gain inappropriate familiarity. As he warned, “It is not in the lectureroom that trouble is to be apprehended or danger incurred.”79 For Wilson, this fear was augmented by the fact that University College was a public institution with a large enrolment, and could hardly be compared to denominational colleges like Mount Allison and Victoria, where one or two women had been introduced into small classes of undergraduates from the same church community. The number of women applying for admission to University College would grow rapidly, and with the large pool of potential students, the adoption of coeducation at Toronto could hardly be regarded as a temporary or experimental measure. In response to Wilson’s intransigence, the campaign gained focus and broad support, uniting members of the committee of the former Ladies’ Educational Association, as well as the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, to demand the right of women to attend lectures at University College. In February 1882, representatives of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club visited Wilson to warn him that they would appeal to the legislature if the council continued to refuse applicants. “A deputation of ladies – strong-minded – bent on having the College thrown open to women,” Wilson commented in his journal.80 A week after this visit, Bengough satirized Wilson in Grip with a cartoon of the president holding two dolls, a girl and a boy, resolutely far apart, with the verse, “Dear doctor, be careful and don’t let ‘em mix, / Keep ‘em widely apart for they’re full of queer tricks.”81 As they had warned Wilson, the reformers’ new strategy was to go over the heads of the university senate and the college council and seek direct parliamentary action. University College was the teaching branch of Ontario’s provincial university, and as such was accountable to the Liberal government of Oliver Mowat. Advocates had kept the campaign steadily in the public view by publishing letters and articles in the Toronto press, and in March 1881, the legislature

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J.W. Bengough, “A Valentine to Dr W.,” Grip Magazine, 11 February 1882. Bengough’s wife, Helena Siddall Bengough, was active in the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, and may well have been a member of the deputation of “strong-minded women” who met with Daniel Wilson, the president of University College, early in 1882.

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had ordered a return of all correspondence between the college council and any woman applicant.82 In March 1882, following their exasperating meeting with Wilson, the Toronto Women’s Literary Club executive prepared a petition to be circulated throughout the province for signatures, demanding that the legislature intervene. The petition concluded, “That your petitioners, forming a respectable and important proportion of the educated men and women of the Province of Ontario, do sympathize with the young women at present suffering from their exclusion from University College. And we regard the exclusion of women as students from University College as an insult to the sex and a wrong to the individual and to society.”83 Bengough’s new annual Grip-Sack published a play that summer, written by Curzon, “The Sweet Girl Graduate,” in which she parodied Tennyson’s The Princess. Curzon’s heroine, Kate Bloggs, is crushed when she receives a letter refusing her admission to University College. Desperate to reach the “sun-lit heights of steep Parnassus,” Kate disguises herself as a man, attends classes, and triumphantly graduates with distinction. The play concludes with an allusion to the petitions being distributed by the Toronto Women’s Literary Club: “Let every man and woman here to-night / Look out for those petitions that will soon / Be placed in many a store by those our friends / Who in this city form a ladies’ club.” 84 In January 1883, these petitions “respecting the attendance of Women at the lectures at Toronto University” were read at the legislative assembly, submitted by the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, as well as by other groups in Toronto, Orillia, Ottawa, Hamilton, and London.85 The cause of coeducation, however, was shaken by a highly publicized controversy at the Queen’s medical school, Royal College in Kingston, which in 1881 had accepted women into regular classes. The first session of medical coeducation had passed quietly, but during the second session, after the senior students had graduated, opposition to the women’s presence flared up among the younger men, fuelled by the open hostility of one of the junior faculty members, Thomas Fenwick. In her diary, Elizabeth Smith recorded her growing misery in lectures, as her fellow students whispered derogatory comments, and her rage at the injustice of being slandered

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for seeking understanding of medicine. “We want the knowledge that is our due,” she wrote angrily, “& we want to gain it honestly, purely, uprightly without harm to any & to all good to ourselves.”86 On 9 December 1882, after some particularly offensive remarks from Fenwick as he played to the backbenches, the women students walked out of their physiology class, amid loud stamping from the men, and informed the registrar that they would not return until the situation was righted. They had planned this strategy in advance, after a previous occasion when Fenwick had incited applause from the students with a vulgar sexual anecdote. Fenwick retaliated that he had been forced to garble his lectures on account of the women in his class – “So absurd as tho’ we did not want all the science they could give us,” Smith observed87 – a falsehood which then was picked up by the press. The Canada Lancet pronounced coeducation to be a complete failure and came down firmly in defence of Fenwick, arguing that the women had left class “because of some statement of fact in connection with the subject in hand which the students applauded, and at which the ladies took offence.”88 While the majority of the professors seem to have been sympathetic to the women, the men students sent an ultimatum that they would not continue to attend Royal College if it remained coeducational. Faced with the threat that most of its students would switch to Trinity Medical School in Toronto, Royal College hastily created separate classes for the women then in attendance and decided not to admit any new women students in the future. 89 In response to the expulsion of women from Royal College, in 1883 two different groups of reformers organized two separate colleges, one in Kingston and one in Toronto, and as with Girton and Newnham at Cambridge, the lines between them divided to a certain extent over the principle of equal education. The Kingston group, endorsed by Elizabeth Smith and Jenny Kidd Trout, and supported by George Monro Grant and A.P. Knight, founded the Kingston Women’s Medical College as a cooperative effort by Queen’s and the city of Kingston. In Toronto, Emily Stowe and the Toronto Women’s Literary Club backed the foundation of the Women’s Medical College of Toronto, affiliated with Trinity. Buried among various professional rivalries

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lay a more fundamental division, based on Stowe’s contention that women in the Kingston school would not receive the same training as men. 90 Yet in her valedictory address at the closing exercises of the first session of the Kingston college in 1884, Alice McGillivray stressed the view of the graduating class that all sources of education should be as freely opened to woman as to man: “Any course of study that will enlarge the mind of woman, develop all her faculties, make her conversant with the matters affecting the varied and vital interest of life – those of home first, then state, and country – will be a means toward the goal we prize.”91 During the early years of the Kingston college, McGillivray was employed as lecturer in practical anatomy, and later lecturer on obstetrics and diseases of women, and following her marriage, Elizabeth Smith Shortt was hired as lecturer on jurisprudence and sanitary science. Unable to compete for the small pool of students, in 1894 the Kingston Women’s Medical College closed, and efforts to advance women in medicine focused on the Women’s Medical College of Toronto, renamed the Ontario Medical College for Women.92 Although the creation of the two medical schools contained the crisis in 1883, the scandal was perceived by some as indicative of the failure of coeducation and used as evidence against admitting women into arts classes at University College, Toronto. For months, the issue was discussed avidly in newspapers and periodicals.93 “The papers are full of the troubles resulting at Kingston from the boasted scheme of co-education, in which they welcomed a fair candidate refused by us,” Wilson noted cheerfully in his journal in December 1882. “The main trouble, as might be expected, is in Medicine.”94 Unable to resist the timeliness of the news, Wilson also was quick to draw the situation to the attention of the minister of education, Adam Crooks, commenting in a letter, “I see our friends at Kingston are not finding co-education fulfil their expectations thus far.”95 In 1883, the Toronto Globe hosted a forum to review the entire question of the higher education of women and coeducation, soliciting the opinions of such prominent educators as Charles W. Eliot of Harvard and Anne J. Clough of Newnham College, Cambridge, as well as Canadian leaders Samuel S. Nelles of Victoria, George Monro Grant

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of Queen’s, and James Ross of Dalhousie. Perhaps not surprisingly, all respondents fully supported higher education for women, but the answers regarding coeducation, even from those in charge of the newly coeducational universities, tended to be more qualified in their endorsement.96 At this point, the undergraduates at the University of Toronto joined the opposition. This was a noticeable change in editorial policy at The Varsity, and reflected the views of a new cohort of students. In 1881, the undergraduates had voted in favour of coeducation at University College, and a deputation had assured the president that lady students would receive a cordial reception.97 “That’s not what I fear, Gentlemen,” Wilson had reportedly replied; “what I fear is that your reception will be too cordial.”98 The Varsity initially had championed coeducation, and its first cover image in 1880 had boldly displayed a woman undergraduate in cap and gown. The newspaper had featured editorials and articles, many written by Houston, criticizing the college council and urging the admission of women.99 By late 1883, however, editorials in The Varsity had become hostile to the idea of women in the college. “In the constitution of the race, men and women are essentially different,” the editor argued. “Our present system is masculine, and is intended for men and suits men.”100 In March 1884, the students debated the subject of coeducation at a large public meeting of the Literary and Scientific Society of University College. Before the debate, Wilson had briefed the two students who argued against women’s admission, and according to Smith in The Week, the sympathy of the audience was unmistakably with the opposition.101 Even though much of this publicity was negative, the Toronto Women’s Literary Club (by now renamed the Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association) had achieved its objective of getting public support. To manage its campaign at the Ontario legislature, reformers had established a network of friends with connections to the government and university senate, including John M. Gibson, Richard Harcourt, and George W. Ross, Liberal members of the assembly, and William Houston, the legislative librarian, all of whom were strong advocates of public schooling. For Gibson, Harcourt, Ross, and Houston, the entrance of women into classes at

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University College would benefit secondary schooling by improving the qualifications of women teachers, and they believed it was wrong to restrict them from attending a publicly funded institution. Harcourt and Ross were former teachers, and both would go on to serve as minister of education. Houston also had been a high school teacher, and in 1892 would be appointed by Ross as director of the provincial teachers’ institutes, a program of training for in-service public school teachers.102 These men aligned on another important public issue, the appointment of Canadian graduates to university positions; as the “home party,” they would later spar with Wilson over hiring faculty members in the new fields of political economy and psychology. The professoriate at Toronto at this time was composed almost entirely of British subjects, academics who had exported their values and expectations from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or less frequently, Edinburgh.103 Coeducation, like the hiring of Canadianborn scholars, became an important cause in a larger movement to reform the provincial university. Gibson, Harcourt, and Houston were all Toronto graduates, and Houston and Gibson served on the university senate, where they kept women’s admission on the agenda and worked behind the scenes with other supporters, such as John Squair, lecturer in modern languages, George Paxton Young, professor of classics, and Andrew Stevenson, a recent graduate who taught at Upper Canada College.104 Along with Houston, Stevenson took up the cause of defending coeducation in The Varsity, charging Wilson with being out of accord with the enlightened spirit of his time, an impediment before the wheels of the world’s progress. “He should not be behind the age,” Stevenson argued dramatically, “but rather in advance of it in all that tends to the elevation of the race.”105 Eliza Balmer, a young teacher living in Toronto, acted as the coordinator of the group of women who had already matriculated and were waiting to start attending lectures at University College. Balmer’s brother, Robert, was an undergraduate at the college, and a friend of both Stevenson and Squair.106 At Balmer’s instigation, the women adopted an assertive strategy of sending the college registrar as many applications as possible, with the knowledge that these letters, along

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with letters of refusal from Wilson, would be returned to the Ontario legislature and then made public in the Toronto press. Ella Gardiner, one of the applicants, later recalled, “Several women matriculants were anxious for university education and after consultation with friends of co-education, we saw that the only way to procure admission to the University was to force the issue ourselves.”107 In September 1883, eleven women sent applications for admission, enclosing fees, to the registrar. All eleven candidates were rejected, the fees were returned, and copies of the correspondence were duly reviewed in the provincial parliament.108 Houston sent out a flood of letters and articles to the editors of The Globe, Canada Educational Monthly, and The Varsity, and he disputed at length with Goldwin Smith in The Week.109 In a letter to William Mulock, vice-chancellor of the university, Houston outlined the reformers’ plans: “It would strengthen our hand in getting a resolution on the subject through the House during the session. Gibson has consented to move in favor of admitting girls to University College, on the same terms as boys, and I have already secured the assent of a considerable proportion of the members. G.W. Ross will vote and perhaps speak in support of the resolution, which will probably be adopted unanimously.”110 In January 1884, one year after the petitions were submitted, Gibson gave notice in the Ontario legislature of a resolution to admit women to University College, and the final stage of the campaign was underway.111 Wilson was not overly worried by this upcoming vote in the legislature, as he did not have a high opinion of Mowat or of Ross, the new minister of education after 1883. In this, Wilson underestimated the Liberals and their pragmatic agenda for public education in Ontario. University coeducation had widespread support among educators within the emerging provincial school systems. As early as 1879, the Ontario Teachers’ Association convention had endorsed coeducation and passed a resolution favouring the removal of any obstacles to the full admission of women to university degrees.112 Throughout the campaign, Wilson held to the view that members of the government would simply bend whichever way political expediency pushed them. “I say very decidedly No!” he wrote in his journal in September 1883. “But the Attorney-General [Mowat] may be

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weak enough to say Yes; and Parliament is master. But I have great faith in the power of steady passive resistance; notwithstanding a strongminded madam’s declaration to-day, that she would force us to submit to woman’s demand for her Rights!”113 Smith expressed an equal degree of cynicism in The Week, and he angrily denounced the introduction of coeducation on the same terms: “The change has been brought about by a small but active and persistent agitation operating on the weak nerves of a Party Government and aided by the fatuous gallantry which fancies that whatever a woman asks must be granted without reference to the real interests or the general wishes of the sex.”114 Wilson and Smith had little respect for Ross personally, who as a normal school graduate and former teacher was not himself a university graduate; Ross did not understand the difference between a high school and a college, Wilson scoffed, and he supported coeducation as any “claptrap bit of popularity-hunting sure to be in favour.”115 Yet Ross had very decided views on the role of the provincial university, and the future of the public system of which it was a part. Like James R. Inch of Mount Allison, who became superintendent of education for New Brunswick in 1891, Ross brought personal knowledge of public schooling to his position, and he worked to centralize the system and introduce higher standards for the training and certification of teachers. For Ross, the role of Ontario’s public education system was to prepare citizens to participate in the new Canadian democracy. In particular, Ross believed in what he termed the “educational ladder,” a democratic model in which a child could receive public support from kindergarten to university. In this system, the university could exert an important influence on the overall quality of teaching at all levels; teachers in high schools, collegiate institutes, and normal schools would receive their education at the university, and then in turn be responsible for improving standards in the elementary schools. By raising the qualifications of women teachers, coeducation at University College formed an important part of Ross’s larger plan to professionalize teaching and exert greater control over the University of Toronto.116 At Victoria’s convocation ceremonies in 1884, for example, Ross took the opportunity to outline his vision of a great educational system, incorporating the

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public schools, high schools, and university, and supported almost entirely by the bounty of the state. He praised Victoria for opening its halls to the humblest citizens of the realm, and for being among the first to graduate a young lady, Nellie Greenwood. Acta Victoriana summarized his speech: “Here he found the true republic of letters, where all men – and women, too – were born equal.”117 In March 1884, the resolution to admit women into classes at University College, moved by Gibson and seconded by Harcourt, was carried in the Ontario legislature.118 Ross and Harcourt gave speeches in which they argued that the issue of coeducation was inseparable from women’s work as teachers, and that for the public system to grow effectively, it was essential for women to improve their qualifications by gaining access to university training. Harcourt noted somewhat presciently that while only a small number of women now taught at the secondary level, they would naturally move into these positions once they had the same opportunity to prepare for them. He concluded, “The bulk of the teaching power rested with the females, still they were discriminated against with reference to higher education.”119 Ross emphasized the fundamental right of women to work and contribute to society. “Women are members of the body politic,” he stated, “and their usefulness is increased just in proportion as their education is advanced.”120 Ella Gardiner, who attended the session along with other women, remembered that they rejoiced when Ross gave such a strong speech on their side.121 Reformers were elated by their triumph, and waited anxiously for notices announcing the change to coeducation to be sent out by University College. After consulting with Smith, however, Wilson chose to ignore the wishes of the legislature. If the “miserable system” were to be introduced at University College, Wilson insisted, the government would have to force it on him.122 An order in council, he told Ross, was “manifestly indispensable in so radical a change.”123 In June, Houston advised Balmer and the other women to send their applications to University College early so that if they were rejected, they would have time to take action, in the courts if necessary. He then warned Wilson: “I think it only fair to inform you that in so far as the young ladies and their friends are concerned the matter will

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not be allowed to drift”124 – a letter which the president dismissed as “pre-eminently coarse insolence.”125 As they had expected, the women once again had their applications rejected and their fees returned. Over the summer months, Wilson returned to his favourite scheme of a women’s college, and busied himself writing condescending letters to Ross, explaining in detail how important it was to separate women students, in their own building if possible, and, if not, how expensive and time-consuming it would be to accommodate them properly within the existing college. Ross’s letters in response were brief. He said the government would not move hastily, but in August flatly informed Wilson that he would comply with the terms of the legislature’s resolution. Wilson again refused to proceed without an order in council.126 As the opening of college approached, the women applicants and their supporters decided that matters really had drifted long enough. Encouraged by Eliza Balmer, the women informed the registrar that they had a legal right to attend, and would present themselves as students on the first day of lectures, whether or not they received permission from the president to do so. Sympathetic editorials appeared in some Toronto and Hamilton newspapers urging the government to take immediate action on the women’s behalf.127 Gibson sent a telegram to Ross from Hamilton on 30 September: “Hope women not excluded from lectures tomorrow certainly would make matters worse and cause future difficulties.”128 On 2 October 1884, the lieutenant governor of Ontario approved an order in council admitting women into classes at University College, Toronto.129 The day before, The Globe had announced that women would be attending the session opening that afternoon, and temporary arrangements were being made to accommodate them in the college building. Subsequent notices appeared in the papers explaining that classes would be delayed a few days while the makeshift preparations were completed.130 To celebrate the victory, Bengough again satirized Wilson in Grip, returning to the theme of Wilson’s preoccupation with sexual propriety. Above the caption, “The Learned Doctor Welcoming Ladies to the Provincial University,” the figure of Wilson glowered at four demure young women lined up

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in front of him, grimly displaying a large birch switch in one hand, and in the other a notice reading, “Our Arts course does not include the arts of flirting, striking or mashing.”131 Nine undergraduate women began taking lectures full time at University College in the fall of 1884. All had matriculated in arts, but since most had studied independently for several years, only two women started as first-year students, and the rest were distributed throughout the different years, taking modern languages, classics, and philosophy.132 By June 1885, five women were qualified to graduate: the three fourth-year students who had attended lectures, May Bell Bald, Ella Gardiner, Margaret Langley, as well as two others who had continued to study privately, Catherine Edith Brown and Margaret Brown, daughters of The Globe’s George Brown. The five graduated together with the class of 1885, becoming the first women to receive degrees from the University of Toronto. Over the past year,

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J.W. Bengough, “The Learned Doctor Welcoming Ladies to the Provincial University,” Grip Magazine, 11 October 1884. Behind Wilson is the equally grim but resolute “Woman Suffrage” campaigner, with an umbrella ready to wield under her arm, who perhaps was a caricature of Emily Stowe.

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Women’s use of space in the library was often contentious, and most universities established separate rooms for women, such as this ladies’ reading room in the Birge-Carnegie Library at Victoria College in Toronto, ca 1910. Libraries tended to be noisy and crowded, and the site of frequent rows among men students; at Dalhousie, Lucy Maud Montgomery described the men’s reading room as “the domain sacred to masculine scrimmages and gossips.”

the Brown sisters, who had been tutored at home by Squair, among others, had used the library and the small ladies’ common room – quickly improvised from the librarian’s private room – and had met with Bald, Gardiner, and Langley to share their lecture notes. Given The Varsity’s open hostility to the admission of women, and the opposition among professors expressed on the college council, Wilson maintained a close watch. The women kept to their common room.133 The cover of the first Varsity issue to appear that October

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pointedly displayed a new design, in which the image of the woman in cap and gown had been removed.134 It was a decisive victory for coeducation, but in the view of Wilson and Smith, the real problem of women’s education had not yet been solved. In a scathing editorial in The Week, Smith accused the government and legislature of forcing the change on the college merely because coeducation was popular and cheap. All that had been done, he argued, was to concede to a handful of young women, in most cases drawn from the normal schools, the liberty of going through a masculine course of education. Reiterating one of his favourite themes, Smith warned that the women’s movement was regressive, and placing women in competition with men represented the most fundamental danger to civilization of the modern age. “Not in this case alone,” he concluded, “the identification of a few women of advanced opinions with the other sex is likely rather to retard than to accelerate the progress of improvement with regard to the female sex at large.”135 In his turn, Wilson let his feelings be known in his opening address to convocation. To Wilson’s satisfaction, Ross was present, and he was able to rebuke the government publicly for what he regarded as caving to expediency and economy. Implying that coeducation was just a temporary measure, Wilson again stressed that a separate college was the model of university education designed in every aspect to fit women’s special needs and capabilities, something the men’s course of education at University College could never achieve, and only retard. The small Anglo-Canadian minority in Quebec, he noted, had rallied behind the cause of women’s education and was supplying to McGill the funds which the wealthy province of Ontario had failed to provide to Toronto.136

Coeducation as a Matter of Course Following the intense publicity of the campaign in Ontario, the provincial universities in New Brunswick and Manitoba experienced similar public pressure to admit women. In 1886, both the University of New Brunswick and the University of Manitoba became coeducational. Like Toronto, they were public institutions accountable to the legislature, and women were admitted largely

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because of changes to the school systems. The president of the University of New Brunswick, Thomas Harrison, later downplayed the change in his annual report to the legislature, stating, “what was formerly looked upon as a radical innovation is now treated as a matter of course.”137 While he clearly wished to dispel any lingering suspicions, Harrison was glossing over the comparatively sluggish reaction of his institution to the movement in the maritime region, where Mount Allison had started admitting women in 1872, Acadia in 1880, and Dalhousie in 1881. First chartered as an Anglican college in 1800, New Brunswick had been established as a non-denominational provincial university in 1859. In 1870, New Brunswick’s president, William Brydone Jack, recommended that a ladies’ academy be founded in connection with Fredericton collegiate, a boys’ preparatory school affiliated with the university.138 This plan was forestalled by the Common Schools Act of 1871, which transformed the grammar schools in Fredericton, St John, and Kent County into coeducational public high schools. The newly coeducational Fredericton collegiate was concerned about its enrolments and motivated to recruit girls, and it produced a small but steady number of women graduates interested in studying for matriculation. In 1880, the university senate agreed to open its matriculation examination to women from the new high schools, stipulating that Greek would be an optional subject, and successful candidates would receive a certificate from the university.139 As in Ontario, however, women were permitted to matriculate into the provincial university long before they were allowed to attend lectures or proceed to degrees. Like Wilson at Toronto, Jack was convinced that the university should admit women only if it could provide separate classes, an extravagance it clearly could not afford. “To give separate courses of Lectures to women,” he pointed out in his report of 1881, “the present limited teaching staff of the University would not suffice, and the advisability of the co-education of the sexes is still a moot point.”140 It was a period of austerity for New Brunswick’s Conservative government, and the superintendent of education, William Crocket, was concerned to reduce costs and improve efficiency throughout

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the public school system. Secondary and higher education repeatedly came under attack in the legislature, and the university was charged with being a drain on the province’s resources, while benefiting comparatively few citizens.141 In 1886, the same year women were admitted into classes, the university also increased its arts course from three to four years, and in 1887 approved a new policy allowing qualified public school teachers to be admitted directly into the second year.142 As in Ontario, the matter of women’s future at the provincial university became inseparable from concerns about the public school system; women teachers could upgrade their qualifications to help meet the demand of the new secondary schools, and at the same time provide the university with much-needed enrolments. Women’s advocates in New Brunswick adopted the strategy successfully pursued by campaigners in Ontario, and brought the issue directly to the attention of the legislature. In 1885, Mary Kingsley Tibbits, a student at Fredericton collegiate, submitted a formal challenge to the exclusion of women from the university. Tibbits was encouraged by Lydia Jane Gregory, her English teacher at the collegiate, who had recently taken a leave of absence to study at Wellesley College in Boston.143 The previous fall, Tibbits and her mother had visited three American colleges – Wellesley, the Harvard Annex, later known as Radcliffe College, and Boston University – and had been told that Tibbits, not yet sixteen, was too young to be admitted. Tibbits then had examined the university act in the Statutes of New Brunswick, and noted that the act did not prohibit women, as it only stipulated that any person who passed the matriculation examination and paid the fees had the right to be admitted as an undergraduate at the university.144 Tibbits later stated, “A lawyer friend assured me that legally I was a person; so, with high courage, I went up to the university to write my examination in September ’85.”145 Women candidates for matriculation were allowed to substitute French for Greek, but Tibbits, with her eye firmly on university admission, began privately to study Greek. As she had expected, the university senate refused her application for admission to classes. In November, the senate decided to refer the issue to a special committee. This committee, charged with the

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task of preparing a report on women’s admission to the university, included Crocket, as well as the new president, Thomas Harrison.146 Frustrated by this delay, early in 1886 Tibbits enlisted support in the provincial legislature from John Valentine Ellis, proprietor of the Saint John Globe and a Liberal member for Saint John. Her timing was good. Provincial politics were in transition; since 1882, Andrew Blair’s Liberal coalition had been open to some cautiously progressive legislation, such as electoral changes in 1886 granting the municipal franchise to widows and unmarried women who met the property qualification.147 During the discussion in the legislature in March concerning the university’s annual appropriation, Ellis asked if there was any hope of the university being opened to young women. Ezekiel McLeod, a Conservative member for Saint John who also served on the university senate, replied that he saw no reason why ladies should not have all the university privileges accorded to male students, and promised that the matter would come again before the senate at its next annual meeting.148 This challenge in the legislature seems to have had some influence among the members of the special senate committee, who subsequently submitted a report recommending the admission of women. At its annual meeting in June 1886, the University of New Brunswick senate adopted the committee’s report, ruling, “that females should be admitted to the privileges of the University on the same terms as men.”149 Tibbits herself drew a clear connection between the initiative of Ellis in the legislature and the decision of the university senate. She recalled, “Shortly after that, the Senate met and sent me word that I might attend lectures.”150 Although ten young women matriculated in arts in 1886, Tibbits was the only one to appear in the lecture halls that fall. In his opening address to the students, Harrison commented that the step taken by the senate was important, and one which increased his own responsibility. He extended a cordial welcome to Tibbits on behalf of the students, and assured her – or perhaps them – that she would be treated with kindness and courtesy.151 Undergraduates at New Brunswick were apprehensive, and their concerns were expressed in the student newspaper, University Monthly. By 1883, coeducation was constantly in the news, as press across the

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country avidly followed the trouble at Queen’s medical school and the prolonged campaign to admit women into Toronto. The University Monthly had kept up with these controversies in Ontario, and for over two years had reported regularly in its “College World” section on the admission of women into other universities in North America and Europe.152 In the fall of 1885, the senior students met to debate Tibbits’ application and the possibility of coeducation, and were divided in their opinions. “All admired the young lady’s determination,” the Monthly explained, “and, while many are upholding her cause by law and precedent, there were not a few who looked with unfriendly eyes upon her suit.” The editor of the Monthly recognized that the university was beginning to appear somewhat behind the times, and that since ladies had an equal right to education, the senate should follow other colleges and admit women to lectures. “If the authorities think so too, then send along the girls, and we are sure they will be well received,” he stated.153 When the decision was announced in June 1886, the Monthly maintained a philosophical stance, observing that sooner or later coeducation would have to be adopted, and the senate had been wise to settle finally such a difficult issue to the general benefit of the university and the province.154 In spite of the Monthly’s progressive tone, men students were hostile to any change to their college traditions, and even those who respected Tibbits’ position agreed that her arrival would have a significant impact on undergraduate life. As the Monthly noted, “Among the students, the gravity of the situation, in all its bearings, was fully realized.”155 Looking back in 1924, Tibbits herself had good memories about her experience as the only woman student. “The men students accepted me without question,” she asserted. “I had gone to school with many of them, so why should I not continue my studies in their company?”156 Yet Mabel Sterling, who entered her first year in 1892, remembered hearing less positive reports about those early years. “At first, to put it mildly, the young men were quite antagonistic to her being here and, if half the stories told of their reception of her are true, a less valiant spirit would have fallen by the wayside but not Mary K.”157 Similarly, Katie Hall Marsters, who lived in St John’s before attending Acadia in the late 1880s, claimed that Tibbits had been

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admitted to the University of New Brunswick grudgingly because she had “stirred up such a hornet’s nest.”158 Tibbits was the only woman during her first year; in 1887, she was joined by a second full-time and several part-time women students. When Tibbits graduated in 1889, the first woman to earn a ba at the University of New Brunswick, the valedictorian for her class expressed his pride, but alluded to the difficulties she had experienced: “It was with no small amount of courage and amid much criticism that this young lady passed matriculation examination with us in the autumn of 1885.”159 In Manitoba, similar discussions were underway regarding the role of the provincial university in training teachers for the new public schools. The University of Manitoba in Winnipeg had been established in 1877 as a degree-granting provincial institution, in affiliation with three existing denominational colleges, St Boniface (francophone and Catholic), St John’s (Anglican), and Manitoba College (Presbyterian). A fourth college, the Methodist Wesley College, was affiliated in 1888.160 The creation of a university was an ambitious project for the new province, which during the 1870s had only the beginnings of an elementary school system and no public high schools. In 1871, Manitoba’s public school act had created a system of Catholic and Protestant elementary schools, supervised by a dual board of education. Boys could receive secondary education in the preparatory divisions of the denominational colleges, as well as in the Wesleyan Institute, the precursor of Wesley College, but secondary education for most girls in Manitoba was limited until 1882, when collegiate departments were opened within some of the larger public schools in Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie, and Brandon.161 The demand for trained teachers, however, stimulated improve-ments in women’s education here as elsewhere. In 1882, the Manitoba Normal School was opened in Winnipeg for both men and women, and shortly afterward, courses of teacher training known as normal institutes began to be held in smaller communities throughout the province.162 Teachers in the Protestant system were eager to professionalize, and members of the provincial and local teachers’ associations met regularly to discuss such challenges as the sparseness of the population in the rural districts, the shortage of teachers, and the

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difficulty of adapting the educational model of the eastern provinces to western conditions. In keeping with the pattern in other provinces, women teachers were dominant numerically at the lower level, and the discrepancy in the salaries and qualifications of men and women became a significant issue of discussion for the associations and the Winnipeg school board.163 Mary Kinnear states that in 1881, women formed 39 per cent of Manitoba teachers; by 1886, they represented 49 per cent, and by 1911, that number had risen to 75 per cent.164 The admission of women into the University of Manitoba was perceived to be linked to the overall progress of public schooling, and the matter first was introduced to the university council by the school board’s representative, the superintendent of the Protestant section, W.C. Pinkham. At a meeting in 1880, Pinkham moved that a special committee be appointed “to consider the question of the higher education of women, with a view to bringing it within the scope and aim of our university work.”165 This committee, which included Pinkham as well as faculty from St Boniface, St John’s, and Manitoba colleges, consisted of men with very different views on women’s education, and the members were unable to come to an agreement. Archbishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché of St Boniface, who convened the committee, strongly opposed women’s admission, and he was joined by the university chancellor, Robert Machray, warden of St John’s and Anglican bishop of Rupert’s Land. Machray was a Cambridge graduate, and, like C.W.E. Body at Trinity in Ontario, promoted the formation of an Anglican college for young women on the Girton model. In 1877, Anglicans had established St John’s College Ladies’ School in Winnipeg, due largely to the commitment of Bishop Machray.166 On the other side of this debate, Presbyterian leaders and faculty at Manitoba College supported coeducation and pushed for the admission of women to degrees. The members of this community shared the progressive ideas of such Presbyterians as George Monro Grant, and were aware of the developments occurring in central and eastern Canada. Early in 1881, the Manitoba Free Press published “A Plea for the Higher Education of Women,” written by Marion Samuel Bryce, whose husband, George Bryce, was one of the founders of

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Manitoba College and professor of science and literature. During the 1870s, George Bryce had worked hard to promote the college, believing that higher education was essential to the development of the frontier, and he had received support within the Presbyterian synod for this project from Grant. George Bryce similarly supported the admission of women, and he would later refer to coeducation as one of the university’s “marks of progress.”167 Before her marriage, Marion Bryce had been headmistress at a private girls’ school in Toronto, Mrs Birnie’s Ladies’ School, and after moving to Winnipeg became active in women’s organizations, and would later lecture in modern languages at Manitoba College.168 The editor of The Press introduced Marion Bryce’s article with the comment that it was appropriate to reproduce it in full as the province was just then engaged in the establishment of its educational machinery. Bryce expressed her concern that young women needed to be better prepared by their education for the duties of life, whether or not they married. She argued that other denominations – presumably the Methodists and Baptists – already had established female colleges which combined preparation for competitive examinations with religious instruction, and that Presbyterians needed to turn their attention to providing Christian women’s education. “Let the gates of knowledge be thrown open to those who have the means, time, and opportunity of entering,” she urged.169 The Manitoba Free Press maintained a steady interest in the question over the next few years, reporting on the separate arrangements made for women at Cambridge, Harvard, and McGill, and deciding, at different times, both for and against university coeducation.170 Once again, the women applicants themselves ultimately forced the issue. The first application came in March 1885 from Addie Cline, an undergraduate at the University of Toronto seeking to transfer to Manitoba. Cline was informed that the university had not yet taken action on the question, but Taché’s special committee was revived and again mandated to consider the admission of women.171 Shortly afterward, a student at Winnipeg Collegiate Institute, Helen Brown, took the university’s preliminary matriculation examination with the highest standing and qualified for a scholarship. In June 1885,

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Taché reported to council that the special committee had not come to any decision about the matter, and referred it back to the university’s board of studies. While council agreed to report Brown’s standing in the examination, it decided to reserve the question of her standing in the university, and her tenure of a scholarship, until the whole issue of the admission of women could be considered and decided at a separate meeting. Following a year of deliberation, the board of studies, in turn, tossed the sensitive issue back to university council, recommending only that women’s examinations be conducted in separate rooms.172 This circumlocution reflected the ongoing dissention among the different denominational colleges over the question of women’s admission. Faculty at St Boniface and St John’s still were opposed, but the campaign for coeducation had gained momentum at Manitoba College. After his appointment in 1883, the principal, John Mark King, had joined George Bryce and Marion Bryce in support of women applicants. Before arriving in Winnipeg, King had served on the committee to establish the Women’s Medical College of Toronto. During the 1890s, he would give three special courses of lectures to the women of Winnipeg on theology, philosophy, and English literature.173 In 1885, the Manitoba College Literary Society held a public meeting to debate the question, “Should women be admitted to our colleges and universities?” As the society’s honorary president, George Bryce gave the decision in favour of the affirmative, and he took the opportunity to express his own opinion that the dangers of coeducation had been exaggerated, since in ordinary life men and women routinely worked together in offices, shops, and factories.174 Encouraged by this endorsement, in 1886 four women applied directly to Manitoba College for admission. The college senate deliberated over the summer and then agreed to admit women into classes, provided they passed the matriculation examination of the university or the college, which included the subjects of Latin, Greek, modern languages, and mathematics.175 The college made it clear that women students admitted to the privileges of undergraduates would be expected to meet all the requirements of the degree course, including the study of Greek; as the Manitoba Free Press put it, “it is only for those ladies who are disposed to do their full share of work.”176

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The decision by Manitoba College resolved the stalemate among university council members, and allowed each college to form its own policy. Robert Machray of St John’s favoured separate education through an affiliation with the St John’s Ladies’ School, and continued to refuse women applicants even after Manitoba College became coeducational in 1886. Yet the financial difficulties of the school, and the growing number of applications to the college, including one from Dora Fortin, the daughter of an influential Anglican archdeacon, encouraged Machray and other council members to change their minds. In 1892, St John’s admitted women into coeducational classes. St Boniface did not become coeducational until 1959.177 In spite of these differences among the colleges, the transition to coeducation at Manitoba was less controversial than at other provincial universities, and men soon accepted the presence of women at student meetings and events. The first woman undergraduate in arts, Jessie Livingstone Holmes, started attending classes at Manitoba College in the fall of 1886. In 1889, Holmes also became the first woman at the university to graduate with a ba degree, an event that sparked considerable excitement in the community. She remembered, “When my time came to come forward and receive my parchment and be hooded, the assembly, no doubt feeling that the high point in the proceedings had been reached, broke out in a great uproar of applause.”178

 Coeducation held the radical potential to break down the barriers between the public and private worlds and blur the gendered division of labour central to Victorian ideology. For writers like Spencer, Clarke, and Smith, who imbued the debates over the woman question with racist ideas, competition in the lecture halls would result in sterility and racial degeneration, and retard the evolution of British and Anglo-American society. Needing to defend this unpalatable link between jobs and degrees, members of the women’s movement in Canada exploited evolutionary theory to serve their own purposes. Led by the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, reformers presented an expanded conception of feminized citizenship in which middle-class

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women’s work was essential to the forward movement of AngloCanadian progress. Freely using racial discourse, supporters claimed that the movement of women out of the private sphere represented not only the fulfillment of individual potential, but on a larger scale, the transition of society to a higher stage of evolution. By following the example of their pioneer foremothers, the women graduates of the modern world would be active rather than passive citizens in nation building, bringing the qualities of industry, selflessness, and courage to the work of colonialism. The admission of women into the provincial universities in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba established a milestone in the acceptance of coeducation in Canada. In their campaigns for admission, women formed important alliances with other reformers and educators. For George W. Ross in Ontario, William Crocket in New Brunswick, and W.C. Pinkham in Manitoba, coeducation was part of a larger plan to professionalize teaching and bring the provincial universities into line with the expanded public school systems. This position had been reinforced by the resolution of the Ontario Teachers’ Association convention in 1879 that women were entitled to the same advantages as men, and any remaining obstacles to the full admission of women to university degrees should be removed. For other reformers, the cause became associated with a more general movement to modernize the universities, broaden the academic curriculum, and apply research to address social issues such as public health or urban housing. Within arts faculties, the idea of a liberal education was changing, and the traditional focus on classics, philosophy, natural science, and mathematics was opening up to include modern languages, political economy, the study of English, and physics.179 Yet even while coeducation became the dominant model in Canada, some reformers returned to the idea of women’s colleges as an alternative form of higher education, where women faculty and administrations could design programs to meet the growing demand for middle-class employment.

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Women’s Colleges and Self-Support But if our separate classes are intended to develop into a separate College, a high-class ladies’ school, we have enough of them already. What those of us who are in earnest want is a University Education, and nothing short of it. A Donalda student of McGill, The Week, 1889

T

he admission of women to the University of Toronto became the turning point of the movement for coeducation. As Nellie Spence put it in 1891, “The question of the Higher Education of women in Ontario was forever settled when in October, 1884, at the opening of University College, a few timidly bold maidens appeared in one of the lecture-rooms.”1 Coeducation emerged from the debates as the decisive winner, offering Canadian universities a financially expedient solution, while meeting the demands of reformers for access to equal education. By the early twentieth century, all but three universities, McGill, St Francis Xavier, and Ottawa, provided coeducational courses of study, and the new provincial universities in western Canada all became coeducational from the year of their opening.2 The University of Alberta accepted women into its inaugural class in 1908, the provincial legislature having decreed, “no woman shall by reason of her sex be deprived of any advantage

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or privilege accorded to male students of the university.”3 Similarly, the University of Saskatchewan, founded in 1907, and the University of British Columbia, established in 1908, had equal privileges for women written into the provincial acts that created them. 4 During the campaign for Toronto, reformers had rejected outright the possibility of a separate provincial college, believing this to be a delaying tactic, at best, that would result in inferior education for women. The vitriol of Edward Clarke and Goldwin Smith undercut the consideration of women’s colleges as a viable form that could maintain the same academic standards. In sharp contrast to the separate but equal principle pursued at women’s colleges like Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley in the American northeast, for reformers in Canada the goal of academic rigour became inextricably linked to access to men’s universities. Yet the movement in Canada, as in Britain and the United States, had always attracted those who argued that women’s education should be different and designed to meet their distinct needs. Some Canadians worried that coeducation had become the dominant model simply because it was cheap and, ultimately, would diminish rather than improve women’s higher education. “The college girl will play a part of increasing importance in the community,” Archibald MacMechan, a professor at Dalhousie, wrote in 1914, “but as yet the community has done very little for the college girl, in Canada at least. Coeducation is a temporary makeshift, due to the national poverty.”5 A variety of different institutions evolved in response to the demand for separate women’s education. McGill and Trinity, with their links to the Anglican elite, established women’s colleges modelled on Cambridge – known as coordinate colleges in America – providing separate classes and space for women within a university system otherwise restricted to men. Coeducational universities, including Mount Allison, Acadia, Dalhousie, and McMaster, created affiliation agreements with Protestant ladies’ colleges, which offered both degree and non-degree programs. At Catholic universities, such as St Francis Xavier and St Michael’s at the University of Toronto, women’s higher education was problematic for the congregations of men who strongly opposed coeducation. Orders of women religious responded to the needs of Catholic women by

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operating colleges where students had separate classes and worked toward degrees granted by their affiliated universities. The chief characteristic of women’s colleges in Canada was the flexibility of their curriculum in adapting to the growing demand for women’s employment. In 1888, the principal of Alma Ladies’ College, a Methodist academy in St Thomas, Ontario, reflected this perspective in his opening address: “Young Ladies, I counsel you to become independent by preparing yourselves to win, if need be, your livelihood and to reap the rewards that come only to honest and efficient labor.”6 While the colleges at McGill and Trinity attempted to replicate the course of study offered to men, with limited success, the other separate colleges offered a wide range of academic, cultural, and vocational studies at the preparatory and post-secondary levels, and by the early twentieth century, many hoped to upgrade their diplomas into degree programs. Most Protestant and Catholic women’s colleges offered the first few years of a liberal arts course, as well as cultural and practical programs intended specifically to train women for employment, often in conjunction with a high school operated by the same board or order, which provided academic preparation for university matriculation. Rather than attempting to compete with coeducational universities by offering similar academic courses, the successful separate colleges adopted a different, more practical orientation, and were the first to design their programs to prepare women to support themselves.

The Cambridge Model Opponents to coeducation looked to developments in Britain for an alternative model of provision that would maintain the academic integrity of men’s universities. This tradition was exemplified by Girton and Newnham at Cambridge, and Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. At the time Daniel Wilson was digging in his heels at Toronto, his friend J. William Dawson, principal of McGill, was becoming a prominent advocate of women’s colleges in Canada. For academics like Wilson and Dawson, coeducation was too closely associated with the countless brash new institutions spreading west across the United States. It is noteworthy that the

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most sustained opposition to coeducation occurred at universities where the majority of the professoriate were educated in Britain and identified with the values of a British academic world. This resistance was particularly strong within Anglican institutions; like Catholic universities, universities associated with the Church of England looked back to an ancient monastic tradition of a community of men scholars training for the priesthood.7 Although officially non-denominational, McGill had been inaugurated in 1829 to serve the Protestant minority in Montreal, and the university had close Anglican associations through its professors and members of the board of governors. Under Dawson’s leadership, McGill had gained a broader base of support within the Anglophone community of Quebec, and had established affiliations with theological colleges of the Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Anglican churches. Dawson held McGill’s chair of natural history and chemistry. He had studied geology at the University of Edinburgh and had served as superintendent of education for Nova Scotia, where he had worked toward the creation of a provincial normal school. After moving to McGill in 1855, one of Dawson’s first projects was the creation of the McGill Normal School, and from 1857 to 1870, he held the position of the school’s director, as well as teacher of natural science.8 The normal school attracted women students, and Dawson would later refer to it as a “college for women,” which, in his opinion, had done much to further the cause of women’s education in Quebec.9 In Montreal, as in other Canadian cities, the main obstacle for reformers was the lack of rigorous training at the secondary level that could adequately prepare girls for university matriculation. In 1861, Hannah Willard Lyman, the headmistress of Coté House, a prominent girls’ school in Montreal, asked Dawson if some of her teachers and students could attend his classes at McGill. Lyman had attended Ipswich Female Seminary in Massachusetts, and been taught by Mary Lyon, who would later found Mount Holyoke. After moving to Montreal, Lyman established her own seminary for girls. As her obituary stated, “In the city of Montreal, surrounded by her nearest relatives, she commenced a select class for young ladies which

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speedily grew into a seminary of a very superior order.”10 Dawson agreed, and for the next session permitted girls from Coté House, accompanied by Lyman, to sit in a separate part of the hall and hear his lectures on natural science. While the young women were not formally enrolled at McGill, Lyman and her students believed that they benefited greatly from this opportunity, and the experiment formed an important precedent at the university. In 1865, Lyman left Montreal to take the position of first lady principal of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. After her death in 1871, a group of her former students at Coté House established a fund in her memory for the promotion of women’s higher education. McGill accepted the fund in memory of Hannah Willard Lyman; the interest was used for prizes awarded by the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association, but its founders planned to use it to endow a women’s college at McGill in the future.11 In 1871, alumnae from Coté House, in collaboration with Dawson and his wife, Margaret Mercer Dawson, established the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association and began meeting regularly at the home of Anne Molson on Sherbrooke Street, near the McGill campus. The members had strategic plans similar to those of the Toronto Ladies’ Educational Association: in the short term, to create a lecture series to prepare women for further study at the university level, and, in the long term, to work toward the establishment of a women’s college in affiliation with the university.12 Dawson gave the introductory lecture in the first session, stressing the importance of liberal culture in ennobling women, elevating their mental faculties, and better fitting them for their influential roles as mothers and wives. “Woman has surely the right to be happy as well as to be useful,” he urged, “and should have fully opened to her that exalted pleasure which arises from the development of the mind, from the exploration of new regions of thought, and from an enlarged acquaintance with the works and ways of God.”13 From 1871 to 1885, the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association offered courses to women in literature, ancient history, philosophy, chemistry, physiology, and natural science, taught mainly by professors from McGill, as well as faculty from the Anglican Bishop’s

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College in Lennoxville.14 The arrangements were formalized, students followed a syllabus, and then were entitled to take an optional examination and receive a certificate, issued by the association, at the end of the course. During the second session, Goldwin Smith, fresh from Cornell, offered a course on English history which attracted large numbers of students, although only twenty-five women of the original forty-two had the nerve to come up for his examination. In a letter to the association, Smith indicated that he had ranked the candidates according to their degrees of merit, following the practice at Oxford, and stated, “My questions were quite up to the University standard, and the answers as a whole, seem to me very creditable to the candidates.”15 The association lobbied to improve girls’ access to secondary schooling, and to the university’s matriculation examination. In 1875, the Protestant board of education opened the Montreal High School for Girls, staffed by graduates of the McGill Normal School, and in 1877, the association was successful in having women admitted to the provincial examinations administered jointly by McGill and Bishop’s. The curriculum of the girls’ high school omitted Greek, however, which meant that its students still were unable to meet McGill’s matriculation requirements for men. In 1884, Rosalie McLea became the first woman successfully to pass the Greek examination by studying independently with the aid of a tutor.16 The Montreal Ladies’ Education Association had strong allies in J. Clark Murray, the professor of moral philosophy at McGill, and his wife, Margaret Polson Murray. In 1872, the Murrays had moved from Kingston, where they had supported the admission of women into Queen’s, and after their arrival the issue of coeducation at McGill would become divisive.17 At one of his first public appearances, Murray repeated his Kingston lecture, “The Higher Education of Woman,” in which he emphatically stated women’s right to a university education. Throughout the decade, Murray grew impatient with Dawson’s insistence that the university could do no more until it was possible to create a separate college for women. In 1882, Murray presented a motion at a meeting of the McGill corporation demanding that the faculty of arts “be thrown open to all persons, without distinction of sex.”18 The corporation appointed a committee, which included both

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Murray and Dawson, to look into the admission of women, but aware of the controversy then underway at the University of Toronto, the members continued to postpone a decision.19 After visiting universities in Britain, Dawson laid out his own views on the importance of maintaining separate but equal standards of university education for women. In 1884, Dawson presented a report to the McGill corporation, subsequently published in Canada Educational Monthly, in which he endorsed the work of Emily Davies at Girton, arguing that women should strive for the same standard of education required by men’s universities, including the study of Greek and Latin grammar. This was important, he pointed out, because the majority of women who attended university went into the teaching profession, and would in turn be responsible for improving girls’ secondary schooling. Of the various institutions he toured in Britain, Dawson was most impressed by the colleges in place at Cambridge and Oxford. He noted that the women’s colleges fitted easily into the existing system, where it was usual for men students to pursue most of their studies in their own colleges under tutors, and attend only a limited number of public lectures given by university professors. This model, Dawson concluded, offered women distinct advantages not available in coeducational institutions: the seclusion of residential colleges, the supervision and tutorial help of women tutors, separate classes in their own buildings, and the opportunity to attend public lectures and prepare for university examinations. Although he acknowledged that neither Cambridge nor Oxford granted women degrees, he stressed that their program of study and examinations were recognized as equivalent to the work done by undergraduates.20 Dawson was convinced that a women’s college would be successful at McGill, and he sympathized fully with Wilson’s fear that the competitive environment of coeducational classes would present both a moral and physical danger to young women.21 In the summer of 1884, hopeful applicants in Montreal decided to adopt a strategy similar to that in Toronto, and force the university to make a decision. A group of young women from the Montreal High School for Girls, who had passed the university’s matriculation examination, petitioned the principal for admission to classes. Like

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Daniel Wilson, Dawson’s response was to reiterate his ideal plan of a separate college in the future. He told the women applicants that the university lacked the funds for separate classes, and instead suggested that the Ladies’ Educational Association might establish classes to prepare them for the senior associate in arts examinations. To everyone’s surprise, however, the women’s college at McGill became a reality within months.22 Following a series of unexpected but substantial gifts from the wealthy fur trader Donald A. Smith, later Lord Strathcona, in the fall of 1884 women were admitted into McGill to proceed toward the ba degree in separate classes, a solution Dawson described as “safe and progressive.”23 Daniel Wilson wrote to commend Dawson for his good example in resisting the champions of women’s rights.24 There was no women’s college building yet, but separate classes were organized immediately, first in the Redpath Museum on campus, then after some hasty renovations, in a separate suite of classrooms in the east wing of the arts building. Seven women registered as full-time undergraduates, nicknamed the “Donaldas” after Donald Smith, and part-time students brought the total number of their group up to twenty-eight.25 In spite of Dawson’s admiration for Davies’ standards at Girton, McGill decided to make Greek optional for women, and those applicants who had certificates with passes in Latin, algebra, and geometry were accepted as fully matriculated. Helen Gairdner, the assistant secretary of the Ladies’ Educational Association, was appointed lady superintendent at the university. Even with the endowment, separate education was expensive, and from the beginning, McGill was able to manage only a partial separation of men and women. While professors duplicated their first- and second-year classes for women, in the third and fourth years some classes were mixed, and all the honours students attended the same classes. As at other universities, the first women at McGill were attracted to science; in 1890, for example, Carrie Derick took first-class honours in classics, zoology, and botany, found work as a demonstrator, and then taught morphological botany at McGill.26 Coeducation would continue to be a contentious issue at McGill. The women undergraduates were concerned that their special

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arrangements for matriculation and lectures would be considered inferior. At the end of their first year, the women students formed their own literary and debating club, the Delta Sigma Society, which frequently held its meetings at the Murrays’ home. In 1888, at a meeting of the Delta Sigma Society, the students debated coeducation and then voted overwhelmingly against the continuation of separate classes. That year, eight women received ba degrees, becoming the first to graduate from McGill. In the celebratory atmosphere, J. Clark Murray took the opportunity to reopen the question of mixed classes, speaking publicly in favour of coeducation at a university dinner, and again at a Delta Sigma meeting, in which he urged the students to make their voices heard. Murray was a popular professor among the undergraduates, and he gained significant support in the university community. His remarks on these occasions precipitated a bitter and personal confrontation with Dawson, followed eagerly by the press, which dragged on until the principal’s retirement in 1893.27 J.W. Bengough poked fun at Dawson in Grip Magazine, as he had at Daniel Wilson, pointing out that great labour and expense could be saved at McGill if only the principal could bring himself to believe women students could behave as well as little girls in public schools. Grip imagined a grumpy professor confronting his students: “‘Young ladies,’ said the venerable McGill professor, ‘I am about to chew over to you the lectures I’ve already delivered to the gentlemen. It’s a perfect absurdity, this wasting of vital energy in repeating lectures, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.’ … The young ladies adjusted their spectacles and tried to look innocent.”28 With the example of coeducation at Toronto before them, women at McGill feared that a separate college would lead to lower standards. One Donalda student wrote to The Week in 1889 to protest McGill channelling further endowment money into the creation of a separate college. She warned that the women undergraduates wanted a university education, and nothing short of it, and would not be satisfied if their separate classes developed into a high-class ladies’ school.29 In the end, the question of coeducation was settled by the terms of Lord Strathcona’s endowment, which stipulated that women’s education at McGill had to remain separate, and the university

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corporation was obligated to conform to his wishes. In 1899, after a further large donation from Strathcona, by then chancellor of the university, Royal Victoria College was opened in an imposing building on Sherbrooke, set apart from the heart of the campus. Hilda D. Oakeley, a former student of Somerville at Oxford, was chosen as warden, and five other women were appointed as faculty to teach firstand second-year courses. Royal Victoria College served as a residence and a centre for social and athletic activities, and women enrolled in arts at McGill took their first two years of classes separately in the building. All women undergraduates at McGill belonged to Royal Victoria College, whether or not they actually lived in the residence. The warden in practice functioned as a dean of women, being responsible for academic guidance and some teaching, as well as supervising the behaviour of students outside of class. Royal Victoria College continued to offer separate classes, though mostly at the first-year level, until 1946; at that time, the college became a women’s residence only.30 Like the coeducational universities, McGill attracted women who wished to use their education to prepare for the work force. The McGill Normal School, once described by Dawson as a college for women, maintained a close association with the university, and many graduates were teachers. Beginning in 1884, women who held normal school diplomas were admitted into arts classes at McGill, and by 1891, undergraduates could qualify for the normal school diploma by taking evening courses in pedagogy taught at the university. In 1907, McGill renamed the normal school the School for Teachers, and moved it to Macdonald College, a new institution dedicated to vocational training in agriculture, household science, and teaching, funded by the tobacco merchant William Macdonald. Located a distance from the McGill campus on the west end of Montreal Island, Macdonald College became a second residential college for women at McGill. Macdonald was committed to promoting the study of household science at the post-secondary level, and in 1903, he had given an endowment to create the Macdonald Institute of Domestic Science in Guelph, Ontario. At McGill, Macdonald College initially offered only short diploma courses in household science, but in 1919,

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the university introduced a four-year bachelor of household science. Women formed the majority of the students in the programs of teaching and household science, lived separately in the women’s residence, and were educated apart from the men enrolled in the agriculture program.31 In Ontario, Trinity University in Toronto made a similar attempt to establish a women’s college, again modelled on Girton. Propelled by John Strachan, the Anglican bishop of Toronto, Trinity had been founded in response to the secularization of the University of Toronto in 1850. Under Strachan’s influence, Trinity had developed with high-church principles as a residential college with a near monastic emphasis on discipline, and students had been required to take religious tests affirming their membership in the Church of England. Although Trinity would eventually federate with Toronto in 1904, in the 1880s it was still an independent university with a new provost, C.W.E. Body, eager to reform the curriculum, expand the teaching staff, and recruit students more widely by removing the religious tests.32 Body was in favour of women’s higher education, and also aware of the financial benefits of their admission. He had support among the lay members of the college council, and among the board members of Bishop Strachan School, an Anglican girls’ academy in the city. In 1883, following a request from the academy to provide university courses for its students, Trinity council appointed a committee to explore the issue. The committee recommended that girls be allowed to write the university’s examinations, including matriculation, and that a special course of study for women be established in arts and music, leading to certificates. Yet this decision was not particularly helpful to graduates of Bishop Strachan School; once they matriculated, women were not permitted to attend lectures at Trinity, nor were they eligible for degrees. The newly formed Women’s Medical College of Toronto, however, was affiliated with Trinity, and in 1884, the university agreed to grant degrees to the women graduates in medicine. In the wake of the storm at the University of Toronto, Trinity council revisited the question, and in 1885 approved a motion admitting women to degrees in any faculty, but still not

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allowing them attendance at lectures. In 1886, without attending classes, Helen Gregory and Emma Stanton Mellish received Bachelor of Music degrees, becoming Trinity’s first women graduates. Gregory still wished to pursue an arts degree; once again, she applied for admission, and receiving special permission from the provost, began to attend lectures at Trinity in the fall of 1886. Gregory completed her arts course taking lectures along with the men, and received her ba in 1889, earning the distinction of becoming Trinity’s first woman graduate in arts as well as music.33 This introduction of coeducation at Trinity was considered a makeshift measure, and was strongly opposed by council members and faculty – one professor had resigned briefly in protest – and Body, himself a Cambridge graduate, shared Dawson’s preference for the separate model. In response, in 1888 Trinity rejected coeducation and established a women’s college, St Hilda’s College. As he explained at a fundraising meeting in 1889, Body believed that the movement for women’s education needed to be guided in the right direction, along lines similar to those he had experienced at Cambridge, where the women’s colleges demonstrated the “benefits of common collegiate life and systematic work.”34 Trinity University Review agreed with the provost, warning that in other Ontario universities unrestricted coeducation had been adopted without the advantages of a collegiate home. “Under these circumstances,” the editorial concluded, “it seems clearly the duty of a Church University to endeavour to find room within its system for all that is good and legitimate in the movement; whilst throwing around women trained under its care, such influence and safeguards as experience shews best calculated to obviate whatever is unnatural or harmful.”35 As at McGill, professors at Trinity gave duplicate lectures to the women in their own building, initially a renovated house, and upper-year honour courses were taken in the college along with the men. With the exception of the principal, Ellen Patteson, who taught French and German, St Hilda’s did not have its own teaching faculty.36 Trinity was a small university, and the burden of maintaining a women’s college strained its fragile resources. Enrolment at St Hilda’s was low, in spite of its recruitment among graduates of

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Bishop Strachan School, and it had to compete for women students with University College, Toronto. Unlike McGill, Trinity lacked a rich endowment to shore up separate education, and the obligation of repeating their lectures in the afternoon became a growing burden for Trinity’s faculty members. In 1894, Trinity’s council decided it could no longer afford it, and women in arts started taking all their classes with the men in the Trinity college building. In 1904, Trinity entered into federation with the University of Toronto, and Trinity women began to attend coeducational classes offered by the university, as well as those given by their own college.37 St Hilda’s became solely a women’s residence. During the years before the First World War, St Hilda’s residents established a flexible form of self-government in collaboration with the principal, Mabel Cartwright, and students in their third and fourth years were responsible for managing the Literary and Athletic Society and the college’s newspaper, St Hilda’s Chronicle. While the ideal of a separate women’s college had been abandoned, St Hilda’s continued to function as a centre for women’s societies, clubs, and athletic activities on campus.38 Bishop’s College in Lennoxville, Quebec, another small Anglican university, shared Trinity’s distaste for coeducation, but also suffered from the financial restraints that made it impractical to establish a college for women. During the 1870s, Bishop’s had supported the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association, and had joined with McGill in opening its associate of arts examinations to women. As at McGill, administrators, professors, and students at Bishop’s favoured the creation of a women’s college on the Cambridge model. In spite of repeated public hints from the chancellor, no benefactor materialized to fund such a project, and classes in arts remained closed to women throughout the nineteenth century. In 1890, Bishop’s admitted women into its affiliated school of medicine, Bishop’s Medical College in Montreal, although it was unable to secure the long-term cooperation of McGill in providing clinical teaching facilities for women students. In 1891, Octavia Grace Ritchie, who had received her ba from McGill in 1888, earned the md and became the first woman to graduate from Bishop’s.39 Bishop’s entered the twentieth century with one of the lowest enrolments in the country – only thirty-three

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undergraduates in arts in 190140 – and in 1903, the university relented and finally admitted women into coeducational classes in arts. In spite of some continued opposition among faculty members, men students cheered the first four women to appear at lectures. In 1905, Anna Bryant, a teacher at the Lennoxville Academy, became the first woman to graduate with a ba degree from Bishop’s.41 The Cambridge system proved difficult to adapt to Canadian conditions; enrolments were lower, residential tutors and separate classes were expensive to maintain, and professors at McGill and Trinity resented having to duplicate their lectures. Perhaps most importantly, women students themselves sought out other options, and increasingly their choices were shaped by their need for employment. The coeducational universities held out the promise that women graduates would be accorded the same professional status as men, and attracted those students who hoped to gain an equal university education. The growing number of ladies’ colleges offered a wide range of programs designed to give women specific skills for the workplace.

Ladies’ Colleges and Practical Education Historians have emphasized the importance of ladies’ colleges in providing valuable career opportunities for women teachers, as well as space for girls and women to pursue excellence in music and fine art and to participate in the intellectual and cultural movements of their day. 42 Yet the legacy of these schools is complex. In spite of their academic orientation, the Protestant ladies’ colleges, Marjorie R. Theobald argues, ultimately reinforced the assumption that women were artifacts rather than agents of culture, and institutionalized the myth of a natural affinity between the humanities and a woman’s mind. 43 Johanna M. Selles has observed that ladies’ colleges were caught between the progressive and the conservative, offering a practical and an ornamental curriculum for young women whose parents sought a Christian alternative to public schooling. 44 The ladies’ colleges attempted to meet the concerns of families who believed that women’s education should remain separate and distinct, strengthen their religious faith, and prepare them to marry.

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“The Creator has indicated beyond doubt, that women and men are intended for different spheres in life,” the Methodist Christian Guardian insisted in 1884. “To woman is assigned the duties of home and motherhood; to man the burden and battle of daily manual or professional toil … They should each, therefore, be educated with special reference to the spheres for which nature designed them, and which the habits of civilized life everywhere assign them.”45 These colleges were careful to reassure middle-class parents that their daughters would emerge as refined and cultured young ladies, fully qualified to marry well. As one ladies’ college teacher commented, “a University graduate may be brilliant in her scholarship, yet very defective in her womanhood and rude and repulsive in her manners.”46 For many Canadian families, however, it was unrealistic to expect that daughters would always become wives, and Protestant ladies’ colleges needed to provide education that would prepare young women to support themselves. In 1886, Benjamin Fish Austin, the principal of the Methodist Alma Ladies’ College, called for the establishment of a fully endowed college for women. Suggesting that Victoria, Queen’s, and Toronto’s University College would attract only a few adventurous spirits, Austin argued that in terms of both curriculum and undergraduate culture, men’s universities were completely unsuitable for young women. Female students, Austin warned, were “risking health, and it may be life, in a race with men for honors better designed for professionals than for the sphere of life in which woman is to move and shine.”47 Austin was seemingly familiar with the concerns of Edward Clarke about coeducation, but his support of separate colleges did not assume that women would remain only within the domestic sphere. In his opening address to students at Alma in 1888, quoted above, Austin stressed the need for a woman’s education above all to be practical, to equip her to face life’s battles alone, if necessary, and emancipate her from unsuitable dependence upon others. Austin’s view of Christian womanhood was one that exalted self-reliance and usefulness as the highest of feminine virtues. 48 The shift toward practical education in the ladies’ colleges reflected a more general development in the curricula of public schools by the

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A home economics class where students learn to make clothing at the Manitoba Agricultural College, University of Manitoba, in 1914. At the university level, the household science curriculum spilled over academic boundaries and encompassed courses in the liberal arts, biological sciences, and physical sciences, as well as vocational training in the acquisition of specific skills such as cooking, cleaning, and ironing.

end of the century. Canadian educators, journalists, and politicians expressed growing concern that schooling was not keeping up with North America’s changing industrial economy, and began to press for the inclusion of more vocational training. Starting in the elementary schools, provincial education ministries introduced basic courses organized along gender lines: manual training in wood- and metal-work for boys, and for girls, domestic science classes focusing on cooking and sewing. Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan subsequently added advanced technical and commercial courses to their high school curricula, and, following the appointment in 1910 of a federal royal commission on industrial training and technical education, these efforts were encouraged by the Canadian government.49 As in the elementary schools, vocational training at the secondary level was determined largely by gender; boys were expected to take technical courses, such as engineering,

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architectural drawing, electricity, and surveying, while girls studied domestic science and commercial courses such as bookkeeping, stenography, and typing. The domestic science movement started as an attempt to improve family life and make girls more capable in the home, but it quickly gained adherents for its potential as a source of paid employment for women, teaching in public schools, or working in the new fields of dietetics, nutritional science, and public health.50 Driven to enhance their market value, in many communities, ladies’ colleges took the lead in teaching practical courses intended to prepare young women, if necessary, to support themselves. Even “ornamental” accomplishments – drawing, painting, singing, and piano playing – in reality provided women with valuable training in fine art and music, and offered graduates a respectable opportunity for paid employment teaching those subjects. Although somewhat unorthodox in his spiritual views, Austin was not alone in his apparently contradictory view that women’s education should be both suited to their separate sphere and oriented toward future employment. In 1892, Canada Education Monthly made a similar plea, arguing that instead of copying men’s universities, ladies’ colleges should adapt themselves to provide the best course of studies for women.51 Faced with competition from public secondary schools on one side, and coeducational universities on the other, ladies’ colleges needed to define their own distinct niche in the educational possibilities opening up to women. Alexandra, the women’s division of Albert College in Belleville, for example, in 1900 offered a matriculation course; a business course including bookkeeping, shorthand, and typewriting; preparation for all teachers’ examinations in connection with the provincial education department; and the first year of arts at the University of Toronto, with which it was affiliated. Similarly, the Ontario Ladies’ College in Whitby, another Methodist institution, by 1921 offered elementary and secondary schooling, preparation for Toronto’s matriculation and provincial education examinations, as well as music and household science.52 At Mount Allison, Acadia, and Dalhousie, affiliated ladies’ colleges took on a multifaceted role, serving as preparatory schools for girls working toward matriculation, offering specialized programs like

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household science in affiliation with the coeducational university, and functioning as residences for women undergraduates. Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy represented an essential part of the board’s larger commitment to the education of women, an obligation that took on new life after the introduction of coeducation at the adjacent university in 1872. Founded originally in 1854, the academy was renamed Mount Allison Ladies’ College in 1886. While the college continued to accept girls of elementary and high school age, it assumed various functions for older students, as well as for women enrolled at the university. Following discussions about the extent to which the college should offer cultural options for wealthier families, administrators at Mount Allison decided instead to plan a more practical new curriculum. By 1900, the ladies’ college still had its graduating course for the mla diploma, and in addition, it offered a university preparatory course, a business course including shorthand and typewriting, and special diploma programs in fine art and music through its affiliated schools, Owen’s Art Institution and Conservatory of Music.53 The growing emphasis on vocational training was strengthened by the introduction of household science. In 1891, W.W. Andrews, professor of science at Mount Allison and later president of Regina College in Saskatchewan, published a series of articles discussing Mount Allison’s future. Andrews was married to Nellie Greenwood, the first woman to graduate from Victoria, who had gone on to teach mathematics and astronomy at Mount Allison Ladies’ College. In his series on the university, Andrews called for practical education and recommended the creation of professional programs, including engineering and domestic chemistry, along with a cooking school.54 In 1904, Mount Allison established two new schools, one for women and one for men: the Massey-Treble School of Household Science, funded by Lillian Massey Treble and hosted by the ladies’ college, and the School of Engineering, housed at the university. Lillian Massey Treble, a devout Methodist and daughter of the wealthy manufacturer Hart Massey, poured much of her considerable inheritance into social reform and charitable work, including the Deaconess Home and Training School and the Fred Victor Mission in Toronto. Treble’s

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Like other Protestant ladies’ colleges, Mount Allison Ladies’ College adopted an increasingly vocational orientation. Classes in drawing, painting, and piano playing – often described as “ornamental” accomplishments – in reality provided women with an opportunity to pursue excellence and acquire skills they needed to find employment teaching fine art and music.

interest in household science grew out of her experience teaching sewing, gardening, and cooking to girls at the mission, and she would provide large donations to establish household science programs at the universities of Manitoba, Mount Allison, and Toronto. Initially, the Massey-Treble School at Mount Allison offered a two-year diploma course for public school teachers, then in 1924 it expanded its programs to include a four-year bsc in household science, conferred by the university but still housed within the ladies’ college.55 Women undergraduates at Mount Allison had the option of living in residence at the ladies’ college, which, along with the new

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Massey-Treble School, served as a home for women’s activities on campus. University women who boarded there were expected to abide by the strict regulations that were in place for the schoolgirls, an indignity that rankled the undergraduates. Sarah Shenton Gronlund, of the class of 1888, remembered that she and the other university students were given permission as a special favour to walk alone outside and not in procession with the younger girls.56 As their numbers increased before the First World War, women began to challenge the restrictions in place at the ladies’ college and to demand exemption as undergraduates. “Surely,” one writer complained to The Argosy in 1906, “any young woman who is fitted to enter upon university studies should not be hedged about by school-girl rules.”57 In 1912, undergraduate women were successful in winning self-government and were moved to an annex of the building, but most still found the rules too restrictive, and in 1920, Allison Hall was opened to serve as a separate university women’s residence. The household science and secretarial science programs attracted parents and boosted enrolments at the ladies’ college during the 1920s. In 1937, the university took control of the departments of fine and applied arts, household science, and music, and, until it closed finally in 1946, Mount Allison Ladies’ College was converted into a school for girls.58 Acadia Ladies’ Seminary performed a similarly diverse role within the coeducational university. In 1879, the female department of Horton Academy was renamed the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary and reopened in a large new building on campus, where it began to function as a girls’ high school and a junior college, as well as the residence for women undergraduates at the university. Following their matriculation, women students could choose to take their first year of university studies at the seminary. The seminary gave women space on campus, yet university students living there were isolated from other undergraduates, particularly when their own numbers were small. Looking back on her university years in the late 1880s, Adella G. Jackson described how she had been the only woman in her class, and for two years the only one in the university, and had virtually no contact with other undergraduates outside the

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classroom. Jackson boarded at the seminary, but as a mature student who had previously been a teacher, she was given the same privileges as the seminary teachers who lived in residence.59 Katie Hall Marsters, of the class of 1891, remembered that university women were encouraged to live at the seminary instead of boarding in private homes, even though the noise of pianos and students singing made it difficult for them to study. She wrote, “The Faculty preferred that they should board at the seminary and to a certain extent come under the rules of that Institution which were made for young girls needing careful supervision.”60 As at Mount Allison, administrators at Acadia were concerned to provide practical programs, and in 1901, the seminary introduced a course in household science. By the 1920s, the seminary’s vocational orientation had been strengthened by the addition of secretarial science, as well as studio courses to qualify women to teach music and art. For boys, Horton began to provide manual training in woodwork and ironwork, and the interest sparked by this program among men undergraduates resulted in the creation of the university’s course in applied science, and, subsequently, the formation of the department of engineering. During the early 1900s, university women still were expected to live in residence at the seminary, and like their counterparts in Sackville, they became impatient with the strict regulations, lobbying the board for separate residential, social, and athletic space better suited to undergraduates.61 Enrolment in Acadia Ladies’ Seminary declined, and in 1926, the board decided to amalgamate it with Horton and transfer its diploma courses in art, music, and household economics to the university. The old seminary building continued to function as a centre for women students, however, serving as another university residence and housing the new degree programs in household economics and secretarial science.62 Halifax Ladies’ College was founded in 1887 by Robert Laing, the minister of St Matthew’s Presbyterian in Halifax. In 1892, Margaret S. Kerr became the school’s new principal, and that year Halifax Ladies’ College became an affiliated college of Dalhousie. Kerr had studied mathematics at Girton, Cambridge, and under her leadership, the ladies’ college developed a wider role in relation to the university.

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The collegiate department provided a three- or four-year course of study in modern languages, mathematics, science, and Latin, with an optional course in Greek. Under the affiliation agreement, young women who completed the collegiate course could be admitted directly either to first or second year in arts and science at the university. Margaret Newcombe Trueman, Dalhousie’s first woman graduate, taught history, literature, and Latin at the ladies’ college, and would become its principal in 1911. The ladies’ college had a studio for fine art and drawing, and its students could take classes at Halifax Conservatory of Music, which was under the same board of management until 1952.63 Halifax Ladies’ College was located close to Dalhousie, and a hall in the residence – nicknamed “the third-and-ahalf” – was set aside for university students to board there. Like the undergraduates in residence at Mount Allison and Acadia, Dalhousie women found the constant noise of piano practice irritating when they were trying to study, and resented being subject to the niggling rules of a girls’ school.64 “If I were a Ladies’ College girl they would be within their rights,” Lucy Maud Montgomery complained during her own stay in 1895, “but as I am of Dalhousie and merely a boarder here, I rather resent their ‘bossing.’”65 After the turn of the century, Halifax Ladies’ College broadened the choices available to students, and in 1902 established a School of Domestic Science, directed by Jean Cameron, who modelled the program on that of the Macdonald Institute in Guelph. The classes proved to be popular, and by 1906, the school’s graduates were recognized by the province as being qualified to teach household science in Nova Scotia public schools. In the hope of raising the enrolment of women at the university, in 1926 Dalhousie established a diploma in household science, a four-year course in which students took two years of classes at the ladies’ college, as well as two years of classes in arts and science at the university, including English, chemistry, and biology. Before it was discontinued during the Second World War, the course had become a four-year bachelor’s degree program, offered jointly by Dalhousie and Halifax Ladies’ College, allowing students the option of studying concurrently and graduating with a degree in arts or science and the diploma

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The home economics food lab at the Manitoba Agricultural College, University of Manitoba, 1914. As programs increasingly incorporated new research in food chemistry and nutritional sciences, women students recognized the potential of household science as a source of employment, either in teaching or in new careers as nutritionists, dieticians, institutional housekeepers, and public health workers.

in household science. Halifax Ladies’ College maintained a music program through its sister institution, Halifax Conservatory of Music; in 1898 the conservatory was affiliated with Dalhousie and began offering a three-year bachelor of music degree.66 In Windsor, Nova Scotia, a less successful affiliation agreement existed between Edgehill Church School for Girls and the University of King’s College. Modeled on Oxford, the Anglican King’s College dated its charter back to 1802, and admitted men to degrees in arts, law, and divinity. In 1879, King’s opened its associate in arts examinations to young women in affiliation with St Margaret’s Hall in Halifax, but as at Bishop’s, women were not permitted to matriculate into the university. After over a decade of delay, in the early 1890s King’s

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responded to the requests of alumni and local citizens by making two interconnected decisions: in 1891, to establish Edgehill, a preparatory high school for girls, in collaboration with the Church of England; and in 1893, to admit women into coeducational classes in arts at the university. Edgehill offered a special course of advanced work for students who wished to prepare for matriculation.67 King’s enrolment in arts was very small – in 1891, it had no more than fifteen students68 – and in spite of efforts by the board to encourage women by allowing them to board at Edgehill, only two matriculated into the university before 1900. King’s first woman graduate, Frances M. Woodworth, who had been the only woman in any of her classes, received her ba degree in 1897. The numbers of both men and women remained low into the twentieth century, and in 1923, following the destruction of the college building by fire, King’s affiliated with Dalhousie and moved to Halifax.69 In Ontario, Moulton Ladies’ College opened in 1888 as an affiliate of the new Baptist institution, McMaster University, founded in 1887. At this first stage of its history, before relocating to Hamilton in 1930, McMaster was located on Bloor Street in Toronto, on the northern edge of the University of Toronto campus. Since 1860, Baptists had provided secondary schooling for boys and girls at the Canadian Literary Institute, later Woodstock College, in Woodstock. William McMaster, a Baptist financier, had bequeathed a large endowment to the new university, and his widow, Susan Moulton McMaster, had offered a building and funds on the condition that the Woodstock ladies’ department was transferred to Moulton and moved to Toronto. During the early planning stages, leading Baptists promoted the idea that the new university would be coeducational. Theodore Harding Rand, principal of Woodstock after 1886 and a former superintendent of education for both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, proposed to transform Woodstock into a coeducational university, affiliated with preparatory schools for both boys and girls. While the McMasters’ plan prevailed, Rand was appointed a professor at McMaster, and subsequently served as chancellor, and his voice was influential among board members. The university was coeducational from its outset, but just in case,

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Susan McMaster had specified in her endowment that its courses would be open to Moulton graduates.70 Susan McMaster, like Hannah Willard Lyman, had been educated in Massachusetts at Ipswich Female Seminary and influenced by Mary Lyon. Moulton Ladies’ College occupied a mansion on Bloor Street that had been McMaster’s home, west of McMaster Hall, and Susan McMaster was personally involved in establishing its curriculum and supervising its operation.71 Moulton accepted students from age twelve to twenty-one, offering liberal arts classes like English literature and modern languages at the high-school level, as well as such cultural subjects as elocution, sewing, music, drawing, and painting. Senior students at the ladies’ college had the option of taking the matriculation course, which included Greek and Latin, and after 1891, those preparing for matriculation in their fourth year at the ladies’ college took the first-year classes at McMaster.72 At the turn of the century, Moulton gradually shifted toward the inclusion of practical subjects, and by 1903, the college had added a three-year diploma course in household science, with training in hygiene, sewing, household accounts, and the care and diet of children. As was common at other institutions, the ladies’ college also served as a women’s residence for graduates who matriculated into the university.73 Moulton Ladies’ College provided McMaster with a steady number of matriculated students; in 1892, for example, three of the five members of its graduating class planned to continue their studies at the university.74 Protestant ladies’ colleges like Mount Allison, Acadia, Halifax, and Moulton emerged as a form of women’s education that could complement the offerings of the coeducational universities with which they were affiliated. Hellmuth Ladies’ College in London, however, made a bid to affiliate itself with the University of Toronto and adopt the potentially lucrative role of becoming Ontario’s provincial college for women. Founded in 1869 by the Anglican bishop, Isaac Hellmuth, the ladies’ college initially accepted students as young as seven, and emphasized literary studies, as well as practical and cultural subjects such as music, drawing, painting, needlework, and domestic economy. In 1881, Western University was established as a regional institution to prepare young men for

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the ministry, law, and medicine. Western’s largely Anglican board members resisted admitting women to the new university, and instead granted affiliation to Hellmuth Ladies’ College, which began to offer a collegiate department for older girls, and include Greek and Latin as elective subjects.75 In 1883, the board of Hellmuth Ladies’ College announced its intention to rename the school Norwood Ladies’ College, and seek affiliation with the University of Toronto as the “Provincial College for Women.” The newly designed Norwood Ladies’ College still planned to offer elementary and secondary education for younger girls, but also would include the addition of a “Faculty of Liberal Arts, or University Department.” Students entering this department who intended to take a ba degree would be designated undergraduates, and would be required to matriculate and pursue a four-year course of study in a choice of subjects, including modern and ancient languages, mathematics, the natural sciences, philosophy, history, and geography.76 The proposal of the Hellmuth board was unsuccessful. While the Mowat government had discussed the possibility of a provincial college for women during the months of controversy over coeducation at University College, the minister of education, George W. Ross, had recommended privately that such a college be non-denominational, located in Toronto, and modeled on Girton, Smith, or Vassar rather than the “ordinary ‘Ladies College’ or ‘Boarding School.’”77 Western University struggled with low enrolments and lack of money, as well as the temporary withdrawal of Huron, the Anglican theological college, and in 1885 was forced to shut down its faculty of arts. When Western reopened ten years later, it was as a coeducational institution.78 Having lost its university affiliation, Hellmuth Ladies’ College returned to its original name and function, specializing in literature, music, and fine art, and developing its vocational offerings, until its own closure shortly after the turn of the century.79

Catholic Women’s Colleges In Canada, the separate model was adopted most successfully by Catholic women’s colleges, which responded to meet the changing needs of middle-class families without disturbing the practices of Catholic universities, men’s institutions designed for priests and lay

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leaders. By establishing women’s colleges affiliated with universities, orders of women religious were able to create unique spaces where sister-professors could teach and research. Elizabeth Smyth has argued that the vocations of women religious gave them unusual academic opportunities, but required them to carefully negotiate the patriarchies of both the universities and the Roman Catholic Church. These Catholic leaders led complex dual professional lives, both as professed women religious and as members of the emerging professions. Orders of women religious were fundamental to the success of women’s higher education at a time when resources remained scarce at other institutions, and their colleges became communities of learning that gave women a degree of autonomy rare within academia.80 The movement of women into higher education at first presented a challenge to the congregations of men who ran the Catholic universities and were unwilling to accept coeducation. Orders of women religious ensured that women had access to Catholic institutions for men, and they also were pragmatic in negotiating affiliation agreements with coeducational universities like Dalhousie and Western. While men often played a dominant role as founders and in governance of women’s colleges, such as the Seven Sisters, Roman Catholic colleges were communities led by and for women, and all shared a commitment to rigorous academic standards that would prepare their students for public life.81 In the early 1890s, the sisters of the Montreal-based Congregation of Notre Dame in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, sought to affiliate their convent academy, Mount St Bernard, with St Francis Xavier. The order had established such academies across Canada, and some had started providing a liberal arts course at the collegiate level for their senior students, as well as offering vocational courses, including stenography, typewriting, and bookkeeping. The sisters had founded Mount St Bernard in 1883, and the academy had taught both an elementary and a collegiate course, with specialties in music, painting, and elocution.82 The academy early on had started using the resources at the nearby university, St Francis Xavier, and professors had come over to the convent to teach some of the senior classes, often bringing men students with them. St Francis Xavier had participated

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in the failed plan to create the University of Halifax from 1876 to 1881, and Catholic administrators were aware of the survival strategies adopted by other small Maritime colleges. In the years before the turn of the century, St Francis Xavier had been undergoing a period of modernization, expanding the college building, hiring professors, and adding new programs such as practical science. Administrators at St Francis Xavier recognized the interest in higher education among Catholic women, particularly teachers, and the extension of university privileges to students at Mount St Bernard was in keeping with the larger effort to secure the university’s future.83 In 1894, St Francis Xavier agreed to matriculate senior students at Mount St Bernard into arts. Several women in the academy’s new college department were admitted as undergraduates and received lectures from university professors. In the beginning, the model of separate education was strictly enforced; women students at Mount St Bernard took all their classes in their own building and had no contact with men undergraduates in any of their extra-curricular activities. In 1897, St Francis Xavier became the first Catholic university in Canada to grant degrees to women when it conferred the ba on Mary Elizabeth Bissett, Florence MacDonald, Lillian MacDonald, and Margaret F. MacDougall. Maintaining the custom of holding separate closing exercises for the convent, the four Mount St Bernard women received their university degrees at a separate convocation.84 Men undergraduates at St Francis Xavier were sympathetic to the aspirations of young Catholic women for higher education. Like Trinity University Review, Excelsior praised its university for having satisfied the modern demand for women’s higher education within a safe educational environment. The editorial stated, “Thus there is the reality of a thorough arts course in both institutions under good professors without the disadvantages of co-education.”85 With limited resources, though, the strict separation of women at St Francis Xavier gradually eroded. Women began to take some of their classes with the men as early as 1900, and by 1930, the university provided most of the teaching in arts while the sisters at Mount St Bernard offered electives and programs designed specifically for women, such as household science and secretarial science.86

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The Sisters of St Joseph, and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loretto Sisters), also worked steadily to increase opportunities for Catholic women’s higher education. These orders of women religious provided secondary schooling for girls at their boarding and day schools throughout Ontario, and members also taught in the province’s separate schools. The Loretto Sisters and the Sisters of St Joseph established convent-academies within their Toronto motherhouses, and by the end of the century, had adjusted their curriculum to prepare their students for university matriculation and provincial teacher certification. Gertrude Lawler, for example, entered University College, Toronto, in 1886, and was the first graduate of St Joseph’s convent school to matriculate, but had been required to write the university entrance examinations at the Toronto Collegiate Institute. 87 In response to their growing interest in higher education – and spurred on by competition – the two communities both sought direct affiliation as distinct Catholic women’s colleges in the University of Toronto federation. In response, the university president, Robert Falconer, proposed that Loretto and St Joseph’s affiliate instead with the men’s Catholic college, St Michael’s, which in 1910 had gained affiliation as an arts college in addition to its status as a federated theological college of the University of Toronto. In 1911, St Michael’s reached an agreement with St Joseph’s and Loretto that all their women students in arts would be enrolled at St Michael’s, sisters teaching at the women’s colleges would be added to the St Michael’s staff, and women would receive degrees conferred by the university through St Michael’s.88 Administrators, faculty, and students at St Michael’s, however, were not in favour of admitting women into their new arts classes. Father Henry Carr, a professor and superior of St Michael’s, in later years tried to explain how upsetting it had been to witness the arrival of women students. In 1910, when St Michael’s first began teaching arts classes, Carr had been truly horrified when five women from University College, hearing that St Michael’s was offering a course in Greek philosophy, had suddenly appeared in his classroom. He recalled, “I cannot think of an illustration that would give you an idea of what a shock it was. St Michael’s had been founded as a seminary

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really, for the education of priests. That spirit had been preserved. Never before had there been girls in a St Michael’s classroom.”89 During the early years, undergraduates at Loretto and St Joseph’s remained apart from men students, taking English, Latin, German, and French from the sister-professors, while priests from St Michael’s came over to teach separate classes in religion and philosophy. As at Mount St Bernard, women undergraduates at St Michael’s gradually began to integrate into coeducational classes. In 1953, St Michael’s adopted full coeducation, motivated primarily by concern over the waste of academic resources, and Loretto and St Joseph’s started to acquire a purely residential role.90 At the Oblate College of Ottawa, men students watched the developments at other universities with some alarm. In 1892, an editorial in the undergraduate paper, The Owl, explained the students’ general opposition to the practice of coeducation, and in particular to the admission of women into Catholic universities: “In the first place women by nature require a different training from that bestowed upon men … Their duties in life differ in toto from those of men, and no system of education can be devised which will serve as a preparation to both one and the other class.”91 Catholic women in Ottawa were drawn to higher education, and during the early 1900s the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, and the Grey Nuns of the Cross, now known as the Sisters of Charity at Ottawa, applied to affiliate their convent academies, Notre Dame and Bruyère, with the university. In 1919, the university senate approved degree programs in arts for Notre Dame and Bruyère, and in 1922, Ottawa conferred its first ba degrees on their students, all four of whom were women religious. Unlike St Michael’s, Ottawa maintained entirely separate space for women undergraduates at the two colleges, which initially attempted to offer their arts classes in both French and English. Women had been able to qualify for public school teaching in English at the Ottawa Normal School since 1875, and in 1923, l’École de pédagogie de l’Université d’Ottawa opened to provide teacher training in French. In 1956, to reduce costs, the university decided to designate Bruyère as a francophone women’s college and register all English-language women students in Notre Dame.92 By this

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time, however, Ottawa already had plans to become a secular statesupported university, and, as part of the larger transition, in 1958 the university announced that women students would be integrated into coeducational classes.93 In the London diocese, the Catholic bishop, Michael Fallon, initiated a proposal to provide higher education for both men and women, albeit in separate institutions. In 1919, Western reached affiliation agreements with two Catholic colleges: for men, the Basilian Assumption College, and for women, Ursuline College, renamed Brescia College in 1963. Ursuline College housed a residence, and maintained its own teaching staff, many of whom were Ursuline sisters. The college offered separate courses for women in such subjects as philosophy, history, and religious knowledge, and, after 1936, home economics. According to the affiliation agreement with Western, all matriculated and special students at Ursuline College also were entitled to attend coeducational lectures in arts at the university, and they received their degrees from Western.94 Brescia College still maintains its original identity as a Catholic women’s college. All its classes are available to both men and women attending Western, but the college continues to admit only women, with the exception of the preliminary year program, which was opened to men in 1972.95 Most Catholic women’s colleges were coordinate institutions, similar to Royal Victoria College at McGill, operating as annexes to the men’s universities with which they were affiliated. At the University of Manitoba, for example, education for Catholic women was provided by St Mary’s College, the collegiate branch of St Mary’s Academy, originally founded by the Grey Nuns in 1869, and operated since 1874 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. In 1936, St Mary’s College became the women’s division of St Paul’s College, the English-language Catholic institution for men at the University of Manitoba. This arrangement lasted until 1957 when St Paul’s became coeducational. St Boniface, the francophone Catholic college at Manitoba, remained a men’s institution until 1959 when it too began to admit women.96 Mount St Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by contrast, was the only independent women’s university in Canada with its

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own degree granting powers, receiving a charter in 1925. It started as an academy for young women, established in 1873 when the Sisters of Charity of Halifax relocated their motherhouse, convent school, and novitiate for teacher training to a larger site outside the city. The sisters renamed their school Mount St Vincent Academy and Boarding School and began to offer a more advanced academic curriculum in keeping with the new public high schools, as well as music, fine art, and deportment. Like the academies of Mount St Bernard’s, Loretto, and St Joseph’s, Mount St Vincent began to include more practical training, offering commercial and domestic science courses. In addition, the novitiate prepared girls to take the provincial teachers’ examinations, and in 1895, its courses were certified by the government as equivalent to those of the provincial normal school in Truro. The sisters were aware that university degrees were becoming attractive to young women seeking higher teachers’ licences, and students at Mount St Bernard already could study for degrees at St Francis Xavier.97 By the early 1900s, the Sisters of Charity of Halifax hoped to provide Catholic women with an alternative to both St Francis Xavier and Dalhousie, and were ambitious to transform Mount St Vincent into an independent college for women, on the model of colleges recently opened by the Sisters of Charity in the United States. In 1914, Mount St Vincent entered into affiliation with Dalhousie as a junior college; students were able to qualify for a Dalhousie degree but could take their first two years of courses only at the Mount. The sisters continued to pursue the goal of independence, however, and in 1925 were successful in having Mount St Vincent chartered as a separate women’s college with the power to confer degrees in arts, science, and music.98 Until 1942, the college also maintained the agreement with Dalhousie that students could receive credit in classes of the first and second years for work done at Mount St Vincent.99 During the following decades, Mount St Vincent focused on programs that prepared women for employment, including teaching, secretarial science, home economics, nursing, and social work. In 1969, encouraged by the province to seek amalgamation and still wishing to preserve its unique character, Mount St Vincent

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established a new association with Dalhousie, and began to admit undergraduate men into coeducational classes.100

 Although Royal Victoria College and St Hilda’s were born of the turmoil surrounding coeducation at Toronto, they enriched the culture and provision of women’s higher education. The Cambridge model ensured a high academic standard, a residential collegiate experience, and the opportunity for women faculty members to mentor and teach women undergraduates. At McGill and Trinity, the women’s colleges created space and resources for women at a time when coeducational universities granted them only meagre accommodation, and the traditions associated with these years continued long after their buildings became solely residential. Ethel Hurlbatt, the second warden of Royal Victoria College and history tutor at McGill from 1907 to 1929, drew attention to this fact at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire in 1912. Not only did women faculty enrich general college life, she explained, but also the endowment ensured that a certain proportion would be appointed to the university staff to teach classes of both men and women. Hurlbatt concluded, “There can be no serious difference of opinion as to the advantage of the presence of women with men upon the staff of a University which admits men and women as students.”101 At McGill and Trinity, administrators encountered challenges trying to deliver separate but equal education, not the least of which was the enormous expense involved in either hiring women faculty or expecting men professors to duplicate their lectures. The separate model was more sustainable at Catholic universities – St Francis Xavier, Ottawa, and St Michael’s at the University of Toronto – where women religious provided leadership as deans, professors, and administrators, taught the majority of the courses, and in turn received resources as they themselves pursued higher degrees. McGill and Trinity also had to contend with the widespread perception that their women’s colleges might be confused with ladies’ colleges and would not maintain the same academic standards

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expected of men’s universities. The traditional association of ladies’ colleges with an accomplishments curriculum, as well as the very public debates over coeducation, worked against the reputation of women’s colleges and encouraged potential students to associate access to men’s classes with a guarantee of intellectual rigour; in the words of one Donalda student, “a University Education, and nothing short of it.”102 The Ontario minister of education, George W. Ross, had recognized this when he warned the premier that a provincial college for women would have to be modeled on Girton, Smith, or Vassar, and not involve an ordinary ladies’ college or boarding school such as Hellmuth. Protestant ladies’ colleges provided adaptable alternatives to university coeducation and were at the forefront in offering women specific training for the workplace, especially useful to those who sought a career other than public school teaching. Their administrators were proud of the fact that the curriculum was academic, cultural, and vocational, arguing that this eclectic mix best fitted young women for whatever the future might hold. “In the ladies’ colleges alone,” Alexander Burns claimed in the Christian Guardian, “any young lady can obtain an education as extensive and as practical as even the most cultured society need desire.”103 While some of these institutions maintained their primary focus on secondary schooling, others, such as Mount Allison and Acadia, began to function as junior colleges, teaching the first year or two of a liberal arts degree, as well as professional degree programs designed specifically for women. Some colleges negotiated specific affiliations for one program, such as the household science diploma offered jointly by Halifax Ladies’ College and Dalhousie, and to this extent, they resemble modern articulation agreements between community colleges and universities. The ladies’ colleges took on numerous functions for the universities with which they were affiliated, preparing students for matriculation, serving as university residences, and housing special programs like household science and secretarial science. The existence of women’s colleges at coeducational universities could become a source of tension among women students. Writing in Sesame in 1899, for example, Helen S. Grant MacDonald argued

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forcefully that university women were undergraduates, not girls at ladies’ colleges, and they needed to claim that status equally with men. “University undergraduates form a distinct class with special privileges and responsibilities, hence some name should be theirs which would distinguish them from students of other conditions.”104 University women self-consciously tried to distance themselves from ladies’ college students, particularly when they shared space in residence, and senior students would impress the importance of this new status on first-year women joining the ranks of undergraduates.105 For women, the right to equal education included the right to participate in literary societies, vote for student governance, and serve on the staff of university newspapers, to assume in fact as well as name all the privileges and responsibilities of undergraduates.

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Rights and Responsibilities of College Life But how far does this co-education extend? Does it reach not only the studies but also the other duties and interests of our college? If not, why should it not extend thus far, and why should it not embrace all the responsibilities of college life? “One of the ‘Third,’” University of New Brunswick Monthly, 1893

P

rofessors at Canadian universities fully expected to have their speeches interrupted by noisy demonstrations from the student gallery. Violent rows, initiation scraps, scrimmages and hustles between men of different faculties or years, the destruction of property, late night celebrations with bonfires, singing, and blasting tin horns – all these manifestations of college spirit were familiar sights and sounds on campus and were an accepted part of undergraduate culture. The admission of women into men’s universities served to heighten rather than restrain this conduct, and the 1890s was marked by a rise in disruptive events. Administrators generally condoned what many students, faculty, and alumni regarded as important college traditions. Historians have explored the significance of this behaviour, which extended into student government and initiation ceremonies, and was reflected in undergraduate newspapers and yearbooks.1 In her study of German

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universities, Patricia Mazón argues that institutional inequality was rooted in the belief that academic citizenship was by its very nature a masculine construct; drinking, duelling, and sexual permissiveness were the external signifiers of the men students’ transformative passage into an exclusive and elite community.2 The undergraduate’s identity, with its odd mixture of dignified ritual and childish misbehaviour, was an assertion of his masculinity. An Acadia alumna of 1891 remembered that entering college was entering a man’s world. “The young men had their college customs, societies, sports and pranks and did not like the idea of having women enter into these or of having to change them on account of women being in the same institution.”3 In 1893, a letter to the editor of New Brunswick’s University Monthly expressed this view, specifically ridiculing the idea that women undergraduates could be members of the Literary and Debating Society. “Imagine readers, if you can, a young lady student ascending the rostrum to expound her views on the subject of debate to the assembled students of the opposite sex. Carry the illustration farther,” he suggested. “Imagine her taking part in the varied festivities of smoke-out night or Hallowe’en or scrambling for apples in the lower hall.”4 This letter conveyed an assumption that was central to the construction of student identity in Victorian Canada: full participation in college life belonged to men undergraduates alone. The right to talk about politics, manage student affairs, or complain about the faculty, like the freedom to indulge in Halloween pranks, was considered integral to a man’s undergraduate experience. For most university men, no aspect of college life was more important than the meetings of the literary society. The formation of professional identity was not yet tied to a specific occupation, but rather to the general training in debate and oration that prepared them, as gentlemen, for the public sphere. W.J. Loudon wrote of the literary society at University College, Toronto, “Many men, afterwards prominent, some eminent, in the affairs of their country, in Law, Medicine, Education and Theology, were trained in the old reading room, which furnished a connecting link between the cloistered walls of a medieval College and the world that common

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people knew.”5 The decade of the 1890s saw a resurgence of interest in debating at Canadian universities, and literary societies began to feature debates more prominently in their programs, adopting either the parliamentary style, which required impromptu reasoning without preparation, or the team approach, in which prepared arguments were rehearsed before the debate.6 Women undergraduates at most universities were excluded from participating in the men’s literary society, or were discouraged from attending unless the meetings were open to the public. Women formed their own literary societies, not as a result of their marginalization but because they recognized the importance of oratory and organizational skills in professional life. To prepare for a team debate, students were required to search different libraries for material, compose and rehearse a speech, and then present it in front of the entire literary society. Conducting the meetings introduced women to what Wendy Mitchinson has termed the power of organization.7 “Spouted my debate at great rate before the looking glass,” Kathleen Cowan wrote in her diary, on her debut at the Victoria Women’s Literary Society. “The debate went off very well although I started out with a fearful frog. Muriel was awfully good. Nora Lewis gave the announcement and both she and Elizabeth heaped all their scathing remarks on me.”8 During a decade of change in which the image of the New Woman captured popular imagination, women at coeducational universities confronted the belief that undergraduate identity was inherently masculine. Separate literary societies created spaces where women could perform the roles of undergraduates, learn how to speak and run a meeting, and by doing so, acquire the experience they needed to work in the public sphere.

Guests or Undergraduates? In the newly coeducational universities, their small numbers made women conspicuous, and the men’s behaviour, even when polite, marked them out as different. Women occupied the front of the lecture halls, and the men left these seats free for them. The custom developed that women students entered as a group after the men had been seated, but they could also adopt the strategy of arriving early

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The front row of the lecture hall was reserved for women students, who generally entered the room in a group after the men had found their seats, often to riotous accompaniment. This photo of Chancellor O.C.S. Wallace lecturing to students at McMaster University was probably taken in December 1903 by C.J. Cameron, who visited McMaster Hall with his camera, McMaster University Monthly noted, to take pictures of “the more aristocratic rooms.”

to avoid the fuss that accompanied their parade into the lecture hall. Elizabeth Smith noted of her botany classes at Queen’s, “we always get dreadful cheers if we go in after the boys & make it a point to be early.”9 Some professors were kind, some disapproving but tolerant, while others, like Andrew J. Bell at Victoria, and Stephen Leacock at McGill, became memorable for their hostility to teaching women. The entrance of women students into class at Victoria and University College, Toronto, as well as at Queen’s, commonly would be greeted

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by the men stamping their feet, whistling, or loudly singing such songs as “Oh My Darling Clementine,” “Annie Rooney,” or “Hop Along Sister Mary.”10 Looking back on his time at Dalhousie in the 1890s, one alumni commented, “The position of the lady students has undoubtedly improved vastly since the days when a rare old Professor assigned them seats in the ‘territory of ignorance.’”11 The first few women to appear in university classes did so as exceptional cases, and the men seem to have regarded them as novel guests rather than fellow students. The close community ties of Mount Allison, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie encouraged an acceptance of coeducation, yet women were placed in the position of visitors, borrowing but not sharing space and resources with their classmates. By the early 1880s, the controversies at Toronto and Queen’s made coeducation a subject of hot debate in the exchange columns of student newspapers, and some became more critical of their universities’ decisions. “We have had a little experience in partial co-education down here,” The Argosy at Mount Allison joked in 1883, “and be it said to the honor of the ladies, that they scarcely ever move a muscle during the whole period.”12 A more serious critique of what the editor now termed “the promiscuous training of the sexes” appeared in The Argosy the following year. Coeducation was as yet only on trial, an editorial claimed, “but the trial has been sufficiently long, in some quarters at least, to prove that the fears of many concerning its successful operation have not been entirely unfounded.”13 The Acadia Athenaeum in 1884 warned that the graduation of Clara Belle Marshall should not be a cause for congratulation: “We are yet to be convinced that co-education is the best thing for the college in particular, education in general, society at large, or the ladies themselves.”14 At Mount Allison, the men undergraduates were friendly to the women in their classes, and most were already part of the circle of friends and family connecting the ladies’ academy and the university. At the end of her second year in 1880, Harriet Starr Stewart was voted an honorary member of the men’s literary and debating society, the Eurhetorian. The Argosy commented, “Of this we are truly proud, and trust others may soon be added.”15 Stewart appreciated

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the goodwill of her classmates in making her their first woman member, but did not take the invitation very seriously. “This gave me the privilege to attend their meetings,” she remembered, “though I don’t really think they expected to see me at them. I only went to a couple all the time I was at the University.”16 Following Stewart’s nomination, all undergraduate women became honorary members of the Eurhetorian, and notices of their admission were sent to the freshman class at the beginning of term. Most women only attended the public meetings, and did not have any representation on the staff of The Argosy, the student newspaper operated by the society.17 Women undergraduates experienced this same sense of difference over the issue of academic dress. Shortly before their graduation, the two women in the senior class, Harriet Stewart and Bessie Narroway, decided to purchase academic gowns, and the professors were “thunderstruck” when they appeared in classes at the end of term wearing their new gowns. The faculty then held a special meeting and decided not to allow the women undergraduates to wear gowns to the upcoming baccalaureate sermon, and to place them apart from the men during the procession and the sermon. Although Stewart was permitted to wear her gown at the graduation ceremony – likely because her father, the professor of theology, objected to this public humiliation – the point had been clearly made that women occupied a special status. Stewart later stated, “It must have been rather amusing to see the two of us tagging along, after the men, and sitting off by ourselves in the church, as though we had straggled in by mistake and really didn’t belong.”18 As their enrolment increased, reaching about twelve by the end of the decade, women at Mount Allison began to engage in more activities with men, such as skating on the pond in front of the ladies’ college. Sarah Shenton Gronlund, who graduated in 1888, recalled, “The boys, tennis, receptions, and rink held a large place in College life, then as now, as well as the more serious subject of study.”19 Dissatisfied with their limited participation in the Eurhetorian Society, in the winter of 1893, women formed the Alpha Beta Society with the goal of gaining knowledge of public affairs and developing skills in debate and governance.20 Alpha Beta functioned as a

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The Women’s Debating Team at Mount Allison, 1917. The Alpha Beta Society at Mount Allison was founded in 1893 for the purpose of developing skills in debate and governance. In 1915, The Argosy summed up this potential for its members: “Her training in Alpha Beta, in class and association work, in the social and religious life of the institution, gives her poise and power.”

literary and debating society; its constitution stated, “Its object is the cultivation of eloquence and sound literature and an acquaintance with the rules of procedure and debate in deliberative assemblies.”21 The society began the practice of nominating one woman to serve as an honorary editor of The Argosy, and “Ladies’ College Notes,” with news about university women, became a regular department. Mary M. Hale, of the class of 1900, was known for her public speaking; according to The Argosy, Hale took the Alpha Beta Society by storm on debate days and became the first woman to speak in the Eurhetorian.22 These changes resulted in a new tone in the pages of the women’s section. “It is no longer ‘The Girl of the Period,’ but the period of the girl,” the editor of Ladies’ College Notes proclaimed in 1894. “Politically, intellectually, socially, the position of woman

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today is a commanding one … She is trained to be a human being first, a responsible member of the nation; then a woman.”23 Men at Victoria initially were proud that their university had been among the first to admit women, and student journalists in Acta Victoriana presented themselves as progressive in comparison to their habitual rivals at the University of Toronto.24 One contributor in 1885 effusively predicted great benefits for the men as well as the women. “A proud day will it be for our land when the young ladies flock to our Universities as earnest Students, for then shall we all be able to look forward to mightier advancement in every sphere of life; a fortunate circumstance will it be for the undergraduates who will lose their proverbial boorishness by working side by side with those who are ‘of finer clay.’”25 Yet this rhetoric was not matched by any tangible invitations to the women to join undergraduate societies or contribute to the student newspaper. The arts and theology men operated two literary and debating societies, the Jackson and the Literary, and these organizations together were responsible for appointing the staff of Acta Victoriana. Administrators had not set aside any space for women in the college building, and Nellie Greenwood had sat alone in a professor’s office when not in class. In her memoirs, Greenwood commented on the importance of numbers in generating a sense of belonging, and as more came to join her, she felt that women had secured a permanent place in the life of the university. Even alone, Greenwood had never doubted her right to be considered an undergraduate. “I know now that I was never in a position to fully savour the spirit of Victoria. I belonged to no undergraduate societies. I knew nothing of college sports. It never occurred to me to present myself at a class meeting. I never even looked through a window at a Bob party but nevertheless Victoria is my college.”26 This sense of belonging, however tenuous, prompted Victoria women to be more assertive about their right to space. They disliked having to wait between classes with the men in Alumni Hall, and as their numbers rose, they recognized their need for a separate room that they could claim for their own meetings and events. In the fall of 1887, the women students sent a petition to the senate asking

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that a room be set aside for their use. The petition was granted, and with the help of Margaret Burwash, the wife of the new chancellor, Nathanael Burwash, a room in the college building was redecorated and designated the ladies’ waiting room. The men reacted angrily. The year before, the faculty had ignored the petition of a group of students for a room in which to hold the meetings of a new society, and the men resented what they saw as inconsistent dealings on the part of senate.27 “Of course it is necessary that our lady friends should have a department where they can gossip or make taffy, when not occupied with the arduous duties of college life,” Acta Victoriana commented sarcastically.28 This outburst was linked to a larger conflict among the men over restricted membership in the Science Association of Victoria University, previously known as the V.P. Society, which in spite of its exclusive nature, had been assigned by senate several rooms for meetings and a library. That winter, Acta Victoriana ran a number of editorials criticizing the actions of Burwash and the faculty. The president demanded an apology, and to save the editors from suspension, the Jackson and Literary societies agreed in future to refer all complaints directly to the authorities.29 Women had not been included in the membership of either society, and as the comments about taffy making revealed, Acta Victoriana reflected an undercurrent of resentment toward them among men students. In “The Lady Students’ Meeting,” for example, the newspaper presented a satirical account of a meeting held by the women undergraduates to discuss the preparation of refreshments for the annual freshmen initiation, the Bob. A college tradition dating from 1874, the Bob was both an initiation event and a party, involving loud music, skits, food, and a present of cash to the janitor, Robert Beare, after whom it was named. In 1881, women students had presented a pyramid cake to the Bob, and since then it had become the custom for the women to provide each freshman with a cookie.30 “The Lady Students’ Meeting” ridiculed the women’s adoption of parliamentary procedure, imagining the chief agenda item to be the method of baking cookies for the freshmen, and the principal motion whether or not to add a raisin to each cookie. “We have assembled to-day,” the chair stated, “not to discuss politics, though

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we are quite capable of doing that, but to discuss the latest and most scientific methods of combining baking soda, flour and eggs, in such quantivalence as to form a digestible compound.”31 Although women students frequently did make candy – alumnae recollected that the ladies’ room in the Cobourg days in fact contained a dish specifically for that purpose32 – they also wanted to increase their participation in undergraduate activities. In 1889, women formed two associations of their own, the Ladies’ Literary Society, founded in conjunction with the professors’ wives, and the Young Ladies’ Missionary Society, which, in 1891, merged with the men’s Missionary Society. In 1895, they created their own college-based chapter of the Young Women’s Christian Association. The Ladies’ Literary Society became the centre of women’s activities and student government, and in 1893, the students decided to change its name to the Women’s Literary Society.33 During this early period, at Victoria and elsewhere, undergraduate women often joined faculty wives, women members of staff, and alumnae to create a larger intellectual community. In 1892, Victoria moved from Cobourg to Toronto, and settled into a new campus near University College, following its federation with the University of Toronto in 1890. The enrolment of women improved steadily, rising from eighteen women and 112 men in 1892–1893, to thirty-four women and 129 men in 1899–1900.34 In 1894, the Jackson and Literary societies were combined to form the men’s Union Literary Society, known as the Lit, which in addition to serving as a debating society and publishing the newspaper, also managed most other business of student governance. Acta Victoriana announced that two members of the Women’s Literary Society from that time on would serve on the board and one on editorial staff, stating “The increasing proportion of ladies in attendance and their efficient organization into a literary society forbade their influence and help being longer disregarded in the selection of the Board.”35 During its early years in Cobourg, the Women’s Literary Society had focused on literary readings and musical performances, but following the relocation to Toronto, the meetings began to include discussions of public affairs, mock parliaments, and regular debates. Students at Victoria could now join the much larger community of women undergraduates in

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the city, and by the end of the decade were holding joint debates with the Women’s Literary Society of University College.36 The society also asserted a growing sense of independence in self-government. In 1895, members resolved not to take any further part in the annual Bob, since the previous year men had performed sketches making fun of some first-year women.37 Acta Victoriana thought it was unfair for the first-year women to escape initiation, and that a good dose of the medicine would do the young ladies no harm. “However,” the editor conceded, “as this is the unanimous request of our fair sisters, we must gallantly bow to the inevitable.”38 At Acadia, women similarly decided to form their own literary society to provide opportunities for members to learn debating skills. While women at Acadia had some chance to socialize with men at the skating pond or the tennis court, or at more formal recitals and receptions held in the college building, they tended to be isolated from undergraduate life, especially if they boarded at Acadia Ladies’ Seminary. The president, Artemus Sawyer, had worried that the first women would be subject to unpleasant attention from the men students. He did not approve of women attending class meetings or joining the Athenaeum Society, and insisted that they be chaperoned at banquets and receptions. By the end of the first decade of coeducation, the number of women at Acadia had only risen to six, including some part-time students.39 Katie Hall, the only woman in the class of 1891, believed that she ought to have the same experience as the men in her year. Without asking permission, Hall began wearing academic dress when on campus after discovering during her first winter that the men had the advantage of being able to wear old clothes under their gowns to keep them warm in the cold classrooms and unheated corridors. In her senior year, Hall began to attend some undergraduate events with men students. When Hall expressed her wish to join the Athenaeum Society so that she could acquire skills in public speaking, Sawyer was alarmed, and suggested to Hall instead that she form a separate society. In 1890, Hall and other women at Acadia accordingly organized the Propylaeum Society. With so few women, however, Hall would have preferred to participate in the Athenaeum and later

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Calling them “Juniors in the Snow,” Bessie Lockhart snapped this photo of her friends, ( from left) Charlotte Layton, Hettie Chute, Esther Clark, and Paige Pinneo during their second year at Acadia in the winter of 1913–14. Decades after Katie Hall Marsters discovered the advantages of academic dress in a cold climate, women undergraduates at Acadia walked confidently to class in cap and gown.

regretted missing what she believed to be a fundamental aspect of her undergraduate training. “I attended several of our class meetings and also general college meetings,” Hall remembered, “but Doctor Sawyer did not altogether approve of it, and when I found it out I did not go any more, and lost the opportunity to learn self confidence and readiness when called upon to speak which I found a handicap in after life.”40 The goal of the Propylaeum Society was to promote literary tastes and friendly relations, and it initially functioned strictly as a literary society. The members presented papers on English, French, and

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American literature, and for their first public meeting hosted Grace Dean MacLeod, a writer from Nova Scotia. Other women shared Hall’s view that they were missing the opportunity to learn public speaking, and by the mid-1890s, the Propylaeum had started to branch out into discussions of current events and debates on political questions, a format that more closely resembled that of the men’s society. 41 This change was reflected more widely in an extension of women’s activities at Acadia. Evelyn K. Farris, who graduated from Acadia in 1898, commented, “many of the earlier tribulations were unknown to the girls of our year. We held offices in the class, attended all class meetings, were co-editors on the Athenaeum and generally were on equal terms with the men.”42 Adella G. Jackson of the class of 1890 had been appointed to the Athenaeum staff in 1888 as an assistant editor, and since that time women had usually been represented on the paper. Women also attended some meetings of the Athenaeum society in addition to those of the Propylaeum. Acadia made gymnastic instruction compulsory for women during their first two years, and a women’s basketball team was created. In 1894, university women and students at the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary jointly formed a branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association. 43 Like the men at Victoria, Dalhousie undergraduates were tolerant of the introduction of coeducation, but regarded the women students as outsiders. Eliza Ritchie, a graduate of 1887, remembered that the professors and students did not consider them to be on the same footing as other students. She wrote, “There was I think no opposition from the men students, who indeed somewhat vociferously applauded the girls when they read or recited in class; they were however not accorded much influence in the general life of the college in those early days.”44 As at Mount Allison, administrators at Dalhousie decided that academic dress was inappropriate for women students. In 1881, Lillie B. Calkin and Margaret Newcombe were unsure if they were expected to wear academic dress, a mandatory requirement for all men undergraduates, and sought the advice of Charles Macdonald, the mathematics professor. Macdonald replied with an emphatic no, that he did not approve of women wearing the gown, and then brought a formal request to the Dalhousie senate, ostensibly

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from the women themselves, requesting that they be excused from the regulations. Senate concurred, and passed a resolution that lady students were to be exempt from regulations as to academic costume. 45 In 1888, women were invited to join the Sodales Debating Society, but did not participate in debates. Student government at Dalhousie was conducted by the General Students’ Meeting, and women were not included on the executive until 1898. Renamed the University Students’ Council in 1900, this organization published the Dalhousie Gazette and managed the reading room, described by Lucy Maud Montgomery as “the domain sacred to masculine scrimmages and gossips.”46 Although Calkin had served on the editorial staff of the Gazette in 1881, the editor had felt it necessary to defend her appointment, and the newspaper did not have women regularly on staff until 1897. 47 The developments of the mid-1890s proved to be significant for women at Dalhousie. Clara W. Seely, a graduate of 1892, remembered, “the social part of our college life was most meager.”48 By contrast, in 1894, women began to serve on the executive committee of the Philomathic Society, a group dedicated to literature, science, and philosophy, and in 1896, the Glee Club was formed for both men and women. 49 Montgomery, who took arts courses as a general student during the 1895 to 1896 session, informed the Halifax Herald that the number of women, twenty-nine, was the largest enrolment yet seen at Dalhousie, particularly in the first-year and senior classes.50 She wrote confidently that Dalhousie women were prominent in the Philomathic, the Philosophical Club, and the Glee Club, served on the staff of the Gazette, and participated in the public missionary meetings of the Young Men’s Christian Association. “A girl is no longer shut out from the temple of knowledge simply because she is a girl; she can compete, and has competed, successfully with her brother in all his classes,” Montgomery stressed. “The girls enter on exactly the same footing as the men and are admitted to an equal share in all the privileges of the institution.”51 In 1897, Dalhousie women founded their own branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and in 1899, established the Delta-Gamma Society to provide a forum for women’s literary programs and debates and to

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serve as women’s student government. The lack of athletic facilities for women had been a steady grievance because all students were required to pay an annual athletic fee, while only the men had access to the gymnasium, and Delta-Gamma arranged to provide a hall, apparatus, and instructor for women. The society also took over the responsibility of appointing two “lady editors” to the Gazette staff every fall.52 In 1900, women accounted for 25 per cent of Dalhousie’s total enrolment in arts and science.53

Sites of Contention At Toronto, New Brunswick, and Queen’s, students and professors had resisted coeducation from the beginning, and existing tensions were exasperated by the strong interest of women in undergraduate activities. As their enrolment grew during the 1890s, the question of women’s membership in the literary societies, in particular, became an increasingly contested issue. The first women to attend classes at University College, Toronto, had been admitted at the last moment by the government’s order in council, and they faced a cold reception from the president, Daniel Wilson, as well as from many professors and undergraduates. Men students already had a reputation for bad behaviour. W.J. Loudon described his first convocation in 1876 being broken up by the noise of the crowd of students scrambling toward the door, and undergraduates routinely disrupted examinations and lectures by throwing paper darts and apple cores, dropping books, stamping feet, singing, and applauding.54 Less than a month after classes began in 1884, the Toronto press pronounced coeducation at University College a failure. In an interview for one of the papers, The Varsity reported, the women reassured the public that the new system was an unqualified success; they had been received with uniform courtesy by everyone, and had no reason to anticipate any trouble in the future.55 But a year later several newspapers, including Educational Weekly and the St Mary Argus, published reports that the men at University College had hooted and jeered at the first women to appear in classes, and that their abuse had caused one to decline to attend any further lectures.56 These reports immediately were discredited by Wilson, who wrote to

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the minister of education, George W. Ross, to protest that he had not seen the slightest discourtesy toward the lady students. To confirm his statement, Wilson enclosed a letter from the lady superintendent, Letitia Salter, who stated that she had spoken with the women, and they all had expressed themselves, again, as having been received with uniform politeness by the men students.57 In the face of public scrutiny, the women chose to downplay their difficulties, but they were acutely aware that they were not welcome. When they first arrived in the college, Wilson sent out orders forbidding them to stand in the halls at the bulletin boards or before the professors’ doors. They were not permitted to use the reading room, a crowded, noisy location where the men often had rows, and therefore initially had no access to the library catalogues. The women themselves decided it would be wise to keep to their tiny common room when not in class, and they drew up and signed their own code of regulations to govern their behaviour.58 “We knew we were being watched closely,” Ella Gardiner remembered, “so strove to give no cause for criticism.”59 The Varsity announced its intention to give coeducation a fair trial, and formally invited contributions from women students. Over the next few years, women joined some of the class societies and student clubs, such as the Modern Language Club, the Natural Science Association, and the Mathematical and Physical Society, yet were barred from the hub of student government, the Literary and Scientific Society, known as the Lit. The Varsity, published by the Lit, did not include women on its staff until 1892, in spite of the polite invitation it had extended to them in 1884.60 The number of women at University College increased quickly, attracted by the close links between the provincial university and the teaching profession. In 1885, new government regulations recognized examinations for teaching certificates as equivalent to the matriculation examination of the University of Toronto, making admission more accessible to teachers wishing to upgrade their qualifications.61 By the late-nineteenth century, the majority of teachers at the secondary school level in Ontario held degrees, and in 1920, university degrees would become mandatory for all newly employed collegiate institute and high school teachers.62 By

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1892, there were 107 women at University College (18.1 per cent of the entire population in arts and science), compared to forty-four women at Queen’s (17.6 per cent of the total population of 250), and fourteen women at Victoria (5.8 per cent of a total student body of 240).63 Following the federation of Victoria in 1890, and of Trinity in 1904, the numbers of women at the University of Toronto doubled over the next two decades: by 1911, there were well over five hundred women attending classes, and their enrolment represented 34.4 per cent of the entire student body in arts and science.64 In 1885, minor improvements were made to the women’s space at University College. Wilson, who never gave up, complained to Ross that he did not approve of the installation of a large mirror in the women’s toilet room.65 Following a devastating fire in February 1890 that destroyed much of the building, extensive renovations to the east wing resulted in women receiving a new common room, retiring room, lavatory, and reading room.66 The opportunity for renovations reopened the question of separate classes for women. At a senate meeting in May, Alfred Baker, a professor of mathematics, gave notice of a motion to deal “with the possibility of providing lecture rooms and accommodation for the lady students, with a view to the more complete separation of the sexes.”67 The motion was not pursued, and no changes were made to the delivery of lectures, but clearly some members of the college continued to regard coeducation as a temporary measure. Women were expected to keep apart; they used a separate door leading to the staircase in the east wing, were forbidden from speaking with men in the building, walked to and from their classes in a group, and entered the lecture rooms after the other students were seated.68 In the pages of The Varsity, the impact of coeducation was debated keenly by both men and women. Men frequently adopted pseudonyms that evoked the authority of classical scholarship, such as Pro Grege, S.P.Q.R., Anthropos, and Old Roman, and by doing so, reminded their readers that the roots of undergraduate identity were exclusively masculine.69 In 1885, an article by Pro Grege (Latin for “on behalf of the crowd”) revived the argument that coeducation in the provincial university was merely the result of

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expediency, that it in no way addressed the needs of women, and by forcing men and women into competition, posed a grave risk to the future of the nation. “Anything which brings woman into competition with man tends to destroy that charm which underlies all the loveliness of the woman’s character,” Pro Grege wrote; “the principle is the same where women compete with men in any sphere of action, in the classroom or in the examination hall, on the platform or at the bar.”70 The Varsity went on to publish several responses to this article, including a thoughtful essay by a poet and regular contributor, Phillips Stewart. Like John Stuart Mill, Stewart cautioned that a woman’s role was defined by custom, but custom was itself changeable over time. “What is womanliness?” Stewart asked. “One says it is unwomanly to vote, or to stand for election to Parliament, but he must not forget that if these political rights are allowed to women this new custom will give increased intention to the term womanliness.”71 The questions raised in this exchange underscore the unsettled nature of gender roles in a newly coeducational university. In the opinion of some, such as Pro Grege, the competitive nature of coeducation would produce coarse, unfeminine women; for others, the admission of women posed a great risk to the masculinity of young men. What if the presence of women in the college building eroded undergraduate masculinity and resulted in weak, effeminate college graduates? The Varsity turned to this theme in 1888 in “The Higher Education Again,” by W.J. Healy, a student in his third year. Healy’s story described a flirtation between two undergraduates at University College, Jack French and Sadie Turner. Miss Turner clearly is more interested in obtaining a husband than a degree, and the object of her attention, Mr French, is a hapless victim, content to carry her notebook and adjust her hairpins instead of joining his fellow undergraduates at football.72 In the January issue, The Varsity published a sarcastic response by Greta, the pseudonym of Madge Robertson, a member of the class of 1889. Robertson mocked Healy’s portrayal of university women as vapid and gazelle-like, and pointed out the weakness of his attempt to criticize coeducation by using “short stories with a purpose.”73

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The image of the New Woman focused attention on the appearance of university women, who could become targets both for their lack of attention to dress and for displaying too much concern with fashion. Madge Robertson retaliated to an attack on fashionable women students in The Varsity with her own satire: “Always carry note-books to match your costume.” This photograph of women undergraduates on the steps of University College appeared in the Toronto World on 27 February 1910.

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At the end of term, the dispute culminated in accusations that women had gained exceptional privileges in the library. In March, The Varsity printed letters from S.P.Q.R. (the Latin initials for “the Roman Senate and People”) and Anthropos (Greek for “man”) complaining that women students were allowed access denied to the men, having tables set aside for them, gaining extra attention from the librarians, and even going into the alcoves and handling the books, a freedom normally prohibited. As several respondents noted, the issue extended beyond the library to the larger question of coeducation, still seemingly on trial, and the letters in reality were an attack on the presence of women in the building.74 “If ladies are to attend our college,” Anthropos demanded, “let them at least comply with the same rules and regulations as other students.”75 A reporter visiting campus at this time described the women undergraduates as a “bright, chirpy lot of girls,” but commented that coeducation at Varsity had not resulted in unity between the sexes, but rather its opposite, competition.76 Early in 1892, The Varsity initiated a more serious campaign against women students. In February, the newspaper printed a letter from Old Roman objecting that the ladies at Varsity no longer knew their proper place; they were flirtatious and overfamiliar, and their chattering presence in the halls demoralized the men. For Old Roman, the connection between coeducation and the emasculation of university men was explicit. “We do not come to Varsity to learn the art of flirtation,” he stated. “We come to be ready to take our place in life as men when we shall leave its hallowed precincts. Perhaps the men who thronged our college of old were less polished and urbane than the jeunesse dorée we turn out to-day; but they certainly were more rugged and better equipped for life’s battles, than the halfeducated foplings who will soon begin to graduate under the present order of things.”77 Old Roman’s letter resulted in a heated debate in the next two issues of The Varsity, provoking, in the words of the editor, “an unprecedented and unanimous outbreak of indignation.” In an editorial, The Varsity apologized for the letter’s exaggerated insinuations, but defended its publication because Old Roman nevertheless expressed

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“opinions held by a no means inconsiderable portion of the student body, who still think that the ladies should have a separate institution.”78 Much of the debate focused on Old Roman’s disparagement of the character of women students, objecting that his own behaviour in writing the letter had been caddish, and that true manhood required chivalry and protection.79 Elizabeth M. Lawson of the class of 1894 joined others in defending the dignity and bearing of the women of the college, and pointed out that they had every right to behave as normal undergraduates on the campus. “Certainly the women greet their friends in the corridors,” she wrote, “certainly they walk in the same direction to and from lectures, but where, pray, is the harm, real or imaginary?”80 The confidence of Madge Robertson and Elizabeth Lawson to respond to these attacks in The Varsity was reflected as well in a new willingness to contest their exclusion from undergraduate activities. In 1888, eighteen women decided to challenge as a group the restriction that prevented them from joining the men’s Literary and Scientific Society. Their names were proposed for membership on a ballot, but the majority of the men in the Lit voted against their election.81 While they were unsuccessful, the group included Charlotte Ross, who would subsequently take on a leadership role in promoting the interests of university women.82 In 1890, Lawson chaired a meeting of University College women to discuss purchasing academic gowns. The previous year, students had formed their own chapter of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and these meetings in the lunchroom formed a broader opportunity to discuss undergraduate affairs. Some hesitated, saying that they should donate money instead to the library, recently destroyed by fire. Lawson’s motion passed, and an excited crowd of women went into the city to order gowns. One Saturday that fall, Bessie Scott attended an evening event in her gown, and then walked home with a young man from the college. “We created rather a sensation as he had his cap and gown and I my gown on.”83 Women undergraduates also began insisting on their right to participate in class societies. As Ross pointed out in The Varsity in 1890, “For here the question is not whether one section of a year shall ‘invite’

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another to join an organization of which every student of the year, irrespective of department or sex, is, in the very nature of the case already a member – a fact which renders an ‘invitation’ somewhat absurd – but whether the organization is to be a class or not.”84 In 1891, students created the University College Women’s Literary Society, largely due to the efforts of Charlotte Ross, by then in her final year. The new society held its first meeting in 1892, with the aim of fostering the social, intellectual, and physical development of its members, and of encouraging literary taste and public speaking. The programs included readings and musical performances, and from the beginning, the members practised their public speaking skills by hosting debates.85 The year before, the women had come into conflict with Daniel Wilson when they had invited Kate Tannatt Woods, an American children’s author and member of the Association for the Advancement of Women, to give an address on campus. Woods, along with Julia Ward Howe, had been in Toronto to attend the association’s eighteenth convention. Wilson, hostile to what he called “a grand convention of strong minded women,” immediately had forbade Woods’ visit to campus, tersely informing the students that no such proceeding could be allowed.86 Scott had noted in her diary, “Expect to have a lecture from Mrs Kate Tannat [sic] Woods of Boston, but Sir Daniel puts a stop to that.” The next day, however, Scott had reported that a few of the women went off campus in the evening to hear Woods and enjoyed the lecture very much.87 A few months later, Wilson had invited the women undergraduates to a reception at his home. He was struck by their self-assurance, especially compared to the men students he had entertained the week before.88 The women themselves had been less pleased with the reception, Scott writing in her diary, “very formal affair, came back at seven starving as we only had a dish of ice-cream and piece of cake.”89 The new self-assurance noted by Wilson was exhibited publicly in 1895, when undergraduate women eagerly joined in a mass boycott of lectures at University College. The student strike grew out of a quarrel between the men’s Literary and Scientific Society, particularly the members of the class of 1895, and the college council concerning the editorial freedom of The Varsity. The men’s residence

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Alexander Isbester’s album of his time at University College bears witness to the concern of officials that there may have been drinking in the men’s residence. Isbester (standing at right with pipe) called this photo “Students at play,” and his album provides a window into men’s social life in the residence shortly before it was closed in 1899.

had become notorious for drinking and gambling, and after scenes of violence during the literary society elections, the government had initiated an inquiry into the behaviour of undergraduates. Among both men and women students, opposition to the council was linked to broader issues of political interference in faculty appointments and the dismissal of the popular classics professor William Dale.90 The strike effectively shut down the college for three days in February 1895. It was called off following a mass meeting of

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undergraduates, in which a committee was established to confer with the college council over the grievances. Before the boycott began, the women held a separate meeting to hear student leaders explain their position; following this meeting, a large number of women signed a petition to the lieutenant governor of Ontario requesting a royal commission to investigate the administration of university matters.91 The next week, women attended a mass meeting of over seven hundred students held away from campus on Spadina Avenue, in which they resolved to boycott lectures until the commission was appointed. The Toronto newspapers recorded that women students turned out in large numbers – at least one hundred the Evening Star noted – and were seated separately at the front of the room, as was customary in lecture halls.92 Three women were appointed to the committee created by the students to discuss grievances with the council, and J.S. Hillock, a woman student in the class of 1895, moved an amendment that the women themselves would select their representatives in a separate meeting.93 The strike was an embarrassment to government and university officials, and some worried that the active participation of women students would result in renewed controversy over coeducation. “The class of young ladies seeking entrance differs very much from what we used to have ten years ago,” S.H. Blake, a member of the senate, warned the premier, Oliver Mowat. “Unless something be done in the way of preserving order, discipline, and propriety … there may be scandals arising from co-education.”94 At the height of the agitation, when men students had lined the corridors jeering and jostling those who entered the building, many women also had been coming to the college, not to attend lectures but to show their support for the boycott. The president, James Loudon, had sent a warning to the women, through Letitia Salter, to stay away from the building, and to discourage them from attending any further mass meetings off campus.95 A rumour circulated among the Toronto newspapers, denied by Loudon, that the women even had received notices threatening them with expulsion. “Though it is possible that matters have not been carried thus far,” the Mail and Empire commented, “there is no doubt that considerable influence has been brought to bear upon the young ladies to induce

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them to refrain from attending the students’ meeting this afternoon, on the ground that it would be unwomanly. The argument does not seem to affect them very much, however, as they are in many instances more extreme in their partisanship even than the young men.”96 In response to the concerns expressed by Blake, George W. Ross recommended to Loudon that new rules for women students be implemented, restricting them from attending evening meetings and lodging at boarding houses where men undergraduates lived. After deliberating over the summer, the University College council passed regulations bringing women under closer supervision both on and off campus, limiting their choice of boarding houses, and stipulating that they were to observe the directions of the lady superintendent regarding their conduct.97 The suggestion of the Mail and Empire that the behaviour of the students was unwomanly followed a decade in which ideas defining masculinity and femininity had been debated within the university community, influenced by more widespread discussion of the New Woman in the North American press. Women at University College were aware of their new strength on campus, and formed a closely collaborative group. The Women’s Literary Society adopted the role of a student government, campaigning for the improvement of library service and gymnasium facilities, raising funds for the creation of a residence, and petitioning for representation on the staff of The Varsity. In spite of the addition of “The College Girl” feature in The Varsity near the end of the decade, women believed they should have a more satisfying outlet for their literary interests, and students joined with alumnae to publish an annual journal, Sesame, which included poetry, fiction, and political writing. In 1898, women graduates formed the University College Alumnae Association, and Charlotte Ross was elected its first president.98 One undergraduate in Sesame commented somewhat smugly on the success of the Women’s Literary Society in comparison to that of the men: “Fortunately our side of the house has not yet reached the stage of being bored by itself.”99 At the University of New Brunswick, the introduction of coeducation ushered in a similarly contentious period in undergraduate life. By 1891, there were twenty-three women and forty men, including

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part-time students, enrolled in arts.100 In some years, the number of women was nearly equal to that of men. In the first-year class of 1892, for example, eight of the seventeen students were women and they dominated the top ranks of the matriculation results; the University Monthly worried about the decline of men’s enrolment, and their poor showing in the entrance examinations.101 The following year, when the enrolment of women entering first year dropped, the Monthly commented, “It will be seen that [the Freshman class] is not such a sufferer from co-education as the other classes now in college.”102 As authorities had hoped, coeducation was profitable, and the university was required to spend very little to accommodate the change. The women students were given two small, shabby rooms on the second floor of the arts building, and no money was forthcoming to provide books or furniture. “We do not believe in co-education,” the Monthly commented in 1889, “but since we have been afflicted with the evil, we believe that the rooms granted to the young ladies should bear an appearance more in keeping with the fair occupants.”103 This frugality in respect to carpets and chairs extended to staff, as unlike Toronto, the university did not hire a superintendent to chaperone the women students. Yet the president, Thomas Harrison, did not trust the men to behave themselves. Worried by his new responsibility, Harrison posted regulations in the ladies’ reading room, rebuked young women for talking with men in the hall, and even attempted to introduce a system of fines for flirting. By the early 1890s, women interacted socially with students on campus, as well as with young men from the town, and it was customary for men to compete with each other to escort them home from class receptions and evening events.104 “We were expected to take our places on the same footing as men students,” Eliza Hunter of the class of 1892 remembered. Coeducation, she stated, “seemed to be taken as a matter of course at unb.”105 The Literary and Debating Society, however, was restricted to men, and women were invited to attend only the public lectures sponsored by the society. The Monthly was published by the society, from which women were excluded, but all students were required to subscribe to the newspaper. Women’s absence on the editorial board of the Monthly became a growing source of conflict. Since 1891, the Monthly

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had appointed an associate editor to represent the women students, but she was the only woman on the editorial staff and was relegated to the role of correspondent without assigned duties. In October 1893, a letter to the Monthly from “One of the ‘Third’” pointed out the discrepancy of two-thirds of the students taking to themselves all the duties, and choosing six of the seven editors of the newspaper. Women had been admitted to the university on the same terms as men, and both sexes had worked together to pursue knowledge without lowering the standard of scholarship. “But how far does this co-education extend?” the letter asked. “Does it reach not only the studies but also the other duties and interests of our college? If not, why should it not extend thus far, and why should it not embrace all the responsibilities of college life?”106 In response, a letter from “One of the ‘Two-Thirds’” in the next issue countered simply, “the line must be drawn somewhere.” That line, he insisted, was membership in the Literary and Debating Society, and without membership, women had no claim to representation on the staff of the Monthly. If the argument was carried to its logical conclusion, he continued, then they would soon have a young lady ascending the rostrum to expound her views on the subject of debate, and this would be as ludicrous as if they joined in the rough festivities of “smoke-out night” or Halloween.107 This exchange of letters in the Monthly hit on precisely the point the women undergraduates wanted to make: they did, in fact, wish to carry this argument to its logical conclusion; they did wish to become members of the Literary and Debating Society, learn to debate, and claim equal representation on the editorial staff. Annie Ross, who matriculated in 1892, described the decision of the women students to establish their rights, and by doing so, prove to their classmates they were “better men” than they were. “The Junior women were openly militant toward their men and delighted to assert themselves,” she recalled in her memoirs. “Our class was more tolerant among ourselves, but not above vamping the occasional wandering fancy, although sticking strictly to the tenet of the Junior women that we were better men than they and would soon show them so.”108 The animosity reached a crisis in January 1894, when a dispute arose over planning the conversazione, an annual social event hosted

(4 . 6 )

The “rough festivities” of men students included often-violent contests between men of different faculties or years, such as this initiation scrap at Victoria College, Toronto, circa 1910. Administrators generally condoned the distinctive traditions of men’s undergraduate culture at each university, and the admission of women served to heighten rather than restrain disorderly conduct.

by the literary society. Mabel Sterling, in her second year, remembered that the women wanted public recognition for sharing the work of preparation and asked that a woman’s name be included on the invitation cards sent out to guests. The men said no, and “feeling ran high for a time.”109 The women students refused to participate without this acknowledgment, and, to their surprise, they were supported by Harrison, who gave an ultimatum to the society that he would not allow the conversazione to proceed if the men did not back down. The men students held a meeting and resolved that they would not allow a lady’s name on the cards. Harrison retaliated by cancelling the conversazione. To make their point perfectly clear, the men then passed another motion deliberately prohibiting women

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from joining the Literary and Debating Society – something that had previously been assumed and not specified in the constitution – and the word “male” was inserted to qualify the clause “all students” in the section regarding the membership.110 Women students continued to protest their lack of representation throughout the rest of the session. During the previous November, the Monthly had offered to increase the number of women on the editorial staff to two, but women were concerned about the hostile material being published, and a number of them cancelled their subscriptions. In February, the two women editors resigned, stating that they had no control over the content of the paper and felt “that their office was merely a name.”111 The Monthly’s response, that the appointments were purely honorary and only members of the society had influence, again cut to the heart of the women’s disagreement.112 Anger bubbled over in the “De Omnibus Rebus” section of the Monthly, which included several pages of jokes about assertive women, including one which mocked them debating. “Oratrix: ‘It’s the principle of Co-Education that we’re working for! That’s what we wish to support!’ (A voice, ‘and we don’t.’)”113 The class of 1894 was divided over the election of a valedictorian; the senior women attempted, unsuccessfully, to elect one of their number. Although the valedictorian tried to smooth things over in his address, suggesting that the combative senior class should avoid reopening old wounds and let bygones be bygones, the confrontations of the previous winter had a lasting impact on the development of student government at New Brunswick.114 Following the confrontation over the conversazione, early in 1894 women undergraduates formed their own organization, the Young Ladies’ Literary Society. The society functioned equally as a student government that could speak for the women as a whole, and a forum to promote the intellectual and cultural development of its members.115 By the end of the 1890s, the program of the literary society had expanded to include debates, and in 1907, women students created their own debating society, Delta Rho. The activities of the Young Ladies’ Literary Society shifted toward governance, involving an annual reception for the freshman class and a banquet to welcome formally

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first-year women. While the society served as the central organization for all women undergraduates, students also formed a branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1898, a basketball team in 1903, and the Ladies’ Athletic Association in 1909. The Monthly remained under the control of the men’s Literary and Debating Society, and retained the custom of having two women on the editorial staff, and by 1907, the paper had a regular ladies’ department. In 1910, women formed a separate Alumnae Society to promote the interests of both undergraduates and graduates of New Brunswick.116 Similar events were unfolding at Queen’s during the winter of 1893 to 1894, and the New Brunswick University Monthly followed accounts gleaned from the Queen’s Journal. In a letter sent to the Monthly in January, a New Brunswick student stated that the great question of coeducation and the extent of its influence had affected both institutions, but the perfidy of the women at his own university had placed the men there on the horns of a formidable dilemma. He concluded, “If the editor of the Queen’s University Journal could only have been present in our University during the month just past, he would have realized that ‘rabid’ and ‘aggressive’ are mild adjectives to apply to the spirit which animated our co-educationists.”117 The Queen’s Journal had raised these issues from the beginning, and men at Queen’s remained wary as the first women entered classes, especially following the controversy at the medical school, Royal College, in 1882. In 1880, the Journal promised to give coeducation a fair trial, but commented that the best plan still would be an endowed state university for women.118 The few women in attendance had a guarded attitude toward their classmates, spending most of their time in their small reading room, and going in groups to the library and lecture rooms. Undergraduate culture at Queen’s revolved around the Alma Mater Society, which published the Journal, held debates, organized events such as the mock parliament and the annual conversazione, and, by the late 1880s, managed the university’s athletic clubs. Although the first women had been invited – apparently as a joke – to attend meetings of the Alma Mater Society in 1881, they had declined, and since that time women had not been asked, nor expected, to participate.119 In 1889, Queen’s women took action to look after their

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own interests. They organized the Levana Society, formed a chapter of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and began contributing to a regular ladies’ column in the Journal, after pressing to have three women editors appointed to the staff. During the previous autumn, the women had moved to a larger reading room in the attic of the arts building with a good view of the lake, and the earliest meetings were held in spacious if somewhat austere surroundings.120 Under the benign influence of the principal, George Monro Grant, women were given greater freedom than at most coeducational universities. By the 1890s, they had developed a confident presence on campus. Grant had not imposed special regulations, or hired a superintendent to act as chaperone, believing instead that if young men and women were put on their honour they would act responsibly. As at other universities, men at Queen’s had a tradition of disrupting public events as much as possible; in 1882, Elizabeth Smith described Grant’s inaugural address in Convocation Hall being interrupted by students in the gallery loudly singing, whooping, stamping, and making furious noise with such instruments as canes, tin horns, and goose quills. To restrain the habitually rough conduct of men students, Grant adopted a policy of tolerance, mixed with frequent and fervent appeals to their better selves.121 In a tribute to Grant at the time of his death in 1902, women students at Queen’s claimed that they owed their secure place in the university to his willingness to put ideas into action, and his “great liberality in thought.”122 The men treated the women as a group apart, blockading their way on the stairs, singing when they entered the classroom, greeting their entry into Convocation Hall with shouts, yells, and whistling; behaviour to which the women objected in the pages of the Journal.123 In Miriam of Queen’s, a semi-autobiographical novel written by Lilian Vaux MacKinnon, the young women enjoy their time with each other, and are confident in their interactions with the men students. In Miriam’s first Latin class, for example, the professor is interrupted each morning by the sound of music and dancing coming from the women’s third-floor room next door.124 MacKinnon’s fictional account is supported by contemporary descriptions of women at Queen’s in the 1890s. In 1895, a visitor to the campus was astonished

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by the free, unconventional ways of women students compared to those at McGill. “What a surprise it is to a McGill man, on coming to Queen’s,” he commented, “to see lady students threading their way through the halls, to see them in the same class-rooms and same year meetings, and consorting together in crowds in the same rink, with no threatening faculty or frowning duenna anywhere.”125 Enrolment at Queen’s grew steadily, and in 1891, of the 250 students registered in arts, there were forty-four women.126 As undergraduates, women officially were members of the Alma Mater Society; they were expected to vote in the annual elections, and most importantly, were responsible for paying fees. “It is the student’s society, since every student becomes a member,” Alma Mater’s president explained in 1890. “It prevents disorder and discord, and cultivates a feeling of manly self-reliance.”127 Yet as the president’s words suggest, the Alma Mater Society belonged to the men. Women were not allowed to attend its regular meetings or to participate in its governance. The men in the arts faculty nevertheless needed their votes and considered women to be important allies in the traditional rivalry between the arts and medical students for control of the Alma Mater executive. Like the Delta-Gamma Society at Dalhousie, the Levana Society protested the injustice of paying fees for which they received no benefit and disputed the custom of charging women athletic fees when they had no access to a gymnasium. In 1889, the Levana executive sent a request to the Alma Mater Society that their gymnasium fee, levied to raise funds for the construction of a new athletic facility, be diverted to buy furnishings for their new reading room. The Alma Mater complied, asking the principal to excuse women from paying the fee, but Grant refused and instead privately donated some furniture.128 In 1891, women returned to the issue of fees, this time explicitly challenging their exclusion from Alma Mater activities. At a meeting of the Levana Society, one member was delegated to send a letter to the Journal representing the views of the women undergraduates. On behalf of Levana, “E.J.M.” argued that women should not be expected to pay the election fee to the Alma Mater Society, on the grounds that they were not treated as members on the same footing as men, had no share in the work or

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benefits of the society, and were only invited to attend when their presence was desired at election time. She demanded, “Since, then, voting is their only prerogative why should they pay for doing what is in reality a favour to a male student?”129 The men discussed the letter at the next meeting of the Alma Mater, and this time they opted to keep the money and send special invitations to the women to attend open meetings once a month. This decision in turn provoked another angry letter to the Journal in which the writer pointed out that if they believed in coeducation, the officers of the Alma Mater should arrange to hold meetings in a larger room and send notices to the women’s reading room every week. “The ladies are members and have a right to attend all the meetings if they like, and the sooner the officers recognize this the better for all.”130 In spite of this protest, over the next two years the Alma Mater Society continued to restrict women to what one critic called a “voteand-cash-nexus.”131 Its interactions with the Levana Society remained unfriendly, and the strain was evident in the editorial direction of the Journal. In 1892, the editor went so far as to urge the university senate to create a special course of study for women in arts, one that could potentially divert the majority of women students away from the regular degree program. Commenting on the unsuitability of such subjects as metaphysics, mathematics, physics, or classics for many women, the editorial argued that a non-degree program combining music and art with general courses in languages and literatures would be “the best preparation for their special sphere.”132 Coinciding with the similar dispute at New Brunswick, the issue of women’s participation in the Alma Mater Society was reopened at Queen’s in January 1894. Compared to the pugnacious attitude of New Brunswick’s Monthly, the editor of the Journal attempted a more conciliatory position, pointing out that the lady students of Queen’s were not the “rabid woman’s rights type,” and recommending that the time might be ripe for the extension of coeducation into the Alma Mater Society.133 This editorial prompted a response from “QuasiModo,” who claimed, disingenuously, that nothing prevented the women from attending meetings; if they found the program not to their tastes, he suggested, perhaps the society should start a sewing

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circle and discuss the latest fashion in flounces. He concluded with a more serious accusation: “They cannot be students with the same rights and obligations as those of the opposite sex, and at the same time expect to be treated with special attention, and ‘specially invited’ to everything.”134 Quasi-Modo’s confrontational letter in turn provoked several rebuttals. Noting that Queen’s affairs were being discussed at New Brunswick, one letter warned that the reputation of the university and its women students would be adversely affected by the tone of the material published in the Journal. Another writer objected to Quasi-Modo’s lack of courtesy: “If this is what Quasi-Modo means by ‘special attention,’ thanks, no; the lady students desire it as little as they do sewing circles, or polemics on fashions.”135 Women retained their voting privileges in the Alma Mater Society, and after 1900, observed meetings from the gallery of Convocation Hall and refused to take seats on the house floor. The Levana Society executive spoke on behalf of all women undergraduates in their dealings with the Alma Mater, and each year recommended the appointment of the ladies’ column editors to the Journal.136 The issue of their exclusion from membership resurfaced periodically. “Let us have fair play, equal rights to all and special favors to none,” the ladies’ column argued in 1898, “ – let all distinctions be done away with in a society claiming to be the central organization of the whole student body.”137 As at Toronto and New Brunswick, women at Queen’s emerged from this period of conflict in the mid-1890s with a new determination to develop their own self-government. In 1894, following the confrontation with the Alma Mater, the Levana Society announced that it had been revitalized and would conduct a full program of monthly meetings.138 In a letter to the Journal, one student extolled the benefits of a renewed society for the development of educated, thoughtful women. “If there is one benefit above another, which should be the outcome of a college course, it is the ability to think, and to clothe that thought in clear, forcible language,” she wrote. “A training like this may be aided nowhere more surely than in a Literary Society of the first order.”139 The next year, a Levana committee met with Grant to discuss matters involving women’s

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space, such as repositioning the lockers and improving ventilation and cleanliness. Grant consented to all their requests, and most satisfyingly, agreed finally to draw on the gymnasium fund to provide money for additional furniture and rent for a piano for the reading room.140 The Levana meetings included musical performances, papers on literary subjects, and debates. Like the Women’s Literary Society at University College, Levana did not emulate the disorderliness that often accompanied men’s events, and members was proud of their ability to manage meetings in an exemplary manner. In 1889, the ladies’ column noted that the Levana elections had been conducted with “dignity and decorum,” unlike those of the Alma Mater, which had been marred by allegations of bribery and the solicitation of votes.141 In 1904, the ladies’ column informed first-year students that Levana provided women with important oratory and administrative skills needed in public life. “You cannot afford to miss a single meeting,” the editors urged. “Here we learn to conduct our meetings along business lines, and to express ourselves in debate – both prepared and impromptu.”142

Needing the Ladies In contrast to the tensions at established men’s institutions, newer universities like Manitoba, McMaster, and Western admitted women when their undergraduate culture was still in an early stage of formation, or became coeducational from the outset. Professors and administrators were more likely to be familiar with coeducation elsewhere; liberal Presbyterians such as George Bryce at Manitoba College and Walter Murray at Saskatchewan brought their progressive ideas with them. Murray, the first president of the University of Saskatchewan, had been a professor of philosophy at New Brunswick and Dalhousie, and was married to an early New Brunswick graduate, Christine Cameron Murray. Murray had studied the functioning of coeducation in the American land-grant universities and staunchly supported the equal inclusion of women into the programs and policies of the new university after 1907.143 At the University of Manitoba, women integrated more easily into undergraduate life than

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at the provincial universities in Ontario and New Brunswick. Due to the demand for teachers, most took the modern language course, which included English, French, and German. “Since teaching was then the only profession open to women graduates nearly everyone followed this course by attending the Normal School,” Lilian Ponton Saul remembered of the class of 1893.144 The first woman at Manitoba College, Jessie Livingstone Holmes, started attending classes in the fall of 1886, and on the opening day was welcomed enthusiastically by the principal, John Mark King, who escorted her to a conspicuous front seat in the assembly room. By her second year, Holmes had been joined by five other women.145 The men students promptly invited the women to attend the meetings of the college’s Literary Society. In 1887, Holmes was appointed second vice-president, and from this point on a tradition was established of having a woman hold this position on the executive. The minutes recorded the students’ sense of the occasion: “This is the first time a lady has held any position in the Literary Society and marks an epoch in its history as well as that of the College.”146 The women were greeted with rounds of applause when they appeared at the first meeting of the Literary Society, and then they attended regularly, contributing essays, recitations, and musical performances, although they did not yet participate in debates. Women were engaged in the popular Dramatic Society, which each year presented a public play, usually from Shakespeare, and after 1891, were represented as associate editors on the staff of Manitoba College Journal.147 In 1892, the graduates of Manitoba College formed the Alma Mater Society for both men and women, and Holmes again was elected one of the vice-presidents. Holmes later stated that student activities in her day were minimal, but the women’s presence added much to the social life of the college; in addition to the weekly meetings of the Literary Society, there were occasional student parties “of which dancing, skating and tobogganing were the chief features.”148 The women were provided with makeshift accommodation in the matron’s sitting room, and after the college building was enlarged in 1893, were allocated a more comfortable room of their own, known as the Ladies’ Parlor, on the ground floor.149 In 1891, the editor of the

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4.7

The skating pond at Mount Allison, circa 1901. At most Canadian universities, outdoor activities formed a central part of coeducational student life. While dances were permitted early on at Manitoba, other universities discouraged or prohibited dances until the 1920s, and skating and tobogganing provided the main opportunity for men and women to socialize together on campus.

Journal noted the considerable number of women undergraduates in attendance that year, and praised his college for its progressive policy and liberality of culture. Coeducation had proved entirely satisfactory, he claimed, stating, “We are proud to belong to an institution where no lady has rapped loud or long ere she was made most welcome.”150 In 1893, an article in the Journal assessed the impact of higher education, and challenged the conclusion that a woman became less womanly as her intellect developed: “We have seen then that higher education, instead of depriving woman of some of her greatest charms; serves … to develop every particle of womanliness in her nature.”151

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By the early 1890s, women’s presence in the University of Manitoba was starting to grow. In 1901, women represented forty-two of the 148 arts undergraduates, dispersed among three colleges.152 They were admitted into Wesley College when it opened in 1888, and, after some opposition, into St John’s College in 1892. As at Manitoba College, women at Wesley and St John’s were invited to participate in the men’s literary societies and were elected to positions on the executive, as well as serving on the editorial staffs of Vox Wesleyana and St John’s College Magazine. In 1895, women at Wesley organized their own Young Women’s Christian Association chapter, but most of the first student societies at Manitoba were coeducational. Helen E. Stacey of Wesley’s class of 1908, for example, served as an editor of Vox, captain of the ladies’ hockey team, and vice-president of the Literary Society. In addition, Stacey was elected the first Lady Stick, or women’s president; the man serving as president traditionally was given the title Senior Stick.153 While mixed societies at Manitoba encouraged social interaction, they initially served to delay the development of public speaking skills among the women. In 1903, the Magazine recorded that “the first ladies’ debate for many years” had been held.154 In 1908, women at Manitoba College, the largest of the colleges at the time, formed the Ladies’ Literary Society with the particular goal of encouraging even the shyest members to participate in debates. As the Journal commented, “the arts of debating and public speaking which formerly have been entirely neglected by the ladies, might be developed.”155 Over the next few years, the women designed their programs to represent the work of a well-rounded literary society, including debating, public speaking, essay writing, music, and drama. The Journal reflected this orientation, publishing articles that discussed women’s issues, such as the 1912 report on Emmeline Pankhurst’s public lecture in Winnipeg on women's suffrage, which noted the “lucidity and undeniable logic which characterized her really remarkable address.”156 Yet the Ladies’ Literary Society at Manitoba College struggled with poor attendance, as did the mixed literary society, and the meetings of both suffered from what was perceived to be insufficient talent among the membership. In 1912, the executives of the two literary

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societies met to discuss their common problem, and agreed to merge to form the Manitoba College United Literary Society.157 The agreement specified that the women students would enjoy equal privileges with the men in the interclass debates. “‘Toba’ can produce debates of the highest rank,” the president-elect of the merged society observed in the Journal, “but the ladies, though never forbidden, have never been invited to attend those debates in which they are vitally interested not only as members of the classes debating, but as students in the very subjects under discussion. Do the men constitute the Student Body of Manitoba College, or do the ladies? No. We two join to form one Student Body.”158 At McMaster University, women were admitted alongside men into its inaugural classes in 1890. The McMaster University Monthly announced in its first issue, “The two ladies of the Arts Department distinguished themselves in their classes, and the young men were not less cordial in acknowledging the fact than were the professors.”159 The women had a ladies’ sitting room in McMaster Hall, which also served as a reading room with a small reference library. Senate members were determined to create a modern arts curriculum for McMaster; the study of classics was de-emphasized, and new subjects were included, such as English literature, political and constitutional history, and political economy. The orientation of the curriculum accommodated women matriculants, who often were underprepared in Greek, and the majority of early women at McMaster took modern languages, English, and history.160 In 1894, three women, Annie M. McKay, Minnie Smith, and Eliza P. Wells, received ba degrees in McMaster’s first graduating class, as well as two teachers from Moulton College, Blanche Bishop, a graduate of Acadia, and Mary S. Daniels, a graduate of Wellesley, who received ma degrees. Wells, who was elected class poet and would pursue a career as an English teacher, read an essay at the commencement exercises on the importance of women’s higher education to home life. She put forth an earnest plea for the power of the educated woman to abolish evil, carry reform, and rule the world through her home. Her essay provoked applause from the large audience and was published in the Monthly.161

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Women undergraduates at McMaster were on friendly terms with their classmates and collaborated with them to establish the first student organizations. Women were included in all aspects of undergraduate culture, holding positions on the class executives, serving on the publishing committee of the Monthly, and joining the men in activities such as the Camelot Club for English specialists, the mathematics society, the natural science club, and field excursions for geology students. Women graduates served on the executive of the alumni association, founded in 1894, and were involved in planning its earliest events.162 Like women at Manitoba College, however, McMaster women founded a separate society of their own. In the fall of 1891, their numbers increased to five, supplemented in the first-year classes by senior students from Moulton, and the women felt strong enough to form the Modern Language Club. This prompted some mild teasing from the Monthly’s editor that since they were so few in number, all members had to hold positions on the club’s executive.163 The women’s initial objectives were to acquire facility in French and German conversation, and to study French, German, and English authors, and the club soon started to function as a literary society, open to all women at McMaster and holding regular meetings with prepared programs of readings and music. At the same time, the men had formed their own organization, the Literary and Theological Society, later known as the Literary and Scientific Society.164 The students found it difficult to maintain two literary societies in such a small college – in 1891, for example, the number of undergraduates in arts at McMaster totalled only thirty-nine165 – and early in 1892 the incoming president of the Literary and Scientific Society included in his platform the suggestion that the women should be invited to attend the men’s meetings. The Monthly summarized his campaign speech: “The society needed the ladies, and, above all, the ladies needed the society.”166 The campaign had some effect, but it seems as though the women did not need the men’s society as much as the president had hoped. Women contributed music as well as essay and poetry readings at the public meeting at the end of the year, and in 1894, they began to attend the men’s

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regular meetings. Yet McMaster women decided to direct most of their energies toward sustaining their own literary society. With their numbers slowly rising, the women reorganized the Modern Language Club and launched a more rigorous program for themselves, including a debate on the question of women entering the profession of law.167 The Monthly reported in 1893, “Independence gained the day, as it is wont to do with 19th century women, and the little society will still preserve its individuality, and strive to gain a place and a name for itself in our University.”168 McMaster women renamed their club the Ladies’ Literary League in 1894, and in 1907, after some years of discussion, decided again to change the name, this time, significantly, to the Women’s Literary Society. According to its constitution, redrafted in 1899, all women in attendance at lectures at McMaster were members, and the object of the League was “the mutual improvement of its member in literary pursuits, in the art of speaking, of writing, and in musical attainment.”169 While the men’s and women’s literary societies continued to hold separate meetings, women also served on the executive of the men’s Literary and Scientific Society and regularly contributed literary readings, essays, and musical performances to the programs at their public meetings. The meetings of the Women’s Literary Society frequently featured debates addressing a range of social and political questions, including the effect of popular magazine culture, poetry in the modern age, and the situation of the Boers in the Transvaal. After 1902, McMaster women joined the InterCollege League, and every year nominated two members to compete against women from Victoria, Trinity, and University College.170 Women normally only debated each other, but in 1897 the men hosted a mixed debate on the subject of temperance, a meeting that sparked great interest. Two women students effectively supported the affirmative, the Monthly praised, while their men opponents “vainly attempted to meet their arguments.”171 At the end of the university’s first decade, students at McMaster viewed coeducation as a success; women were engaged in both their own literary society and that of the men, had founded their own branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and were

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integrated into the other undergraduate clubs and social activities.172 In 1900, the Ladies’ Literary League debated the question of whether or not coeducation was the preferred model of university education. It was really no debate, as the Monthly pointed out, because the hearts of the speakers for the negative were not in their cause, and the decision emphatically was given in favour of coeducation. The Monthly reported, “The debate was decided by a vote of all the members of the Society, who endeavoured to carry out Miss Dryden’s injunction to be entirely impartial, even though they might be already prejudiced in favour of the affirmative.”173 Western University first opened in 1881 as a men’s college, and women were admitted only into the collegiate department of the affiliated Hellmuth Ladies’ College. Hellmuth lost its bid to become the provincial college for women, however, and Western was forced to suspend its arts classes in 1885. When Western reopened in 1895, the university accepted women into a coeducational faculty of arts. Two women enrolled in 1896, and in 1898, Mary L. Cowan, who had transferred from the University of Toronto to complete her ba, became the first woman to graduate from Western. The university’s fragile beginnings continued to shadow enrolments, and the arts faculty at Western remained one of the smallest in the province. In 1911, for example, there were only sixty-seven men and twelve women enrolled in arts.174 The number of women, in particular, was affected by the ongoing refusal of the provincial department of education to recognize Western’s honours degree – a recognition necessary for students to achieve specialist standing as high school teachers. Until 1919, when the Ontario government placed its graduates on the same footing as those of Toronto, Queen’s, and McMaster, Western would contend with the problem of students transferring to other universities to complete their degrees.175 As at McMaster, at Western men and women collaborated in founding the earliest student organizations. In 1896, the first two women to enroll in arts joined forces with the divinity students at Huron to create the Literary Society. W.F. Tamblyn, an English professor at Western during this time, remembered, “Arts students were so few in number, that their section of the University was a

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sort of home circle, or a guild, bound tightly together. The Arts men and women and Huron men nearly all belonged to the ‘Lit’ and attended fairly well.”176 According to Tamblyn, the women initially were hesitant about debating in public and preferred to read prepared speeches, but soon “tired of the curb” and participated fully in the society’s debates. One of the most popular activities of the Literary Society was the presentation of an annual public play, in which women usually performed the central roles.177 In 1902, women established the student newspaper, In Cap and Gown. The early issues were handwritten and entirely composed, illustrated, and edited by the women undergraduates. For the first two years, their original copy, carefully written and illustrated by hand, would be read at a meeting of the Literary Society and then placed on file in the reading room or library. Women students had their own room in the Huron College building, No. 6, and they socialized freely with their classmates, met frequently to discuss the business of the literary society and student newspaper, and joined them in such activities as tennis, skating, and tobogganing.178 A poem in a 1904 issue of In Cap and Gown, by the editors Madge Dearness and Jessie Rowat, conveyed a sense of the easy interaction between the men and women that existed then at Western: Some students spend their moments so It gives them intimation That when they’re through they’ll have the “co” Without the education.179 Rowat was chosen to be valedictorian of the class of 1906. In a scrapbook, she later humorously depicted her sociable life at Western: “She meets many men – but cannot choose – finally she graduates – and becomes J.R. B.A.”180 The prominence of women in Western’s undergraduate activities began to diminish during the early 1900s. Debating became a particular source of conflict, and men students challenged the custom of the Literary Society to hold mixed debates in which both sexes participated. In 1903, the men formed a rival debating

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society, the Areopagus Society, named after the highest council of ancient Athens, with the intention of creating a forum strictly for young men planning to enter public life. Although the men used the excuse that the Literary Society was too focused on the annual play, and the women created the Modern Language Club that same year, women were aware that they were being excluded from more serious debating.181 In 1904, the women editors of In Cap and Gown satirized the proceedings of the Areopagus Society by reporting on an imagined debate, “Resolved that a wife is of more benefit to a nonprofessional man than a library.” The debate concluded with one of the judges informing the members that they were to have libraries and not wives unless they were very clever, “in which case they might possibly have both.”182 After 1906, women students lost control of In Cap and Gown. The newspaper was sent off to the printers to acquire a more professional appearance, and in 1909 was expanded and renamed the Western University Gazette. Women still maintained positions on the editorial board, especially as editors of the “Western Girls” section from 1907, but once the paper became a formal production a man usually was appointed editor.183 In 1909, women undergraduates and alumnae together decided to form the Woman’s Club, with the goal of providing intellectual improvement and a unifying force for their activities, including debating. After briefly thinking of calling themselves the “Gynarchy Club” – Greek for government by women – in 1910 members voted instead to name the new organization the Alumnae of the Western University. As it gained members, the Alumnae Association focused less on readings and debates, and functioned instead as a social club, holding receptions for new students and other gatherings.184

 At Manitoba, McMaster, and Western, women and men interacted with easy familiarity, and the new coeducational environment allowed women students to join men in mixed organizations and social activities. This interaction stemmed from small classes and close

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friendships among the arts students; as the McMaster Monthly had noted, the men needed the women to make their events a success. But it became increasingly difficult for women to gain experience in debating within mixed literary societies that were dominated by men. The Ladies’ Literary Society at Manitoba College, the Ladies’ Literary League at McMaster, and the Woman’s Club at Western were all established as separate literary societies to allow women undergraduates to pursue self-government and more fully develop their skills for public life. The literary society was at the centre of the undergraduate world, and women’s desire to share in its activities required careful negotiation during the 1890s. At Mount Allison, Victoria, Acadia, and Dalhousie, women were treated as guests, invited to be honorary members or attend public meetings, but not to participate in debates. At Toronto, New Brunswick, and Queen’s, older institutions where undergraduates were deeply invested in their college history, membership in the literary societies became a source of bitter conflict between men and women students. At Manitoba, McMaster, and Western, the absence of inherited traditions encouraged women to work together with men to support mixed literary societies and newspapers, serving on the executives and editorial boards and contributing to social activities. At all ten universities, however, women students formed their own literary societies as soon as their numbers permitted it, whether or not they were welcomed into the men’s organizations. Katie Hall Marsters at Acadia recognized that professional identity originated as much in the literary society as it did in the classroom, and training in debate and oration, like donning the undergraduate cap and gown, would give her the self-confidence she needed to move into the public sphere. By adopting this strategy, women students were asserting that they were entitled to the full rights and responsibilities of undergraduates. Literary societies became public spaces in which women could perform roles reserved for men, and through these activities, reinterpret gender identities within the context of the new coeducational university. Women refused to occupy the special category of lady students and chose instead to demonstrate that they

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could conduct themselves as undergraduates, to prove, in the sense conveyed by Annie Ross, that they could be “better men.” When New Brunswick’s University Monthly invited its readers to imagine the absurdity of a woman ascending the rostrum to debate, it was implying that this would be crossing the gender line as much as if she were wearing men’s clothing, or tethering a cow to the flagpole on Halloween night. Similarly, the Queen’s Journal satirized a Levana debate on the motion that the mind of woman was superior to that of man. “The president ruled the speaker out of order for wandering from the point and for reflecting on those who were absent,” the writer claimed. “But the speaker protested that she had only exercised her womanly prerogative of speaking without reflecting at all.”185 As young women stepped up to engage in debate, they knew they risked being called unwomanly, but they also were aware that their performance in the literary societies challenged the definition of who could be an undergraduate. They pushed the boundaries of gendered identity to plan for new opportunities in their lives after graduation, where skills in oratory, administration, and public procedure were an obvious asset, whether for teaching or community leadership. In 1901, Acta Victoriana questioned the concept of womanliness, and suggested that the old view of femininity being linked to the home sphere no longer was relevant for a college woman. “She should realize that beyond the so-called womanly is the human element in life,” the author argued, “and that it is her right and duty to reach out and grasp all things that are great and good … whether the past has labelled them masculine or feminine, sure that in the end what develops her humanly, will make her only more truly womanly.”186 In 1915, The Argosy at Mount Allison summed up this potential: “Her training in Alpha Beta, in class and association work, in the social and religious life of the institution, gives her poise and power.”187 In the changing climate of the twentieth century, the new deans of women would discover that women undergraduates were prepared to assert this newfound power to expand their right to self-government.

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Deans, Suffrage, and Self-Government The only guarantee of a wholesome and orderly social life is students who respect themselves and prize the good name of their University. No rule can ever be invented which cannot and will not be evaded. u r s i l l a n. m ac d on n e l l , dean of women, Manitoba, 1924

D

uring the winter of 1919, marked by news of demobilization riots, labour unrest, and the influenza pandemic, women at the University of Toronto organized a mass meeting to protest what they saw as the arbitrary transferral of power from their student house committee to the dean of residence. Under a cartoon showing women marching with banners proclaiming “We Want Freedom,” The Varsity described these events as “The Insurrection of the Women,” but more seriously noted that the protest supported an important principle, the right of undergraduates to democratic self-government.1 For their part, women leaders across the federated university – the heads of Annesley Hall, St Hilda’s, Queen’s Hall, Household Science, University College Women’s Union, and Victoria College Women’s Union – immediately convened a committee to discuss a universitywide policy to restrict students from attending late-night theatres and public dance halls in the city. Margaret Addison, the dean at Victoria, warned, “the love of pleasure and the license which are the

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aftermath of war are no small part of our concern in the women’s residences of the University.”2 Women’s residences were being established at most Canadian universities, and students turned their new skills in parliamentary procedure to creating self-governing house committees. Residences immediately proved to be sources of strength for women undergraduates, promoting their sense of belonging in both a physical and emotional sense, and challenging the lingering prejudice that they were mere guests in academia. The behaviour of students in residences, however, increasingly attracted criticism that often developed into open conflict over the issue of student government and discipline. The position of dean of women arose in response to concerns about student conduct, particularly that of women living on campus. The years spanning the First World War were a period of change for women undergraduates. Social opportunities expanded, new ideas circulated, and a variety of different groups competed for students’ allegiance. In addition to the activities of the Women’s Literary Society, campuses also became places where women could dance, date, play hockey, join a sorority, or organize for women’s suffrage. Most importantly, as photograph albums and diaries show, the new residences allowed young women to develop the social aspects of undergraduate culture, to gather in their rooms for night suppers, plan stunts and pranks, and go out in groups to parties, picnics, and evening skates.3 While not all of these past-times were new, administrators began more frequently to express a sense of unease when they reflected on the freedom of women students. As men enlisted, existing tensions became accentuated by the new prominence of women, and the traditional restraints imposed by chaperones, lady superintendents, and matrons seemed to lack real authority. Deans of women had emerged as an influential group in the United States during the prewar years, linked closely to the spread of coeducation and rising enrolments. 4 For those who campaigned for similar appointments in Canada, such as the United Alumnae in Toronto, a dean ideally would serve to mentor the young students under her charge, and fulfill a broad mandate to promote the academic interests of women in the university more generally. As

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one alumna put it, “She must be a woman of direct methods, a scholar and a believer in scholarship.”5 To ensure she had authority, the dean of women had to meet two criteria that set her position apart from the purely residence-based appointments of the past: first, she had to have academic qualifications and, hopefully, a teaching position in the university; and second, she had to have responsibility for all women students, whether or not they lived in residence. Although their titles varied in the early years, ranging from adviser to lady resident, between 1899 and 1926, most Canadian universities created a dean of women position to supervise the academic and social lives of women undergraduates.6 Catherine Gidney has shown that the interwar system of moral regulation of women was different from that for men; more concerned about women’s chastity, universities imposed more stringent regulations on their women students, and residence culture sustained and reinforced existing gender norms.7 University administrators expected the deans to be primarily responsible for ensuring good behaviour, and a growing gap emerged between the first deans of women and their students over the meaning of self-government for academic women. Early deans believed from their own undergraduate experience that student government prepared women for public roles after graduation, giving them important skills they could use as professionals and community leaders. By contrast, women students embraced a view of self-government that encompassed a greater degree of personal autonomy, including the liberty to stay out late, attend public dance halls, and meet with friends in the city. The students often regarded the deans with hostility, resenting what they saw as an infringement on their hard-won rights to manage their literary societies, councils, and residence house committees. After the war, deans of women navigated a difficult path between the students and administration; while deans were expected to regulate moral behaviour in loco parentis, they themselves were deeply committed to the principle of student government and regarded it as an essential training for the young women who would soon exercise their new right to vote.

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Wartime Challenges to Discipline In the early years of the twentieth century, undergraduate student culture expanded to encompass a wide variety of extracurricular activities, ranging from organized sports and military training to social service, missionary activity, and dancing.8 Among women students, the rise of sororities and activism for suffrage were the two developments that most worried university administrators. The newspapers were fascinated by the idea of coed suffragettes, and journalists were alert to the potential for scandal and controversy. In 1914, for example, the Toronto Star reported a “conspiracy” on the busy College streetcar line. According to the conductor, who was interviewed for the story, a number of women students wearing suffrage buttons on their coats were systematically refusing to take men’s seats when chivalrously offered, preferring to stand up on the crowded cars. “Hereafter Toronto suffragettes will be strap-hangers,” the reporter concluded. “Evidently the new movement has had its beginning among the university women students. It is well known that the girls’ fraternities are hotbeds of suffragette influence.”9 Whether or not the Toronto Star was correct that the sororities were hotbeds of suffragettes, the sorority movement, like that of suffrage, created new opportunities for women to organize, and introduced a further strain into the social dynamic of campus life. At Queen’s, Acadia, Mount Allison, and Toronto, pre-existing tensions over women’s conduct led to conflict during the war years, provoking administrators at all four universities to introduce more extensive restrictions. Sororities started in the United States during the 1870s. Diana B. Turk has maintained that the idea of women’s fraternities developed as a specific response to the unwelcoming environment of the coeducational university. Treated by the men as second-class citizens, women turned to each other for support and friendship, regarding these small societies as a source of mutual aid both during and after their time at college. By the early twentieth century, however, the intellectual aspect had been eclipsed by social concerns, and as the number of sororities proliferated, the second generation of fraternity women adopted a view of their purpose that emphasized competition and appearance.10 Many Canadian administrators regarded both

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This photo of women leaders in student government at University College, Toronto, appeared in The Varsity in October 1914. From left, Marion Ferguson, president, ywca; Dorothy Ferrier, associate editor, The Varsity; Margaret Anderson, president, Women’s Undergraduate Association; Bessie Ferguson, president, Women’s Athletic Association; Jean MacRae, president, Women’s Literary Society; and Clara Smith, president, Modern Language Club, and first vice-president, Fourth Year Executive.

fraternities and sororities as an unwholesome American phenomenon, and tried to block or limit their spread onto university campuses in Canada. The first Canadian Greek-letter sorority, the Sigma Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta Society, was formed at University College, Toronto, in 1905. The movement took hold there, and by 1919, the college had no less than six sororities. This proliferation of sororities, which had exclusionary memberships, accentuated the discord that already existed in women’s student government at University College during the war years. In 1907, Xi Zeta Gamma, later the Beta Psi Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, began operating at Victoria in spite of widespread opposition, and in 1915 the Women’s Student Council

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petitioned the senate against the movement, which responded by disallowing other sororities in the college.11 Kathleen Cowan found the sorority to be a divisive factor at Victoria’s Annesley Hall, and in her final year, she and other seniors began conducting a campaign to discourage first-year students from joining.12 The problem flared up again after the war. In 1924, the Victoria senate ruled to ban both sororities and fraternities, and Kappa Kappa Gamma moved the following year to set up at University College. At Western, the sorority movement grew quickly after 1927, reaching a high point of six different societies, and by 1938, the university had placed them under the control of the Pan-Hellenic Council. At Manitoba, the dean of women reported in 1929 that the university had five sororities, and she feared that the students would be torn into hostile and socially competitive groups. While few universities had sororities before 1920, by the 1930s the controversial movement had spread throughout Canada.13 As the Toronto Star straphanger conspiracy implies, university women were interested in the right to vote, and many student groups supported the goal of women’s suffrage. The Canadian suffrage movement gained strength in the prewar years, following its endorsement by the National Council of Women in 1910. In addition, women’s rights became a highly topical issue in light of the publicity given to the newsworthy activities of the Pankhursts and the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union in Britain. In 1918, the federal franchise in Canada was extended to women over age twenty-one, and by 1925, most also had the right to vote in all the provinces except Quebec, although women of Asian background and Indigenous women were still subjected to voting restrictions.14 Some alumnae provided leadership for the suffrage campaign and used their university contacts to spread information. For example, in 1908, Laura McCully, a recent Toronto graduate, addressed a number of open-air meetings on behalf of women’s suffrage in Toronto and Orillia. As a student, McCully had been drawn into membership in the newly formed Canadian Suffrage Association as a representative of the college women of Toronto. The following summer, the University of Toronto hosted the International Council of Women, in which Lady

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Aberdeen, the governor general’s wife, lent her aristocratic prestige and declared herself in favour of women’s suffrage. Eliza Ritchie, president of the Dalhousie Alumnae Association in 1911, and warden of the first women’s residence, directed the suffrage activity of Halifax’s Local Council of Women and the Nova Scotia Equal Suffrage League.15 Suffrage began to be a regular topic of debate for literary societies on campuses across the country, and the cause frequently resulted in activism among undergraduates. “Those women who are suffragists are also the lustiest of co-educationists,” a student in The Arbor noted in 1911, adding dryly, “also they seem often to be vegetarians.”16 In 1913, the Toronto Globe published the startling headline, “‘Vic’ Women Object to Man-Made Edicts,” reporting that the Women’s Literary Society of Victoria had placed itself on record as being in favour of votes for women and had passed a resolution to separate the governance of women students from the all-men student council.17 This had long been an interest among Victoria women; as early as 1897, the Women’s Literary Society had held a mock parliament in which the government defeated a bill introduced by the opposition, “For the extension of the Franchise to men, other than bachelors and widowers.”18 At McMaster, in 1914 the Women’s Student Body – though disclaiming any “militant” spirit – challenged the authority of the men to speak for all undergraduates and declared its commitment to the “Woman’s Cause,” including the goal of suffrage. Flora MacDonald Denison, the president of the Canadian Suffrage Association, addressed the mixed Literary Society at McMaster that winter, arguing forcefully that all professions should be thrown open to women.19 In the fall of 1916, a petition for women’s suffrage was sent out to Ontario universities, and every woman over the age of twenty-one was invited to sign it. The Victoria Women’s Student Council appointed canvassers to circulate the petition among the students.20 The suffrage cause also attracted students in the Maritime universities and at Manitoba College. At Mount Allison, the debate of the Eurhetorian Society on the enfranchisement of women in 1908 was attended, The Argosy noted, “by an unusually large number of the University girls.”21 “Why should a woman want a vote?” Mary Trerice, a student at Mount Allison, asked in 1916. “Why, indeed, when the all-sufficient, all-

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powerful, all-mighty creature, man, stands ready to shut her out from any such inappropriate employment!”22 At Acadia, the Propylaeum Society held a debate on women’s suffrage in 1915, and following the war, when women students formed a political club to discuss public affairs, the subject of their first meeting was “Women and the Ballot.”23 Wartime conditions gave the activities of women’s groups more consequence, and magnified anxieties about their behaviour. When war was declared in 1914, thousands of university men enlisted, and women undergraduates assumed a new prominence on campus. Although their actual numbers did not increase during the war, the relative proportion of women to men rose quickly.24 “Everyone is saying that Dalhousie will be a ladies college next year,” Florence Murray wrote to her father in March 1916. “They don’t expect any of the boys back.”25 Looking back on her time at Dalhousie during these years, Emelyn MacKenzie recalled that there had been little or nothing for social life, no dances, and only very dull parties. Many social activities were suspended and students spent their time outside of class volunteering for the war effort.26 “It was a very difficult time to be a student,” Hilda Laird at Queen’s remembered. “It wasn’t a happy time, you know, we didn’t have the usual happy times that students have.”27 Marion Machum Bennett at Mount Allison similarly noted, “the social life was at pretty much of a standstill.”28 During the summer vacations, women undergraduates worked to fill jobs vacated by enlisted men, as National Services Girls, picking and canning fruit, or as bank clerks and civil servants. Others interrupted their studies to work full-time in munition factories, plane engine factories, and military offices, or to serve as Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses. A few university women gained employment as scientists, working in soil analysis or chemical analysis of high explosives, such as the chemistry graduates of McMaster who were hired at the munition factory at Nobel in northern Ontario.29 At all Canadian universities, those who continued their studies volunteered for the Red Cross, knitting socks and mufflers, rolling bandages, preparing sphagnum moss dressings, packing overseas boxes, and making scrapbooks for soldiers in hospital. Women students were busy fundraising by tagging, buying victory bonds,

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or helping out at one of the patriotic tearooms. The University of Toronto was responsible for provisioning a Canadian military hospital in Salonica, and women raised money and sewed supplies such as sheets, surgical nightshirts, and masks, while Grant Hall at Queen’s was turned into a hospital and required nurses’ assistants and other visitors to help the wounded brought there. At Manitoba, women’s Red Cross work was reorganized in 1917 into the Western Universities Units’ Auxiliary, and students united in their efforts to knit socks and fundraise. At Dalhousie, the commitment of women students to the Red Cross and other volunteer work grew exponentially following the Halifax Explosion in December 1917. Undergraduate women also volunteered in large numbers to nurse the sick during the devastating influenza pandemic that followed in the wake of the war.30 The appointment of deans of women was closely linked to issues of conduct raised by the war; only two coeducational universities, Alberta and Queen’s, had created this position before 1914. At Alberta, the first adviser to women students, Helen McHugh Sheldon, was appointed in 1911, just a few years after the university was founded. Sheldon was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and the wife of the mathematics professor, E.W. Sheldon, but was not herself a member of faculty. Her successor, Geneva Misener, held the position of assistant professor of classics at Alberta, in addition to serving as adviser to women students from 1913 to 1920. Misener had graduated with a ba and ma from Queen’s, and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and would be an active member of the Edmonton suffrage organization. After 1919, when women students at Alberta moved into residence in Pembina Hall, the adviser to women students also usually served as the live-in warden.31 At Queen’s, the question of appointing a dean of women first had been raised in the mid-1890s, when the Queen’s Journal had suggested that a refined, educated woman might serve as a guide and inspiration to the young students. In the winter of 1895, the Levana Society had debated the statement that “Colleges require a Lady Dean,” and the argument for the negative, that a lady dean would tend to destroy the bonds among the older students, won the

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debate. “A living, refining spirit is what is needed – not one woman,” one student wrote in the Journal. “Therefore this spirit, imbibed and fostered by the girls individually and together, is the best refining influence at college.”32 The issue of supervision had resurfaced after 1901, when Queen’s students had started living off campus in a series of houses, rented and furnished by the alumnae, the second of which was nicknamed the Hencoop. The residences nominally were under the supervision of wardens, but the students had quickly organized their own committees to establish house rules, and in reality enjoyed a significant degree of independence.33 In 1911, Queen’s appointed Caroline E. McNeill to the position of adviser of women. The principal, Daniel Gordon, had become critical of the state of coeducation at Queen’s, claiming in his annual report that women were not integrated fully into the academic and social life of the university, lacked a central place on campus, and required more guidance in selecting appropriate programs from among courses that were framed primarily for men. McNeill was to be in charge of all undergraduate women, and Gordon attempted to reconcile Levana to her authority, carefully explaining, “The appointment of such an adviser would not be for oversight of the conduct of the students or for any purpose of discipline, as there is no suggestion of any existing need in these respects.”34 McNeill had studied modern languages, earning both a ba and ma degree from Bates College in Maine, and had held the positions of professor of romance languages and dean of women at Bates. She came to Queen’s with her husband, W.E. McNeill, professor of English, and would become a part-time lecturer in French and Spanish in addition to serving as adviser of women.35 McNeill believed that self-government was ineffectual as it currently existed, and her first actions were intended to strengthen the system and bring the residence house committees, as well as Levana, under her influence. During her first few years as adviser, McNeill prepared a revised constitution with a formalized list of regulations, and established a Levana council of twenty members, distinct from the executive, to serve as a court of discipline to enforce these rules among all women students. Beginning in 1912, women at Queen’s were forbidden to live in boarding houses with men other than their family members.36

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After the outbreak of the war, McNeill grew more dissatisfied with the ability of student government to maintain discipline at Queen’s. In 1916, her title was changed to dean of women.37 Women students in the residences were used to living by a flexible set of rules and enjoyed the freedom to go out on dates, skate, dance, or attend the theatre. After reorganizing the Levana Society, McNeill turned her attention to what she saw as unruly behaviour in the residences, particularly initiation rituals, and the inability of the house committees to maintain good discipline. Mabel Roberts, who was involved in self-government at the Hencoop, remembered being warned by another student to dissociate herself from her dynamic friend, Charlotte Whitton. “She thought that it’d drag me down a little bit to be with somebody so noisy and boisterous,” Roberts explained. “I had to be a sort of a custodian of the conduct of the Queen’s girls and therefore I had to watch my own step, you see.”38 In 1917, undergraduates brought a complaint against the dean of women to the board, protesting that McNeill had interfered unduly with their self-government by restricting initiation activities within the residences. Gordon intervened on behalf of the students, and suggested that the dean might have been misled about the nature of initiation rites in the residences.39 Gordon’s successor, R. Bruce Taylor, however, sided with McNeill. Taylor became convinced that initiations and rushes were dangerous and weakened the authority of student government. After a woman student with a history of heart disease died after hazing in 1922, the Queen’s senate pressured the student societies, including Levana, to abandon all forms of physical initiation. 40 At Acadia, the university had shifted its focus away from theology and arts to embrace what the board of governors believed were more practical studies, such as engineering, household science, and education, and had launched a campaign to expand and modernize the campus. Undergraduate enrolment increased significantly before the war, almost doubling between 1903 and 1913, and in 1914, women constituted nearly one-third of the student body. 41 Although some women in arts went on to study medicine or social work, or pursue graduate studies, the majority still became teachers. Bessie Lockhart,

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Esther Clark and Lillian Chase in their residence room in 1914, from Bessie Lockhart’s snapshot album of her undergraduate days at Acadia. Lockhart’s photographs reveal how central the residences were to women’s sense of belonging on campus, showing them studying, but also laughing over the “much hated” bloomers for gym, gathering for latenight feeds, and dressing up for theatricals and parties.

of the class of 1916 at Acadia, noted that of the nineteen women in her year, half were teachers and over the age of twenty-five.42 Women attending the university were dissatisfied with the poor quality of the residential, social, and athletic space available to them in comparison both to the men and to the students attending the ladies’ college. As the university expanded, the board made the commitment to provide a separate residence for undergraduate women that would be distinct from the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary. In 1909, the College Women’s Residence was opened, nicknamed the Crow’s Nest by the students, with Acadia’s first woman graduate, Clara Belle Marshall Raymond, serving as matron. After her graduation in 1884, Raymond had taught at the seminary; now widowed, she moved

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with her family into the women’s residence, and her daughter Mary enrolled as a student at Acadia. 43 By early 1914, this building had become overcrowded, and the university announced that in future rooms would be reserved for students only in their first and second years.44 The suggestion that seniors would live off campus struck at the heart of the students’ new esprit de corps at the Crow’s Nest. “It will just mean that we will miss half the college life,” Esther Clark, a second-year student, wrote to her father in 1914. “The most of our good times and much of the good we get … comes from being able to get together for a good long chat, able to discuss what is going on, able to share our joys, our experiences of all kinds.”45 After receiving urgent appeals from women students, the Acadia board approved the immediate construction of a larger building with a dining room and space for social activities. The new College Women’s Residence opened late in 1914, with Raymond continuing on as matron. 46 “Back to wonderful new residence,” Bessie Lockhart wrote in her photo album, next to her snapshot of the smiling women lined up at the front door. 47 From the beginning, the women’s residence became known as Tully Tavern, a nickname bestowed during the first winter by the men students. Among the undergraduates, a “Tully” was the unit of measurement used in their system of evaluation for women – 1,000 Tullies was the highest award possible. With the same aplomb they had shown at the Crow’s Nest, the women students immediately appropriated the name for themselves, making up an irreverent yell: Tullyphone, Tullygraph, Tully Tavern we Uniform, Unison, Universal fee Levity, Laughter, Late Lights and Larks Let ‘em come, let ‘em go, we’re not here for marks Yah! Tully Tavern!48 The residence soon was expanded with the addition of a west wing, and in 1926, renamed Whitman Hall.49 Women at Acadia took on greater prominence as the men enlisted for service. The president, George B. Cutten, worried that

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the war was producing a spirit of restlessness, and he disliked the kind of levity exhibited by the undergraduates at Tully. Cutten noted an increase in rowdiness among students, even in church, and became preoccupied about the safety of young women in the town. In response to an incident involving a student in 1914, Cutten decreed that all women must have permission from their parents to visit anywhere off campus overnight. The women undergraduates reacted with indignation. Esther Clark, then in her third year, wrote to her brother, “Dr Cutten added a crazy rule – that we have to have permission from home to stay out overnight. Please ask Mother to send in her next letter a statement that she is perfectly willing for me to visit any friends … I think and hope I’ve got sense enough not to go visiting anywhere Mother wouldn’t approve of.”50 Men students also resented what they regarded as the undue extension of the president’s authority. In 1918, following a skirmish with the administration over the right to initiate first-year students, Acadia undergraduates formed a disciplinary branch of government, the Student Committee, with the power to make and enforce rules guiding conduct. As more men enlisted, women had adopted leadership roles in undergraduate governance; in 1917, for example, Helen Starr became the first woman editor of the Acadia Athenaeum, and another woman followed her in that position in 1918. Women students emerged from these years with new experiences, prompting them to consider their wider roles as citizens in the postwar world. The Athenaeum published a number of articles describing the contribution of women to the war effort and their responsibilities to provide leadership to the nation after graduation.51 The unsettled war years, combined with the expansion of the residence, motivated the Acadia board to consider a more formal arrangement for the supervision of women undergraduates than the limited authority held by the matron in residence. In 1919, Acadia’s enrolment experienced a sudden rise as enlisted men returned, taxing the number of spaces in residences and boarding houses. The university estimated that about 320 students were registered, and of these over 90 were women.52 That year, Acadia appointed Annie B. McIntosh, a graduate of McMaster, to the position of first dean of

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women, as well as instructor of new courses in social service. Like Raymond, McIntosh managed the residence, but her responsibility also included the academic oversight of all undergraduate women. McIntosh resigned suddenly the following year, and her role was filled temporarily by a housemother. Subsequent appointments, including that of Edith M. White in 1921, and of Blanche MacLean in 1925, also combined the position of dean of women with teaching assignments in such women’s programs as social service and expression.53 At Mount Allison, undergraduate women resented living at the ladies’ college, and in 1912, the university began housing them in the Annex, a wing of the building, where they could be relieved from some of the restrictions imposed on the other students. That year, the undergraduates formed the Girls’ Student Government of Mount Allison University, known later as the Women’s Student Council, to write and enforce rules, as well as plan social activities.54 The vice-principal of the ladies’ college was placed in charge of the Annex, however, and maintained control over the behaviour of the undergraduates living there. The Women’s Student Council operated under the close supervision of the vice-principal, who also was given the title of “dean of the student council.”55 By contrast, men in residence had been living under self-government since 1911, when they had established the Students’ Council to preside over discipline. The Argosy had proclaimed, “The Faculty have granted to the students absolute and unqualified control of purely Residence matters and in doing so we believe they have acted wisely.”56 During the war years, university women at Mount Allison campaigned steadily for the right to full self-government, and in particular to distance themselves from the ladies’ college and its viceprincipal. Marion Machum Bennett, a graduate of 1919, remembered a rebellious attitude among the undergraduates as they pushed for more freedom from the strict rules. “We felt that we, after all, were on a course that was issuing degrees, and while some of the Ladies College girls were a lot younger, some were almost University age, but we had this feeling that we were going to be University graduates.”57 The rules of the ladies’ college were plentiful and applied to a growing range of activities in wartime: women were not allowed in the library

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after 4:00 p.m.; women needed permission from home to have their hair cut; women were not permitted to recline in unsuitable attitudes on the grounds; and, in 1915, women were restricted from visiting Amherst due to the presence of large numbers of soldiers.58 In their interactions with the vice-principal, the Women’s Student Council steadily chipped away at these restrictions, extending hours and challenging curfews. Women undergraduates won some concessions, but there were limitations on the places where they could go. In an ironic consequence of the earlier campaign of Harriet Stewart and Bessie Narroway to wear academic dress, the cap and gown made women undergraduates more noticeable, and they were required to wear their caps and gowns at all times so that they could be readily distinguished from the ladies’ college students.59 Bennett recalled how they would sneak into the movie house downtown – forbidden to university and ladies’ college students alike – by hiding their caps and gowns behind the counter of a nearby drugstore, and then sliding into their seats in the theatre when the lights were out.60 The Argosy reflected this spirit and adopted a new tone as more women joined the editorial staff; the newspaper reflected on women’s right to vote, their role during the war and responsibility in ensuring peace, as well as publishing the speeches given by women valedictorians for the graduating classes of both 1917 and 1918.61 After the war, administrators at Mount Allison remained uneasy about the supervision of women undergraduates. In 1920, a separate residence for university women, Allison Hall, was established off campus in rented space in a former hotel; in 1925, the residence was moved into a larger hotel building in Sackville. When Allison Hall opened, the university created the position of dean of women to manage the residence, oversee the academic progress of all university women, and help plan and chaperone social events.62 Edith Beatty Liddy, the first dean of women, had attended the Ontario Medical College for Women, and had been the medical superintendent of the Grace Hospital in Toronto before her marriage to R.B. Liddy, a professor of psychology at Mount Allison. Liddy lived at Allison Hall with her husband until 1925, when she was replaced by Alice E. Ryder. As dean of women, Liddy served in an advisory capacity on the

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Women’s Student Council and often acted as a mediator between the students and the university over matters of discipline.63 More serious disruptions emerged at the University of Toronto, where women students in residence clashed with authorities at both Victoria and University College. By the war years, Toronto had become a large, diverse university, with faculties of applied science and engineering, medicine, forestry, education, and household science. In addition to University College, Toronto’s federated arts colleges now included Victoria (1890), Trinity (1904), and St Michael’s (1910). After Victoria had relocated to its new campus in Toronto in 1892, the alumnae had joined other Methodist women to campaign for a women’s residence. Funded by $50,000 bequeathed by Hart Massey, Annesley Hall opened in 1903 with Margaret Addison, a graduate of 1889, as the first dean of residence.64 Addison regarded self-government as a good training ground for character development. In her report in 1905, Addison noted that the students were less studious and more boisterous than they had been the year before, yet hoped that after four years at Annesley they would become “actively Christian, womanly, and courteous,” in the same way that an Oxford degree was a guarantee that a man was a gentleman.65 In 1906, Victoria students formed the Annesley Student Government Association, and Addison helped them prepare the house committee’s constitution and rules of conduct. She welcomed the opening of the University Settlement House south of the college in 1910, and was pleased to see residents volunteering to work among the poor in immigrant neighbourhoods. While Addison trusted that social service would instill higher principles, she still was disappointed by the moral qualities of her students, believing they had been coarsened by the plethora of activities available on campus. She found that her position as dean of residence lacked true authority, and her frustration was exacerbated by interference from the committee of management led by Margaret Burwash, the wife of the chancellor.66 In spite of Addison’s defence of women’s self-government, administrators had their doubts about what went on at Annesley. The students for their part regarded Addison as more than sufficiently

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This photo of residents and staff at Annesley Hall, Victoria College, Toronto, was probably taken in 1908, and includes Kathleen Cowan (sitting on fourth step on right) and Margaret Addison, the dean (sitting on fifth step, third from left). In her diary, Cowan described her frequent clashes with Addison over residence rules, and kept careful note of all the men who asked her to skate at the Victoria rink. “Went skating and had a lovely time, the air was so fresh,” she wrote in March 1909. “Mr Rumball did not favour me though I wish he had.”

strict. In a diary of her residence life at Annesley from 1907 to 1910, Kathleen Cowan portrayed Addison as a stickler for rules, recording that their introductory meeting “turned out to be a lecture on must and must-nots.”67 Cowan was a sociable first-year student, and resented the early curfew at Annesley. Both Cowan and her brother were indignant, for example, when Addison forbade her from going out to an evening concert with a young man whom she had met at a

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college reception, in spite of the fact that her father had sent a letter giving his approval.68 Nathanael Burwash saw things differently, and in 1911 wrote a stern letter to Addison. “I am told that many students have the habit of sitting up and visiting in their rooms until 12 o’clock at night,” he stated, “that students are allowed the privilege of going out on visits every night in the week, and that students have gone to dances without a chaperone and to dances probably the character and conduct of which we know nothing, and have come in as late as 2 o’clock in the morning.”69 Burwash’s concerns were taken seriously by the Victoria senate, which then conducted an intense review of the system of student government in Annesley Hall. Although the senate upheld women’s self-government with only minor changes, Margaret Burwash and Nathanael Burwash refused to sign the resulting agreement with the students. The matter dragged on into 1912, and a second commission was appointed, this time to investigate new charges that Annesley students had attended theatres and dances late into the night. Following a vigorous defence from Addison, in which she meticulously documented the residents’ attendance at plays and dances, the Victoria senate once again supported the students. Nathanael Burwash resigned as chancellor shortly afterward, and a year later Margaret Burwash left the committee of management.70 Women’s student government continued to be controversial at Victoria. In 1913, the Women’s Literary Society took exception to the way in which the Student Board of Control ruled in matters relating to women. The literary society passed a resolution requesting a separate women’s council, referring to Annesley Hall as proof of the ability of women undergraduates to manage their own affairs. They were successful, and the following year the university agreed to the creation of the Victoria College Women’s Council, later the Women’s Undergraduate Association of Victoria College, entrusted with the management of all matters concerning the conduct and activities of the women students.71 Addison continued to worry about the “flighty” elements of coeducation. “They toboggan, and nearly break their pretty heads,” she wrote in 1915, “they snow-shoe in the moonlight, and nearly break their dear hearts; while the band on the rink

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lures them out at least two nights a week. In vain I storm within, but nobody seems to sympathize with me much.”72 During the war, Addison’s reports acquired a darker tone. In 1917, she noted that women students were restless, “showing a wholesome dissatisfaction with many institutions which they have before accepted without query.”73 In 1921, members of the Victoria Women’s Literary Society discussed their exclusion from key positions in student governance – what they termed “the subject of coeducation” – resolving that the principal offices on the Acta Victoriana board, such as that of editor and business manager, should be open to women as well as men.74 Similar problems arose at Queen’s Hall, another residence for women attending the University of Toronto. Queen’s Hall had been opened in 1905 by alumnae and other friends of University College, with meagre funds, and occupied a series of shabby and makeshift houses close to campus.75 The University College council had placed Queen’s Hall under the management of a dean, but like Addison, her responsibility was limited to the women in residence, and she found herself increasingly in conflict with their student government. Following the tradition of self-government in the Women’s Literary Society, the Queen’s Hall residents had established a house committee to oversee discipline. In 1914, the dean of Queen’s Hall, Mrs John Campbell, resigned her position following a disagreement with the house committee over her decision to expel a student.76 At the time, The Varsity noted perceptively that the constitution of the self-government association at Queen’s Hall was far too vague, and the students’ powers needed to be clearly defined in relation to those of the dean.77 Campbell’s successor, Louise Livingstone, a former headmistress in Britain, attempted to work with the house committee to enforce rules and diffuse the growing rivalry of sororities and cliques. By the end of the war, Queen’s Hall had developed a reputation for loose behaviour and lax discipline. Mossie May Waddington Kirkwood, who served as dean of women in the 1920s, later commented, “the Queen’s Hall lot were thought to be rather gay, you see.”78 The deteriorating situation during the war was aggravated by the fact that authority over women students was divided between the dean of Queen’s Hall, on the one hand, and the dean of women at University

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College, on the other. In 1916, Margaret Wrong was appointed to the position of lady resident of the new University College Women’s Union – the position’s title would change to dean of women in 1926 – with the responsibility for supervising the behaviour and academic progress of all women undergraduates at University College, as well as for running the Women’s Union. Wrong was a lecturer in history at the University of Toronto. She had been an undergraduate at University College before leaving to attend Somerville College, Oxford.79 Before Wrong’s appointment, University College had retained the position of lady superintendent, held for over thirty years by Letitia Salter. Salter’s principle duties had been to oversee the women’s common room and chaperone students at college events. Agnes MacGillivray remembered being greeted warmly by Salter, who had known her mother as a student, and was still occupying a small office in the east wing of University College.80 As Salter approached retirement, the alumnae had campaigned for the creation of the position of dean of women, arguing that an academic leader who could teach as well as provide guidance to students was needed. Many alumnae, however, did not support the appointment of Margaret Wrong. This division was rooted in lingering animosity to her father, George M. Wrong, who in 1909 had led a controversial senate campaign to move women at the University of Toronto out of the faculty of arts and into a separate women’s college, affiliated with the faculty of household science.81 Margaret Wrong struggled to fulfill the expectations that she would demonstrate academic leadership. The Women’s Union provided a social centre and dining room, particularly for those students who lived in boarding houses rather than in residence at Queen’s Hall. In addition to providing academic counselling, Wrong was expected to investigate boarding houses, chaperon parties, and regulate sororities, as well as direct the activities of the Women’s Union, including meals in the dining room, the operation of the library, and use of the rooms by student clubs and societies.82 Wrong believed that her authority was undermined by housekeeping duties. In 1917, her title was changed to resident head, but she insisted that it ought to be dean of women, and another staff member should be appointed as housekeeper.83 “The Union is regarded as the centre for the women of the college,” she

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pointed out in 1921, “and the Head is looked upon by them as a Dean of Women would be in an American College.”84 Early in 1919, the tensions over self-government among residence women reached a crisis point. In January, the entire student house committee at Queen’s Hall resigned after a confrontation with Livingstone over discipline. The principal of University College, Maurice Hutton, and the council decided to intervene. They instituted stringent regulations for Queen’s Hall residents, including restrictions on late leaves to attend theatres, public dance halls, and restaurants in the city. This in turn sparked protest from women students. Arguing that the arbitrary transfer of power from the house committee to Livingstone had undermined student government, the Queen’s Hall students abolished their own association, refusing to enforce laws that were not of their own legislation.85 The senior students then sent a long letter of protest to the University of Toronto president, Robert Falconer, objecting that the actions of Hutton and the University College council “had taken away self-government by the abolition of one of its functions, the making of laws.”86 Sensing a threat to the principle of self-government for all undergraduates, The Varsity strongly supported the Queen’s Hall students, commenting, “The meeting decided that if the Council insisted upon passing rules obnoxious to the whole body of University women, they would have to enforce them themselves.”87 What The Varsity termed “The Insurrection of Women” mobilized support from undergraduates across the university, and motivated women to create a university-wide system of self-government that went beyond college or program associations.88 In 1919, the Women Students’ Administrative Council of the University of Toronto was established by students enrolled in the four arts colleges – University College, Victoria, St Hilda’s at Trinity, Loretto and St Joseph’s at St Michael’s – as well as in social service, education, and medicine. The new council successfully petitioned the senate to have a compulsory annual fee levied on all women students, with the goal of achieving joint financial responsibility with the Men’s Student Administrative Council in the publication of The Varsity and the student yearbook, Torontonensis.89

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“The Insurrection of the Women,” The Varsity, 24 March 1919. The Varsity supported the protests of women at Queen’s Hall, arguing that they upheld the important principle of the right of all undergraduates to democratic self-government.

For the new deans of women, however, the behaviour at Queen’s Hall not only challenged discipline within the residences but also threatened to overturn the gains women had made in the university. The women heads of Annesley Hall, St Hilda’s, Queen’s Hall, and household science, as well as of the women’s unions at University

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College and Victoria, immediately convened a committee to discuss a university-wide policy for dealing with the seemingly rebellious attitude of students, what Addison referred to “an undercurrent of discontent.”90 The committee unanimously passed resolutions urging Falconer to curb social activities among students, and to restrict women undergraduates from being downtown late in the evenings in the dance halls and restaurants. Following a subsequent meeting attended by Falconer and college administrators, the president agreed that all women students across the university were to be forbidden to attend dance halls outside the campus.91 University College severed its affiliation with Queen’s Hall in 1919, the council declaring it was no longer responsible for its discipline, and established another women’s residence, Hutton House, in connection with the Women’s Union. To underline what the principal and council regarded as the failure of self-government at Queen’s Hall, they placed Hutton House directly under Margaret Wrong’s control without any student house committee.92 Wrong remained apprehensive about the conduct of women students, particularly those who lived at Queen’s Hall, which continued as a women’s residence of the University of Toronto without college affiliation until 1930. She warned the University College council that graduates teaching in schools outside Toronto were concerned about poor standards in residence, that the powers of discipline of student government were ineffectual, and that the standards of university dances were below those of public dances in the city. The Alumnae Association agreed with Wrong, claiming in its submission to the Royal Commission on University Finances in 1921 that conditions for women both in residence and in rooming houses were highly unfavourable to their proper development as future community leaders. The alumnae increased their fundraising efforts to build a large women’s residence at University College, a project that resulted in the opening of Whitney Hall in 1930.93 Women students at Toronto were divided into factions over the issue of self-government; Kirkwood recorded that during these years, there was a strong antagonism between residents at Hutton House and those at Queen’s Hall, and the two groups hardly spoke to each other

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Four women undergraduates at Victoria College, Toronto, circa 1920. After the war, Margaret Addison, dean of women, observed a new tendency to challenge rules among students, which she put down to a spirit of restlessness and discontent. Like E. Margaret Lowe at Dalhousie, Addison became concerned in particular with the unruly behaviour of the younger women entering university.

when they met.94 Disillusioned with student government, Margaret Wrong resigned in 1921. Noting that the friction between Queen’s Hall and other students was very marked, she stated that her work was wasted under such conditions and urged that steps be taken immediately “to control the behaviour of women students in the public buildings of the University.”95

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In the wake of the Queen’s Hall controversy, administrators at Victoria also tried to bring women undergraduates under closer supervision. As Addison had expected, in 1919 the Annesley students reacted strongly to the news of the university-wide restriction on attending dance halls off campus. Addison agreed to a series of meetings where she listened to student leaders, and they negotiated modifications to the residence rules, including permission to go out with men in the evenings, eat at restaurants, and attend university dances.96 The Victoria board of regents launched an investigation into the troubles, and decided that all women students, whether or not they lived in residence, needed to be placed under the authority of a dean of women. The dean was to be a member of the faculty and accountable to the university rather than to the committee of management. In 1920, Margaret Addison was appointed the first dean of women, with the responsibility of advising undergraduates in their social and religious activities, supervising life in the dormitories, dining hall, and common rooms, and representing Victoria in university women’s associations. The expansion of Addison’s role coincided with a growth in enrolment, and in 1925, Victoria opened a second residence, named Wymilwood, which also served as a student union and dining hall for women living off campus.97 From the perspective of administrators at Victoria, as at University College, Queen’s, Acadia, and Mount Allison, the primary task of the new deans of women would be to restore discipline and moral character damaged by the war years.

Training Women for Democracy During the 1920s, the creation of a women’s residence on campus, and the appointment of a dean of women to act in loco parentis, became a common institutional development at Canadian universities. Hilda Laird, dean of women at Queen’s, explained that her responsibility was to ensure both the physical and the moral health of the women in residence. “The students were left in our care, and we were responsible to the parents for them as well as being responsible to the university for them,” she recalled. “But first of all, responsible to the parents, for their health, moral as well as physical, you see.”98

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This sweeping mandate required the dean to work alongside nonacademic staff, including nutritionists and health-care professionals, to improve the living conditions of women students.99 The deans of women were all university graduates and had experienced self-government themselves as undergraduates. The stresses of the war years had sparked conflict over this privilege, and the advances of alumnae seemed precarious in light of undergraduates’ fondness for late hours and dancing. Deans often found it difficult to reconcile their responsibility for moral regulation with their own faith in the importance of student government. Yet for a number of deans of women, the changes of the postwar period provided an opportunity to enlarge students’ view of public life, to accommodate women’s new role as educated citizens who would need to use their vote consciously. This development reflected the growing influence of progressive education among Canadian educators, as provincial policy makers explored curricula changes at the elementary and secondary levels, which encouraged students to internalize self-regulation as an essential component of training in democracy.100 In this expanded view, the deans shifted the more familiar emphasis on public speaking and organizational skills to encompass a much larger vision of selfgovernment as a training ground for participatory democracy. At the University of Manitoba, the first dean of women students, Ursilla N. Macdonnell, was appointed in 1920 with the task of overseeing the academic, social, and athletic activities of all women, a position she would hold until 1944. This appointment was the result of sweeping institutional change early in the century that gradually reduced the role of the denominational colleges and encouraged the rise of university-wide student activities. Administrators were engaged in a prolonged debate over the relationship between the colleges and the university, the introduction of new, more practical disciplines such as pharmacy and engineering, and, most controversially, the physical site of the expanding campus.101 For women, after 1910 this interest in vocational training resulted in the establishment of the department of home economics within the new Manitoba Agricultural College, affiliated with the university and located at Fort Garry, south of the downtown. In 1912, the agricultural

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college opened the first facilities at Manitoba intended specifically for women, including a residence, lounge, gymnasium, and swimming pool, located nearby in the east end of Taché Hall. Home economics students were isolated from other women undergraduates, and even from the men taking agriculture on the other side of Taché Hall, and their separation encouraged independence; they elected their own government and formed their own literary society, basketball, and hockey teams.102 In 1914, Manitoba College disbanded its faculty of arts and moved its entire teaching staff over to the University of Manitoba. Wesley started on a similar plan of action, but in response to students’ vigorous protests against what Vox Wesleyana termed “the factory type of a university,” the board decided to reinstate the college’s right to teach arts.103 By the outbreak of war, undergraduates in arts at the University of Manitoba had been organized into a single administrative unit, designated Varsity Arts, and in 1915 they cooperated with students in science, engineering, and pharmacy to organize a central student government, the University of Manitoba Students’ Association, known after 1919 as the Students’ Union.104 Students at Manitoba College had already decided in 1912 to unite the men’s and women’s literary societies. Although individual college organizations for both women and men continued, the Students’ Union attempted to represent the entire university, and it administered two new publications, The Manitoban and the ’Varsity Year Book, renamed Brown and Gold in 1920. The student government was coeducational – after the reorganization, women served on the governing council, as well as on the staffs of The Manitoban and Year Book – and women in addition chose to develop their own university societies. A university branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association already existed, and in 1915 Varsity Arts members formed the University Co-Ed Society, named Eko-le-la in 1917, which coordinated freshette initiation, social events, and athletics, including tennis, basketball, curling, and hockey. In 1922, women voted to formalize this drift back to separate student government, founding the Women’s Council, later the Women’s Committee, to oversee their own athletic and social affairs at the University of Manitoba.105

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The Ladies’ Hockey Team, Wesley College, University of Manitoba, circa 1919. Ilo McHaffie ( fourth from left) enthusiastically embraced college activities, playing on the basketball, curling, and hockey teams, serving on the dramatics executive, and in her senior year, as lady stick on the college student council. Women student leaders at all universities turned their attention to the lack of athletic facilities and campaigned for access to gymnasiums.

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The construction of women’s residences was delayed by the ongoing negotiations between the denominational colleges and the university. Apart from the home economics residence in Taché Hall at the new Fort Garry site, the majority of women undergraduates attended the arts colleges downtown and were scattered throughout the city in boarding houses. Vox Wesleyana and Manitoba College Journal often raised the students’ concerns over the expense and inconvenience of these arrangements, and urged the college boards to provide residences for women.106 Administrators were hesitant to approve new building projects at a time when the future of the university seemed uncertain, and as was now common elsewhere, the initiative fell to the volunteer efforts of alumnae, faculty wives, and prominent churchwomen. At Manitoba College, the Women’s Auxiliary successfully raised enough funds in 1920 to open their own Ladies’ Residence on Kennedy Street, which was placed under the supervision of Edna Sutherland, who also taught voice culture and reading at Manitoba College.107 At Wesley College, a group of women representing the various Methodist churches in Winnipeg took the lead. Using the Women’s Educational Association of Victoria in Toronto as a model, in 1915, they created the Wesley College Women’s Association, and, with the approval of the board, opened the Ladies’ Residence in a large house on Broadway. Members of the association formed a board of management and hired a faculty member in modern languages, Mary C. Rowell, to serve as dean of residence. Like the women in Taché Hall, Wesley students pursued self-government, and formed a house committee, chaired by a head girl who was elected by the residents. In 1917, as the enrolment of men declined due to enlistment, the Wesley board decided to close the Ladies’ Residence as a costcutting measure, and the women were moved into Sparling Hall on campus, a new building originally constructed before the war. After 1920, Sparling Hall offered meals for men students, who ate with the women in a common dining room. While this innovation was extremely popular among the students, it prompted the resignation of Mary Rowell as dean of residence. As Ilo McHaffie’s photographs show, Sparling Hall provided women at Wesley with space where

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Ilo McHaffie (back row, third from left) and other students of the class of 1920 at a Thanksgiving dinner, Wesley College, 13 October 1919. “Let there be boys and there were boys and they did feast and drink in Sparling Hall and lo, the girls were glad and saw that it was good,” commented Vox Wesleyana.

they could freely pursue friendships and enjoy each other’s company at late-night suppers, sporting events, and parties.108 The appointment of Ursilla Macdonnell as dean of women of the University of Manitoba was intended to encourage an esprit de corps among women students beyond the denominational colleges and the strengthening of the institutional identity of the university as the central teaching body. Macdonnell, who had a PhD in history from Queen’s, received a teaching appointment in the history department, as well as the position of dean, and a salary considerably above that of other women faculty.109 Although Macdonnell’s duties included acting as chaperone at dances and parties and accompanying athletic teams on the road, she believed that university women should have sufficient self-control to regulate their own behaviour. Working closely with the Students’ Union Women’s Committee,

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Macdonnell discouraged the more degrading physical forms of firstyear initiation, and was pleased to report in 1925 that both arts and medicine had reformed their proceedings. In her matter-of-fact and often terse annual reports, Macdonnell urged the board of governors to provide better rest rooms, cafeterias, and lounges. The dean steadily supported democratic student government as a response to concerns about women’s conduct, and seems to have accepted the excesses of coeducational youth culture in the 1920s with a rare degree of equanimity.110 In her report in 1924, Macdonnell wrote that the only guarantee of good conduct was to have students who respected themselves and valued the university’s reputation. She told the board bluntly, “No rule can ever be invented which cannot and will not be evaded.”111 At McMaster, the creation of a dean of women position coincided with the establishment of the first women’s residence, Wallingford Hall, in 1920. Previously, some undergraduates had lived at the affiliated Moulton College, but the majority had been required to find rooms in boarding houses in Toronto. Wallingford Hall was opened by the Alumnae Association in a renovated house several blocks from campus, after a donation from the wealthy pork-packer William Davies.112 The McMaster board appointed Ellen Freeman Trotter as dean of Wallingford Hall, with responsibility for exercising authority over all women undergraduates studying at McMaster, as well as for maintaining discipline in the residence. The memorandum between the board and the alumnae stipulated, “The Dean shall also have general supervision and chaperonage of the women students of the University not in residence.”113 Ellen Freeman had attended Acadia’s Horton Academy, then Wellesley College, and served as lady principal of Woodstock College before her marriage to Thomas Trotter, a theology professor at McMaster.114 In 1910, McMaster women had formed a self-governing council – known somewhat awkwardly as the Women’s Student Body – representing the Women’s Literary Society, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Women’s Athletic Association, and each of the class executives. The students moving into Wallingford Hall immediately turned their attention to creating a constitution for student government, electing a house

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committee and president, and preparing a series of regulations regarding curfew, telephone duty, monitors, and social functions.115 As the new dean, Trotter attempted to bridge the gap between the women who lived in residence at Wallingford Hall and those who lived off campus in boarding houses. Most women’s meetings and social events were held in the ladies’ room at McMaster Hall, the centre for off-campus students, rather than at Wallingford Hall. The dean made an effort to invite non-resident women to afternoon teas in the reception room at Wallingford, and to attend events herself at McMaster Hall. She also invited McMaster students to hold their events at Wallingford, such as the crowded lecture by Emmeline Pankhurst on sexual health and the dangers of venereal disease, presented by the Women’s Student Body in 1921.116 As her annual reports reveal, Trotter had difficulty creating a formal role among the undergraduates in general, and most of her activities were directed toward regulating the behaviour of the thirty-odd students actually living in residence.117 In 1930, McMaster relocated from Toronto to the city of Hamilton, and women students moved into a purpose-built residence on the new campus, which retained the name Wallingford Hall. That year, the board appointed Marjorie Carpenter, a graduate in classics and medieval history from Missouri, to serve as dean of women and part-time lecturer in classics. At the new Wallingford Hall, Carpenter introduced more opportunities for men and women to socialize informally, such as coeducational dining and bonfires, and she hosted musicales and student club meetings in the common rooms. Carpenter kept a very close watch on the moral conduct of university women, making sure that she was always present and visible when men were visiting the residence.118 At Dalhousie, similarly, a dean’s position was created in conjunction with the establishment of a new women’s residence, Shirreff Hall. In 1923, E. Margaret Lowe, a Toronto graduate, was appointed adviser to women students and first warden of Shirreff Hall, as well as parttime lecturer in French and English.119 The movement for a women’s residence had started in 1909, when the Alumnae Association had been formed to fundraise for a residence. In 1912, the alumnae had renovated a house, Forrest Hall, and Eliza Ritchie, the alumnae

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president, had taken on the job of its first warden. In addition to managing the house, Ritchie had devoted time to establishing selfgovernment among the students. An early graduate of Dalhousie, Ritchie had earned a PhD at Cornell, and taught philosophy for ten years at Wellesley College, yet in spite of her academic qualifications, her authority over women students had not extended beyond the small residence. Ritchie had served as warden only for the first year of the new venture.120 Many Dalhousie women had continued to live unsupervised in boarding houses, and Forrest Hall and its successor, Marlborough House, had occupied rented houses. The alumnae’s long-term objective had been to convince the university to proceed with a purpose-built women’s residence on campus, and the project had been advanced by a large donation from Jennie Shirreff Eddy.121 Like Trotter, Margaret Lowe was required to exert authority over all women at the university, and the creation of Shirreff Hall was designed to end the problem of women living independently in boarding houses. While there was no regulation preventing men from living off campus, beginning in 1923 Dalhousie’s Calendar stipulated that except in very unusual circumstances, all women students not living with their parents had to live in residence.122 In 1930, reflecting on her years at Dalhousie, Lowe observed that democratic values were inherent to self-government, causing women students to develop a healthy sense of honour and social responsibility in their public life. She concluded, “They also go out after graduation better prepared to take responsibility if they have begun in their senior years in college.”123 At Western, Ruby C.E. Mason, a graduate of Toronto, was appointed the first dean of women in 1926, with additional teaching duties in the department of English. Mason had extensive experience as a dean of women at the universities of Indiana and Illinois. When she started at Western, Mason believed her most urgent task was the formation of a women’s residence. Some Western women lived at Ursuline College; the majority, though, found boarding houses in the city of London.124 The movement for a women’s residence at Western had been hampered by the fact that the university had only graduated a small number of women in the prewar period, and the

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ranks of alumnae were thin. In 1909, the alumnae had joined forces with undergraduate women to form the Woman’s Club, shortly after renamed the Alumnae Association. During its early years, the Alumnae Association had functioned like a literary and debating society for both graduates and students. Then in 1918, it had been reorganized for alumnae only, and its activities had become focused on fundraising for a residence.125 After the war, the enrolment of women in arts at Western had increased rapidly. This was largely due to the decision of the provincial department of education in 1919 to recognize Western’s honours degrees, giving graduates the standing of specialists, an important recognition if they wished to teach in Ontario’s public high schools or collegiate institutes.126 In 1920– 21, for example, the registrar reported that the total enrolment at Western was 530 students (excluding the medical school where only four women were enrolled) and 45 per cent were women.127 Women’s enrolment also had been encouraged by the affiliation of Ursuline College in 1919, and the relocation of the arts campus northwest of the city in 1924.128 Mason believed that self-government was an integral part of the undergraduate experience because it trained women for their public roles in a democratic society. She actively promoted the establishment of a women’s residence not only to bring women under closer supervision but because it would provide an ideal opportunity for self-government, something she felt was lacking at Western. “Residence life develops group loyalty,” she explained in 1928, “contributes to character building through developing capacity for team work, evolves a sense of social responsibility, directs energies into socially acceptable channels, offers recognition for tasks successfully performed, and induces forte for leadership.”129 As dean of women, one of Mason’s first acts was to encourage her students to establish the Undergraduate Women’s Organization to oversee women’s activities on campus. In 1920, the Students’ Council, later renamed the Students’ Administrative Assembly, had been formed to administer discipline and regulate undergraduate conduct. The Students’ Council had been officially coeducational, yet always headed by a man, the prefect; the sub-prefect and senior girl managed

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matters relating to women. Mason also turned her attention to a range of issues for women students, organizing first-aid rooms in the buildings, regulating the introduction of sororities, and creating strict guidelines that men and women might not live in the same boarding houses.130 Mason continued to campaign for a women’s residence, arguing that it would allow students to acquire the team building and leadership skills necessary for democratic participation. In 1928, frustrated by the lack of university funding for the project, Mason herself opened a small residence, Alpha House, in her own home off campus, and a year later, established a second residence nearby named Beta Hall. Together, the two houses accommodated only forty students and suffered from underfunding.131 In spite of Mason’s high esteem for student government, the residents seem to have found her supervision too restrictive. In 1930, the president of Western, W. Sherwood Fox, suggested to her, “the girls who reside in [Beta Hall] must be given a greater measure of independence and responsibility than was accorded them last year.”132 Both residences closed in 1932, when Mason resigned her position due to ill health, and a permanent women’s residence was not provided at Western until Spencer Hall was opened in 1951.133 These institutional developments were even more delayed at the University of New Brunswick, where the first women’s residence and dean of women position were not established until after the Second World War. From the beginning, the university had adopted a policy of frugality in respect to the accommodation of women, and they continued to use the original ladies’ reading room on the second floor of the arts building until the 1950s. The Young Ladies’ Literary Society had been formed in 1894, and it managed the concerns of women undergraduates, holding first-year receptions, campaigning to raise funds, and overseeing the use of the Ladies’ Reading Room. “The Ladies’ Society is the chief functioning ladies’ organization of the college,” The Brunswickan announced in 1927, “and comprises every female member of the university.”134 Women’s self-government remained separate from the men’s Students’ Union, organized in 1914 and renamed the Students’ Representative Council in 1933. Although women paid compulsory

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fees to the Students’ Union, the executive were all men, and it was not until 1938 that the first woman was appointed to serve as vicepresident. Women were excluded from the traditional “burning of Anna” ceremony, when second-year men would ritually burn their analytical geometry textbook, but in 1926, the women performed their own mock funeral by setting fire to the hated text in a baby carriage.135 The Associated Alumnae, founded in 1910, collaborated with the undergraduate Ladies’ Society during the 1920s to campaign for a women’s residence, planning fundraising activities, such as the evening of musical entertainment held in a downtown theatre in Fredericton in 1927. In 1930, the university created a men’s residence, Lady Beaverbrook Residence, with money donated by the financier Lord Beaverbrook; no accommodation was made for women until 1949, when the Maggie Jean Chestnut House, also donated by Beaverbrook, was opened by the Associated Alumnae. New Brunswick did not appoint a dean of women until 1960.136 The deans of women walked a tightrope, necessarily balancing the expectations of the administrators who hired them with those of the students they supervised. This balancing act was particularly difficult at universities where wartime strains had created lingering resistance among women students. At Queen’s, Caroline McNeill retired in 1925, and Hilda Laird was appointed dean of women, with the responsibility of running Ban Righ Hall, the new women’s residence and union, as well as supervising the academic and social life of undergraduates. Laird had graduated from Queen’s in 1918 and later taught as a lecturer in German. She established an elected council of students to manage discipline within Ban Righ Hall, and invited Levana and the other women’s associations to move to the residence, where she personally attended their meetings and social functions. As dean of women until 1934, Laird attempted to strengthen the administrative functions of student government, but she frequently sparred with students over matters of curfews, smoking, and men visiting.137 Laird was challenged by senior students, in particular, who had experienced more freedom in the old residences off campus. As Sybil Spencer MacLachlan remembered, “when we were seniors at Ban Righ, we were not very cooperative

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with the Dean because the rules just seemed so unreasonable.”138 By the late 1920s, Laird had introduced regulations increasing the supervision of women boarding off campus and requiring all firstyear women students under the age of twenty-five and away from their families to live in the university residence, a regulation not applied to men students.139 At Mount Allison, Marion Machum Bennett, who served as dean of women from 1929 to 1942, also had great respect for the ideal of women’s self-government, and tried to effect gradual change by ensuring that the Women’s Student Council and the dean worked together. Many of the restrictions undergraduates had experienced living at the Mount Allison Ladies’ College survived the war and the move to Allison Hall. Well into the 1930s, university women were forbidden from walking home from the library or a restaurant accompanied by a man. As at Dalhousie, all women students at Mount Allison were required to stay in residence under the supervision of the dean of women unless they lived with their parents or other relatives.140 At the University of Toronto, following Margaret Wrong’s resignation in 1921, Mossie May Waddington Kirkwood was appointed resident head of the University College Women’s Union. Kirkwood had a PhD in philosophy and taught English at both Trinity and University College. She agreed to the appointment only on the condition that her authority was strengthened by the hiring of a dietician to manage the housekeeping. In 1926, Kirkwood’s title was changed to dean of women at University College, a role she held until 1929, and in 1936, she became principal of St Hilda’s College and dean of women at Trinity.141 Kirkwood faced the challenges of the divided university by trying to revitalize women’s student government. She had always been a strong advocate for deans of women, believing that they could serve a crucial leadership role in training students to participate in selfgovernment. “Through our Deans of Women, the best ideas and noblest ideals of other universities are imparted to the student body,” Kirkwood wrote in 1913. “These are being worked into the fabric of our college societies, the development of our student government and the strength of our public opinion.”142 Her first actions at University

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College were designed to encourage unity and get first-year students involved. She collaborated with the Women’s Undergraduate Association to introduce a new system of class executives and to ensure notices of athletic games, literary debates, and club meetings were posted in all the residences. Maintaining that senior students had a particular role to play in promoting fellowship, Kirkwood urged upper-year women to enrich the life of the whole by fostering a sense of cohesion and responsibility in the college.143 In her 1925 report, Kirkwood explained the value she saw in selfgovernment: “The College societies severally teach people human nature, train their members to express themselves with ease, give them experience of business, help them to work with other people harmoniously – and all together they promote that cohesion and unity which should be the heart of the College.”144 In 1938, Kirkwood published a summary of her reflections, “On Government in College,” in which she argued that the trend in contemporary academic institutions was democratic, and one of the most valuable aspects of a college experience was that it introduced students to questions connected with law and government. “At first it may be that participation in students affairs amounts to no more than bewildered voting for class officials, or taking part in the humble duties assigned to freshmen in some colleges,” she noted. “Later it may mean hard work on committees, or as a class president, or as a senior who conscientiously uses her influence and example in maintaining decent standards of work in her dormitory.”145

 The unrest among women undergraduates during the war was problematic for the new deans of women. The success of women’s student government had been premised on self-discipline, and the demands of young women for greater freedom seemed more and more antithetical to maintaining their fragile gains in academia. The deans themselves were academic women seeking careers within the universities, and often the price of a faculty position was the expectation that they take on the additional role of supervising

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students and running residences. Alice Vibert Douglas, dean of women at Queen’s from 1939 to 1959, had an international reputation as a scientist, one former student noted, but spent much of her time on more mundane duties: “She was a brilliant astrophysicist, but as a student I remember her doing all kinds of daily tasks, such as counting towels in women’s residences.”146 Deans of women tackled the conflicting demands of their position, caught between the imperatives of controlling students’ behaviour and their own conviction that self-government was an essential part of the undergraduate experience. While the provision of residential space undoubtedly was an advantage for women, the deans were expected to enforce regulations that were significantly different from those applied to men and had the effect of setting their students apart from the mainstream of undergraduate life. In the quickening social environment of the 1920s, what the deans regarded as an attraction to pleasure was viewed by many women as an assertion of their right, like men, to use self-government to extend the limits of their campus experience. Margaret Wrong gave up on student discipline altogether, but most deans of women adopted a more flexible approach, condoning a greater degree of freedom while seeking to inspire their students to higher standards of academic accomplishment, social responsibility, and group loyalty. Ursilla Macdonnell, Margaret Lowe, and Mossie May Kirkwood, deans who worked with student government to encourage progressive democratic values, exemplified the process at its best. By doing so, these deans were able to develop an expanded view of student government that emphasized the role of university women as voting citizens in a participatory democracy. The anxieties surrounding women students were magnified by their numerical prominence during the war years and by the perception that their activism for self-government was linked to the broader movement for women’s suffrage. Over the next decade, the numbers of young women marching to their graduation ceremonies would continue to grow. For opponents of coeducation, these images would come to symbolize the impact of the Great War on university life, a visual reminder of the decay of academic vitality during the

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(5.8)

J.L. Sheard, “The Last Man,” in Stan. Murray and Jos. Sheard, Varsity in Cartoon (Toronto: Bryant Press [1910]). Sheard and Murray were staff artists for The Varsity in 1909–10. This cartoon reflects the controversial debates over the feminization of arts sparked by George M. Wrong’s report to the University of Toronto senate recommending that all women undergraduates be moved from the faculty of arts into a new separate College for Women.

war years. Yet these fears reached back to an earlier period. Before the war, a student cartoonist at the University of Toronto had foreshadowed just such a development. The cartoon, “The Last Man,” pictured a procession of women in cap and gown – swanlike in their superiority – escorted by one hapless and enfeebled man. The cartoon, which appeared in a collection entitled Varsity in Cartoon, was introduced by the comment, “Coy-Education – A Timid Forecast. Our artist in a moment of inspiration has depicted a class reception as seen by the prophetic eye.”147

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Toward Academic Separation Although there is ample opportunity for meeting in social functions, much of the intellectual activity which centres about the University is carried on entirely separately: literary, dramatic, athletic, historical and debating societies. “A Plea for Co-Education,” The Rebel, 1919

T

he first generation of reformers had pursued coeducation with single-minded determination, at times seeing it as a necessary evil; separate women’s colleges would never be equal, they argued, and though far from ideal, access to men’s universities had seemed to promise access to the same classes, the same professors, the same libraries, and the same degrees. The creation of women’s residences and the appointment of deans had many advantages for women, yet the support of alumnae carried some ambivalence as they started to recognize the threat to coeducation inherent to the creation of specialized space. The new residences on campus were built to look like distinct colleges – in many cases, they gave the appearance of being separate colleges – and quickly became the home for most of women’s undergraduate activities. While separate space had the positive impact of eroding their nebulous status as guests, it nevertheless contributed to the perception that women students

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were different. This sense of difference was accentuated by the rise of a seemingly hedonistic social life, one that forced the new image of the frivolous “co-ed” into the glare of public scrutiny. University professors and administrators often expressed their disapproval of student behaviour after the war, and were bewildered as they watched social activities multiply on campuses across the country. Young Canadians regarded themselves as belonging to a new age, and some asserted their modernity by dancing to jazz, smoking, or drinking gin. Advertisements prompted women to wear makeup and silk stockings, and to show their bodies in dresses designed to be light and revealing, while veterans returning from the war were less inclined to follow rules, claiming the freedom to smoke, drink, gamble, and dance.1 Denominational universities, such as McMaster, Mount Allison, and Victoria, attempted to hold back the wave – “How soon will we be allowed to dance?” one student asked impatiently in 19212 – but at most Canadian universities, students threw themselves into a steady round of social engagements. Many observers blamed coeducation in general, and women in particular, for the idleness of undergraduate culture, and the academic decline perceived to accompany it. In 1928, W.J. Loudon at Toronto was nostalgic about the first women graduates of the 1880s. “Take a look at those three Graces and compare them with the Furies of today,” he wrote. “I wonder what those three would say or do if they dropped, some night, down into Hart House when a dance was going on, or a swimming exhibition by the women students of the present day.”3 At Western, W.F. Tamblyn described the prewar innocence of the women’s activities in No. 6: “In their retreat above, the ladies were still making fudge in 1913. But by 1921 back-hair was passing away to join the wigs of the eighteenth century. Flappers were flapping even in University halls.”4 D.D. Calvin pursued a similar theme in his description of student life at Queen’s before the war. “Men and women students did not speak to each other in the College halls,” he explained. “The women students were covered from neck to heel in ‘blouse and skirt.’”5 For these contemporaries, the war had altered the undergraduate world in the same way it had produced a cataclysmic disruption; a “great gulf” as Robert Falconer termed it,6 in the social,

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political, and economic lives of all Canadians. The perception that young women largely were responsible, that they came to university solely to dance, was exacerbated by the assumption that they had grown overly prominent and assertive during the war years. The attacks on coeducation were entrenched in unresolved tensions dating from the first decades of women’s admission. By criticizing their behaviour, opponents were returning to much older arguments that women’s education should be separate and different from that of men. In response to the demand for professional education, a central aspect of this argument became the relationship of women to science, and the increasingly gendered distinction between science-based knowledge and skill-based technique. New professions that attracted large numbers of women, such as social work, were required to challenge the assumption that scientific knowledge was masculine and associated with theoretical disciplines, while occupational training for women gave priority to technical and applied skills.7 The 1920s represented a period of paradoxical change in women’s education, producing both an unprecedented degree of social contact between the sexes and a renewed emphasis on the need for academic separation. Historians have pointed out the resilience of prewar gender ideologies during the 1920s, and the importance of seeing continuity over transformation when assessing the impact of the First World War on Canadian society.8 Women undergraduates bore the brunt of criticism for the perceived shallowness of youth culture on campus, reviving long-standing anxieties that the integration of women into men’s universities would destroy moral and academic integrity in equal measure.

Attacks on Coeducation After several decades of coeducation, a growing number of academics in Canada began to maintain that the integration of women into men’s universities had been a failure, that arts faculties were becoming feminized, and that women required separate programs. As they canvassed other institutions, Canadian administrators hit a nerve of anxiety, uncovering similar movements underway internationally to move women out of the arts and into household science programs.

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Academics also were aware of the explosive tensions over women’s presence at Oxford and Cambridge during the interwar years. Women at Cambridge were denied the right to degrees in 1897 and again in 1921, and on both occasions the university’s decision was celebrated by mobs of undergraduate men. Although Oxford granted women degrees in 1920, by 1927 the numbers of women students admitted into the university had been limited by statute to about one-sixth that of the number of the men. Similar concerns were acted on at the University of New Zealand, which opened a department of home science in 1911 as a deliberate attempt to divert women students into technical subjects, at a time when the number of women earning ba degrees represented about 40 per cent of its graduates. 9 Although the publication of Sex in Education in no way limited the rapid spread of coeducation in the United States, Edward Clarke’s assessment of the dangers for women played a formative role in shaping their experience within those new institutions. Clarke had provided ample ammunition for those who believed that competition between the sexes was unsafe as well as unwise, and other prominent physicians continued to pressure administrators to make special accommodations for their women students.10 While Cornell University had become coeducational in 1872, after 1884 women were restricted by quotas from entering the professional programs and the sciences, and channeled instead into home economics. In 1902, after ten years of coeducation, the University of Chicago brought in a new policy, ultimately impractical, of offering segregated undergraduate classes in courses with high numbers of women. In 1907, the University of Wisconsin launched a campaign to force all women into separate classes, but the determined opposition of alumnae was successful in ensuring the continuation of coeducation. Women at the universities of Rochester and Pennsylvania also experienced attempts to move them out of men’s classes into separate programs.11 These tensions were evident even within the western land grant colleges, such as Iowa, Oregon, Nebraska, and Utah, where coeducation had been promoted as a progressive experiment and students had been encouraged to socialize and, ultimately, select their marriage partners from among

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their classmates. Andrea G. Radke-Moss notes that after 1900 the land-grant colleges experienced a significant drop in enthusiasm for coeducation due to fears of declining birth rates among middle-class women and concern that universities were becoming feminized.12 The first sustained attack on coeducation in Canada took place shortly before the war, and not surprisingly, at the University of Toronto. Women had been admitted only after a long and nasty fight, and opposition to their presence had resurfaced continually during the first twenty-five years of coeducation. In 1909, a committee headed by the historian George M. Wrong advised the University of Toronto senate to remove all women undergraduates from the arts faculty into a separate College for Women, where they would be housed in their own building under the charge of a woman dean. The senate had created the committee in 1907 with the mandate to examine the possibility of ending coeducation at Toronto.13 While Wrong’s task can be seen partly as a response to the restructuring that followed the University Act of 1906, more specifically, this inquiry was linked to two current developments on campus: first, the growth of the number of women enrolled at University College and Victoria, and a perceived decline in their quality; and second, the rise of the household science movement as an alternative to courses in arts.14 In 1902, the University of Toronto had established the Lillian Massey School of Household Science to offer courses leading to a degree in household science. Nathanael Burwash, a member of Wrong’s committee and chancellor of Victoria, had played an influential role in the formation of the new program. “This is the first course prepared for a true woman’s life in our University,” Burwash had written proudly to the minister of education, “and I am sure you will appreciate the step in advance.”15 In 1906, Toronto had created a faculty of household science, and in 1908, had started construction of a stately new building to house the program, located next to the women’s residence, Annesley Hall. When Burwash and Wrong undertook their senate investigation, they discussed the possibility of either constructing the proposed College for Women beside the household science building, or somehow merging the two projects.

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Like Adelaide Hoodless and other promoters, they were concerned that household science was not attracting the number of students they had anticipated. The success of the household science program could be bolstered by the compulsory movement of women out of the arts faculty into a College for Women, which could then house this kind of specialized program.16 In a memorandum to the committee on a College for Women, Wrong stated, “The main argument against co-education is that women and men need somewhat different types of training, and that when they are educated together the men tend to become effeminate and the women masculine.” Wrong then suggested that new courses be developed to train students to lead in questions associated with good housekeeping, “adequate to fit women for women’s work.”17 The committee’s report stopped short of recommending a formal affiliation, however, because Lillian Massey Treble had made it clear that she did not want the proposition of a separate college for women to “interfere with the convenience and success”18 of her household science building, then under construction. Citing the issues of overcrowding in the arts colleges, and of the lack of women instructors in the faculty of arts, the Wrong committee maintained that the chief difficulty with the current situation was the fact that women refrained from taking the courses in which men predominated, and instead clustered into modern languages. In the College for Women, women undergraduates would be encouraged to take the kind of courses that were best suited to their own distinct needs. “The present conditions do not do women justice,” the report concluded. “The special needs of women’s education are not adequately studied; the courses are designed for men and for men’s careers.”19 The Wrong report was adopted by the University of Toronto senate in March 1909 and became instantly controversial. Women leaders from the federated colleges – University College, Victoria, and Trinity – as well as many alumnae and students, launched a sustained opposition to the proposal. Undergraduate women circulated a petition and sent a letter to the senate protesting against the adoption of the report. Representatives of the University Women’s Club of Toronto met with the university president, Robert Falconer, to convey

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the resolution that they “would respectfully express their wish to dissociate themselves absolutely from the statements contained in the report and to declare their entire disapproval of its contents.”20 This opposition had less to do with the idea of separate education, which Margaret Addison, among others, actually supported, than with the conviction that the proposed College for Women would not be considered equal to the men’s colleges. In particular, many women suspected, with good reason, that the proposal was actually a clumsy attempt to move all women undergraduates into the new faculty of household science.21 The benefits and drawbacks of a separate women’s college were debated hotly by faculty, students, and alumni, and the press in Toronto and beyond followed with interest. The Toronto Star commented, “Professor Wrong has displayed the courage of a man who uncorks a large bottle of hornets, and then remains to observe the result.”22 For the first generation of university women, the need to maintain the principle of equal education demanded complex negotiation, as well as compromise, in the changing environment of the coeducational university. While they recognized that separate colleges allowed qualified women to gain a foothold in academia as professors and administrators, they also tenaciously held to their faith that only coeducation could ensure equality in education and access to professional work. Augusta Stowe-Gullen strongly attacked Wrong’s separate college proposal in the Toronto Star. “I am thoroughly opposed to the spirit of the report,” she stated. “It advocates a most reactionary step and opposes most of what women’s reform has been struggling for in Canada.”23 Stowe-Gullen’s own recent experience regarding the Ontario Medical College for Women served to reinforce the complexity of these decisions for university women. Following the closure of the Kingston Women’s Medical College in 1894, the Ontario Medical College had continued to struggle financially. By 1905, students at the college in their first and second years were receiving almost all their instruction in science at the university, and there was a drift of women into classes at the faculty of medicine, particularly those who registered in human anatomy as part of the combined course

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in biology and physiology leading to a degree in arts. The college alumnae association, led by Stowe-Gullen, Jennie Gray, and Helen MacMurchy, had submitted a proposal first to the Royal Commission on the University of Toronto, and subsequently to the board of governors, to have the Ontario Medical College become the Faculty of Medicine for Women of the university, in which women medical students would attend coeducational classes in science, but maintain separate classes in medicine taught by staff specially appointed to the women’s faculty. Recognizing the disadvantages to both women students and professors if the college was just absorbed into the faculty of medicine, a central feature of the alumnae’s proposal had been to allow women staff to be appointed by the university to teach at the new medical faculty for women. This plan had been rejected. In 1906, the Ontario Medical College for Women was forced to close to avoid debt, and following the recommendation of the royal commission, its students were transferred to the newly coeducational faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto.24 At the time of its closure, the college had ten women on its teaching staff of thirty-two, including Augusta Stowe-Gullen, who had risen to a senior position, professor of diseases of children, and Jennie Gray, associate professor of gynecology. Following the transfer of women students in 1906, none of the women staff were appointed to teach in the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto, although in 1907–08, two science graduates, Mary Lee Edward and Leah Bidena Johnson, were given sessional appointments as assistant demonstrators in physiology and physics, respectively. 25 Despite the obvious loss the closure represented to her and other women faculty, Stowe-Gullen continued to insist on the importance of the principle of coeducation for the future advancement of women both in higher education and the medical profession. In her brief history of the Ontario Medical College for Women, written in 1906, StoweGullen made an explicit link between the progress of reformers and coeducation, the perspective she would maintain a few years later during the Wrong controversy. The University of Toronto was a coeducational institution, she concluded, a place where young men and women learned to have a clearer understanding of, and a greater

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respect for, each other, both intellectually and morally: “The main point under review, is that the development of the ethical personality of women, secured by their higher and professional education, during the last half century, has given an impetus to the march of progress unparalleled in human history.”26 The publicity surrounding Wrong’s proposal was unpleasant for the university, and in the end, the decision came down to practicality, just as it had back in the 1880s. It had been a close call, however, and the Wrong report had an enduring impact on how women regarded their place in the university. The need to unite, organize, and achieve a voice in the management of their own affairs became obvious. In 1910, women from all the arts colleges, as well as the medical graduates, created the United Alumnae Association, and launched a campaign to gain representation on the University of Toronto senate. Later that year, three alumnae were elected to serve as senators: Gertrude Lawler and Charlotte Ross, as representatives of University College, and Stowe-Gullen, as a representative of Trinity.27 In their response to the senate proposal, alumnae had flatly rejected the suggestion that women had special needs, and protested that the majority took modern languages for the practical reason that they could then earn a living by teaching in those areas. Alumnae supported household science for its employment potential, but they also recognized the value of the arts degree in giving women a foundation for other professional training.28 Although the University of Toronto never did establish a separate college for women, the administration continued to discuss the project, and in 1920, the architect John M. Lyle prepared a series of drawings for a proposed women’s building at University College, which included a great hall, library, and common rooms, as well as residential space.29 The larger goal of separating women from men was pursued privately through donations made by the Massey family. During the decade after 1909, the Masseys funded two new buildings, Household Science and Hart House, which promoted separate academic and extracurricular programs for women. In 1913, the Household Science building was completed, and from the beginning, it served women undergraduates from across the

6 .1

Donations from the Massey family ensured the effective separation of men and women at the University of Toronto. Following the creation of Hart House for men students, the Household Science building became the centre for women’s activities on campus. The gymnasium and pool – nicknamed “the bathtub” and pictured here in 1915 – provided the only athletic facilities for women until 1959.

university, whether or not they were registered in household science. The university regarded its construction as an inexpensive way of providing much-needed space for women’s activities; it included a small pool and gymnasium open to all women students, as well as the offices of the Young Women’s Christian Association. Apart from the Women’s Unions at Victoria and University College, the Household Science building offered the principal recreational space for women undergraduates for many years.30

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The Masseys’ second project at Toronto, Hart House, opened in 1919 to provide social, athletic, and cultural facilities for men students and faculty. In spite of pressure after the Second World War to admit women, the terms of Vincent Massey’s deed of gift specified that Hart House – much nicer than the Household Science building – remained restricted to men, with the exception of dances and other events by invitation only. Designed to promote the masculine fellowship and idealist goals of an Oxford college, Hart House quickly became the true hub of the university’s social life. “The difference between Hart House and the Women’s Union is pitiable and humiliating,” Saturday Night commented in 1920, “and while the women students do not look for anything so majestic as the former structure, they have a reasonable hope that the friends of the University will recognize the need of new buildings and respond to the appeal for nobler things.”31 Hart House remained restricted to women until 1972, and it is notable that this gift from the Massey family was announced in 1910, in the aftermath of the separate college controversy. The United Alumnae campaigned for decades to advance women’s physical education and sports, but the University of Toronto did not provide adequate athletic facilities until the opening of the Benson Building in 1959.32 The memory of the separate college controversy was evident in strained relations among the undergraduates. In 1913, The Arbor published a chilling assessment by a recent graduate, Helen McMurchie, in which she claimed that a large number of influential people at University College were opposed to coeducation. McMurchie wrote, “The idea that this is a men’s university, and that women are here on sufferance, is very prevalent and largely influences women’s conduct, making them cautious, diffident and guarded in their actions.”33 The annual Torontonensis struck a sour note, introducing “The Ladies” pages with a cartoon of two spiteful hens gossiping.34 This feeling was only compounded by women’s wartime activities. In 1919, an article in The Rebel pointed out that much of the intellectual life of the university was carried on entirely separately. Women had representation on The Varsity, yet were restricted from visiting the newspaper’s office, which was located in Hart House. “Prejudice still reigns,” the author concluded, “in defiance of franchise laws and the

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advance of women into other fields!”35 In 1920, women at University College tried to gain membership in the men’s Literary Society, the traditional heart of student life, but once again failed, as the motion to admit them was defeated in the face of what The Varsity termed “vigorous opposition.”36 Women did not become members of the University College Literary Society until its amalgamation with the Women’s Undergraduate Association in 1958.37 Some professors adopted informal practices of separation within their own classrooms, or deterred women from enrolling in their courses. Frank Underhill, a professor of history at the universities of Saskatchewan and Toronto, separated the students in his tutorials because he believed that shy women inhibited the men from expressing themselves freely and lowered the quality of the discussion.38 Stephen Leacock, a political economist at McGill, became one of the most public critics of coeducation. Throughout Leacock’s professorship, McGill maintained separate classes for women at Royal Victoria College, but women took their upper-year courses with men. He denounced this practice at every opportunity, famously stating, “But men can’t study when women are around.”39 Leacock argued that men and women fundamentally were different, had different minds, aptitudes, and paths in life, and therefore should be educated in a completely distinct way. He believed that women were far below the standard of men in physical and mathematical science, and needed to be directed toward the esthetic side of education where they could excel in literature and art. Leacock also applied this logic to oppose women’s suffrage, arguing in a Maclean’s Magazine essay of 1915 that the vote would do nothing because nature determined that the average and ordinary woman would become a wife and mother. 40 “It may sound an awful thing to say,” Leacock insisted in 1922, “but the women are going to be married. That is, and always has been, their career; and, what is more, they know it; and even at college, while they are studying algebra and political economy, they have their eye on it sideways all the time.”41 Eileen Flanagan, who attended McGill in 1917, thought that Leacock discouraged women from taking his courses. “There were only two or three girls in our class and he wasn’t very keen on having girls in his class,” she remembered. “He would

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come up the aisle behind us and he would stop right behind a girl and he would shoot a question at her quickly, you see. Frighten the life out of her.”42 During the interwar years, the question of coeducation stayed in the public eye, and plans for separating men and women in arts classes were discussed again at the University of Toronto, as well as at Queen’s, McMaster, and Dalhousie. At Victoria, as at all the affiliated colleges at Toronto, the opposition of administrators to dancing was tied to a larger concern that women would soon outnumber men in arts. Early in 1923, Acta Victoriana organized a group of students to debate the case for and against coeducation. The students opposed to coeducation focused on the profusion of social events, and blamed women for lowering intellectual standards and creating a frivolous atmosphere. “It is my firm contention,” one student concluded, “that if we had separate colleges for men and women we should not be confronted with this problem.”43 Catholic education at the University of Toronto continued to be offered by three separate colleges until 1953: for men, at St Michael’s, and for women, at Loretto and St Joseph’s. Shortly after this debate, there was a disorderly skirmish among first- and second-year women at Victoria when class photographs were being taken. The incident resulted in embarrassing publicity for the university and much public discussion of the character of incoming women students. The Women’s Undergraduate Association immediately disciplined the students, levying heavy fines on all the participants, and then published its decision in The Varsity to make it clear that the senior students did not condone unruly conduct. In spite of this attempt to head off trouble, the chancellor and board of Victoria took the incident very seriously and requested that the Alumnae Association consider planning a separate college for women in connection with their campaign for new residences. 44 These troubles made their way into the Queen’s Journal at Kingston, when one student shared the view that coeducation at Toronto was disliked by professors as well as undergraduates. “It is well known that among the professors are found those who sigh for the good old days when dances were few and far between,” the student wrote. “Dances are many in number; students are distracted from their serious work. We

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The perception, in the words of one professor at Western, that “flappers were flapping even in university halls,” was accentuated by images in popular media of the modern coed as a fashionable and attractive young woman. This photograph was taken in front of University College at the University of Toronto in 1928.

even hear that professors are distracted not by dances, but by the gay garments flaunted daily in their faces by the fashionable co-eds.”45 The gift of the Wymilwood residence in 1925 forestalled the question of building a separate women’s college, along with the alumnae’s plans for a new residence. “The main argument in favour of coeducation,” Acta Victoriana noted, “which has so far been blissfully ignored, is its economic advantage.”46 Yet the dean of women, Margaret Addison, came to favour separation, and in 1927 recommended that Victoria create a separate women’s department under her charge. In 1909, Addison had opposed Wrong’s plans because the proposed college had lacked any guarantee that the academic

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quality would be the same. Throughout her career, however, she believed that an independent college for women should be established in Canada, similar to Wellesley or Bryn Mawr. Addison was convinced that the mental capacity of women was equal to that of men but that the womanly strengths of altruism, compassion, and imagination should be reflected in their education. 47 By the end of the decade, the pressures caused by rising enrolment focused attention on what was perceived to be a feminization of the arts, and a Victoria senate committee was appointed to look into establishing a quota on the enrolment of young women. In 1929, Addison sent out a questionnaire to over two hundred women undergraduates at Victoria, asking why each student had decided to come to the university. In the preamble, she wrote, “As a Senate committee is considering the limitation of students in Victoria College it would be helpful to the committee to have further information as to why so many women are registering in the College.”48 According to C.B. Sissons, a member of this committee, a proposal was introduced that enrolment should be denied to first-year women with junior matriculation if they came from schools where they might delay their application and take senior matriculation instead. Although the proposal was not adopted, the issue of women’s enrolment and its impact on academic quality continued to be discussed. The perception that standards were declining was based on the assumption that more young women were attending college simply to have a good time and find a husband. 49 At Queen’s, the rise in social events during the 1920s similarly was associated with an increase in women’s enrolment. In his annual reports, the principal, R. Bruce Taylor, became critical of what he regarded as the decline of discipline among undergraduates, the postwar mania for pleasure, and the weakness of the Alma Mater Society as an effective student government. If the frivolity of the age encouraged students to waste their time attending dances and parties, then this idle element was for him in a very real way the product of coeducation. He believed that the quality of women students had deteriorated, and their attendance at university was now a matter of convention rather than an indication of exceptional

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purpose and ability.50 “One main disadvantage,” Taylor noted in 1927, “is that where there is lack of seriousness, whether in men or women, it is apt to be accentuated by the opportunities which co-education gives.”51 The Queen’s Journal also adopted a censorious tone regarding women’s lack of academic seriousness, one editor in 1923 charging them with flitting late into their classes like butterflies. “They fail to interpret the applause which greets them in the spirit in which it is given,” the editorial warned.52 The following year, a professor at the annual arts dinner made public comments in a speech that condemned coeducation. While not actually repeated in the Journal’s report of the event, the comments were endorsed by an editorial in the same issue. In response, at the Levana dinner shortly afterward, the dean of women, Caroline McNeill, contradicted the implication that women in particular were responsible for frivolity, pointing out that only a small number of the women were flappers and that there were as many flappers among the men as the women.53 In a separate message published in the Journal, the dean noted that her own generation had been forced to prove that they had the physical and mental strength necessary to succeed in university. It was now up to the present generation of women, she urged, to accept the burden of proving that they also had sufficient seriousness of purpose and determination to maintain these high standards of scholarship. “We of the older generation have all confidence in our young sisters,” McNeill stated.54 These tensions at Queen’s reached a crisis during the student strike of 1928, when the undergraduates boycotted classes for one day to protest the actions of the senate in imposing disciplinary measures in cases involving fighting, drinking, and organizing a dance, cases that normally would have been handled entirely by student government. The senate and principal, in their turn, believed that the Alma Mater Society had shirked its duty and failed to maintain acceptable standards of conduct. Many Levana members had been opposed to the strike; after meeting with the dean of women, by then Hilda Laird, the residents of Ban Righ Hall decided as a group not to boycott classes.55 The events surrounding the strike nevertheless served to focus the attention of administrators on the perceived dangers of coeducation,

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and Laird was asked to monitor the behaviour of women students more carefully. By 1930, Laird had developed new regulations that provided greater supervision for first-years and women boarding off campus, as well as instituting specific rules controlling the dress, comportment, and social activities of women undergraduates. As at Dalhousie and Mount Allison, regulations obliging students to live in residence were applied only to women: all first-year women under the age of twenty-five and away from their families were required to live in the university residence.56 By the late 1920s, administrators at McMaster also were troubled by what they saw as a decline of both moral and academic standards among women undergraduates, particularly among the first-year students. In the midst of discussions about the relocation of McMaster to a new campus in Hamilton, the senate entertained a proposal that special courses in arts be created for women, with the avowed goal of increasing enrolment. This proposal was opposed by those who suspected, correctly, that separate classes were a veiled attack on coeducation, a delicate question at a time when the move from Toronto to Hamilton left a reimagining of the university open for debate. Separate classes were not adopted, but in 1930, shortly before the move was completed, the board changed the dean’s title to dean of women instead of dean of Wallingford Hall, and appointed the classicist Marjorie Carpenter to assume a more vigorous role in directing the activities of McMaster women on the new campus in Hamilton.57 At Dalhousie, administrators were having misgivings about the heightened social atmosphere on campus, and they too blamed coeducation. The grimness of the war years had been superseded by a heady enthusiasm among young people for fun and entertainment, and Dalhousie students had embraced a rapid spread of sororities, fraternities, clubs, and societies, with the attendant rise in social events. The adviser to women students, E. Margaret Lowe, objected strongly to the excessive numbers of dances and parties attended by women students. Like Addison, Lowe began to favour separate education as a possible solution, especially for younger, less mature women. There had always been a tradition of separation at Dalhousie; as Lucy Maud Montgomery had pointed out, the library reading room was a “strictly

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masculine domain,”58 and in 1915, when the new Macdonald Library opened, the custom was preserved of ensuring segregated study areas for men and women in the reading room. The establishment of Shirreff Hall in 1923 served to reinforce this custom, as in addition to bedrooms and dining space, the new residence provided study rooms, common rooms, and a library. Shirreff Hall soon became the centre for women’s social and club activities, such as the meetings of the Delta Gamma Society. By the end of the 1920s, two new student organizations had been formed: the Midlothian Society, founded in 1926 for women, with the warden of Shirreff Hall as honorary president; and the Unicorn Club, created in 1927 for men only, which encouraged interaction between professors and students.59 In her report to the president in 1930, Margaret Lowe recommended that Dalhousie move to a separate model of education similar to that of McGill, where women tutors would be hired and women students would take separate classes during their first two years of study. “They have had co-education throughout their public and high school courses,” Lowe wrote, “and it would be interesting to see what results would be obtained from one or two years of separation in the class room, to the advantage of both men and women just entering college, when everything combines to hinder concentration at the very moment when they are left more dependent on themselves than ever before.”60 Lowe focused specifically on the number of dances, and the pressure put on young women to attend them with dates. The dances themselves were cliquey and exclusive. Lowe bluntly informed the president: “If we have co-education, co-educational problems should be faced.”61 The Dalhousie Gazette agreed with her. In 1930, an editorial commented that a “dance-mad Dalhousie” would result in lower academic standards, impoverished students, and a bad reputation for the university. In a related column, “Alice Speaks,” the writer denounced the effect of the dancing craze on women in particular, arguing that a coed’s success at university was measured solely in terms of the men she dated and the dances she attended. Serious women students at best were led to neglect their studies, and in some cases were ostracized. “Young girls who do come here with the idea of a well-balanced college life are either distracted by

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Procession of Women Graduates, Dalhousie University, 1926. In 1923, Dalhousie opened a new women’s residence, Shirreff Hall, and required that all women students not living with their parents live in residence under the supervision of the dean. Similar regulations preventing women from living in boarding houses were enforced at Queen’s and Mount Allison.

collegiate success or lead an unhappy life because they are different from the majority and find themselves completely out of things.”62 These proposals for separate classes all lost momentum at the budget table. By comparison, in 1922 St John’s College at the University of Manitoba took a bold step and suspended the admission of women. Coeducation had never been an easy fit for St John’s. Manitoba College had become coeducational in 1886, but St John’s had held out against admitting women until 1892, considering instead the financially impractical alternative of affiliating the St John’s College Ladies’ School as a women’s college. J.M. Bumsted writes that even

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though women were present over the next thirty years, the ambiance of St John’s remained masculine, with an ethos of sport and character development similar to that of an English public school.63 Women undergraduates mostly kept to themselves under the supervision of the lady matron; unlike the men students, they could not live in residence or participate in most of the college events. St John’s emerged from the war in poor shape, with low enrolments and falling revenue as it attempted to adjust to the reduced position of the denominational colleges within the expanding university. The new warden, George Anderson Wells, considered the role of women in the college to be particularly problematic. Their enrolments had dwindled almost completely, and, he believed, they should not be admitted to the college if they could not be offered space in residence. Since St John’s could not hope to afford a women’s residence, Wells recommended to the council that no women be admitted beginning in 1922. This restriction remained in place until 1931.64 Officially, the policy was based on the perception that women were not receiving adequate provision, but the warden seems to have assumed that coeducation was undesirable without separate residential space and the accompanying supervision of a dean. Wells told The Manitoban, “I am not so sure that co-education is having the beneficial effect upon either the male or female members of the University that its advocates claim it does. As far as I can see the girls are becoming too much like men and the men too much like women.”65

Skill and Knowledge Since the earliest campaign for admission, women had assumed that a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts would prepare them for a variety of professional jobs in the expanding commercial and business sectors. In their response to the separate college controversy at Toronto, alumnae relied on this argument and defended the continued importance of the arts degree as a foundation for professional training. “The courses leading to an arts degree are designed in the first instance to furnish that liberal education which we hold to be necessary both for women and for men,” they told the Toronto senate in 1909. “Both men and women should, we believe, study for

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professional careers after their arts course is finished.”66 Similarly, the ladies’ editor of the Manitoba College Journal claimed in 1911 that an arts degree would provide a suitable background for all professional work. “Women may now with propriety appear in almost any kind of profession or business – and the better equipped, the greater chance of her success,” she wrote. “Before launching forth in a new and untried pursuit she should see that she is properly prepared, and a general university education would be of untold value.”67 Early reports on graduate careers, however, challenged this faith that new opportunities were opening up, and revealed that most women still went into teaching. A statistical survey prepared in 1906 by the alumnae association of Toronto’s University College, for example, recorded that as many as 158 of the 203 employed graduates were working as teachers, and the other numbers were widely dispersed into office work, missions, libraries, journalism, business, civil service, settlement work, and nursing.68 As Susan Gelman has shown for Ontario, in 1920 degrees became a requirement for all newly employed secondary school teachers, and the percentage of teachers with university degrees at that time already was 67.1 per cent of women and 80.7 per cent of men.69 After the war, university women began to be more critical of the bachelor’s degree as a suitable preparation for the modern workplace. How practical was a degree, after all, that had been designed originally to produce gentlemen? In her series on “Women and Their Work” in Maclean’s Magazine, Ethel Chapman asked, “Is she to be equipped for some skilled work with a fair salary, or will she be left to take her chance at some makeshift job, the remuneration from which will never make it possible for her to prove, if necessary, against a possible time when she cannot work, and which will always be more or less drudgery, something which she would never have chosen for herself?”70 It was becoming clear to many that professional work itself was changing, and the more diverse universities of the early-twentieth century had taken on a new role in determining professional status. Most universities had created new professional schools that controlled the admission and certification of their practitioners and body of knowledge. The bachelor’s degree

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was no longer directly associated with the formation of professional identity; instead many universities had faculties of medicine, law, and engineering, where students took the subjects they needed for those particular occupations. The definition of a professional gentleman that emerged in the twentieth century developed as much as a response to who was not included as to who was, and boundaries were drawn to limit practitioners based on race and religion, as well as gender.71 These professional schools generally excluded women, either explicitly by refusing them admission, or more informally by introducing quotas, restricting access to articling or interning experiences, or creating hostile learning environments. Admission policies varied by institution as well as by profession, and this process was complicated by the professional requirements imposed by each province’s regulatory body.72 Law and medicine are good illustrations of this complexity. The study of law was in transition from apprenticebased legal training to modern law school instruction. While some provinces had university law schools dating from the nineteenth century, such as McGill in Quebec and Dalhousie in Nova Scotia, legal training in Ontario was regulated by admission to Osgoode Hall Law School, operated by the Law Society of Upper Canada from 1889 until 1957, when the school was affiliated with York University. Women first began to enter law schools in New Brunswick in 1892, and in Ontario in 1893, but then still had needed to petition the provincial law societies and the judiciary for admission to the bar.73 Clara Brett Martin was called to the bar in 1897, becoming the first woman admitted to the profession of law in the British Commonwealth, and only after a long and difficult campaign, first to be admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada as a student member, then to be recognized to practise law as both a barrister and a solicitor. As Constance Backhouse has demonstrated, the entrance of women into the domain of law was especially contentious due to the fact that men alone constructed the laws under which women lived.74 The Law Society of Manitoba refused to admit women as students-at-law, and it was not until the province changed the Law Society Act in 1912 that women were permitted to practise as barristers or be admitted

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to the study and apprenticeship of law. Long after the admission of women into law schools, the orientation of legal education remained masculine, and the customs, pedagogy, and language of law continued to place women as outsiders in the legal profession.75 Medical education in Canada opened to women somewhat earlier; as discussed in previous chapters, women started training as doctors in the 1870s, although men students and professors hotly contested their presence in coeducational classes. In 1871, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario first permitted women to take its matriculation examination, and that fall, two successful candidates, Emily Stowe and Jenny Kidd Trout, took one session of classes at the Toronto School of Medicine, affiliated with Victoria College in Cobourg. In 1883, Augusta Stowe-Gullen graduated from Victoria with the md, the first woman to do so in Canada, having matriculated with Elizabeth Smith in 1879.76 Queen’s followed in 1880, initially offering a special summer session for women, and then in 1881, partially integrating them into regular classes at its affiliated medical school, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston. In 1881, Dalhousie also made the early decision to encourage women in medicine at its affiliated school, Halifax Medical College, but the first woman did not enrol until 1888. That same year, in response to lobbying from a group in Montreal, Bishop’s Medical College admitted women; in 1891, Octavia Grace Ritchie, who had received her ba from McGill in 1888, became the first woman to graduate from Bishop’s. Hattie Foxton studied for two years at the Women’s Medical College of Toronto, and then moved to Winnipeg to complete her training at the Manitoba Medical College, becoming its first woman graduate in 1892.77 Yet the ideal of medical coeducation had received a decisive setback in 1883 with the expulsion of women from Royal College, and medical education in Ontario had remained separate until 1906. “At the end of our first year the Ontario Medical College for Women closed its doors,” Jennie Smillie of the class of 1909 recalled, “which made it necessary for us to finish our Medical Course at the University of Toronto, and so test the advantages and disadvantages of co-education.”78 The medical faculties at McGill and Western also

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became coeducational, in 1918 and 1919 respectively, but women were not permitted back into classes in medicine at Queen’s until 1943. Historians have questioned, however, whether the shift back to medical coeducation in the early twentieth century actually benefited women in the profession of medicine. As the alumnae of the Ontario Medical College had feared, the transfer of women students to Toronto resulted in the loss of employment for women faculty, and a decline of women graduates in medicine. Veronica Strong-Boag notes that 146 women graduated with medical degrees from the separate colleges at Kingston and Toronto between 1883 and 1906, and the closure of these two schools represented a dramatic dropping off in the number of qualified women doctors in Canada.79 In coeducational faculties of medicine, women applicants experienced prejudice during the admissions process, including quotas on enrolment, and once admitted, often were discouraged from completing by antagonism in the classroom, lack of women role models, and limited opportunities for clinical placements or research positions at hospitals and medical facilities. 80 Women faced fewer institutional barriers in pharmacy, dentistry, and psychology where many practised independently, and there was less competition for employment and promotion among graduates than in the traditional professions. Education in dentistry and pharmacy developed in response to the efforts of practitioners to form organized professions, and starting in the late 1860s, all the provinces established provincial associations for licensing and regulation, initially through a system of apprenticeship leading to qualifying examinations. By the 1890s, provincial associations had established schools that offered instruction and had started to seek university affiliation to recognize their graduates. Admission standards for pharmacy tended to be lower than for dentistry; instruction at the Ontario College of Pharmacy, for example, was limited to one year compared to the three-year course required for dentistry by the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario. In their attempts to professionalize, pharmacists encountered opposition from doctors, who often preferred to dispense their own medicines, and in most provinces, apothecaries, chemists, and druggists united to gain

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independence from medical bodies. In 1888, the Royal College of Dental Surgeons gained affiliation for its school with the University of Toronto, which awarded its graduates the dds degree. By comparison, the Ontario College of Pharmacy, which affiliated with Toronto in 1892, offered only a one-year course until 1927, and its graduates were eligible, though not required, to pursue the bachelor of pharmacy degree. Similarly, in 1902 the Manitoba College of Pharmacy affiliated with the University of Manitoba, which also offered a bachelor of pharmacy degree, although most students opted for the one-year diploma course. 81 Psychology followed a different pattern, evolving as a social science within faculties of arts, originally as a branch of philosophy that dealt with mental life and consciousness, and then as an applied science of human behaviour. By the 1920s, psychology courses were being taught at McGill, Toronto, Acadia, and Mount Allison, and psychologists were beginning to organize professionally with a clearly defined field of research. 82 Women were admitted into education for careers in dentistry, pharmacy, and psychology from the earliest period of professionalization. In dentistry, the number of women graduates at first was low, but Tracey L. Adams has shown that the heightened interest in health professions during the First World War encouraged a sudden rise in women applicants, and between 1921 and 1935, twenty-seven women entered dental practice, twenty-two of them in the period between 1921 and 1926.83 Pharmacy was even more open to women. With its roots in family-run practice, women already had been practising pharmacy in small towns across Canada before the push to professionalize, often in partnership with their husbands or fathers. Women students began attending the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1883, soon after it was founded, and continued to enroll steadily after it received university affiliation with Toronto. Between the end of the war and 1927, ninety-four women attended the Ontario College of Pharmacy, and while many took the one-year diploma, sixty-five women graduated with the PhmB from Toronto during this period.84 Psychology also emerged as a profession that encouraged the enrolment of women; like social work, it was a new discipline with little initial prestige within the universities, and fewer men were drawn

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into the field. During the interwar years, women entered the profession of psychology in educational, research, and clinical settings in large numbers, particularly in the area of child development, but their participation declined abruptly after the Second World War when the reorientation of the discipline to clinical psychology began to attract more men. 85 The experience of women in psychology reflects a more general shift toward specialization within the universities that on a much larger scale transformed their participation in the sciences. The nineteenth century ba had required students to take courses in both the arts and the sciences, including classics, mathematics, and philosophy, as well as chemistry, botany, zoology, and geology. Most universities did not have separate faculties of science until well into the twentieth century, and only in the 1920s did the bsc emerge as a distinct degree granted to students who specialized in mathematics or science rather than arts. By the 1890s, women undergraduates were moving freely into the sciences, including the newer field of physics, where they found employment as laboratory assistants and researchers, or they prepared themselves to enter medicine or other health care professions. In the early twentieth century, however, increased specialization and a stronger research orientation within the arts faculties in turn led to the creation of new disciplines in the social sciences, including political economy, sociology, and psychology, as well as the transfer of the sciences away from the arts into separate degree programs.86 Women have not always been excluded from the sciences, Alison Prentice has argued, and it is incorrect to assume that physics and chemistry represent “non-traditional” areas of study. University women experienced greater opportunities in the sciences, as well as in medicine, during this early period than would be the case for most of the century to follow. 87 For the majority of women students, these larger currents of change, combined with a growing masculine culture within the sciences, resulted in a gradual but relentless movement toward academic separation. Women’s enrolment in Canadian universities increased significantly after the First World War. While the majority of women continued to enroll in faculties of arts, many were drawn into courses with a

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A physics lab in progress, taught by Wilson R. Smith, lecturer in biology and physics at McMaster University, Toronto, circa 1899. By the 1890s, women undergraduates were attracted into the newer field of physics, as well as chemistry and biology. This early period was one of relative opportunity for women in the sciences compared to their increasing marginalization in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics after the First World War.

vocational orientation, sometimes offered in affiliation with another institution, such as the diploma in household science at Dalhousie and Halifax Ladies’ College. During the interwar years, the numbers of women in law, medicine, and engineering remained extremely low, and enrolment in the new women’s programs – household science, library science, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and social work – climbed steadily.88 As they gained professional status, women’s programs needed to legitimize their curricula within academia, attempting to counter the assumption that masculine knowledge was associated with theoretical disciplines, and occupational training for women gave priority to technical and applied skills.89

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These developments in part were a response to the demands of students for higher status jobs and to the worries of parents who recognized that their daughters might need to support themselves in the modern world.90 While women students were criticized for their apparently irresponsible behaviour at dances and parties, the dating culture on campus promoted matchmaking within a fairly closed circle of possibilities. Undergraduates danced, but they also attended meetings of the Student Christian Movement, volunteered at the university settlement houses, and discussed contemporary art and literature. The emphasis on the coed as a love-interest in magazines, novels, and movies spoke to a stereotype of the university woman as the ideal mate, educated, cultured, and middle-class, for the rising professional or businessman, which echoed back to the racial claims of campaigners during the 1880s. Daniel A. Clark has argued that the appearance in popular culture of the coed as the suitable wife for the college man was facilitated by a transformation of perceptions that created a new hegemony of discourse about the university. By the 1920s, Clark suggests, college education had become central to conceptions of power in America, and business success was connected to the process of acquiring status and authority for white American men.91 Popular media promoted what came to be known as the collegiate look, branding the modern coed as a fashionable and attractive young woman. The highly sociable habits of this generation disguised serious concerns of men and women about the world around them and their futures in it, about finding partners, gaining employment, and securing their places in the middle class.92 The first social work program in Canada, established at the University of Toronto in 1914, provides a case study of the way women’s professions struggled to achieve academic legitimacy. The organizers of Toronto’s social work course had hoped originally to attract men into the new profession, despite the fact that the field of social service already was numerically dominated by women, both paid workers and volunteers. This tendency was increased by the enlistment of men and, after the war, training in social work, and the larger profession as a whole, became a women’s field. Worried that women’s enrolment would devalue the program, throughout

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the interwar period the university placed social work under the direction of men, all social scientists, and the curriculum devalued casework technique and specialization in favour of a broadly based liberal education in political science, economics, and psychology. The program at Toronto embodied a tension between the theoretical foundation of its curriculum and the requirement that its students do fieldwork under the supervision of practising social workers. Courses in social work also were established in 1918 at McGill, in 1919 at Acadia, and in 1928 at the University of British Columbia; like the program at Toronto, they primarily attracted women students.93 J.J. Kelso, the superintendent of neglected and dependent children for the province of Ontario, was frustrated that social work so quickly became regarded as a women’s profession. “It was a great disappointment to me,” he remembered in 1932, “to find when the course was actually opened that it was swamped with young women and the young men felt they were quite out of it. It seemed to be taken for granted that it was a woman’s job and this is a big mistake for the key positions should be held by men.”94 By contrast, household science had been conceived from the beginning not only as training for marriage and motherhood but as a program leading to a women’s profession. Household science had originally been introduced into the public schools, ladies’ colleges, and academies as a primarily skill-based discipline. During the first decade of the twentieth century, its advocates successfully transferred the discipline to the universities and incorporated new research in food chemistry and nutritional sciences. Some administrators, like Burwash at Victoria, approved of household science as a field of study that reinforced the boundaries of women’s sphere without infringing on men’s professions. Alumnae and students, however, recognized its potential for women to gain a niche teaching the subject in secondary schools, or for opening up new careers as nutritionists, dieticians, institutional housekeepers, and public health workers.95 Clara C. Benson, a professor of physiological chemistry in household science at Toronto, maintained that the program provided students with solid intellectual development, as well as with practical training in domestic skills. “The course thus strives to be of distinct practical

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use to the students,” she argued, “enabling them to undertake home duties or to go out into the world as bread winners, as they may be required to do; to give students a practical and educative knowledge of the sciences; and yet to be a true University course in intellectual training and culture.”96 After the turn of the century, the first university courses in household science were established at Toronto, Acadia, Mount Allison, and Dalhousie. Toronto’s Lillian Massey School, created in 1902, became a faculty of household science in 1906, but had difficulty attracting enough women into its program. After the failure of the Wrong proposal to force all arts women into household science, the university re-evaluated its curriculum and revised the program to try to attract more upper-year general arts students.97 At Acadia, Mount Allison, and Dalhousie, household science was tightly woven into the history of the ladies’ colleges affiliated with the three universities. As Tanya Fitzgerald has pointed out with respect to New Zealand, these programs had a complicated impact; intended to limit the participation of women in higher education, they resulted in the recruitment of educated women to the university, provided a protected space where professors and students could flourish, and for graduates created new forms of academic, professional, and technical work in the sciences and social sciences. 98 Acadia began offering household economics at the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary in 1901. The work of the seminary increasingly overlapped with that of the university, and by the 1920s, the majority of the students living at the seminary were admitted with full college matriculation, and were pursuing diploma courses in art, music, expression, secretarial science, and household economics. In 1926, the board decided to amalgamate the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary into Horton Academy and transfer its college-level diploma courses to the university, but the building continued to house the new degree programs in household economics and secretarial science. By 1928, Acadia University had created the School of Household Science, which offered a new four-year bsc degree in household economics.99 In 1904, the Mount Allison Ladies’ College opened the Massey-Treble School of Household Science, offering a two-year diploma course for

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public school teachers, and in 1924, the school expanded to include courses in household management, dietetics, clothing, and cooking leading to a four-year bsc in household science, conferred by the university. The ladies’ college hosted the women’s programs until 1937, when the university took control of its departments of fine and applied arts, household science, and music.100 Victoria Burrill Ross, the principal’s wife, noted in 1929 that parents of students at the Mount Allison Ladies’ College preferred the household science and secretarial programs because of their promise of jobs. “Parents realize that these boom years can’t last,” she wrote in her diary. “They want their daughters equipped to earn their own livings.”101 Similarly, Halifax Ladies’ College established a school of domestic science in 1902, and between 1926 and 1944, offered a four-year diploma course in affiliation with Dalhousie, which was recognized by the province for public school teaching. Dalhousie students had the option of taking the diploma in household science concurrently with a fouryear bachelor’s degree in arts or science.102 Household science programs appeared at universities across the country. The discipline had special resonance for newer universities in western Canada, where education for rural women was regarded as integral to the larger ambition of raising up the farm family, and programs were created at the provincial universities of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Similar to the land-grant colleges of western America, faculty in western Canada believed that domestic science was particularly appropriate for future farm wives on the agricultural frontier.103 “The chief purpose of a Domestic Science course would be to train the daughters to do their share,” the M.A.C. Gazette stated in 1908, “to build up our Western country and thus help in the development of the whole Dominion.”104 At the University of Manitoba, the new Manitoba Agricultural College at Fort Garry opened its program in home economics in 1910, with a residence for women in one wing of Taché Hall. The department started by offering a three-month course in homemaking, including cooking, laundry, and hygiene; in 1914, it added courses in institutional management and a normal course for teachers, and in 1917, the university approved a ba degree in home economics.105 By the late 1920s, degree programs

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UNIVERSITY WOMEN

in household science were available at Toronto, Acadia, Mount Allison, Dalhousie, Alberta, Manitoba, McGill, and Saskatchewan. The poor enrolments that had plagued the early courses improved, as women responded to the growing demand for nutritionists, dieticians, and institutional housekeepers after the war. In 1921, there were 234 students enrolled in household science degree courses in Canada, and by 1930, the number had risen to 639.106 The tension between applied technique and scientific knowledge evident in social work and household science also characterized the feminized professions in health care that developed after the war, including nursing, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy. Since the 1870s, most nurses had received their education in the hospital apprenticeship system, such as the training school for nurses established at Winnipeg General Hospital in 1887. The high profile gained by nursing sisters during the war, and the priorities of the expanding public health movement, provided an opportunity to bring education for women health care workers into the universities. Kathryn McPherson has calculated that the number of student and graduate nurses grew from less than three hundred at the turn of the century to over twenty thousand by 1918.107 Advocates pushed for recognition that nursing education and related health care training in physiotherapy and occupational therapy should be included within the universities. Following the influenza pandemic at the end of the war, the Canadian Red Cross Society agreed to provide financing for a three-year period, and courses for public health nurses were established at Dalhousie, McGill, Western, Toronto, Alberta, and British Columbia. The goal of the courses was to provide short-term education for women who already had practical training in nursing, most of whom had been with the army overseas. With the exception of Dalhousie, all of the universities continued to offer diploma courses in nursing after this initial period. In 1919, the University of British Columbia established the first university degree program, a bsc in nursing, which required students to get practical training in the hospital in their third and fourth years. In the interwar period, only two other universities, Western in 1923 and Alberta in 1924, expanded their diploma

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courses into degree programs along the same lines.108 The vast majority of graduate nurses continued to earn their qualifications by completing a three-year hospital apprenticeship, applying skills first learned in the classroom to their work on the ward, and in the twentieth century only a small percentage of the nursing workforce was trained in university programs. Nursing education remained divided by two very different models: one requiring certification at hospital schools of nursing based on practical experience, assumed by contemporaries to be more feminine and skill-based; and the other involving a combined theoretical and practical approach provided in a university program, deemed more masculine and scientific. In her study of apprenticeship at Winnipeg General Hospital, however, McPherson argues that science was central to the ordinary workplace experience of nurses, and nursing procedures such as the system of asepsis, required the theoretical understanding and practical application of the germ theory of disease, as well as the theory of scientific management.109 Closely linked to nursing, physiotherapy originated in the work of masseuses in hospitals and private practice. This work came into prominence during the war when Canadian nursing sisters were trained in the practice of massage in overseas military hospitals, and the federal government committed to including physiotherapy training in its rehabilitation services. From 1914, McGill offered courses for masseuses in the School for Physical Education, and in 1916, it created a one-year diploma course in massage and medical gymnastics to train rehabilitation workers. In 1917, a Military School of Orthopaedic Surgery and Physiotherapy was established at Hart House at the University of Toronto, where primarily women practitioners learned massage, muscle function training, physical training, and occupational therapy.110 The Varsity was impressed by the sight of these women working with wounded and disabled soldiers, asking, “why any chap could have refrained from rushing to the colours in the hope of some day being taken [under] the instruction and, to say the least, entrancing care of the aforementioned fair ones.”111 Early practitioners of both occupational therapy and physiotherapy pushed successfully for the formation of

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university-based courses; in 1926, the University of Toronto opened a two-year diploma course in occupational therapy, and in 1929 created a similar two-year diploma course in physiotherapy. McGill established its School for Physiotherapy in the faculty of medicine in 1943, renamed in 1949 the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. Similarly, in 1951, the occupational and physiotherapy programs were combined at Toronto as part of a three-year diploma program within the faculty of medicine.112 The extent to which nursing should be included as a theoretical, university-based program provoked other discussions regarding the commercial courses taught to girls in public secondary schools, ladies’ colleges, academies, and private commercial colleges. Since the late-nineteenth century, the expansion of clerical employment had opened up new avenues of employment for women in offices, and commercial courses in skills such as penmanship, typewriting, bookkeeping, and business law had become popular with middleclass parents. These courses trained young women to take up the growing number of jobs in the commercial or public sectors, and women’s employment there grew from 14.3 per cent in 1891 to 41.8 per cent in 1921.113 While most of these women were hired into the lower rungs of clerical work, there clearly was some potential for university graduates to qualify for higher-paying positions as supervisors or managers. The field of record management developed with the growth of the administrative workplace. Within the universities, courses in library science complemented existing programs in secretarial and business training, teaching students the marketable skill of how to organize, store, and retrieve information. The first library school was formed at McGill in 1904 as a short summer certificate course in library methods. Gradually, promoters of library science began to see the value of library training for arts students interested in administrative work. In 1920, Acadia began including library science as part of the ba program, offering two courses in library methods and the history of libraries, and in 1936, the university added a program in secretarial sciences. Western adopted a similar approach, and in 1924 formed the Department of Library and Secretarial Science where stu-

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dents in arts could major either in library science or secretarial science. In 1927, McGill started supplementing its summer course with a one-year diploma program, and in 1930, approved a degree program in library science. The University of Toronto in 1928 also began offering a course leading to librarian certification through the Ontario College of Education, and in 1937 awarded its first bachelor of library science degrees.114 Throughout the interwar period, the majority of undergraduate women in Canada still sought ba degrees in arts and science disciplines. In his study of university students in the 1930s, Paul Axelrod has shown that women consistently represented about one-third of the enrolments in arts faculties across the country, and most continued to choose public school teaching as their occupation if they pursued a career.115 Even before the war, many women had become dissatisfied with the limited options available to them. “Just because she is a woman,” the ladies’ editor of the Manitoba College Journal asked in 1910, “should the longing possessed by all, men and women alike, to do something grand and noble, something to help the world along, should that longing be forced to find its fulfilment in feminine duties, necessary and worthy though they be?”116 As the universities began to play an increasingly central role in regulating the process of professionalization, women faced both formal and informal boundaries in professional faculties dominated by men, particularly in law, medicine, and engineering. Some professions became stratified by incorporating related occupations with shorter training courses that attracted women, such as dentistry and dental hygiene. By establishing new programs for women, however, the universities were responding to demand. Those women who decided to enter a professional course, with the notable exceptions of dentistry and pharmacy, overwhelmingly selected from such feminized programs as household science, occupational and physical therapy, social work, nursing, and secretarial or library science.117



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UNIVERSITY WOMEN

At the end of his career, Maurice Hutton assessed the impact of coeducation during his fifty years at Toronto. Hutton had never been overly kind to women in his classes – “Mr Hutton perfectly abominable, ignores us completely”118 a student noted in her diary in 1889 – and perhaps he was still thinking of his sharp confrontation with the Queen’s Hall residents after the war. In Hutton’s view, the admission of women had lowered the intellectual and moral standards of the university. “A general slackening of intellectual keenness and a general quickening of the pulse of social life, and a large share of that craze for dancing and mild flirtation which is a feature of all modern universities,” he stated; “how can it be otherwise when a certain percentage of young women frankly enter a university to have a good time and to dance three or four times a week in the pursuit of education; to dance themselves into education.”119 Women were not the only ones dancing, as Caroline McNeill at Queen’s had pointed out, but their growing presence in coeducational universities was identified by many to be the source of the problem. For critics of coeducation, the solution lay in separation. Even as a highly sociable undergraduate culture emerged, the push to create separate academic and extracurricular programs within the coeducational universities resulted in women and men becoming more divided. As The Rebel observed in 1919, “Although there is ample opportunity for meeting in social functions, much of the intellectual activity which centres about the University is carried on entirely separately: literary, dramatic, athletic, historical and debating societies.”120 The war accelerated, but did not create the conditions that determined the course of women’s education. The backlash against coeducation was deeply rooted, and the movement toward academic separation that marked the 1920s would continue to define the experience of women undergraduates for most of the twentieth century. In his 1935 study, The Strange Death of Liberal England, George Dangerfield warned that the political and social upheavals of the period had to be interpreted in light of the turbulent years leading up to the Great War. “That extravagant behavior of the post-war decade, which most of us thought to be the effect of war, had really

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begun before the War,” he wrote. “The war hastened everything – in politics, in economics, in behaviour – but it started nothing.”121 Separate colleges on the model of Vassar or Girton were beyond the reach of Canadian universities, and on most campuses the women’s residence served this purpose in a makeshift way, providing separate space for club meetings and activities. While it proved difficult, and financially impractical, to limit their enrolment in arts, universities found that women responded to the expanding range of new professional programs designed specifically to prepare them for the workplace. The principle of equality could exact a high cost, as Augusta Stowe-Gullen and other medical alumnae learned, and the return to coeducation in medicine in Ontario resulted in the loss of employment for women faculty and of opportunities for women students. Yet for the alumnae who continued to campaign for space and resources, the coeducational university, with all its limitations, remained the only guarantee of equal education for their daughters.

CONCLUSION

The college gown, which hitherto we had not been permitted to wear, we now insistently demanded, regarding it as the cherished symbol of equality. o c tav i a gr ac e r i t c h i e e ngl a n d, McGill News, 1934

L

ooking back after the war, Jennie Stork Hill noted that most early graduates went on to lead quiet lives, but their collective contribution to the public sphere was much more significant. “They taught very forcibly to the general public that a woman could take a University course and at the same time not be a freak,” Hill wrote; “their broader education made them as the years went by the leaders in feminine thought and their influence has been a large factor in the uplift of women in the whole Dominion.”1 The women’s editor of Manitoba College Journal had made a similar observation in 1911. “The ‘half idiot, half angel’ conception of womankind has come to a desirable end through various proofs of her general aptitude,” she asserted. “Advancement along many lines of reform is measured by the progress of education among women.”2 For the first women attending coeducational universities, the experience of becoming undergraduates exposed the mutability of gender roles, revealing the essential contradiction between prescriptive ideals and the rapidly changing social reality of their times. Coeducation, in particular, had become a prized symbol of their progress toward equality in education and entrance into professional work. In 1894, the Toronto Globe pointed out that it would now be useless to establish a separate

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provincial university because women undergraduates would not want to attend it. “They would find it difficult to induce the public to believe that the standard of culture is kept as high in a University for women as it is in a University for both sexes,” the editor commented. “They ask no favors educationally, and they get none.”3 The determination of reformers to unite their quest for equal education to the more radical goal of accessing men’s universities shaped the development of higher education in Canada. By 1900, coeducation had become the normative form of university education. With the exception of Catholic colleges, where women religious served as professors and administrators, women were educated within universities in which men formed the majority of the students, professors, administrators, and board members. My primary question has been whether or not coeducation fulfilled its early promise for women. The initial success of the campaign ushered in a period of comparative opportunity for women in these newly coeducational universities; the first generations moved confidently into science and medicine as well as arts, and were assertive in assuming their equal rights as undergraduates. They found the challenges of student life to be resonant with unlimited potential. “I am more jolly, merrier, wilder than you could imagine,” Elizabeth Smith wrote of a long day at Queen’s. “The girls wonder what possesses me & I do myself & wonder more how I endure so much study & with so little sleep as I do & can run up those long steps at college ten or twelve times as I have today.”4 Knowledge was obtainable, and the world of scholarship opened up with it possibilities for deeply rewarding employment. Women entered higher education in Canada at a time when the universities were still small liberal arts colleges, grounded in the Christian values of evangelical Protestantism, and designed to form an educated class of professional gentlemen. Young men were expected to acquire skills in debate and student government to prepare them to become leaders in business, the professions, and politics. The first university women excelled in this environment, placing at the top of the class lists, forming their own literary societies, and expecting that they too would have access to a broad range of professional work. The majority of early women graduates became teachers, but a growing

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number of women began looking to new fields, to physics, chemistry, or the social sciences, and trusted that their degrees would open up the expanding commercial employment available to university men. This book has argued, however, that women’s history in higher education cannot be seen as a linear and progressive narrative. Following this period of access, the position of women in Canadian universities began to deteriorate, and complex changes in higher education resulted in the marginalization of women students, faculty, and researchers. During the early twentieth century, universities became modern research institutions with professional schools in law, medicine, and engineering, as well as greatly enlarged faculties of arts with new programs in the sciences and social sciences. The idea of professional status itself was changing to include a more specific occupational identity, one regulated and defined by a body of knowledge imparted by university education and certification. As the universities became more specialized, they also began to play a more central role in the process of professionalization. Most of the new professional schools established boundaries that excluded women; some refused women outright during the admission process, while others discouraged them by introducing formal or informal quotas, restricting access to articling or interning experiences in law offices and hospitals, and fostering unwelcoming environments. All these changes stimulated gendered debates over what constituted a profession, over the greater value of theoretical disciplines based on academic knowledge versus technical skill, and the extent to which the university should teach applied and practical training. Motivated by fear that ba degrees were becoming feminized and diminished in value, Canadian universities created professional courses, such as household science, nursing, and library science, designed specifically to attract women out of the faculties of arts. These gendered assumptions were compounded by the larger movement of the sciences away from the arts faculties, the establishment of the bsc as a degree distinct from the ba, and an increasingly masculine culture within the fields of science and technology. The consequences of these developments are with us today. Women have gained access to all institutions of higher education in

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Canada, yet still are underrepresented in many academic programs, particularly physical sciences, computer science, engineering, and mathematics, as well as at the highest levels of faculty and administration.5 Susan L. Poulson and Leslie Miller-Bernal warn that we cannot simply assume that university coeducation will be the same as equal education for women. Over the last fifty years, they point out, most of the remaining single-sex institutions in the United States became coeducational, but they admitted women without addressing the issue of gender equity, expecting them to fit into the existing campus culture and not disturb the status quo.6 Citing the Ontario College of Teachers 2004 report on the need to attract men into teaching, Kristina R. Llewellyn and Elizabeth M. Smyth have argued that the current rhetoric over a perceived crisis of masculinity links the failure of boys to a lack of strong male role models in schools, but does not acknowledge the social construction of masculinity as white and heteronormative. Echoing the debates over coeducation that occurred a century ago, widespread public concern that boys are falling behind girls in literacy levels, and in university enrolment, places the overachievement of young women as the cause of the underachievement of young men.7 These conclusions were confirmed by the symposium on gender equality in higher education hosted in the Royal Irish Academy in 2018. Reflecting on current scholarship, Pat O’Connor, Judith Harford, and Tanya Fitzgerald state that institutions across Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand remain male dominated; designed by men for men, their structural and cultural features reflect, reinforce, and perpetuate patriarchal and increasingly managerial forces. 8 Canadian universities also perpetuate historically constructed barriers on the basis of race and Indigeneity as well as gender. This book has explored the intersections of race and gender within the discourse of university women, arguing that in the debates surrounding the campaign for admission, reformers created a feminist ideology that served to reinforce Anglo-Canadian colonialism. During the movement for coeducation, racial theory became a decisive factor both to support and to argue against access for women. As Social Darwinism infiltrated popular discourse,

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opponents charged university coeducation, in particular, with undermining the reproductive fitness of white women and the integrity of the middle-class family. In response, campaigners themselves increasingly exploited Lamarckian theory to promote what they regarded as their inherent right to higher education and professional work. Basing their demands on women’s past and future contribution to colonialism, reformers maintained that educated Anglo-Canadian women, like their pioneering foremothers, were needed to take up the work of nation building. Modern equity initiatives at universities on the basis of gender, race, and Indigeneity have encountered challenges from those who either ignore or are unaware of the inequalities rooted in the histories of these institutions. Sheila Cote-Meek has shown that as Indigenous students and faculty enter academia in growing numbers, they often experience a hostile classroom environment charged with racism. Cote-Meek has called for transformative pedagogy to increase the awareness of ongoing colonialism in Canadian universities.9 In 2020, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations issued a statement indicating that employment equity within and across academic institutions is a priority issue, and that discrepancies in salaries and job security are more pronounced for those marginalized by Indigeneity, race, sexuality, and ability.10 Systemic inequalities have shaped Canadian higher education, and much more transformative change is necessary before all students can exercise their right to equal education in a supportive and inclusive environment. But the history of university coeducation in Canada, I believe, offers us the important reminder that even the most rigid institutions can change. Judith Butler has argued that the idea of “reality” can function in discourse as an intractable force against radical change, and the ability to imagine new possibilities of equality or justice requires a commitment to counter-realism.11 Victorian separate spheres ideology functioned as just this kind of intractable force against reform, ridiculing the demands of women to men’s education as being contrary to a prescribed reality of what gender roles “ought to be.” Yet in the newly coeducational universities, women proved that they could compete with men in

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arts, science, and professional programs, could sustain undergraduate newspapers, debate in literary societies, establish and protect student government. Before the advent of the dean of women, most enjoyed a freedom on and off campus that was comparatively unregulated. By performing these roles, women claimed the rights and privileges of undergraduates, and altered the gendered discourse that university education and its connection to middle-class work belonged to men alone. The very effectiveness of this challenge is there in the degree of resentment to women’s presence that lingered on in many Canadian universities, flaring up in sudden attacks on coeducation and the renewal of plans for separation. This early experience was fundamental in influencing the response of university women to increasing academic separation, and to the decline of prospects that had seemed so limitless only a few decades before. They did not forget the problems of coeducation, but rather constructed a social memory in which the movement for access to men’s universities, and its connection to meaningful work, became integral to the progress of the new nation. As the integration of women into higher education underwent setbacks, many alumnae found it difficult to reconcile themselves to the narrowing horizons of the postwar period. Yet they looked to the future, and claimed their own intellectual reality about the meaning of the admission of women, one in which coeducation was the key to far-reaching social change. “At the end of her course, as an educated woman she is capable of self-support, and need not marry for a home,” Ellen Freeman Trotter urged in the Acadia Athenaeum. “She sees open numberless avenues of usefulness and happiness, and need not assume domestic cares for lack of other interests.”12 For the first generations of women graduates, the social memory of their own experience was empowering, and it shaped their reactions to the complex changes that eroded the place of women in the twentieth-century university. Alumnae attempted to tackle these problems by forming protective subcultures for women, hoping that the creation of women’s residences, dean of women positions, and separate professional programs would provide the supportive and collegial environment that was missing within institutions dominated by men. Even as they witnessed women

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students being inexorably pushed out of medicine and the sciences, and personally incurred the loss of faculty and research positions, university women continued to trust that the achievement of coeducation would have a profound significance. During the interwar period, early graduates began to record tributes to the women they regarded as pioneers, particularly in response to requests for testimony circulated by the newly founded Canadian Federation of University Women. Accounts by Harriet Starr Stewart at Mount Allison, Mary Kingsley Tibbits at New Brunswick, and Jessie Livingstone Holmes at Manitoba all stressed the common theme that coeducation had been central to Canadian progress.13 Among Toronto alumnae, Eliza Balmer – a “little fair-haired, blueeyed girl”14 – became a heroic figure. Like Laura Secord, who had been mythologized by the reformer Sarah Anne Curzon in 1887, Balmer was seen to embody the qualities of women’s service and sacrifice associated with the loyalist tradition of Canadian history.15 “The real pioneer was Eliza Balmer, who fought almost single-handed the fight for the college,” Nellie Spence wrote in 1923. “She was an inspiration to us who followed through the portals which she opened for us.”16 Similarly, Jennie Stork Hill advised modern students to learn from Balmer: “Let them emulate her scholarly success if they will, but let them take still closer to their heart the building up of a character such as hers, whose elements of industry and determination were bound together by unselfishness and love of justice and truth.”17 Both Balmer and her mother had worked as teachers to support the family after her father had died young and destitute. In some recollections, Balmer had collapsed from the strain of the men students hooting and jeering when she appeared in the lecture hall, and her health never fully recovered from the ordeal.18 In the social memory of alumnae, these modest pioneers were the antithesis of the umbrella-wielding women’s rights activists lampooned in the press, and whether at home or in the public sphere, they had used their degrees to build communities and contribute to national advancement. The right to wear academic dress was an outward sign of the new status of university women, and the gown could become a treasured possession. Bessie Scott Lewis left her gown to her daughter, along

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with the diary recording her excitement when she wore it for the first time. Frederika Ryckman, a student of Queen’s during the 1890s, also gave her long black gown to her daughter, Margaret Dale, to wear at Toronto in the 1920s; Margaret in turn passed the gown along to her younger sister, Frances, when she too joined the rank of undergraduates.19 University women invested their undergraduate years with meaning. They asserted their conviction that women belonged in university, and by doing so, changed the idea of who could be an undergraduate, a scientist, a professor, or a dean. They wore their caps and gowns proudly on campus, and then hid them away to sneak into movie theatres. “My reason for going was in order to have special training if it ever became necessary for me to earn my own living,” Katie Hall Marsters remembered of her decision to apply to Acadia, adding, “After receiving my degree I wanted to use it whether necessary or not.”20

APPENDIX 1

Admission Dates by University University

Location

Admission date1

Model

Affiliation

Mount Allison

Sackville, nb

1872

coeducation

Methodist

Queen’s

Kingston, on

1876

coeducation

Presbyterian

Victoria2

Cobourg, on

1877

coeducation

Methodist

Acadia

Wolfville, ns

1880

coeducation

Baptist

Dalhousie

Halifax, ns

1881

coeducation

non-denominational

Toronto

Toronto, on

1884

coeducation

provincial

McGill

Montreal, qc

1884

separate

non-denominational

Trinity3

Toronto, on

1886

coeducation

Anglican

1888

separate

1894

coeducation

New Brunswick

Fredericton, nb

1886

coeducation

provincial

Manitoba

Winnipeg, mb

1886

coeducation

provincial

McMaster

Toronto, on

1887

coeducation

Baptist

King’s College4

Windsor, ns

1893

coeducation

Anglican

St Francis Xavier

Antigonish, ns

1894

separate

Catholic

Western

London, on

1895

coeducation

Anglican

Bishop’s

Lennoxville, qc

1903

coeducation

Anglican

Alberta

Strathcona, ab

1906

coeducation

provincial

Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, sk

1907

coeducation

provincial

British Columbia

Vancouver, bc

1908

coeducation

provincial

Ottawa

Ottawa, on

1919

separate

Catholic

280

1

2 3

4

APPENDICES

The admission date given is the year when women first were admitted to the rank of undergraduates at that university, granting them all three undergraduate rights: to matriculate, attend lectures, and register in a course of study leading to a degree. McMaster, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia all opened as coeducational institutions, and the date given is that of the university’s establishment. Victoria entered into federation with the University of Toronto in 1890, and moved to the city of Toronto from Cobourg in 1892. Trinity entered into federation with the University of Toronto in 1904. Trinity originally introduced coeducation in 1886, but adopted separate classes between 1888 and 1894 with the opening of St Hilda’s College. After 1894, St Hilda’s became the women’s residence at Trinity. King’s College accepted women in 1893, but before 1900 only two women matriculated and one woman graduated. King’s College affiliated with Dalhousie University in 1923 and moved to Halifax.

APPENDIX 2

First Women Graduates University

Graduate’s name

Date

Degree

Mount Allison

Grace Annie Lockhart Harriet Starr Stewart

1875 1882

BS BA

Victoria

Augusta Stowe Nellie C. Greenwood Julia Darling Haanel Isabel Willoughby

1883 1884 1884 1886

MD BSc BSc BA

Queen’s

Elizabeth R. Beatty Eliza S. Fitzgerald Annie Fowler Alice McGillivray Elizabeth Smith

1884 1884 1884 1884 1884

MD BA BA MD MD

Acadia

Clara Belle Marshall

1884

BA

Dalhousie

Margaret Newcombe

1885

BA

Toronto

May Bell Bald Catherine Brown Margaret Brown Ella Gardiner Margaret Langley

1885 1885 1885 1885 1885

BA BA BA BA BA

Trinity

Helen Gregory Emma Stanton Mellish Helen Gregory

1886 1886 1889

MusBac MusBac BA

McGill

Eliza Cross Blanche Evans Georgina Hunter Donalda McFee Martha Murphy Alice Murray Jane V. Palmer Octavia Grace Ritchie

1888 1888 1888 1888 1888 1888 1888 1888

BA BA BA BA BA BA BA BA

282

APPENDICES

New Brunswick

Mary Kingsley Tibbits

1889

BA

Manitoba

Jessie Livingstone Holmes Hattie Foxton

1889 1892

BA MD

Bishop’s

Octavia Grace Ritchie Anna Bryant

1891 1905

MD BA

McMaster

Annie M. McKay Minnie Smith Eliza P. Wells

1894 1894 1894

BA BA BA

King’s College

Frances M. Woodworth

1897

BA

St Francis Xavier

Mary Elizabeth Bissett Florence MacDonald Lillian MacDonald Margaret F. MacDougall

1897 1897 1897 1897

BA BA BA BA

Western

Mary L. Cowan

1898

BA

APPENDIX 3

Wo m e n’s C o ll e g e s w i t h Un i v e r s i t y A f f ili a t i o n Women’s college

Period of affiliation

University

Church

Mount Allison Ladies’ College

1872–1937

Mount Allison

Methodist

Acadia Ladies’ Seminary

1880–1926

Acadia

Baptist

Hellmuth Ladies’ College

1881–85

Western

Anglican

Donalda Classes/ Royal Victoria College

1884–1946

McGill

non-denominational

Halifax Ladies’ College

1892–1959

Dalhousie

Presbyterian

St Hilda’s College

1888–94

Trinity

Anglican

Moulton Ladies’ College

1888–1954

McMaster

Baptist

Mount St Bernard College

1894–1987

St Francis Xavier

Catholic

Loretto College

1911–53

St Michael’s, Toronto

Catholic

St Joseph’s College

1911–53

St Michael’s, Toronto

Catholic

Mount St Vincent College

1914–251

Dalhousie

Catholic

Notre Dame College

1919–58

Ottawa

Catholic

Bruyère College

1919–58

Ottawa

Catholic

Ursuline/Brescia College

1919–present2

Western

Catholic

St Mary’s College

1936–57

St Paul’s, Manitoba

Catholic

1 2

In 1925, Mount St Vincent was chartered as an independent institution with the power to confer degrees in arts, science, and music. It became coeducational in 1969. Brescia University College continues to offer undergraduate courses in affiliation with Western University. Although all its classes are open to both men and women, the college only admits women, with the exception of the preliminary year program which was opened to men in 1972.

APPENDIX 4

First Residences and Deans of Women University

Location

First women’s residence

Dean of women position created1

McGill

Montreal, qc

Royal Victoria College, 1899

18992

Queen’s

Kingston, on

William St Residence, 1901

19113

Alberta

Edmonton, ab

Pembina Hall, 1919

19114

University College, Toronto

Toronto, on

Queen’s Hall, 1905

19165

Acadia

Wolfville, ns

Crow’s Nest, 1909

1919

Victoria

Toronto, on

Annesley Hall, 1903

1920

Mount Allison

Sackville, nb

Ladies’ College Annex, 1912

1920

Manitoba

Winnipeg, mb

Taché Hall, 1912

1920

McMaster

Toronto, on

Wallingford Hall, 1920

19206

British Columbia

Vancouver, bc

Wesbrook, MacInnes, Bollert Halls, 1951

19217

Dalhousie

Halifax, ns

Forrest Hall, 1912

19238

Western

London, on

Alpha House, 1928

19269

Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, sk

Saskatchewan Hall, 1912

1944

New Brunswick

Fredericton, nb

Maggie Jean Chestnut House, 1949

1960

1

2 3 4

The position of dean of women had two key features that set it apart from the purely residence-based appointments of the past: first, the dean had academic qualifications, and often a teaching position; and second, she had responsibility for all the women undergraduates, whether or not they lived in residence. I have indicated when a title other than dean of women was used. Warden of Royal Victoria College (1899). Adviser of women (1911); dean of women (1916). Adviser to women students (1911); dean of women (1951).

286

5 6 7 8 9

APPENDICES

Lady resident (1916); resident head (1917); dean of women (1926). Dean of Wallingford Hall (1920); dean of women (1930). Adviser of women (1921); dean of women (1922). Warden of Shirreff Hall and adviser to women students (1923); dean of women (1956). Dean of women (1926); adviser to women (1932).

NOTES

Introduction 1

Lavinia C. Read to G.M. Grant, 6 October 1879, George Monro Grant fonds, mg 29, D38, vol. 2, 990–991, Correspondence, 1879–1882, Library and Archives Canada (lac). Lavinia C. Read had a first-class diploma from the Normal School of Boston and also a first-class licence from both the Nova Scotia and the New Brunswick school boards. Until 1877, she had been a public school teacher in the county of Saint John, New Brunswick, and then had moved to Woodstock, Ontario, to teach history and later serve as head of the ladies’ department at the Baptist Canadian Literary Institute (renamed Woodstock College in 1883). Report on Public Accounts, “Warrants for Salaries of Teachers of Public Schools for Term Ended 31st October 1877,” Journals of the House of Assembly of the Province of New Brunswick, 1879, 120, New Brunswick, House of Assembly; “Respecting Universities, Colleges and Schools, not under Provincial Control,” Report of the Minister of Education, 1880 and 1881, 411, Ontario, Department of Education; Bates, By the Way, 9–18. 2 In 1879, two women in Canada were enrolled as undergraduates, Harriet Stewart at Mount Allison Wesleyan College and Adeline Shenick at Victoria College in Cobourg, Ontario, and only one woman, Grace Annie Lockhart, had earned a degree. In 1875, Lockhart had graduated from Mount Allison with a Bachelor of Science and English Literature (bs), becoming the first woman in Canada to receive a university degree (see appendix 2). 3 Helen Marjorie Bates at Acadia, see “Anniversary Exercises,” Acadia Bulletin 1, no. 5 (June 1912): 3. 4 Conway, “Coeducation and Women’s Studies,” 239–49; Conway, “Perspectives on the History of Women’s Education,” 1–12. See also Conway, A Woman’s Education, 39–58. 5 Conable, Women at Cornell; Zimmerman, “Daughters of Main Street,” 154–70; Howe, Myths of Coeducation; Solomon, Company of Educated Women, 186–212; Rury and Harper, “The Trouble with Coeducation,” 481–502; Horowitz, Campus Life; Schwager, “Educating Women in America,” 362–5; Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era. 6 Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?, 238–47; Mazón, Gender and the Modern Research University; Parkes, ed., A Danger to the Men?; Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 289–303; Robinson, Bluestockings; Myers, University Coeducation in the Victorian Era, 1–26, 185–90; Rowold, The Educated Woman; Horne, “The

288

NOTES FOR PAGES 4–6

Final Barrier?,” 76–96; Mackinnon, “The Keystone of the Arch,” 213–22; Mackinnon, “And Sweet Girl-Graduates?,” 201–23; Fitzgerald, “Claiming Their Intellectual Spaces,” 1–12. 7 Dissertations by Donna Yavorsky Ronish, Paula J.S. LaPierre, and Alyson E. King provide the only syntheses of the history of women’s admission to English-speaking universities in Canada. Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates”; LaPierre, “The First Generation”; King, “Experience of the Second Generation.” For studies of individual institutions, see Gillett, We Walked Very Warily; Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison”; Ford, Path not Strewn with Roses; Marks and Gaffield, “Women at Queen’s University”; Fingard, “College, Career, and Community,” 26–50; Stewart, “It’s Up to You”; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 161–224; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 118–206. 8 Harford, Opening of University Education, 1–9, 160–73; Harford, “Gender, Subjectivity, and Lived Experience,” 34–51. 9 Smyth, “Much Exertion of the Voice,” 97–113; Smyth, “Professionalization among the Professed,” 234–54; Smyth, “Culture of Catholic Women’s Colleges,” 111–30; Smyth, “Sister-Professors,” 207–24. 10 Poulson and Miller-Bernal, “Conclusion,” in Millar-Bernal and Poulson, Going Coed, 309–16; Miller-Bernal and Poulson, eds, Challenged by Coeducation, ix–xii, 375–88; Miller-Bernal, Separate by Degree, 3–9. 11 Gidney, “Dating and Gaiting,” 138–60; Gidney, A Long Eclipse, 3–47; King, “Centres of ‘Home-Like Influence,’” 39–59. 12 Gidney, Tending the Student Body. 13 Panayotidis and Stortz, “Intellectual Space, Image, and Identities,” 123–52; Panayotidis and Stortz, “Visual Interpretations, Cartoons, and Caricatures,” 195–227; Panayotidis and Stortz, “Contestation and Conflict,” 35–53; Panayotidis and Stortz, “Feverish Frolics of the Frivolous Frosh,” 182–209. 14 My focus has been on English-speaking universities, as francophone women were not admitted to degree programs until after the First World War, at Ottawa in 1919, and Laval in 1936. Baillargeon, Brief History of Women in Quebec, 89–90. 15 See appendix 1. Although the new provincial universities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia would add an important dimension to this history, they admitted women into coeducational classes from their outset, at a time when coeducation had already become common in central and eastern Canada. To determine the date of women’s admission to each university, I have searched for the moment when women were admitted to the rank of undergraduates with all privileges: the right to matriculate, the right to attend lectures, and the right to register in a course of study leading to a degree.

NOTES FOR PAGES 6–10

289

Harris, History of Higher Education, 609–11, 623, 352. Gaffield, Marks, and Laskin, “Student Populations and Graduate Careers,” 12. 18 King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 74. 19 Carol Dyhouse makes this point in reference to women in British universities. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?, 189–90, 240. 20 Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 1–11, 28–50; Scott, “ahr Forum: Unanswered Questions,” 1422–9. For a discussion of the impact of Scott’s work, see Meyerowitz, “ahr Forum: A History of ‘Gender,’” 1346–56. 21 Poovey, Uneven Developments, 1–23. 22 Butler, Gender Trouble, 134–41; and Margadant, “Introduction,” 2–3. I am grateful to Linda Ambrose for bringing these studies to my attention. 23 Butler, “The New Yorker Interview,” New Yorker, 9 February 2020. Butler argues that discourse, collective practices, infrastructures, and institutions can be the vector of change: “In response to the objection that a position in favor of nonviolence is simply unrealistic, this argument maintains that nonviolence requires a critique of what counts as reality, and it affirms the power and necessity of counter-realism in times like these.” Butler, Force of Nonviolence, 10. 24 The popular image of the angel in the house romanticized separate sphere ideology and pervaded culture on both sides of the Atlantic. The term comes from a poem by Coventry Patmore, but this image appears in the work of numerous Victorian writers. See Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House,” in The Angel in the House (first pub. 1854–56), 27–191; John Ruskin, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” in Sesame and Lilies (first pub. 1865), 115–6; Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (first pub. 1847). 25 Anthony Trollope, “Higher Education of Women” [1868], in Four Lectures, 75. Trollope’s lecture tour in 1868 was a response to Emily Davies’ book, The Higher Education of Women, published in 1866. 26 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (first pub. 1876), 609–10. 27 I have been influenced by the externalist approach to intellectual history, examining the relationship between ideas and social change through the impact of ideology, beliefs, and attitudes on the actions of individuals and groups. In 1979, Susan Trofimenkoff charged intellectual historians with ignoring the importance of women in nationalist thought, asking “what about the women?” Trofimenkoff, “Nationalism, Feminism and Canadian Intellectual History,” 7–20. See also Vickers, “Feminisms and Nationalisms,” 128–48; Cook, “Nailing Jelly to a Wall,” 205–18; Owram, “Writing About Ideas,” 47–70; McKillop, “Nationalism, Identity, and Canadian Intellectual History,” 3–17; Gaudet, “Empire Is Woman’s Sphere,” 38–42, 365–8. 16 17

290

28 29

30

31

NOTES FOR PAGES 11–16

Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entry, 31 March 1890, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 3, uta. Academic dress, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 2, uta; Edith Clement, phone interview by Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], 2 February 2000. The study of social memory rests on the premise that a group’s perception of the past has a cultural and intellectual reality of its own. Vance, Death So Noble, 4; Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 3–6. Estelle Cook Webster to Mrs Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac.

Chapter One “From our Hamilton Correspondent,” The Globe, 15 March 1855; “Miss Lucy Stone,” The Globe, 15 March 1855. 2 “Legal Rights of Married Women,” The Globe, 26 December 1856. 3 [A.S. Hunt, Address to the Teachers’ Association], Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 2, no. 44 (August 1872): 50. 4 Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 1–10. 5 Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 65–6. See also Perry, “Mary Astell and Enlightenment,” 357–70. 6 More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 157–221; Cohen, “‘To Think, to Compare, to Combine, to Methodise,’” 224–42; Orr, “Aristocratic Feminism,” 306–25; Eger, “The Noblest Commerce of Mankind,” 288–305. 7 Rousseau, “Sophie or the Woman,” 357–450. 8 Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 293–4. A new edition of Wollstonecraft’s book was published in 1891, edited by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, women’s suffrage leader and one of the founders of Newnham College, Cambridge. See also Martin, Reclaiming a Conversation, 38–69, 70–102. 9 Himmelfarb, introduction to On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, 7–49. 10 Mill, The Subjection of Women, 27. See also John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, Essays on Sex Equality. 11 Davies, “Some Account of a Proposed New College for Women,” in Thoughts on Some Questions Relating to Women, 87, italics in original. 12 de Bellaigue, Educating Women, 232–9. 13 Pedersen, Reform of Girls’ Secondary and Higher Education, 12–36; Myers, “Glasgow Association,” 357–71; Smith, “Retaking the Register,” 321. 14 Brittain, Women at Oxford, 16. 1

NOTES FOR PAGES 17–22

15 16 17

18 19

20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

291

Turpin, “Ideological Origins of the Women’s College,” 133–58; Allmendinger, “Mount Holyoke Students,” 27–46. Quoted by Solomon, Company of Educated Women, 43. Gordon, “Smith College Students,” 147–67; Wein, “Women’s Colleges and Domesticity,” 31–47; Horowitz, Alma Mater, 1–7; Eschbach, Higher Education of Women, 32–81, 136–64; Solomon, Company of Educated Women, 14–26, 43–61. Albisetti, “American Women’s Colleges,” 439–58; Hirsch, “Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon,” 84–100. Davies, “Special Systems of Education for Women,” in Thoughts on Some Questions Relating to Women, 118–37; Tullberg, Women at Cambridge, 37–55, 155–91; Sutherland, “Anne Jemima Clough and Blanche Athena Clough,” 101–4. Bush, “‘Special Strengths for Their Own Special Duties,’” 387–405; Batson, Her Oxford, 1–32, 99–111, 176–90; Brittain, Women at Oxford, 68–85; Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees, 13–45; Robertson, “Manchester, Owens College,” 201–20; Vicinus, Independent Women, 121–62. Harford, Opening of University Education, 10–46, 74–98; see also Parkes, ed., A Danger to the Men?; Parkes and Harford, “Women in Higher Education in Ireland,” 105–44; Raftery, Harford, and Parkes, “Mapping the Terrain of Female Education,” 565–78; Harford, “Gender, Subjectivity, and Lived Experience,” 34–51. Malkmus, “Small Towns, Small Sects,” 33–65; Buchanan, “Early Coeducational Institution as Matchmaker,” 46–57. McGuigan, A Dangerous Experiment, 15–45; Haines, “For Honor and Alma Mater,” 25–37; Conable, Women at Cornell, 62–133. Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 1–47; Gelber, University and the People, 31–2, 58–9. Ware, Beyond the Pale, 49–116. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 21–56; Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 76–8, 95–117. Myers, University Coeducation in the Victorian Era, 16–19, 186; Gilbert, “Women Students and Student Life,” 405–22; Albisetti, “Un-learned Lessons from the New World?” 473–89; Howarth and Curthoys, “Political Economy of Women’s Higher Education,” 208–31; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? 1–55. Barnes, “Crossing the Invisible Line,” 37. Pietsch, “Wandering Scholars?” 377–87. See also Pietsch, Empire of Scholars. The Queen’s calendar, for example, specified, “There shall be a Matriculation Examination for students entering upon the ordinary course of study, on passing which they shall be admitted to the rank of Under-

292

31

32

33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40

41 42

43 44 45

46 47

NOTES FOR PAGES 22–8

graduates.” Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, Canada, 1879–80, 16. Archibald, Historical Notes on the Education of Women, 7; Sonser, “‘A Respectable English Education,’” 87–103; Sonser, “Literary Ladies and The Calliopean,” 368–80; Selles-Roney, “Manners and Morals,” 247–68; den Boggende, “‘The Vassar of the Dominions,’” 95–117. Sonser, “‘A Respectable English Education,’” 87–103, 369; Martens and Chalmers, “Educating the Eye, Hand, and Heart,” 31–59; Nash, “A Means of Honorable Support,” 45–63. Theobald, “‘Mere Accomplishments’?” 85; Theobald, “The Sin of Laura,” 264. See also Theobald, Knowing Women, 29–54. Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle, 13–31; Westfall, Two Worlds, 191– 209; Chambers, Married Women and Property Law, 70–104, 137–47. Gidney and Millar, Inventing Secondary Education, 108; Gidney and Lawr, “Egerton Ryerson,” 442–65; Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 3–25. Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 1–10. “Wesleyan Female College, Hamilton,” Christian Guardian, 2 July 1879. Royce, “Methodism and the Education of Women,” 131–43; Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison,” 7–8; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 30–102. Moody, “Breadth of Vision, Breadth of Mind,” 3–29; Sawyer, Education of Women, 5–12; Davison, “Alice Shaw and Her Grand Pré Seminary,” 124–37. Gossage, Question of Privilege, 67–78, 103–8, 113–6, 124–7, 132–5; Gwynne-Timothy, Western’s First Century, 66–7; Calendar of the Church School for Girls, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1891–92, 3–4. Smyth, “A Noble Proof of Excellence,” 269–90; Smyth, “Gender, Religion and Higher Education,” 547–61. Smyth, “Much Exertion of the Voice,” 97–113; Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 155–7, 323; Cameron, For the People, 77–8; Bartley, “French Education: Compilation,” 157–65. Phillips, Development of Education in Canada, 198–203; Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 24–68. Sager, “Women Teachers in Canada,” 204. Errington, “Ladies and Schoolmistresses,” 71–96; Houston and Prentice, Schooling and Scholars, 310–44; Davies, “Private Education for Women,” 9–19; Whiteley, “Annie Leake’s Occupation,” 97–112. A Female Teacher, “Female Teaching,” Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 1, no. 36 (April 1871): 559. Guildford, “‘Separate Spheres,’” 119–43; Prentice, “Like Friendly Atoms in Chemistry,” 285–317; Perry, “The Grand Regulator,” 60–83.

NOTES FOR PAGES 28–34

48 49 50 51

52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62

63 64

293

Kinnear, In Subordination, 125. Dawson, “The Future of McGill University,” 57. See also J. William Dawson, Report on the Higher Education of Women, 1. Norman, “‘True to My Own Noble Race,’” 5–34; Luby and Labelle, “‘The New Generation,’” 88–110; Milloy, A National Crime. The earliest identified Black woman to take advanced studies at a Maritime academy was Lalia Halfkenny, who graduated in 1889 from Acadia Ladies’ Seminary in Nova Scotia and then taught at Hartshorn Memorial College, a Baptist institution of higher learning for Black women in Richmond, Virginia. Harris, “‘Ushered into the Kitchen,’” 45–65. For Black women teachers and segregated schooling, see Cooper, “Black Women and Work,” 143–70; Morton, “Separate Spheres in a Separate World,” 194–6. Llewellyn and Smyth, “Gender and Teachers,” 410–1. Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 73. Prentice, “Feminization of Teaching,” 5–20; Childs and Bower, “Teacher Testing and Certification,” 282–3; Smaller, “‘A Room of One’s Own,’” 106–7; Guildford, “‘Separate Spheres,’” 137; Perry, “Concession to Circumstances,” 327–60; Kinnear, In Subordination, 126–32; Goldberg, “I Thought the People Wanted to Get Rid of the Teacher,” 55–6. A Female Teacher, “Female Teaching,” Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 1, no. 36 (April 1871): 559. Isabella L. Chalmers, “The Position and Influence of Female Teachers,” Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 7, no. 71 (February 1877): 6. MacLeod, History of the Halifax Ladies’ College, 17. Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 73–4. Sawyer, Education of Women, 12–17; Davison, “Alice Shaw,” 124–37. Pomeroy, “Mary Electa Adams,” 107–17; Prentice, “Scholarly Passion,” 259–67; Sonser, “Respectable English Education,” 89–90, 94; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 161–5; Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison,” 3–10; Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 59–63; Reid, “Mary Electa Adams”; Semple, Faithful Intellect, 235. John F. German, “Ontario Ladies’ College, Whitby,” Canadian Magazine 5, no. 1 (May 1895): 73. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 101–23, 149–76; McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence, 1–91; Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 3–25, 354–83; Ainley, “Gendered Careers,” 265; Moody, “‘The Trail of the Serpent,’” 117–8; Harris, History of Higher Education, 239, 378; Lambert, Dethroning Classics and Inventing English, 1–3, 90–155. Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century, 7–8. See also Westfall, Two Worlds, 82–125; Semple, Faithful Intellect, 27–57; McKillop, Matters of Mind, 94–100. Westfall, The Founding Moment, 70–109.

294

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

NOTES FOR PAGES 34–40

Smyth, “Sister-Professors,” 207–24; Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 155–7; Cameron, For the People, 77–8. College Board and Senate Minutes, 26 May 1872, 44–5, Mount Allison University, maua. Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison,” 3–19; Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 118–21; Archibald, Historical Notes, 1–8. J.G.A., “Mount Allison College and Academies,” Provincial Wesleyan, 22 November 1871 [originally cited by Reid]. Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison,” 3–19. “Dr James R. Inch Died Last Evening,” Sackville Tribune, 14 October 1912. Somerville, “James Robert Inch”; Reid, “David Allison.” Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 72, 118–21. “Advance, Halt, or Retreat; Which?” Provincial Wesleyan, 5 June 1872 [originally cited by Reid]. J.G.A., “Mount Allison College,” Provincial Wesleyan, 12 June 1872 [originally cited by Reid]. Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 91–3, 120–1, 168–70, 268–9. Mrs J.L. Dawson [Grace Annie Lockhart], “The New Woman Has Come to Stay,” newspaper clipping, 27 June 1896, 50, Mount Allison Scrapbook, 1857–1895, Raymond Clare Archibald fonds, mta5, 5501/6/1/2, maua. Cited by Mawhinney, “Grace Annie Lockhart” [quoted in epigraph]. W.M. Tweedie to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 27 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac. “Enters Door of University and Shows Way to Others,” Regina Post, 10 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac. Editorial, The Argosy, February 1880, 54; Graduate Biographies, The Argosy, October 1882, 3–4. Annie Jean Lavinia Stewart, “My Aunt Harriet” or “Life with Auntie,” typescript, n.d., 13–14, Harriet Starr Stewart fonds, 8254/1, maua. Editorial, The Argosy, December 1877, 30–1. See also Editorial, The Argosy, February 1878, 54–5; Editorial, The Argosy, March 1878, 66–7. “Mount Allison University,” Chignecto Post and Borderer, 3 June 1880 [originally cited by Reid]. “Mount Allison University,” Chignecto Post and Borderer, 3 June 1880 [originally cited by Reid]. See also Editorial, The Argosy, January 1881, 43. Mrs H.E.G. Arey, “Mixed Schools,” Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 2, no. 43 (June 1872): 41. [A.S. Hunt, Address to the Teachers’ Association], Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 2, no. 44 (August 1872): 50. For Lamarckian evolutionary theory, see Rowold, Educated Woman, 26.

NOTES FOR PAGES 41–3

86 87

88

89

90

91

92 93

94

295

[A.S. Hunt,] “Our Public Schools,” Journal of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia 1, no. 37 (June 1871): 574. Editorials, The Argosy, February 1880, 55, April 1881, 78–9; “Graduate Biographies,” The Argosy, October 1882, 4; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 118–21; Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 148–152; Somerville, “James Robert Inch.” Calendar of the University of Victoria College, Cobourg, 1867–68, 16; “Cobourg Collegiate Institute,” College Courant, 15 November 1873, 214; Maude B. Stapleford, The Admission of Women to Victoria College, typescript [n.d.], Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, 1990.146V, box 1, file 19, vua; Pomeroy, “Mary Electa Adams,” 107–17; Prentice, “Scholarly Passion,” 259–67; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 27, 161–5. “College of Physicians and Surgeons, Ontario, Matriculation Examination, April 1871,” Canada Lancet 3, no. 9 (May 1871): 373. While Jenny Kidd Trout’s name appears in some sources as Jennie, she is listed in the Victoria Register of Students and the Canada Lancet as Jenny. In 1869, the Ontario legislature approved the creation of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, incorporating the licensing boards of eclectic and homeopathic doctors as well as regular practitioners, and empowered it to regulate matriculation requirements and licensing examinations in the province. Backhouse, “Celebrated Abortion Trial,” 162; Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 85–105. Emily H. Stowe (no. 8), Jenny Kidd Trout (no. 9), Session 1871–72, Register of Students, Medical Department, 1858–1875, Victoria University, 1858–1875, Department of Medicine fonds 2083, 1987.144V, box 10S, file 1, vua. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 22 April 1879, A Woman with a Purpose, 83–4. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 27 December 1882, A Woman with a Purpose, 282. See also Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 1–2, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua. At the annual meeting of the council in July 1880, the committee on credentials referred the matter to the registration committee, which recommended in its report that Stowe be allowed to register. The minutes recorded, “The complainant set forth that she had been practicing since 1850.” This date is incorrect, however, because in 1850 Stowe was working as a public school teacher in Oxford County. “Ontario Medical Council, Minutes and Proceedings,” Canada Lancet 12, no. 12 (August 1880): 369, 373. In her analysis of Stowe’s 1879 trial for attempting to procure an abortion, Constance Backhouse notes that Stowe declined to say whether

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98

99 100

101 102 103 104 105

106

107

NOTES FOR PAGES 44–6

she was a licensed practitioner and stated that she had been following her profession in Toronto for eighteen years, indicating that she herself dated her medical practice from 1861, five years before she graduated from the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women. Backhouse, “Celebrated Abortion Trial,” 164. “College of Physicians and Surgeons, Ontario, Professional Examination,” Canada Lancet 7, no. 9 (May 1875): 286; Dembski, “Jenny Kidd Trout,” 183–206. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 22 April 1879, A Woman with a Purpose, 86. Augusta Stowe Gullen, A Brief History of the Ontario Medical College for Women (n.p., 1906), 4, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 41, lac. “Ontario Medical Council Examinations,” Canada Lancet 11, no. 10 (June 1879): 312; Augusta Stowe, 1882, 1883, Register of Students Examined by the Medical Board of Examiners, 1880–1892, Victoria University, Department of Medicine fonds 2083, 1987.144V, box 10S, file 2, vua; Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 1–6, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua. “Ladies’ Institute, Brookhurst, Cobourg,” Canada Educational Directory, Year Book for 1876, 83. Maude B. Stapleford, The Admission of Women to Victoria College, typescript [n.d.], Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, 1990.146V, box 1, file 19, vua. Reid, “Mary Electa Adams”; Semple, Faithful Intellect, 235. Rev. President Nelles, “Importance of the Teacher’s Profession,” Journal of Education for the Province of Ontario 22, no. 9 (September 1869): 130. “Educational Problems: Further Replies from Eminent Educators to ‘The Globe’s’ Queries,” The Globe, 27 October 1883. Barbara M. Foote, 19 September 1877, Register of Students at Victoria University, 1872–1892, 75–6, Registrar’s Office fonds, 2049–2–1–1987.146V, vua. D.C. McHenry, “The Higher Education of Women,” Canada School Journal 4, no. 28 (September 1879): 198–201; Adeline Shenick, 7 October 1879, Register of Students at Victoria University, 1872–1892, 97–8, Registrar’s Office fonds, 2049–2–1–1987.146V, vua; Calendar of the University of Victoria College, Cobourg, 1878–79, 60–3; Maude B. Stapleford, The Admission of Women to Victoria College, typescript [n.d.], Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, 1990.146V, box 1, file 19, vua. Calendar of the University of Victoria College, Cobourg, 1867–68, 1878–79; “Ladies’ Institute, Brookhurst, Cobourg,” Canada Educational Directory, Year Book for 1876, 82. Quoted by Pomeroy, “Mary Electa Adams,” 114.

NOTES FOR PAGES 46–50

297

108 Prentice, “Scholarly Passion,” 259–67; Sonser, “Respectable English Education,” 89–90, 94; Reid, “Mary Electa Adams.” 109 Victoria University Senate Minutes, 6 May 1884, 137, 2048, Series 1, 1987.134V, box 1, file 1, vua; Nellie Cora Greenwood, 4 October 1880, 7 October 1881, 8 October 1883, Register of Students at Victoria University, 1872–1892, 107–8, 123–4, 143–4, Registrar’s Office fonds, 2049–2–1–1987.146V, vua; Burwash, Victoria College, 237–41; Harris, History of Higher Education, 127–8. 110 Nellie Greenwood Andrews, Victoria Is My College, manuscript [195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046v/tr, file 1, vua. 111 Clara Field, Cassy Munson, Nellie Greenwood, 8 November 1881, Register of Students at Victoria University, 1872–1892, 125–6, Registrar’s Office fonds, 2049–2–1–1987.146V, vua. 112 Nellie Greenwood Andrews, Victoria Is My College, manuscript [195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046v/tr, file 1, vua. 113 “The Class of ‘84,” Acta Victoriana, April 1884, 11. 114 J.R. Campbell, “Co-Education in Universities,” Acta Victoriana, April 1881, 7. 115 Nellie Greenwood Andrews, Victoria Is My College, manuscript [195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046v/tr, file 1, vua. 116 Editorial, Acta Victoriana, May 1884, 3–4; “Convocation – Wednesday,” Acta Victoriana, May 1884, 8; Victoria University Senate Minutes, 6 May 1884, 137, 2048, Series 1, 1987.134V, box 1, file 1, vua; Burwash, Victoria College, 256–7, 548–9; Sissons, History of Victoria University, 150–1. 117 Nellie Greenwood Andrews, Victoria Is My College, manuscript [195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046v/tr, file 1, vua. 118 Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, Canada, 1869–70, 10–25; 1879–80, 46; “Young Ladies’ Institute,” Daily British Whig, 16 March 1878. 119 Senate Minutes, 26 April 1870, 267–8, Queen’s University, qua; Board of Trustees Minutes, 29 April 1870, Queen’s University, qua. 120 Report to the Synod, Board of Trustees, 28 April 1870, Queen’s University, qua. 121 Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, Canada, 1870–71, 15; 1871–72, 15. 122 “Queen’s University, Meeting of Convocation,” Kingston Daily News, 28 April 1871. 123 “The Education of Ladies,” Kingston Daily News, 14 November 1870. 124 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 39–72; Gillett, “Margaret Smith (Murray) Polson”; Cook, The Regenerators, 180–4. 125 Murray, The Higher Education of Woman, 6. 126 Ramsay Cook speculates that Murray might have been happier staying at Queen’s and working under its new principal, George Monro Grant, whose liberal views were much more compatible with those of Murray

298

127 128 129 130

131 132 133

134

135

136 137 138 139 140

NOTES FOR PAGES 50–3

than the socially and scientifically conservative Dawson. Cook, The Regenerators, 180, 7–25. See also Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 39–72. “Principal Dawson on University Culture,” Queen’s Journal, 23 October 1875, 5–6. D.H. Marshall to Mrs Hallett, 30 August 1884, “Foreign Notes and News,” Englishwoman’s Review 15, no. 1 (15 January 1885), 45. Senate Minutes, 13 October 1876, 423, Queen’s University, qua. Advertisement for Mme and Miss de St Rémy’s Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies, British Daily Whig, 11 September 1868; Notice of Death of Caroline Henrietta Leonora LeLièvre de St Rémy, Kingston News, 6 March 1869; Advertisement for Miss de St Rémy’s School, Kingston News, 1 September 1869; Advertisement for Sterling House Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies, Daily British Whig, 3 September 1877; Harriet Annie Angelique LeLièvre de St Rémy, Toronto Normal School Jubilee Celebration, 1847–1897 (Toronto: Warwick Bros and Rutter, 1898), 139. In the census of 1861, the de St Rémy family is living in Toronto, where Caroline de St Rémy operates an Establishment for Young Ladies. In the census of 1871, Elizabeth and Theresa de St Rémy live with their father, Edward John de St Rémy, in Kingston, and all three are listed as teachers. Edward J. de St Rémy, Toronto, York, Census of Canada West, 1861; E.J. de St Rémy, Kingston, Frontenac, Census of Canada, 1871. E[lizabeth] de St Rémy, “The Training of Girls,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 3 (November 1881): 425–6. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 22 April 1879, A Woman with a Purpose, 86. “Young Ladies’ Institute,” Daily British Whig, 16 March 1878. In 1883, A.P. Knight became the registrar for the new Kingston Women’s Medical College. “Kingston Women’s Medical College,” Canada Citizen 4, no. 14 (5 October 1883): 166–7. Elizabeth H.D. LeLièvre de St Rémy (936), 1 February 1876, Register of Students, University of Queen’s College, qua; Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, Canada, 1877–78, 43. Young, The Roll of Pupils of Upper Canada College, Toronto, 49; Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, Canada, 1869–70, 25, 1870–71, 23, 1871–72, 23, 1872–73, 22. “Sweet Girl Graduates,” Queen’s Journal, 16 December 1876, 5–6. Aliquis, “Female Education,” Queen’s Journal, 12 January 1877, 2. John Watson, “Female Education,” Queen’s Journal, 27 January 1877, 3. “The Education of Women,” Queen’s Journal, 10 February 1877, 4–5; “Higher Education for Women,” Queen’s Journal, 10 March 1877, 2–3. “Queen’s University and College,” Presbyterian Record 2, no. 6 (June 1877): 148; Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 22 February 1879, 85.

NOTES FOR PAGES 53–5

299

141 J. Webb to Elizabeth Smith, 13 April 1877, cited by Veronica Strong-Boag, introduction, A Woman with a Purpose, xiv–xv. 142 Board of Trustees Minutes, 3 October 1877, 48, Queen’s University, qua; Mack, “George Monro Grant.” 143 G. Bell to George Monro Grant, 10 July 1877, and A. Robertson to George Monro Grant, 13 August 1878, George Monro Grant fonds, A. Arch. 2172, qua; Board of Trustees Minutes, 27 April 1882, 78, Queen’s University, qua. See also Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 132–4, 151–67, 206–10; Calvin, Queen’s University, 235–8. 144 Principal Grant, “Education and Co-Education,” Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (November 1879): 511. This article also was published as “Education and Co-Education,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 1 (October 1879): 477–87. 145 Grant, “Education and Co-Education,” 514–5. 146 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (first pub. 1876), 609–10, 713, 731. 147 Grant, “Education and Co-Education,” 516. 148 “Closing Ceremonies,” Queen’s Journal, Midsummer Number, 1884, 144. 149 Lavinia C. Read to G.M. Grant, 6 October 1879, George Monro Grant fonds, mg 29, D38, vol. 2, 990–991, Correspondence, 1879–1882, lac. 150 Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 22 February 1879, 85. 151 “Freshwomen,” Queen’s Journal, 30 October 1880, 24. 152 Annie Law Fowler (1129), 24 October 1880; Laura Leah Allen (1139), 27 October 1880; Alice McGillivray (1162), 28 October 1880; Annie Erdine Dickson (1143), 28 October 1880; Jennie Harriet Greaves (1157), 25 November 1880, Register of Students, University of Queen’s College, qua; Daniel Wilson to Lizzie S. Fitzgerald, 7 January 1882, Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly; “Resolution of the Council of University College Relative to the Applications of Misses Fitzgerald, Goodwillie and Charles for Admission to Lectures in the College,” Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. See also Calendar of Queen’s University and College, Kingston, 1869–70, 10–25; 1881–82, 56–7. 153 Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 4 December 1880, 26. See also editorials, Queen’s Journal, 6 March 1880, 100–1, 10 April 1880, 122, 7 May 1881, 146; “University Education for Women,” Queen’s Journal, 1 January 1881, 40; “To Correspondents,” Queen’s Journal, 26 March 1881, 115.

300

NOTES FOR PAGES 56–8

154 “Principal’s Closing Remarks,” Queen’s Journal, 7 May 1881, 159. See also “Queen’s University, Kingston,” Canada Presbyterian 9, no. 18 (May 1881): 285. 155 “The Evening,” Queen’s Journal, 7 May 1881, 155. Elizabeth de St Rémy seems to have maintained a social connection between Sterling House and Queen’s; during the 1881–82 session, for example, Elizabeth Smith turned down three invitations to an evening event hosted by de St Rémy. Elizabeth Smith to Charlie Roberts, n.d., A Woman with a Purpose, 234. 156 Emily Stowe to Elizabeth Smith, 2 July 1879, cited by Veronica StrongBoag, introduction, A Woman with a Purpose, xxiii. See also Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 1–6, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua; Announcement of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, 4 September 1879, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 9, qua. 157 Emily Stowe to Elizabeth Smith, 2 July 1879, cited by Veronica StrongBoag, introduction, A Woman with a Purpose, xxiii. 158 Jenny Kidd Trout to Elizabeth Smith, 9 November 1880, cited by Dembski, “Jenny Kidd Trout,” 192. 159 Elizabeth Smith named these five women and herself as the group attending coeducational classes at Royal College in the 1881–82 session. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 28 October 1881, A Woman with a Purpose, 227. All six original students transferred to the new Kingston Women’s Medical College in 1883. Elizabeth R. Beatty (no. 1), Alice Isabel McGillivray (no. 2), Elizabeth Smith (no. 3), Helen E. Reynolds (no. 4), Anne Eveline Dickson (no. 8), Margaret A. Corlis (no. 11), Session 1883–84, Register of Students, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 9, qua. 160 Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 5 November 1881; Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 6–7, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua. 161 Elizabeth Smith to Charlie Roberts, n.d., A Woman with a Purpose, 234. 162 Senate Minutes, 30 November 1883, Queen’s University, qua. 163 “Closing Ceremonies,” Queen’s Journal, Midsummer Number, 1884, 144–6, 150. 164 “Laureation Day: The ‘Sweet Girl Graduates’ Receive Their Degrees,” Kingston Chronicle and News, 8 May 1884, Adam Shortt fonds, 2147, Series x, Personal Family Material, box 40, file 1: Elizabeth Smith, qua. In 1887, Eliza Fitzgerald was appointed principal of Stamford High School in Niagara Falls, becoming the first woman to hold the position of high school principal in Ontario. Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 88.

NOTES FOR PAGES 58–63

301

165 Adella G. Jackson to Elinor M. Wheeler, 5 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; DeWolfe, Acadia and Women, 3–9; “Acadia Seminary Jubilee,” Acadia Bulletin, 1 April 1912, 2–3; Sawyer, Education of Women, 12–17; Moody, “Breadth of Vision,” 21–4. 166 “Literary,” Acadia Athenaeum, November 1874, 6. 167 Mrs T. Trotter, “Results of the Higher Education of Women,” Acadia Athenaeum, February 1900, 132. 168 Sawyer, Education of Women, 11. See also Moody, “Artemas Wyman Sawyer.” 169 Board of Governors Minutes, 3 June 1874, vol. 1, 210, Acadia University, aua; Adella G. Jackson to Elinor M. Wheeler, 5 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. 170 “A Plea for Woman,” Acadia Athenaeum, February 1875, 30. 171 Acadianus, “Higher Education of Women in Great Britain,” Acadia Athenaeum, March 1878, 57; see also Graduate, “Co-Education,” Acadia Athenaeum, February 1878, 43–4. 172 Baptist Year Book of the Maritime Provinces, 23; Conrad, Rice, and Townsend, Women at Acadia University, 4–7, 14–15; Longley, Acadia University, 82, 92– 3; DeWolfe, Acadia and Women, 3–18; Moody, “Give Us an A,” 36. 173 Baptist Year Book of the Maritime Provinces, 28. 174 “Voices from the Hill,” Acadia Athenaeum, October 1880, 9; “Locals,” Acadia Athenaeum, October 1881, 10. 175 DeWolfe, Acadia and Women, 3–18. 176 Editorial, Acadia Athenaeum, December 1880, 80. See also Editorial, Acadia Athenaeum, March 1882, 2. 177 Eliza Ritchie to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac; “Dalhousie College and University,” British Colonist, 3 November 1870; E.D. Millar, “The Rev. James Ross, D.D.,” Dalhousie Gazette, 12 January 1903, 144–52; Waite, Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 101–3, 131; Dunlop, “James Ross.” 178 Editorial, Dalhousie Gazette, 23 November 1878, 9. 179 “Educational Problems: Further Replies from Eminent Educators to ‘The Globe’s’ Queries,” The Globe, 27 October 1883. 180 Margaret Trueman to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 9 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. 181 Board of Governors Minutes, 9 July 1881, Dalhousie University, dua. 182 Senate Minutes, 24 October 1881, Dalhousie University, dua. 183 Margaret Trueman to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 9 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac; J.B. Calkin, Report of the Normal School, 1880–81, Journals and Proceeding of the House of Assembly of the Province of Nova Scotia, 1882.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 63–8

184 Convocation, Dalhousie Gazette, 11 November 1881, 3. 185 Convocation, Dalhousie Gazette, 3 May 1882, 135. 186 Eliza Ritchie, “Woman’s Debt to Dalhousie,” Morning Chronicle, 23 November 1911, 1–2. See also Fingard, “Eliza Ritchie.” 187 Margaret [Newcombe] Trueman to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 9 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. 188 Clara W. Seely to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 7 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. 189 Dalhousie University Calendar, 1882–83, 44–51; 1883–84, 59–71; 1884–85, 70–7; 1885–86, 74–82; Waite, Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 130–4; Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 7. 190 Convocation, Dalhousie Gazette, 11 November 1881, 2. 191 D.C. McHenry, “The Higher Education of Women,” Canada School Journal 4, no. 28 (September 1879): 198. 192 Quoted by Guillet, In the Cause of Education, 84. See also John Millar, “The Co-Education of the Sexes,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 1 (May/June 1879): 288–94.

Chapter Two 1

2

3

In 1881–82, Canadian universities had the following enrolments of women: Acadia – 52 men, 6 women; Dalhousie – 114 men, 2 women; Mount Allison – 34 men, 14 women; Queen’s – 176 men, 8 women; Victoria – 138 men, 5 women. Harris, History of Higher Education, 624. At the University of Toronto, science was housed within the faculty of arts, and University College was responsible for teaching courses in both. The name of the faculty of arts was changed to faculty of arts and science in 1960. In 1891–92, for example, the faculty of arts included courses in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, physiology, mineralogy and geology, history and ethnology, comparative philology, political economy and constitutional history, philosophy, Italian, and Spanish. Calendar of the University of Toronto, 1891–92, 26–7. Nellie Spence, How Women Won Admission to the University of Toronto, typescript [1932], Keys Family fonds, L44, Series 1, box 5, trl. A revised version was published in two parts in 1933: M.E. (Nellie) Spence, “Once There Were No Women at Varsity,” University of Toronto Monthly 33, no. 4 (January 1933): 121–3; M.E. Spence, “Eliza May Balmer,” University of Toronto Monthly 33, no. 5 (February 1933): 146–9.

NOTES FOR PAGES 69–71

4

5

6

7 8 9

10

11

12

303

Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle, 1–11. See also Vickers, “Feminisms and Nationalisms,” 128–48; Cooper, “Constructing Black Women’s Historical Knowledge,” 39–50; Agnew, “Canadian Feminism and Women of Color,” 217–27; Gaudet, “Empire Is Woman’s Sphere,” 38–42, 365–8. Yee, “Gender Ideology and Black Women,” 53–73; Bristow, “Whatever You Raise in the Ground You Can Sell It in Chatham,” in “We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up,” 108; Silverman, “Mary Ann Shadd and the Search for Equality,” in Nation of Immigrants, 101–14. See, for example, “Women’s Rights,” Provincial Freeman, 6 May 1854; “One of Our Legal Fictions,” Provincial Freeman, 10 June 1854; Editorial, Provincial Freeman, 17 March 1855; “Marriage of Lucy Stone under Protest,” Provincial Freeman, 12 May 1855; “A Bazaar for the Provincial Freeman,” Provincial Freeman, 3 June 1854; Editorial, Provincial Freeman, 10 June 1854. Murray, “Great Works and Good Works,” 75–95; Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle, 33–53. Quoted in Edith M. Luke, “Woman Suffrage in Canada,” Canadian Magazine 5 (1895): 329. Newspaper clippings on the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, n.d., 18, 66, 91 and “Women Wanting Votes,” newspaper clipping, n.d., 60, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua; Murray, “Great Works and Good Works,” 82–91. Scrapbooks kept by Stowe’s mother, Hannah L.H. Jennings, contain newspaper clippings on women’s rights and the activities of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club. Stowe’s biographer, Gina Feldberg, has observed that Stowe commonly signed her letters X.Y.Z., and I believe that other letters in the scrapbook, similar in style and content, can also be attributed to Stowe. For example, letters to The Globe signed “For Progress and Reform” and “Reformer” have the handwritten notations “Emily” and “E” next to the signatures. For Progress and Reform [Emily Stowe], “One of the Strong-Minded,” newspaper clipping, The Globe, 10 November 1877, 17–18, and Reformer [Emily Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” The Globe, 29 November 1877, 108, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. See chapter 1. Newspaper clippings on the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, n.d., 18, 66, 91, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua; Fryer, Emily Stowe, 13–40, 59–87; Backhouse, “Celebrated Abortion Trial,” 160–3; Feldberg, “Emily Howard (Stowe) Jennings.” Mrs J.W. Bengough is listed among the leaders of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club present at a public meeting in the Toronto council chambers on the subject of extending the parliamentary franchise to women.

304

NOTES FOR PAGES 72–7

“Woman Wanting Votes,” newspaper clipping, n.d., 60, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. 13 Cook, The Regenerators, 7–25; Murray, Come, Bright Improvement!, 107–16, 139–41; Burr, “Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism,” 549–51; Burr, “An Artist of Righteousness,” 56–97. 14 Newman, White Women’s Rights, 3–19, 22–75; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 37–44, 119–20. 15 Rowold, The Educated Woman, 17–66. 16 Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Cause” (first pub. 1857), in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 8–62. 17 Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (first pub. 1876), 609–10, 713–31, 757–8; see also Spencer, The Study of Sociology (first pub. 1873), 340–8. 18 John Maclean, “The Woman Question in Its Relation to Progress,” The Week, 6 March 1884. 19 Rowold, The Educated Woman, 200–11; Goodchild, “G. Stanley Hall,” 80–90. 20 Clarke, Sex in Education, 43. 21 Ibid., 140, italics in original. 22 Aubrey Lewis, “Henry Maudsley: His Work and Influence.” 23 Henry Maudsley, “Sex in Mind and in Education,” Fortnightly Review 15 n.s. (April 1874): 472. 24 Ibid., 482. 25 Zschoche, “Dr Clarke Revisited,” 547. 26 Julia Ward Howe, ed., Sex and Education, 8. 27 Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres, 1–27; Burstyn, “Education and Sex,” 79–89. 28 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, “Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply,” Fortnightly Review 15 n.s. (May 1874): 585. 29 Mitchinson, Nature of Their Bodies, 83–5. 30 “Sex in Education,” Sanitary Journal 1, no. 2 (September 1874): 56. 31 Goldwin Smith had taught at Cornell for two years before coming to Toronto, but had left shortly after women were admitted in 1870. Report on the Annual Convention of the Ontario Teachers’ Association, Journal of Education for the Province of Ontario 27, no. 9 (September 1874): 136–7; “The Co-Education of the Sexes,” Ontario Teacher: A Monthly Educational Journal 2, no. 10 (October 1874): 289–92. 32 John Millar, “The Co-Education of the Sexes,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 1 (May/June 1879): 288–94. See also Editorial, “CoEducation of the Sexes,” The Globe, 7 November 1877. 33 Cook, “Goldwin Smith”; Conable, Women at Cornell, 77 34 Phillips, The Controversialist, 87–92, 145–78; Strong-Boag, “Independent Women, Problematic Men,” 6–8; Wallace, Goldwin Smith, 72–9, 90.

NOTES FOR PAGES 77–80

35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42 43

44

45

46

47

48

49

305

Quoted by Haultain, Goldwin Smith: His Life and Opinions, 171. See also Goldwin Smith, Reminiscences, 360. A Bystander [Goldwin Smith], “The Woman’s Rights Movement,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 1, no. 3 (March 1872): 249. Editorial, The Week, 20 March 1884, 244. Editorial, The Week, 21 February 1884, 178–9. See, for example, Goldwin Smith, “Female Suffrage,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 6, no. 1 (July 1874): 68–78; Goldwin Smith, “Woman’s Place in the State,” The Forum 8, no. 52 (1890): 515–30; Goldwin Smith, “Woman Suffrage,” 183–218. See, for example, editorials, The Bystander, July 1880, 362–4, December 1880, 633–7, April 1883, 103–4; William Houston, “Co-Education in University College,” The Week, 14 February 1884, 165–6; S.A.C. [Sarah Anne Curzon], “Co-Education,” The Week, 6 March 1884, 216–17; editorials, The Week, 7 February 1884, 148, 13 March 1884, 226–7, 20 March 1884, 244, 23 October 1884, 741. Editorial, The Bystander, November 1880, 591. A Bystander [Goldwin Smith], “The Woman’s Rights Movement,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 1, no. 3 (March 1872): 251. Reformer [Emily Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” newspaper clipping, The Globe, letter dated 29 November 1877, 108, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. S.A.C. [Sarah Anne Curzon], “Woman and the Franchise,” newspaper clipping, The World, n.d., 58, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. X.Y.Z. [Emily Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” newspaper clipping, n.d., 109, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua [quoted in epigraph]. S.A.C. [Sarah Anne Curzon], “Professional Women,” newspaper clipping, n.d., 62, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. Reformer [Emily Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” newspaper clipping, The Globe, 29 November 1877, 108, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. It is probable that the writer was a member of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, possibly Stowe herself. Progress, “The Question of Woman’s Rights,” newspaper clipping, Evening Telegram, n.d., 55, Scrapbook #1, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. Valverde, “When the Mother of the Race Is Free,” 3–26; Christian, “Canada’s Fate,” 89–92; Berger, The Sense of Power.

306

50

NOTES FOR PAGES 80–2

For Progress and Reform [Emily Stowe], “One of the Strong-Minded,” newspaper clipping, The Globe, 10 November 1877, 18, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. 51 Reformer [Emily Stowe], “Woman’s Rights,” The Globe, 29 November 1877, 108, Scrapbook #2, Emily Howard Stowe collection, F01044, A. Arch 3078, qua. 52 Brouwer, “Moral Nationalism in Victorian Canada,” 90–108; Brouwer, “The ‘Between-Age’ Christianity,” 347–70; Hallman, “Agnes Maule Machar,” 165–82; Hallman, “Cultivating a Love of Canada,” 25–50; Boutilier, “Women’s Rights and Duties,” 51–74; Morgan, “History, Nation, and Empire,” 491–528; Knowles, Inventing the Loyalists, 91–138. 53 A. Ethelwyn Wetherald, “Some Canadian Literary Women II – ‘Fidelis,’” The Week, 5 April 1888, 300–1; Leman A. Guild, “Canadian Celebrities: No. 73 – Agnes Maule Machar (Fidelis),” Canadian Magazine 27, no. 6 (October 1906): 499–501. 54 Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar], “Higher Education for Women,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 7, no. 2 (February 1875): 153, italics in the original. 55 Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar], “Woman’s Work,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 1 (September 1878): 311; “A Few Words on University Co-Education,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 8 (March 1882): 313– 9; Agnes Maule Machar, “The Higher Education of Women,” The Week, 27 December 1889, 55–6; Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar], “The Enlarged Conception of Woman’s Sphere,” The Week, 10 October 1890, 713–4. 56 Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar], “The New Ideal of Womanhood,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 2 (June 1879): 661. 57 M., “The Woman Question,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 2 (May 1879): 575. 58 A Woman of Newfangle, “Some Newfangle Notions,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (July 1879): 82. 59 Ibid., 83. 60 A Non-Resident of the Same, “Newfangle and Its Opinions,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (August 1879): 206, italics in the original. 61 See also A Woman of Newfangle, “Another Word or Two,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (September 1879): 296–302; A Non-Resident, “Newfangle Again,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (October 1879): 410–6; Our Old Friend of Newfangle, “Some Last Words on the Woman Question,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (November 1879): 529–35; A Non-Resident of Newfangle, “A Brief Summing Up on the Woman Question,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (December 1879): 620–6.

NOTES FOR PAGES 82–5

307

Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar], “Higher Education for Women,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 7 (February 1875): 145, italics in the original. 63 Principal Grant, “Education and Co-Education,” Canadian Monthly and National Review 3 (November 1879): 516. This argument continued for several decades to be used by those who defended coeducation, presenting the university woman as an example of one who had adapted and evolved. See, for example, Elizabeth Johnson, “Co-Education of the Sexes in Relation to Evolution,” Lake Magazine 1, no. 7 (February 1893): 423–6. 64 Harris, History of Higher Education, 624. 65 Jennie Stork Hill taught mathematics at Moulton Ladies’ College, and graduated from Toronto with a ba in 1890, and an ma from the University of Alberta in 1911. She was active on the National Council of Women, and in 1913 was elected as a school trustee in Edmonton. Her daughter, Esther Marjorie Hill, graduated from Toronto with a bachelor of applied science in architecture in 1920, the first woman to graduate from a Canadian architectural program. Jennie Stork Hill, “Lone Woman Won Place for Women in Universities of Canada Fifty Years Ago,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d., Department of Graduate Records fonds, Jennie Stork Hill, A73–0026, box 18a, file 17, uta. 66 “The Ladies’ Educational Association of Toronto,” in Marling, Canada Educational Directory, 86 67 Daniel Wilson to Lizzie S. Fitzgerald, 7 January 1882; Daniel Wilson to Ada M.H. Goodwillie, 5 January 1882, Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. 68 Senate Minutes, 28 May 1877, 163–6, University of Toronto, uta. 69 Daniel Wilson to Ada M.H. Goodwillie, 5 January 1882, Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. 70 “The New University Curriculum,” The Globe, 19 July 1877. 71 “Replies to Circular as to Admission of Women to the University,” June– July 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–222, ao. 72 Squair, Admission of Women to the University of Toronto and University College, 6; Senate Minutes, 4 March 1881, 406, and 2 February 1881, 398, University of Toronto, uta; “Education for Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 3 (March 1881): 143. 73 Senate Minutes, 4 March 1881, 406, and 2 February 1881, 398, University of Toronto, uta. 62

308

74 75 76

77

78 79 80 81

82

83 84

85 86 87 88

NOTES FOR PAGES 86–90

Averill and Keith, “Daniel Wilson,” 166–72. Journal entry, 20 September 1883, 71, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. “Resolution of the Council of University College Relative to the Applications of Misses Fitzgerald, Goodwillie and Charles for Admission to Lectures in the College,” Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881– 82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. Daniel Wilson to Lizzie S. Fitzgerald, 7 January 1882, Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. Daniel Wilson, “Address at the Convocation of University College, 1884,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Magazine 6 (November 1884): 422. Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 16 March 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao. Journal entry, 3 February 1882, 58, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. J.W. Bengough, “A Valentine to Dr W.,” Grip Magazine, 11 February 1882. For Bengough’s somewhat inconsistent support of the women’s movement, see J.W. Bengough, “Mr Stotenbottel on Woman Suffrage,” Grip-Sack, A Receptacle of Light Literature, Fun and Fancy 2 (July 1883): 51–5. Paper no. 20, “Return of Applications Made by Females for Admission to Lectures of University College, Session 1881–82, with Copies of Correspondence in Connection Therewith,” Sessional Papers, 1882, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. “The Cause of Co-Education,” The Varsity, 3 March 1882. S.A.C. [Sarah Anne Curzon], “The Sweet Girl Graduate: A Drama in Three Acts,” Grip-Sack, A Receptacle of Light Literature, Fun and Fancy 1 (July 1882): 43, 54. Petitions, 26 January 1883, 103, vol. 16, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, 1883. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 22 November 1882, A Woman with a Purpose, 276. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 27 December 1882, A Woman with a Purpose, 283. “Co-Education in Medicine,” Canada Lancet 15, no. 5 (January 1883): 156. Other medical journals supported this view that coeducation had proved a failure. See “Kingston Medical School,” Canada Medical and Surgical Jour-

NOTES FOR PAGES 90–1

89

90

91 92

93

309

nal 11, no. 6 (January 1883): 382; “The Woman’s Medical College,” Canadian Practitioner 8, no. 6 (June 1883): 179. Elizabeth Smith, diary entries, 9 December 14, 27, and 28, 1882, A Woman with a Purpose, 277–85; Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 9–22, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua. Stowe’s suspicions that women would receive different training at Queen’s have been supported by the research of James McNutt, who compares the textbooks used for men at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, with the textbooks assigned to women at the Kingston Women’s Medical College. McNutt concludes that the reluctance of professors to adequately lecture the women students may have led to the incorporation of lengthier, more detailed textbooks to supply comprehensive explanations. McNutt, “Medical Curriculum Change,” 100–1, 124. See also “Kingston Women’s Medical College,” Canada Citizen 4, no. 14 (5 October 1883): 166–7; Sarah Ann[e] Curzon, “The Opening of Toronto Women’s Medical College,” Canada Citizen 4, no. 17 (26 October 1883): 202–3; Feldberg, “Emily Howard (Stowe) Jennings”; Dembski, “Jenny Kidd Trout,” 183–206. “Women’s Medical College,” Queen’s Journal, Midsummer 1884, 143. Elizabeth Smith Shortt, Historical Sketch of Medical Education of Women in Kingston, Canada (n.p., 1916), 22–3, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua; Kingston Women’s Medical College Calendar, 1883–84, 1884–85, Women’s Medical College, Faculty of Medicine fonds, Queen’s University, 1184a, box 1, qua. In 1886, Elizabeth Smith married Adam Shortt, professor of politics and economics at Queen’s. See, for example, the daily coverage in The Globe and Daily Mail from 11–20 December 1882; “Medical Co-Education a Failure,” Queen’s Journal, 21 December 1882, 73–4; “Notes of the Week,” Church Guardian, 3 January 1883, 6; “Co-Education in Medicine,” Canada Lancet 15, no. 5 (January 1883): 156–7; Editorial, The Bystander, January 1883, 69–70; “Kingston Medical School,” Canada Medical and Surgical Journal 11, no. 6 (January 1883): 382; Editorial, Varsity, 3 February 1883; editorials, Acta Victoriana, February 1883, 4, March 1883, 16; “Medical College for Women,” Canada Lancet 15, no. 9 (May 1883): 286; “The Woman’s Medical College,” Canadian Practitioner 8, no. 6 (June 1883): 179; “Kingston Women’s Medical College, Canada Citizen, 6 October 1883, 166–7; “Medical Colleges for Women,” Christian Guardian, 10 October 1883; “Medical Schools for Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 5 (October 1883): 407.

310

94 95 96 97 98 99

100

101 102

103 104

105

NOTES FOR PAGES 91–3

Journal entry, 19 December 1882, 63, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. Daniel Wilson to Adam Crooks, 14 December 1882, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao. “Educational Problems,” The Globe, 19 October 1883; 27 October 1883; 13 November 1883. “College News,” The Varsity, 21 October 1881. Quoted by M.E. Spence, “Eliza May Balmer,” University of Toronto Monthly 33, no. 5 (February 1933): 147. Cover illustration, The Varsity, 7 October 1880; William Houston, “Co-Education in University College,” The Varsity, 7 October 1880; William Houston, “Co-Education in University College,” The Varsity, 13 November 1880; William Houston, “Co-Education in University College,” The Varsity, 11 December 1880; editorials, The Varsity, 20 November 1880, 22 January 1881, 19 February 1881, 3 February 1883; “Concerning Co-Eds,” The Varsity, 27 January 1882; “The Cause of Co-Education,” The Varsity, 3 March 1882; “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 11 November 1882. “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 3 November 1883. See also “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 13 March 1884; “Co-Education: An Answer,” The Varsity, 22 March 1884; editorials, The Varsity, 23 February 1884, 29 March 1884, 5 April 1884, 19 April 1884, 10 June 1884. Editorial, The Week, 20 March 1884, 244; M.E. Spence, “Eliza May Balmer,” University of Toronto Monthly 33, no. 5 (February 1933): 147. Stamp, “Educational Leadership in Ontario,” 196–204; Burley, “Sir George William Ross”; Gray, “Sir John Morison Gibson”; Evans, Sir Oliver Mowat, 200–13. Pietsch, “Wandering Scholars?” 377–87 William Houston to Mrs [Sarah Anne] Curzon, 12 February [1884], 91–5, William Houston to Dr [Jacob Gould] Schurman, 31 July 1884, 162–3, and William Houston to P. Robinson, 1 November [1884], 201–4, William Houston’s Letterbook, William Houston fonds, B2004–0002/001, uta; Burke [MacDonald], Seeking the Highest Good, 15–17. A. Stevenson, “At Last!” The Varsity, 23 February 1884. See also A. Stevenson, “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 6 October 1883; A. Stevenson, “Co-Education and Dr Wilson,” The Varsity, 20 October 1883; A. Stevenson, “Co-Education – Conclusion of Evidence,” The Varsity, 27 October 1883; William Houston, “Co-Education,” and A. Stevenson, “Co-Education: A Criticism,” The Varsity, 22 March 1884; William Houston, “Co-Education,” and A. Stevenson, “Co-Education Once More,” The Varsity, 5 April 1884; William Houston, “Higher Education of Women,” The Varsity, 19 April 1884.

NOTES FOR PAGES 93–5

311

106 James Brebner to Elinor Wheeler, 8 September 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 40, lac; A.F. Bruce Clark, “Eliza M. Balmer,” University Monthly 16, no. 1 (October 1915): 12–15. 107 Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. 108 “Replies to Circular as to Admission of Women to the University,” June– July 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–222, ao; Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac; Nellie Spence, How Women Won Admission to the University of Toronto, typescript [1932], Keys Family fonds, L44, Series 1, box 5, trl. 109 See, for example, William Houston, “The Necessity for a Provincial University,” The Globe, 11 January 1884; William Houston, “Co-Education in University College,” The Week, 14 February 1884, 165; William Houston, “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 22 March 1884, 263–4; William Houston, “Co-Education,” The Varsity, 5 April 1884, 286; William Houston, “Higher Education of Women,” The Varsity, 19 April 1884, 300; William Houston, “Higher Education of Women,” The Varsity, 10 June 1884, 316; William Houston, “Higher Education of Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 6 (November 1884): 457–8; William Houston, “University Confederation,” V.P. Journal 2, no. 10 (April 1885): 453–4; William Houston, “Higher Education of Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 7 (April 1885): 130–2. 110 William Houston to W[illiam] Mulock, 25 January 1884, 59–60, William Houston’s Letterbook, William Houston fonds, B2004–0002, box 1, uta. The vice-chancellor, William Mulock, officially promoted the idea of a separate college for women at Toronto, but behind the scenes seems to have encouraged coeducation in the hope of annoying Daniel Wilson. “Address Delivered by Vice-Chancellor Mulock in Convocation Hall, University College, at the Annual Commencement, June 8th, 1883,” in Loudon, Sir William Mulock, 222–4; journal entry, 3 October 1883, 72, 18 March 1884, 78, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65– 0014, box 4, file 2, uta; Senate Minutes, 26 October 1883, 637, University of Toronto, uta; “University of Toronto,” The Mail, 5 January 1884. 111 Notices of Motion, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Hansard Debates, 31 January 1884. 112 Guillet, In the Cause of Education, 84. 113 Journal entry, 26 September 1883, 72, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65-0014, box 4, file 2, uta. 114 Editorial, The Week, 23 October 1884, 741.

312

NOTES FOR PAGES 95–7

115 6 June 1884, 82, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65– 0014, box 4, file 2, uta. Wilson made similar slighting comments about the superintendent of education, Egerton Ryerson, in spite of the fact that Wilson himself had attended the University of Edinburgh for no more than a year, and held only an honorary degree from St Andrews. Berger, “Sir Daniel Wilson.” 116 For Ross’s views on the importance of the university for training secondary school teachers, see George W. Ross, “Preface,” The Universities of Canada, v–viii; Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Hansard Debates, 20 April 1887. 117 “Convocation,” Acta Victoriana, May 1884, 10. 118 Motion Respecting Coeducation at University College, 5 March 1884, 113–4, vol. 17, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, 1884. The legislative assembly approved the resolution on coeducation at University College on the same day as it carried the bill to give the municipal franchise to unmarried women and widows on the second reading. “University Co-Education,” The Mail, 6 March 1884. 119 Richard Harcourt, 5 March 1884, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Hansard Debates. 120 George W. Ross, 5 March 1884, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Hansard Debates. 121 Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. 122 Journal entry, 12 March 1884, 78, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. See also, journal entry, 9 March 1884, 77–8 and 28 March 1884, 78–9, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. 123 Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 20 June 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao. 124 William Houston to Dr Wilson, 11 June 1884, 131–5, William Houston’s Letterbook, William Houston fonds, B2004–0002, box 1, uta. 125 Journal entry, 12 June 1884, 82, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. 126 Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 13 March 1884, 16 March 1884, 20 June 1884, 27 August 1884, 28 August 1884, 30 August 1884, and 22 September 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29– 1–247, ao; Paper no. 58, “Return of Copies of All Correspondence between the Government and the Council of University College, Respecting the Admission of Women to that Institution,” Sessional Papers, 1885, Ontario, Legislative Assembly.

NOTES FOR PAGES 97–100

313

127 E. Gardiner, “A Reminiscence,” Sesame 1, no. 1 (April 1897): 22; Letter from A. Stevenson, clipping from University of Toronto Monthly, June 1938, Department of Graduate Records fonds, Andrew Stevenson, A73–0026, box 445, file 93, uta; Nellie Spence to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 12 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac; Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. 128 J.M. Gibson to G.W. Ross, 30 September 1884, telegram, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–72, ao. 129 Copy of an Order in Council, approved by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, the 2nd day of October, A.D. 1884, Paper no. 58, “Return of Copies of All Correspondence between the Government and the Council of University College, Respecting the Admission of Women to that Institution,” Sessional Papers, 1885, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. 130 “Women at University College,” The Globe, 1 October 1884; “Women in Toronto University and University College,” The Globe, 2 October 1884; journal entry, 1 October 1884, 84, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta; Squair, Admission of Women, 23–4. 131 J.W. Bengough, “The Learned Doctor Welcoming Ladies to the Provincial University,” Grip Magazine, 11 October 1884. I am grateful to Barbara Freeman for bringing this cartoon to my attention. 132 Fourth-year: May Bell Bald (Welland), Ella Gardiner (Ingersoll), Margaret Langley (Brantford); third-year: Eliza Balmer (Toronto); second-year: Nellie Spence (Prince Albert), Caroline Fair (Peterborough); first-year: Alice Jones (Stamford), Mary Lennox (St Mary’s), Jennie Stork (Albion). “Replies to Circular as to Admission of Women to the University,” June–July 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–222, ao; Squair, Admission of Women, 26; Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac; “Attendance of Women at University College,” Paper no. 58, “Return of Copies of All Correspondence between the Government and the Council of University College, Respecting the Admission of Women to that Institution,” Sessional Papers, 1885, Ontario, Legislative Assembly. 133 Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 18 March 1885, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao; journal entry, 17 October 1884, 84, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta; Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. 134 Frontispiece, The Varsity, 25 October 1884.

314

NOTES FOR PAGES 100–3

135 A Bystander, Editorial, The Week, 23 October 1884, 741. 136 Daniel Wilson, “Address at the Convocation of University College, 1884,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Magazine 6 (November 1884): 420–2. 137 Thomas Harrison, Report on the University of New Brunswick and Collegiate School, 25 February 1887, ua rg 109, University Manuscripts fonds, Series 3, item 936, unba. 138 W. Brydone Jack, Graduation Address, June 1870, case 67, box 1, Encaenia Addresses, unba. 139 Regulations Respecting the Holding of Examinations for Women, 30 March 1880, ua rg 41, University of New Brunswick Reports to Senate, file 2, #68, unba. 140 W. Brydone Jack, Report on the University of New Brunswick and Collegiate School, 11 February 1881, ua rg 41, University of New Brunswick Reports to Senate, file 3, #71, unba. 141 MacNaughton, Development of the Theory and Practice of Education, 237–63; Kennedy, “William Brydone Jack”; MacKirdy, “Formation of the Modern University,” 33–46; Hansen, “Those Certain Women,” 1–13. 142 Thomas Harrison, Report on the University of New Brunswick and Collegiate School, 25 February 1887, ua rg 109, University Manuscripts fonds, Series 3, item 936, unba; Montague, A Pictorial History, 42. 143 Lydia Jane Gregory was the first woman teacher at Fredericton Collegiate High School, where she subsequently became head of the English Language and Literature Department and vice-principal. “Lydia Jane (Gregory) Armstrong,” unb Archives and Special Collections, unb Honorary Degrees Database. 144 Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac; Mary Kingsley Tibbits, Account of Entry to unb, n.d., Hathaway vertical file #983, Associated Alumnae fonds, unba. 145 Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac, italics in the original. 146 Senate Minutes, University of New Brunswick, book 3, 19 November 1885, 349, ua rg 40, unba; Mabel Sterling, Alumni Oration, May 1939, case 67a, box 2, Encaenia Addresses, unba. 147 In March 1886, when this issue came to the legislature, the provincial government under Andrew Blair was preparing for an April election and likely would not have welcomed public controversy. Young, “Andrew George Blair”; Allaby, “John Valentine Ellis.” 148 New Brunswick, House of Assembly, Synoptic Report of the Proceedings of the House of Assembly of New Brunswick, 11 March 1886, 62–3.

NOTES FOR PAGES 103–5

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149 Senate Minutes, University of New Brunswick, book 3, 18 June 1886, 360, ua rg 40, unba. See also “Co-Education,” New Brunswick Journal of Education, 8 July 1886, 19. 150 Mary Kingsley Tibbits, Account of Entry to unb, n.d., Hathaway vertical file #983, Associated Alumnae fonds, unba. See also Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac. 151 “Opening of the U.N.B.,” University Monthly, October 1886, 2–3. See also Thomas Harrison, Report on the University of New Brunswick and Collegiate School, 25 February 1887, ua rg 109, University Manuscripts fonds, Series 3, item 936, unba. 152 See, for example, University Monthly, January 1883, 12; March 1883, 10; May 1883, 42; October 1883, 75–6; November 1883, 92; December 1883, 107; January 1884, 123; February 1884, 140; March 1884, 9; October 1884, 7; November 1884, 23; December 1884; January 1885, 54. 153 “Co-Education,” University Monthly, November 1885, 19–20. 154 Editorial, University Monthly, June 1886, 129–30. See also Editorial, University Monthly, February 1886, 77. 155 “Co-Education,” University Monthly, November 1885, 19. See also Editorial, University Monthly, June 1886, 130. 156 Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac. 157 Mabel Sterling, Alumni Oration, May 1939, case 67a, box 2, Encaenia Addresses, unba. 158 Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. 159 “Mr Barbour’s Valedictory,” University Monthly, June 1889, 139. Mary Kingsley Tibbits attended Bryn Mawr for graduate studies in English, and then returned to Fredericton to enroll in the provincial normal school, where she qualified to teach at the county grammar school level. She subsequently became principal of the Queens County Grammar School at Gagetown, New Brunswick, and then taught English in secondary schools in Boston, Massachusetts. Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac. 160 Bedford, University of Winnipeg, 3–29; Morton, One University, 17–41; Bumsted, University of Manitoba, 4–5. 161 Glenn, “History of the University of Manitoba,” 16–20; Gregor and Wilson, Development of Education in Manitoba, 31–47; Owen, “John Beaufort Somerset”; Mitchell, “Forging a New Protestant Ontario,” 22–3. 162 Kinnear, In Subordination, 127–32.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 106–8

163 “Manitoba Teachers: Second Day’s Proceedings of the Provincial Convention,” Manitoba Free Press, 20 August 1883; “Teacher’s Association,” Manitoba Free Press, 16 June 1884; “School Board: Annual Report of the School Management Committee,” Manitoba Free Press, 28 January 1885; “Winnipeg Teachers: The City Association in Session,” Manitoba Free Press, 25 September 1886. 164 Kinnear, In Subordination, 125. 165 “University of Manitoba: Regular Quarterly Meeting,” Manitoba Free Press, 3 December 1880. 166 “University of Manitoba,” Manitoba Free Press, 4 March 1881; Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; Lilian Ponton Saul to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 22 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; E. Cowley, “St John’s College Ladies’ School,” St John’s College Magazine, February 1887, 11–13; Bumsted, St John’s College, 35–6; Hackett, “Robert Machray.” 167 Rev. Dr Bryce, “Historical Sketch of Manitoba University,” Manitoba College Journal, March 1907, 3. 168 Blanchard, ed., A Thousand Miles of Prairie, 129–30; Manitoba Historical Society, “Marion Samuel Bryce (1839–1920)”; Owram, Promise of Eden, 145–6. 169 Mrs [Marion] Bryce, “A Plea for the Higher Education of Women,” Manitoba Free Press, 5 February 1881. 170 See, for example, “Higher Education of Women,” Manitoba Free Press, 27 January 1881; Editorial, Manitoba Free Press, 21 March 1881; “Higher Education for Women,” Manitoba Free Press, 14 March 1883; “Co-Education of the Sexes,” Manitoba Free Press, 23 June 1884; “Higher Education of Women,” Manitoba Free Press, 12 December 1884; “Girls in College,” Manitoba Free Press, 7 October 1886. 171 Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 452–3. 172 University Council Minutes, 4 June 1885, 33, and 4 June 1886, 68, University of Manitoba, uma; “University Council: The Admission of Women as University Students,” Manitoba Free Press, 8 June 1885; Editorial, “Lady Undergraduates,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1891, 6. 173 Elizabeth Parker, “A Woman’s Tribute,” Manitoba College Journal, March 1899, 176–8; Sir Thomas Taylor, “John Mark King: Biographical Sketch,” Manitoba College Journal, March 1899, 147–53; Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; Augusta Stowe Gullen, A Brief History of the Ontario Medical College for Women (n.p., 1906), 4–5, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 41, lac.

NOTES FOR PAGES 108–12

174

175

176 177

178

179

317

“Manitoba College: The Literary Society Discusses the Co-Education of the Sexes in Colleges and Universities,” Manitoba Free Press, 21 February 1885. For the publicity surrounding this meeting, see “Manitoba College: An Interesting Session of the Literary Society Last Night,” Manitoba Free Press, 31 January 1885; “Manitoba College Literary Society,” Manitoba Free Press, 14 February 1885; “Manitoba College: Opening Meeting of the Literary Society on Friday Evening Next,” Manitoba Free Press, 19 February 1885. Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; “Manitoba College: Some Notes on the Opening of the Present Session,” Manitoba Free Press, 25 September 1886. “Manitoba College: Some Notes on the Opening of the Present Session,” Manitoba Free Press, 25 September 1886. Lilian Ponton Saul to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 22 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; “College Notes,” St John’s College Magazine, January 1897, 22; Shook, Catholic PostSecondary Education, 323. Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac. The reminiscences enclosed with this letter subsequently were published in a Winnipeg newspaper with the title, “First Woman Graduate Gives Her Impressions.” Jessie Livingstone Holmes, “First Woman Graduate Gives Her Impressions,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d., Women in the University of Manitoba, Presidents’ Papers, 1888–1976, ua 20, box 3, file 003–024, uma. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 149–203; Lambert, Dethroning Classics, 1–3, 90–155.

Chapter Three 1 2 3 4

5

N. Spence, “Woman’s Education in Ontario,” Educational Journal, 15 July 1891, 457. See appendix 1. An Act to Establish and Incorporate a University for the Province of Alberta, 9 May 1906, 388, Alberta, Legislative Assembly. Drover, “Presbyterian Professor on the Prairies,” 561; Johns, History of the University of Alberta, 22; Hayden, Seeking a Balance, 7, 62; Stewart, “It’s Up to You,” 11–14. Archibald MacMechan, “Little College Girls,” 51.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 113–8

[Benjamin Fish] Austin, “What Knowledge Is Most Worth to Woman?” in Woman: Her Character, Culture and Calling, 339. 7 Westfall, The Founding Moment, 67–9; Pietsch, “Wandering Scholars?” 377–87. 8 Frost, McGill University, 1: 57–61, 86–7, 193–8; Eakins and Sinnamon Eakins, “John William Dawson”; Fingard, “Alexander Forrester.” 9 J. William Dawson, “The Future of McGill University,” Educational Record of the Province of Quebec 1, no. 2 (February 1881): 57. 10 Henry Lyman, “Miss Hannah W. Lyman,” 31. 11 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 39–44; Gordon, Gender and Higher Education, 122; Scranton and Sherer Scranton, “Hannah Lyman,” https://vq.vassar. edu/issues/2001/02/vassar-yesterday. 12 Manuscript by Helen Gairdner, May 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 27, lac; n.a., typescript, “Women at McGill,” Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 29, lac. 13 Dawson, Thoughts on the Higher Education of Women, 10. 14 Manuscript by Helen Gairdner, May 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 27, lac. 15 Report of the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association (Montreal: Gazette Printing House, 1873), 4. 16 England, “The Entrance of Women to McGill,” 14–15; Dawson, Report on the Higher Education of Women, 1–3. 17 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 39–72, 89–100, 113–48. 18 Quoted by H.D. [Hilda Diana] Oakeley, “The Royal Victoria College,” University Magazine 1, no. 1 (December 1901): 86. 19 N.a., typescript, “Women at McGill,” Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 29, lac. 20 Dawson, “Higher Education of Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 6 (November/December 1884): 424–9, 478–82. 21 Daniel Wilson to J. William Dawson, 16 October 1883, Marinell Ash fonds, B84–0033, box 1, file 3, uta. 22 England, “The Entrance of Women to McGill,” 15; n.a., typescript, “Women at McGill,” Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 29, lac; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 39–72. 23 Dawson, “Higher Education of Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 6 (November/December 1884): 482. 24 Daniel Wilson to J. William Dawson, 5 May 1885, Marinell Ash fonds, B84–0033, box 1, file 3, uta. 25 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 74. 26 N.a., typescript, “Women at McGill,” Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 29, lac; England, “The Entrance of

NOTES FOR PAGES 119–24

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39 40 41 42

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Women to McGill,” 15–17; Dawson, “Higher Education of Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 6 (November/December 1884): 424–9; Helen R.Y. Reid, “Women’s Work in McGill University,” Dominion Illustrated Monthly 1, no. 4 (May 1892): 213–9; Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts,” 277. For a full discussion of the controversy over coeducation at McGill, and the support of the press for Murray, see Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 89–100, 113–48. “At M’Gill,” Grip Magazine, 19 May 1888, 8. A Donalda Student, “Methods of McGill,” The Week, 8 February 1889, 154 [quoted in epigraph]. Editorial, McGill Outlook, 19 October 1899, 1; H.D. [Hilda Diana] Oakeley, “The Royal Victoria College,” University Magazine 1, no. 1 (December 1901): 85–92; Hilda D. Oakeley, “Progress of Higher Education for Women,” Canadian Magazine 23, no. 6 (October 1904): 500–6; Frost, McGill University, 264; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 168. The three-month course at the Macdonald Institute of Domestic Science in Guelph was nicknamed the “diamond ring course” because many of its students became engaged to farmers attending the Ontario Agricultural College. Wilson, “Certified Women”; Rowles, Home Economics in Canada, 36–65; Snell, MacDonald College, 35–61, 81–2; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 261–2, 333–66. Westfall, The Founding Moment, 70–109. MacGill, My Mother the Judge, 40–54; Westfall, The Founding Moment, 89–90, 107–8; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 379–86. “St Hilda’s College,” Trinity University Review, February 1889, 26. “Higher Religious Education of Women,” Trinity University Review, January 1888, 5. Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 390–9; Reed, History of the University of Trinity College, 188–96. Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 390–9; Reed, History of the University of Trinity College, 188–96. Mabel Cartwright to the Secretary, Congress of the Universities of the Empire, 29 March 1912, Cartwright Family fonds, ms 120, box 10, Correspondence file, 1909–20, tca. Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 335–40; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 480–8. Harris, History of Higher Education in Canada, 626. Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 132–5; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 480–8. Theobald, “‘Mere Accomplishments’?” 71–91; Theobald, Knowing Women, 29–54; Nash, “A Means of Honorable Support,” 45–63; Martens and Chalmers, “Educating the Eye, Hand, and Heart,” 31–59.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 124–30

Theobald, “The Sin of Laura,” 270. Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 7–8. “University Co-Education,” Christian Guardian, 19 March 1884. W.D. Armstrong, “The Ladies’ College and Its Place in Our Educational System,” Canada Educational Monthly, March 1901, 83–4. Principal Austin, “A Canadian College for Women,” Christian Guardian, 28 July 1886, 3. [Benjamin Fish] Austin, “What Knowledge Is Most Worth to Woman?,” 339. See also [Benjamin Fish] Austin, “The Higher Christian Education of Women: Its Mission and Its Method,” in the same volume, 371–82. In 1897, Benjamin Fish Austin resigned his position as principal of Alma Ladies’ College and pursued his growing interest in spiritualism. Two years later, Austin was expelled from the Methodist ministry for heresy. Cook, The Regenerators, 69–78. Stamp, “Education and the Economic and Social Milieu,” 292–7; Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 104–15. Jackson and Gaskell, “White Collar Vocationalism,” 165–94; Danylewycz, “Domestic Science Education,” 127–45; Heap, “Schooling Women for Home or for Work?,” 195–243; Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 70–3; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 103–32. Editorial, “The College for Women,” Canada Educational Monthly and School Chronicle 14 (December 1892): 391–2. Georgina Hunter, “English Education: Compilation,” in Women of Canada: Their Life and Work (N.p.: National Council of Women of Canada, 1901), 139; Massey Foundation Commission, “Ontario Ladies’ College, Whitby,” Report of the Massey Foundation Commission on the Secondary Schools and Colleges of the Methodist Church of Canada, 1921 78–82; Suchan, “Useful Ornaments,” 215–31. Georgina Hunter, “English Education: Compilation,” in Women of Canada: Their Life and Work (n.p.: National Council of Women of Canada, 1901), 141; Reid, “Education of Women at Mount Allison,” 19–31. W.W. Andrews, “Mt Allison’s Possible Forward Movement,” The Wesleyan, 23 April 1891, 4–5; “Mt Allison’s Possible Forward Movement, No. 2,” The Wesleyan, 7 May 1891, 1; “Mt Allison’s Possible Forward Movement, III,” The Wesleyan, 21 May 1891, 4; “The Peculiar Claims of Mt Allison,” The Wesleyan, 28 May 1891, 1. Roberts, “Lillian Frances (Treble) Massey”; Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 240–2; Reid, Mount Allison University, 2: 82–3. Sarah H. Gronlund to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 8 May 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac.

NOTES FOR PAGES 130–4

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Samara, “A Defect of Mt Allison,” The Argosy, May 1906, 364. See also, “Ladies’ College Notes,” The Argosy, October 1893, 11–12, October 1897, 20–1, February 1904, 141–2, March 1906, 279–81, October 1910, 40–1, October 1913, 62–3; “A Girl’s Experience at Mt Allison,” The Argosy, February 1915, 275–80; “Rules and Regulations, Mt Allison Ladies’ College” [c. 1900], Raymond Clare Archibald fonds, mta5, 5501/6/1/4, 183, maua. Archibald, Historical Notes on the Education of Women, 8–19; Ross, Moments Make a Year, 75; Massey Foundation Commission, “Mount Allison, Sackville,” Report of the Massey Foundation Commission, 56–70; Reid, Mount Allison, 2: 25–6, 123–31. Adella G. Jackson to Elinor M. Wheeler, 5 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. “The Woes of a College Girl,” Acadia Athenaeum, May 1900, 241–4; DeWolfe, Acadia and Women, 3–18; Georgina Hunter, “English Education: Compilation,” in National Council of Women, Women of Canada, 143; Moody, “Give Us an A,” 46. “Acadia Seminary Jubilee,” Acadia Bulletin, 1 April 1912, 2–3; Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 39–48; Moody, “Give Us an A,” 53, 70; Conrad, Rice, and Townsend, Women at Acadia University, 4–19; Longley, Acadia University, 127–9. Dalhousie University Calendar, 1892–93, 49; 1896–97, 111; 1899–1900, 110; MacLeod, History of the Halifax Ladies’ College, 13–20, 43. Montgomery, journal entries, 17 September 1895, 19 September 1895, 1 December 1895, 20 January 1896, in The Selected Journals, 1: 143–5, 148–9, 155–6; Florence Murray to her father, 17 September 1915, Florence Murray to her mother, 23 October 1915, Robert Murray and Family fonds, ms 2 535 A9, A10, dua. See also Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 7; Bruce, “How Did She Get into the Picture?” 8. Montgomery, journal entry, 24 December 1895, in Selected Journals, 1: 151. Advertisement for Halifax Ladies’ College, St John Sun, 8 August 1906; Dalhousie University Calendar, 1898–99, 86–8, 125; 1926–27, 28; 1930–31, 44–5; 1936–37, 50; 1937–38, 48–9; 1944–45, 51–5; MacLeod, History of the Halifax Ladies’ College, 45. A Graduate, “Reminiscences of College Life,” King’s College University Magazine, April 1871, 14; Editorial, “The University of King’s College, Windsor, N.S.,” King’s College University Magazine, April 1871, 95–6; Calendar of the Church School for Girls, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1891–92, 3–4; and 1897–98, 27–8. Harris, Higher Education in Canada, 625.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 134–7

Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 530–6; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 272–6. “McMaster Hall,” McMaster University Monthly, June 1891, 42; E.M. Saunders, “Theodore Harding Rand,” McMaster University Monthly, June 1892, 1–9; Rawlyk, “A.L. McCrimmon, H.P. Whidden, T.T. Shields,” 31–40; Conrad, “Theodore Harding Rand.” Theodore H. Rand, “Susan Moulton McMaster,” McMaster University Monthly, January 1893, 153–60. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, November 1891, 89–90, December 1891, 139–40. Legendre, “Baptist Contribution,” 122–61; Gossage, Question of Privilege, 72–8; Hall, Per Ardua, 11–17, 53–6. “Moulton College: Graduating Class,” McMaster University Monthly, June 1892, 49–50. Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Prospectus, 1878; Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Circular, n.d.; Hellmuth Ladies’ College (Affiliated with the Western University), Circular, n.d.; Bell, “We Were Having a Lot of Fun,” 240–61; Talman and Davis Talman, “Western” – 1878–1953, 18–28; Gwynne-Timothy, Western’s First Century, 76–92, 116. Norwood Ladies’ College, Prospectus, 1883, 6–7; Norwood Ladies’ College, London, Ontario: The Provincial College for Women, Circular, 1884. “Paper re Admission of Women to University,” 1884, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–222, ao. In April 1884, George Ross informed Daniel Wilson that a separate college might be a possibility. Journal entry, 2 April 1884, 79, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. Talman and Davis Talman, “Western” – 1878–1953, 43–54; GwynneTimothy, Western’s First Century, 127–39. Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Circular, 1884–85; Hellmuth Ladies’ College: Closing Exercises, Programme, 1885; Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Prospectus, 1889–90; Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Prospectus, 1891–92; Hellmuth Ladies’ College, Programme, 1900. Smyth, “Gender, Religion and Higher Education,” 547–61; Smyth, “Sister-Professors,” 207–24; Smyth, “Culture of Catholic Women’s Colleges,” 114; Smyth, “Professionalization among the Professed,” 234–54. Miller-Bernal, introduction, in Going Coed, 7; Conway, “Coeducation and Women’s Studies,” 239–49; Conway, “Perspectives on the History of Women’s Education,” 1–12; Harford, Opening of University Education, 1–9, 160–73; Harford, “Gender, Subjectivity, and Lived Experience,” 34–51. Advertisement for Mount Saint Bernard, Excelsior, May 1900, n.p.; H. Bartley, “French Education: Compilation,” 59–60.

NOTES FOR PAGES 138–42

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Cameron, For the People, 96–108. “Xaveriana,” Excelsior, May 1899, 21; “Salutatory,” and “Xaveriana,” Excelsior, October 1899, 13, 19; “Reception at Mt St Bernard’s,” Excelsior, February 1900, 18; Editorial, Excelsior, November 1900, 3; “Reception at Mt St Bernard,” Excelsior, February 1901, 15; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 537–47; Cameron, For the People, 96–108. 85 Editorial, Excelsior, June 1897, 4. For a satirical discussion of women’s rights, see A.J.G. MacEchen, “A Christmas Eve on the Great Woman Question – Woman’s Rights – Was It a Dream, or a Message from Beyond?” Excelsior, December 1902, 68–74. 86 Cameron, For the People, 202, 255. 87 After graduating in 1890, Gertrude Lawler became a popular English teacher at Harbord Street Collegiate Institute in Toronto, and was a founding member of both the University College and St Joseph’s Academy alumnae associations. In 1910, she became one of the first three women to gain representation on the University of Toronto senate. Smyth, “Elizabeth Gertrude Lawler (Lawlor).” 88 Smyth, “Gender, Religion and Higher Education,” 549–54; Smyth, “Sister-Professors,” 211–4; Smyth, “Culture of Catholic Women’s Colleges,” 111–30; Smyth, “Lessons of Religion and Science,” 168–91. 89 Henry Carr to Robert J. Scollard, 31 March 1963, University Historian Collection, Correspondence, A83–0036, box 28, uta. 90 Smyth, “Gender, Religion and Higher Education,” 54–5; Smyth, “Culture of Catholic Women’s Colleges,” 111–30; Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 155–60, 184–91. 91 Editorial, “Co-Education,” The Owl, March 1892, 360. 92 “Two Colleges Revert to One Language,” Ottawa Citizen, 24 September 1956, 2. 93 Michel Prévost, “Chronologie de l’histoire des femmes à l’Université d’Ottawa,” 31 mars 2011, Archives de l’Université d’Ottawa; Prévost, L’Université d’Ottawa depuis 1848, 42; Mathé-Tessier, “Le Collège Bruyère, 1925–1968,” 127–53; n.a, Université d’Ottawa: Un héritage pour demain, 20, 89. 94 “Agreement of Affiliation of Ursuline College, Chatham, with Western University,” 1919, Western University, Report of the Registrar, 1920–1921, Office of the President fonds, vol. 3, Series 2, Miscellaneous, 1919–1921, wua. 95 Skidmore, Brescia College, 5–49. 96 Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 323. 97 Corcoran, Mount Saint Vincent University, 10–16, 25–84. 98 Ibid., 154–204; Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 96–102. 99 Dalhousie University Calendar, 1926–27, 8; 1930–31, 8; 1935–36, 11; 1941–42, 13. 83 84

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100 McKenna, Charity Alive, 163–7; Harris, Higher Education in Canada, 214, 217. 101 Hurlbatt, “Discussion: The Position of Women in Universities,” 349. 102 A Donalda Student, “Methods of McGill,” The Week, 8 February 1889, 154 [italics in original]. 103 Alexander Burns, “Female Education in Ontario,” Christian Guardian, 5 October 1887. 104 H.S. Grant MacDonald, “Women or Girls?” Sesame 1, no. 3 (January 1899): 1. 105 See, for example, Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entry, 1 October 1889, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 3, uta; Bessie Scott Lewis, “College Women,” ms., [1899], 8, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 6, uta; Lucy Maud Montgomery, journal entry, 24 December 1895, in Selected Journals, 1: 151; Florence Murray to her father, 17 September 1915, Florence Murray to her mother, 23 October 1915, Robert Murray and Family fonds, ms 2 535 A9, A10, dua; Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac.

Chapter Four 1

Walden, “Respectable Hooligans,” 1–34; Walden, “Hazes, Hustles, Scraps, and Stunts,” 112; Panayotidis and Stortz, “Visual Interpretations, Cartoons, and Caricatures,” 219–20; Panayotidis and Stortz, “Contestation and Conflict,” 35–53; McKillop, Matters of Mind, 244–5. 2 Mazón, Gender and the Modern Research University. 3 Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. 4 “One of the ‘Two-Thirds’” to Editor, University Monthly, November 1893, 29. 5 Loudon, Sir William Mulock, 40–1. 6 King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 212; Levi, Comings and Goings, 3–6. 7 Mitchinson, “Canadian Women and Church Missionary Societies,” 71. I am grateful to Linda Ambrose for this reference. See also Hevel, “Preparing for the Politics of Life,” 486–515; Wiggins, “Gendered Spaces and Political Identity,” 737–52. 8 Kathleen Cowan, diary entry, 11 November 1908, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 162. To prepare for her debate, Cowan researched at the Ontario legislative library and the Toronto reference library, as well as her own college library. Diary entries, 30 October 1908, 6 November 1908, 9 November 1908, 157, 160, 161. 9 Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 28 October 1881, A Woman with a Purpose, 227.

NOTES FOR PAGES 150–4

10

325

Bessie Scott Lewis, “College Women,” ms, [1899], 6, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 6, uta; Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entries, 11 and 23 October 1889, 1 October 1890, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, files 3 and 4, uta; Kathleen Cowan, diary entries, 27 October 1908 and 18 February 1909, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 156, 208; “What the Ladies Would Like to Know,” Queen’s Journal, 28 November 1891, 31; MacKinnon, Miriam of Queen’s, 58, 178–9, 212. 11 R.M. MacGregor, “Dalhousie in the Nineties,” Dalhousie Gazette, 12 January 1903, 168. 12 “Exchanges,” The Argosy, March 1883, 72. 13 “Co-Education,” The Argosy, April 1884, 81. 14 Editorial, Acadia Athenaeum, May 1884, 2. See also, editorials, Acadia Athenaeum, April 1883, 3, April 1884, 3, May 1884, 2–4. 15 Editorial, The Argosy, February 1880, 54. 16 “Enters Door of University and Shows Way to Others,” Regina Post, 10 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac. 17 “The Class of ‘88,” The Argosy, October 1888, 6. 18 “Enters Door of University and Shows Way to Others,” Regina Post, 10 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac. 19 Sarah H. Gronlund to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 8 May 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac. 20 “Ladies’ College Notes: Our Societies,” The Argosy, October 1893, 12; “Ladies’ College Notes,” The Argosy, May 1894, 8. 21 “Alpha Beta,” The Argosy, February 1895, 16. 22 “Argosy Regulations,” The Argosy, May 1893, 91; “The Class of ’97,” The Argosy, October 1897, 20; “The Class of ’99,” The Argosy, October 1899, 14; “The Class of ’00,” The Argosy, October 1900, 21–4; Archibald, Historical Notes on the Education of Women, 18. 23 “Ladies’ College Notes,” The Argosy, May 1894, 9–10. 24 J.R. Campbell, “Co-Education in Universities,” Acta Victoriana, April 1881, 7; “The Class of ‘84,” Acta Victoriana, April 1884, 11; “Convocation – Wednesday,” Acta Victoriana, May 1884, 8; editorials, Acta Victoriana, April 1882, 4, May 1884, 3–4, December 1888, 4, October 1890, 4. 25 “Only a Girl,” Acta Victoriana, December 1885, 7. 26 Nellie Greenwood Andrews, manuscript, “Victoria Is My College,” [195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046V/tr, file 1, vua. 27 12 October 1887 – 14 March 1888, Register of Students at Victoria University, 1872–1892, 169–72, Registrar’s Office fonds, 2049–2–1–1987.146V, vua; Nellie Greenwood Andrews, manuscript, “Victoria Is My College,”

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NOTES FOR PAGES 154–8

[195–?], Nellie Greenwood fonds, 2120, 1997.046v/tr, file 1, vua; Editorial, Acta Victoriana, December 1887, 18; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 106. Editorial, Acta Victoriana, December 1887, 18. Editorial, Acta Victoriana, December 1887, 20; Sissons, History of Victoria University, 197–9, 200–1, 213–15; Ibronyi, Early Voices, 11–18. Sissons, History of Victoria University, 149; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 36–8. “The Lady Students’ Meeting,” Acta Victoriana, January 1887, 17. Kathleen Cowan, diary entry, 10 November 1909, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 270n8. The name of the society sometimes was recorded as “Woman’s Literary Society.” Women’s Literary Society Minutes, 5 November 1893, 11 December 1895, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, Series 3, 1990.134V, vua; “Local,” Acta Victoriana, December 1889, 18; Editorial, Acta Victoriana, December 1891, 16–17. Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 71. Editorial, Acta Victoriana, October 1894, 1–2. See also, H.S.S., “The Society,” Acta Victoriana, October 1894, 5–6. Women’s Literary Society Minutes, 13 October 1891, 5 November 1893, 11 December 1895, 4 March 1896, 19 February 1896, 18 January 1898, and 7 November 1900, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, Series 3, 1990.134V, vua. Women’s Literary Society Minutes, 30 October 1895, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, 2069, Series 3, 1990.134V, vua. Editorial, Acta Victoriana, November 1895, 36. Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. Ibid. Adella G. Jackson to Elinor M. Wheeler, 5 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; Estelle Cook Webster to Mrs Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; “Our Societies,” Acadia Athenaeum, January 1891, 35; “Our Societies,” Acadia Athenaeum, March 1891, 59. Evelyn K. Farris to Mrs Wheeler, 8 March 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac. Estelle Cook Webster to Mrs Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; C.W.B., “The Propylaeum Society,” Acadia Athenaeum, December 1897, 21–2; Editorial Staff, Acadia Athenaeum, November 1888, 1; “The Month,” Acadia

NOTES FOR PAGES 158–60

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Athenaeum, April 1894, 140; Editorial Staff, Acadia Athenaeum, December 1897, 34; Isobel Eaton, “The Y.W.C.A.,” Acadia Athenaeum, December 1897, 16–17. Eliza Ritchie to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. Senate Minutes, 30 October 1881, Dalhousie University, dua; E. Scott, “The First Ten Years of Dalhousie, 1863–1873,” Dalhousie Gazette, 12 January 1903, 156; Margaret Trueman to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 9 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. For the popularity of Charles Macdonald among undergraduates, see “College Notes,” Dalhousie Gazette, 16 October 1893, 23. Lucy Maud Montgomery, “A Girl’s Place at Dalhousie College, 1896,” 151. Editorial, Dalhousie Gazette, 3 May 1882, 139; “Students’ Societies,” Dalhousie University Calendar, 1891–92, 82–3; 1894–95, 98; 1895–96, 104; 1896–97, 110; 1897–98, 104–7; 1898–99, 120–3. Clara W. Seely to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 7 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac. “Students’ Societies,” Dalhousie University Calendar, 1894–95, 98; 1896–97, 110. Lucy Maud Montgomery, “A Girl’s Place at Dalhousie College, 1896,” 150 Ibid., 148, 151. See also Lucy Maud Montgomery, journal entry, 23 December 1895, in Selected Journals, 1: 149. Margaret Trueman to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 9 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 26, lac; Editorial Staff and College Notes, Dalhousie Gazette, 16 October 1893, 1, 24; “Varsity Notes,” Dalhousie Gazette, 20 December 1893, 156; Editorial Staff, Dalhousie Gazette, 12 January 1903, 181; “Students’ Societies,” Dalhousie University Calendar, 1897–98, 104–7; 1898–99, 120–3; 1899–1900, 116–8; 1900–01, 118–21; 1901–02, 123–7; 1903–04, 116–9; 1905–06, 124–7; 1907–08, 120–3; 1909–10, 116–21; Florence J. Murray to her mother, 23 October 1915, Robert Murray and Family fonds, ms 2 535 A9, dua; Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 9–10; Fingard, “College, Career, and Community,” 29. Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 181. Loudon, Studies of Student Life, vol. 2, 157; Loudon, Studies of Student Life, vol. 3, 73; Loudon, Studies of Student Life, vol. 6, 46–59. See also Arthur Murray Chisholm, “When I Went To College,” University of Toronto Monthly 27, no. 2 (November 1926): 64–7. Editorial, Varsity, 15 November 1884. Editorial, Educational Weekly, 19 November 1885, n.p.; “Notes and Comments,” Educational Weekly, 26 November 1885, 757.

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NOTES FOR PAGES 161–5

Letitia Salter to Daniel Wilson, 23 November 1885, Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 23 November 1885, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao. “Reminiscences of Professor Van der Smissen,” [1913], Ephemera, B82– 1034, uta; E. Gardiner, “A Reminiscence,” Sesame 1, no. 1 (April 1897): 23. Ella Gardiner to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 15 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. E. Gardiner, “A Reminiscence,” Sesame 1, no. 1 (April 1897): 23; Jennie S. Hill to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 18 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 39, lac; editorials, The Varsity, 25 October 1884, 15 November 1884, 10 June 1885; “Modern Language Club,” The Varsity, 5 December 1885. Burley, “Sir George William Ross.” Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 79–80. Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 168. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 141. Daniel Wilson to G.W. Ross, 29 December 1885, Minister of the Department of Education, Correspondence files, rg 2–29–1–247, ao; D.B. Dick to G.W. Ross, 18 December 1885, Department of Education, Select Subject files, rg 2–42–0–7643, ao. Richardson, A Not Unsightly Building, 134. University of Toronto Senate Minutes, 21 May 1890, 50, uta. Maud C. Edgar to Aunt Carry, 20 November 1892, J.D. Edgar Family fonds, F 65, mu 962, Series A–6, ao. I am grateful to Robert Stamp for this reference. I explore this argument further in Burke [MacDonald], “New Women and Old Romans,” 219–41. Pro Grege, “Womanliness,” The Varsity, 14 November 1885. Thomas Brown Phillips Stewart graduated with his ba from Toronto in 1888, and then registered at the new Osgoode Hall. He died young, in 1892, and left a portion of his estate to purchase books for students, which later became the Phillips Stewart Library at Osgoode Hall. Phillips Stewart, “The Future of Woman,” The Varsity, 12 December 1885. W.J. Healy, “The Higher Education Again,” Varsity, 3 November 1888. Greta, “The Higher Education,” The Varsity, 19 January 1889. For the writing of Madge Robertson Watt as part of the New Woman genre of literature, see Ambrose, A Great Rural Sisterhood, 49–68. S.P.Q.R., “The Ladies in the Library,” The Varsity, 2 March 1889; James Brebner, “The Library,” The Varsity, 16 March 1889; J.D. Swanson, “The Ladies in the Library,” The Varsity, 6 April 1889; “Reminiscences of Professor Van der Smissen,” [1913], Ephemera Collection, B82–1034, uta.

NOTES FOR PAGES 165–8

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87 88 89 90

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Anthropos, “The Ladies in the Library,” The Varsity, 16 March 1889. “With Cap and Gown: Varsity’s Fair Students,” newspaper clipping, 1 February 1889, 19, Henry Robertson Scrapbook, Collingwood Museum. I am grateful to Linda Ambrose for giving me a copy of this article. Old Roman, “Women at Varsity,” The Varsity, 16 February 1892. Editorial, The Varsity, 23 February 1892. W.H. Bunting and Chandos, “Women at Varsity,” The Varsity, 23 February 1892; Old Roman, “Old Roman Again,” The Varsity, 1 March 1892; An Admirer [A.T. DeLury] to Editor of The Varsity, 16 February 1892, A.T. DeLury fonds, Ms Coll 71, box 1, folder 3, tfrb. Elizabeth M. Lawson, “Women at Varsity,” The Varsity, 23 February 1892. Literary and Scientific Society of University College Minutes, 26 October 1888, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 2, uta. I am grateful to Charles Levi for this reference. Charlotte Ross graduated in 1892, taught literature and rhetoric at the Margaret Eaton School, and later became head of English at Havergal College. In 1898, Ross was elected first president of the University College Alumnae Association, and in 1911 became one of the first women elected to the senate of the University of Toronto. Levi, “Where the Famous People Were?” 237. Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entry, 25 October 1890, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 4, uta. See also, diary entries for 28 February 1890, 31 March 1890, 10 March 1890, 13 March 1890, 24 March 1890, and 26 March 1890. C. Ross, “Some Thoughts on Class Societies,” The Varsity, 4 November 1890. “To the Women Undergraduates,” The Varsity, 9 October 1895; Levi, “Where the Famous People Were?” 235–44. Journal entry, 22 October 1890, 184, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. See also “Women Who Make History: Eighteenth Convention of the Women’s Congress,” Globe, 15 October 1890. Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entries, 22 and 23 October 1890, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 4, uta. Journal entry, 13 December 1890, 184, Daniel Wilson’s Journal, Langton Family fonds, B65–0014, box 4, file 2, uta. Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entry, 13 December 1890, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 4, uta. Oliver Mowat to Daniel Wilson, 20 May 1892, James Loudon fonds, B72– 0031, box 1, file 22, uta; Chisholm, “When I Went to College,” 64–7. See also, Burke [MacDonald], “New Women and Old Romans,” 234–41.

330

91

92

93

94 95

96 97

98

99 100 101 102 103 104

NOTES FOR PAGES 169–71

Student Petition, 1895, James Loudon fonds, B72–0031, box 2, file 28, uta; Literary and Scientific Society of University College Minutes, 22, 31 January 1895, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 3, uta; William Lyon Mackenzie King, diary entries, 22 and 31 January, 7 February 1895, William Lyon Mackenzie King Diaries, 1893–1931, transcript, G265, G268, G210, trl; University College Council Minutes, 19 March 1895, University College Council fonds, A69–0016, box 1, file 2, uta. “The Students May All Leave,” Evening Star, 16 February 1895. See also “Varsity Students Meet,” The World, 16 February 1895; “Varsity Troubles,” Daily Mail and Empire, 16 February 1895. William Lyon Mackenzie King, diary entries, 18–20 February 1895, William Lyon Mackenzie King Diaries, 1893–1931, transcript, G214, trl; “Varsity Strike Begins” and “Varsity in Deep Mourning,” Evening Star, 18, 19 February 1895; “The Students’ Boycott” and “Students’ Meeting,” Mail and Empire, 19, 21 February 1895; “The Boycott at Varsity” and “The Boycott Is Off,” The World, 19, 21 February 1895; appendix 1, “Students in Attendance, 1894–95,” Calendar of the University of Toronto, 1894–95, 9 S.H. Blake to Oliver Mowat, 28 February 1895, James Loudon fonds, B72– 0031, box 11, file 1, uta. Transcript of Examination of Letitia Saulter [sic], Records of the Commission on the Discipline and Other Matters in the University of Toronto, 1895, rg 18–33, box 2, vol. 2, 775–8, ao; “The Boycott at Varsity,” The World, 19 February 1895; “A Decision Today,” Evening Star, 20 February 1895; “Is Tucker an Agitator?” The World, 11 April 1895; “Want Facts, Not Opinions,” The World, 19 April1895; “Loudon,” Evening Star, 20 April 1895. “Still in Full Force,” Mail and Empire, 20 February 1895. George W. Ross to James Loudon, 9 July 1895, James Loudon fonds, B72– 0031, box 13, file 8, uta; Minutes of University College Council and Joint Councils, 29 August, 6, 12 September 1895, University College Council fonds, A69–0016, box 1, file 2, 175–81, uta. Sesame was published from 1897 to 1901. Editorial, Sesame 1, no. 1 (April 1897): 93–5; Editorial, Sesame 2, no 1 (March 1900): 70–1; Gertrude Lawler, “The Alumnae Association of University College, Toronto,” Sesame 1, no. 3 (January 1899): 26–7. “A Sketch of the Women’s Literary Society,” Sesame 1, no. 2 (January 1898): 43. Harris, History of Higher Education, 625. “The Freshman Class,” University Monthly, October 1892, 7. Ibid. “Ladies’ Reading Room,” University Monthly, January 1889, 50. Annie Garland Foster, Passing Through: Pictures from the Life of Mrs W. Garland Foster, née Annie H. Ross, typescript, 1939, 103–18, Annie

NOTES FOR PAGES 171–5

105 106 107 108

109 110 111 112

113 114 115

116

117 118

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Harvie (Ross) Foster Hanley fonds, mg L 7, Series 2, box 2, file 6, unba; Mabel Sterling, Alumni Oration, May 1939, Case 67a, box 2, Encaenia Addresses, unba; “De Omnibus Rebus,” University Monthly, November 1889, 14; Editorial, University Monthly, October 1890, 12; “De Omnibus Rebus,” University Monthly, October 1890, 16; “Literary Editors,” University Monthly, October 1891, 10. E.B. Hunter to Mrs Wheeler, 16 April 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac. “One of the ‘Third’” to Editor, University Monthly, October 1893, 12 [quoted in epigraph]. “One of the ‘Two-Thirds’” to Editor, University Monthly, November 1893, 29. Annie Garland Foster, Passing Through: Pictures from the Life of Mrs W. Garland Foster, née Annie H. Ross, typescript, 1939, 105, Annie Harvie (Ross) Foster Hanley fonds, mg L 7, Series 2, box 2, file 6, unba. Mabel Sterling, Alumni Oration, May 1939, Case 67a, box 2, Encaenia Addresses, unba. Ibid.; Hansen, “Those Certain Women,” 9–10. ’94 to Editor, University Monthly, March 1894, 56. Editorial, University Monthly, February 1894, 38; “Those Lady Editors,” University Monthly, March 1894, 59–61; Editorial, University Monthly, April 1894, 89. “De Omnibus Rebus,” University Monthly, January 1894, 21. See also “De Omnibus Rebus,” University Monthly, March 1894, 68–9, April 1894, 92–3. “De Omnibus Rebus,” University Monthly, March 1894, 68, April 1894, 93; “Valedictory,” University Monthly, May 1894, 98. “Y.L.L.S.,” University Monthly, October 1894, 20; E.B. Hunter to Mrs Wheeler, 16 April 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac. “Literary Editors,” University Monthly, November 1896, 45, December 1897, 73; “The Con,” University Monthly, February 1898, 132–3; “The Girls at U.N.B.,” University Monthly, March 1899, 155–6; “Literary Editors,” University Monthly, March 1899, 159; “The Ladies’ Society,” University Monthly, October 1899, 22; “Co-ed Basket-Ball,” University Monthly, February 1903, 131; “Ladies’ Debating Society,” University Monthly, February 1907, 131; “Ladies’ Department,” University Monthly, November 1907, 27–8; B. Welling, “A College Girl’s Life at the University of New Brunswick,” Queen’s Journal, 15 December 1908, 176–80; “Ladies’ Athletic Association,” University Monthly, December 1909, 60; “U.N.B. Alumnae,” University Monthly, April 1910, 150; Hansen, Those Certain Women, 10–15. “One of the ‘Gulled’” to Editor, University Monthly, January 1894, 12. Editorials, Queen’s Journal, 6 March, 100–1, 10 April 1880, 122.

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124 125 126 127 128

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

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NOTES FOR PAGES 175–9

Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 4 December 1880, 26; “The Ascent of Woman,” Queen’s Journal, 1 December 1894, 43; Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 199–210. “The Ladies’ Corner,” Queen’s Journal, 19 January 1889, 54, 15 February 1889, 81; “Our Society’s Doings,” Queen’s Journal, 4 March 1889, 96; “Ladies’ Department,” Queen’s Journal, 20 November 1889, 12; “The Queen’s College Y.W.C.A.,” Queen’s Journal, 18 December 1889, 44; Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 4 November 1893, 1; Editorial Staff, Queen’s Journal, 10 December 1898, 39, 26 December 1902, 12; “Beginnings of Levana Society,” Queen’s Journal, 4 March 1924, 1, 3; Charlotte Whitton, “Faithful to Levana,” Queen’s Alumni Review 24, no. 4 (April 1950): 93–100. Elizabeth Smith, diary entry, 11 November 1882, A Woman with a Purpose, 273; Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 9 May 1888, 145, 26 December 1902, 12–13; Grant and Hamilton, Principal Grant, 441–51; Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 193–9. “A Tribute from the Ladies,” Queen’s Journal, 6 November 1902, 48. “What the Ladies Would Like to Know,” Queen’s Journal, 28 November 1891, 31; “College Notes,” Queen’s Journal, 20 February 1892, 110; One of the Girls, “The College Woman,” Queen’s Journal, 7 March 1896, 135. MacKinnon, Miriam of Queen’s, 62. A Graduate of M’Gill, “Impressions of Queen’s,” Queen’s Journal, 2 March 1895, 140. Harris, History of Higher Education, 625. Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 14 February 1890, 114. “A Plea,” Queen’s Journal, 19 January 1889, 54; “College Notes,” Queen’s Journal, 21 January 1893, 80; “The Levana Society,” Queen’s Journal, 25 January 1896, 91; Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 208. E.J.M. to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 12 December 1891, 44. For the origins of the letter, see Levanaite to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 3 March 1894, 135. Oudanor, “Co-Education,” Queen’s Journal, 19 December 1891, 52. Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 20 January 1894. Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 5 March 1892. Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 20 January 1894. Quasi-Modo to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 17 February 1894, 121. Levanaite to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 3 March 1894, 135; A Student to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 17 March 1894, 153–4. “Ladies’ Column,” Queen’s Journal, 9 December 1899, 74; “The Levana Tea,” Queen’s Journal, 6 December 1901, 24; “Levana Tea,” Queen’s Journal, 26 December 1902, 21; Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 208–9. “Ladies’ Column,” Queen’s Journal, 24 December 1898, 62. See also Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 10 December 1898, 39–40; Editorial, Queen’s Journal, 24 December 1898, 62–3; Member of the One Strong Central Organiza-

NOTES FOR PAGES 179–83

138 139 140 141

142 143 144 145

146 147

148 149

150 151 152 153

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tion, “The Ladies and the Alma Mater,” Queen’s Journal, 21 January 1899, 76–7; “Ladies’ Column: Comments,” and “One of the Fifty-Five to Editor,” Queen’s Journal, 21 January 1899, 80–2. “Re-animation of the Levana,” Queen’s Journal, 15 December 1894, 63; “The Levana Society,” Queen’s Journal, 19 January 1895, 96. Maria to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 17 November 1894, 21. “The Levana,” Queen’s Journal, 30 November 1895, 43. “Levana Society Elections,” Queen’s Journal, 18 December 1889, 44. See also “The Levana Society,” Queen’s Journal, 5 March 1892, 125–6, 16 February 1895, 126–7, 25 January 1896, 91; “The Levana Debate,” Queen’s Journal, 16 March 1895, 158; “Ladies’ Column,” Queen’s Journal, 3 March 1900, 176. “Ladies,” Queen’s Journal, 17 October 1904, 24. Drover, “Presbyterian Professor on the Prairies,” 561–78. Lilian Ponton Saul to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 22 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac. Mrs MacGregor Young to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 19 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; Edith A. Clark, “Early Days in the Life of the Denominational Colleges,” September 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac. Literary Society Minutes, 30 September 1887, 131, Manitoba College, uwa. Literary Society Attendance Roll, 1887–1888, 128–30, Manitoba College, uwa; Literary Society Minutes, 7 October 1887, 133, Manitoba College, uwa; Editorial Staff, Manitoba College Journal, November 1891, 5, December 1893, 37. Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac. Lilian Ponton Saul to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 22 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; Manitoba University Calendar, 1886, 21, 1887, 22–3, 1888, 24–5, 1889, 19–22; “Women Graduates, 1887–1907,” typescript, Women in the University of Manitoba, Presidents’ Papers, 1888–1976, ua 20, box 3, file 003–024, uma; “Ladies’ Department: An Appreciation,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1904, 7–8; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 464–5. Editorial, “Lady Undergraduates,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1891, 6. M. Johnston, “‘The Girl of the Period,’” Manitoba College Journal, December 1893, 44. Harris, History of Higher Education, 626–7. “The Literary Society,” St John’s College Magazine, February 1893, 898–9, November 1894, 1141–2, April 1895, 76–7, June 1900, 154–6; Editorial

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158 159 160 161

162 163 164

165 166 167

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NOTES FOR PAGES 183–6

Staff, Vox Wesleyana, March 1901, 101, January 1903, 65; Ronish, “Sweet Girl Graduates,” 468; Bumsted, St John’s College, 46–8; Bedford, University of Winnipeg, 56–7. “Items from the Ladies’ Parlor,” St John’s College Magazine, December 1903, 110. “Ladies: The Ladies’ Literary Society,” Manitoba College Journal, April 1908, 17. Manitoba College had the highest enrolment of the colleges before the First World War. See Bumsted, University of Manitoba, 14. “Aims and Means,” Manitoba College Journal, January 1912, 2. See also “Women in Professional Life,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1910, 4–6; “Woman and Education,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1911, 13–14. “Ladies,” Manitoba College Journal, January 1909, 13–14; “Ladies’ Literary Society,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1910, 7; “Union Is Strength,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1910, 7–8; W. Burton Hurd, “Literary Society Reorganization,” Manitoba College Journal, May 1912, 11–13. W. Burton Hurd, “Literary Society Reorganization,” Manitoba College Journal, May 1912, 11. “College News: McMaster Hall,” McMaster University Monthly, June 1891, 42. Johnston, McMaster University, 1: 45–68; Moody, “The Trail of the Serpent,” 107–30. E.P. Wells, “Higher Education of Women in Its Relation to Home Life,” McMaster University Monthly, June 1894, 13–19; “College News: The First Annual Commencement,” McMaster University Monthly, May 1894, 375–80. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, February 1894, 234; March 1894, 280–1; December 1894, 135–8. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, November 1891, 89–90, December 1891, 139–40. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, February 1891, 238; January 1892, 184; December 1892, 144–5; March 1893, 298–9; November 1893, 88. Harris, History of Higher Education, 625. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, January 1892, 187. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, November 1892, 97; December 1892, 145; February 1893, 248; March 1893, 298–9; May 1893, 392. “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, January 1893, 200.

NOTES FOR PAGES 186–9

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169 Ladies’ Literary League Constitution, 10 February 1899, n.p., 14–23, McMaster University, cba. During the redrafting of the constitution in 1899, members decided against changing their society’s name to Woman’s Literary League. In 1907, however, a motion to change the name to “Women’s Literary Society” was carried. Ladies’ Literary League Minutes, 10 February 1899, n.p., 29 October 1907, n.p., 14–23, McMaster University, cba. 170 Ladies’ Literary League Minutes, 17 February 1899, n.p., 10 November 1899, n.p., 14–23, McMaster University, cba; “The Ladies’ ‘Lit,’” McMaster University Monthly, November 1904, 77; “Our Victorious Lady Debaters,” McMaster University Monthly, January 1905, 187; King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 214. 171 “College News,” McMaster University Monthly, December 1897, 136. 172 “College News: The University,” McMaster University Monthly, May 1893, 392; November 1893, 90–1; March 1895, 281; November 1895, 89–92; February 1896, 234; May 1898, 366–7; May 1899, 380; October 1899, 38–9; March 1900, 281. 173 “College News: Around the Hall,” McMaster University Monthly, February 1900, 233. See also Ladies’ Literary League Minutes, 11 January 1900, n.p., 14–23, McMaster University, cba. 174 Harris, History of Higher Education, 628. 175 “The Past and the Present,” Western University Gazette, March 1912, n.p.; “Relation of the Western University to the Department of Education,” Report of the Registrar, 1920–21, Office of the President fonds, vol. 3, Series 2, Miscellaneous (1919–1921), wua; Talman and Davis Talman, “Western” – 1878–1953, 43–54, 92; Gwynne-Timothy, Western’s First Century, 127–39, 209–25. 176 Tamblyn, These Sixty Years, 25–6. 177 Ibid., 26–34. 178 “Our Jean,” In Cap and Gown, January 1904, n.d.; “Our Junior,” In Cap and Gown, November 1904, n.p.; “The Lady or the Library??” In Cap and Gown, December 1904, n.p.; “Editorial,” In Cap and Gown, December 1904, n.p. 179 N.a, “untitled poem,” In Cap and Gown, March 1904, n.p. 180 [Jessie Rowat], “The Life and Journeys of One Jessie Rowat,” 12 June 1908, Scrapbook, Jessie Rowat fonds, B4257–8, uwoa; Jessie Rowat, “Valedictory: Class of ’06,” 1 June 1906, Manuscript, Jessie Rowat fonds, B4257-8, uwoa. In Cap and Gown teased Rowat for her habit of having lengthy conversations with men in the college hallways. “Our Junior,” In Cap and Gown, November 1904, n.p. 181 Jessie Rowat, “Valedictory: Class of ’06,” 1 June 1906, 12–13, Manuscript, Jessie Rowat fonds, B4257–8, uwoa. The Areopagus Society ceased meeting in 1907 but was revived briefly in 1915, again as “strictly a men’s

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NOTES FOR PAGES 189–94

organization.” “The New Aeropagus,” Western University Gazette, November 1915, 19–20; Tamblyn, These Sixty Years, 27–8, 78–9. “The Lady or the Library??” In Cap and Gown, December 1904, n.p. The exception to this pattern was the period immediately before the First World War: between 1911 and 1915, three women served as editors-in-chief of the Western University Gazette. Tamblyn, These Sixty Years, 84; Editorial Staff, In Cap and Gown, November 1906, 12, March 1907, n.p., November 1907, n.p.; “The Western Girls,” In Cap and Gown, November 1907, 19; Executive Committee, Western University Gazette, November 1908, n.p., 14, October 1909, n.p.; Editorial Staff, Western University Gazette, November 1910, 11; November 1911, n.p.; November 1912, 8, n.p. “Western Girls: Our Club,” Western University Gazette, March 1909, 164–5; “Western Girls: The New Club,” Western University Gazette, October 1909, 24; “Western Girls: The Gynarchy Club,” Western University Gazette, January 1910, 151; “Western Girls: The Club,” Western University Gazette, February 1910, 171; “Western Ladies: The Woman’s Alumnae,” Western University Gazette, November 1910, 13; “Western Girls: The Alumnae,” Western University Gazette, December 1911, 48. “The Levana on Men and Women,” Queen’s Journal, 3 March 1894, 140. Graduate ’00, “Our Women Students,” Acta Victoriana, October 1901, 3. A.E.O., “A Girl’s Experience at Mt Allison,” The Argosy, February 1915, 280.

Chapter Five 1 2

3

4

5 6 7

“The Insurrection of the Women,” The Varsity, 24 March 1919. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Report, 13 February 1919, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, file 2, vua. Eva Bessie Lockhart, Acadia Snapshot Book, 1913–1916, Eva Bessie Lockhart fonds, 1969.002-loc/21–22, aua; Ilo McHaffie Photograph Collection, Welsey College, 1917–1920, uwa; Kathleen Cowan, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone. Walton, “Achieving a Voice,” 113–46; Myers, University Coeducation in the Victorian Era, 78–83; Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 48–78; Gordon, Gender and Higher Education, 52–120. Marjory MacMurchy, quoted by Margaret Eaton, “Women’s Department,” McMaster University Monthly, January 1917, 174. See appendix 4. Gidney, “Dating and Gaiting,” 138–60. See also, Gidney, A Long Eclipse, 3–47; King, “Centres of ‘Home-Like Influence,’” 39–59.

NOTES FOR PAGES 195–9

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

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16 17 18 19

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24 25 26 27

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McKillop, “Marching as to War,” 75–93; Pedersen, “The Call to Service,” 187–215. “Student Girls Refuse to Take Man’s Seat in Car,” Toronto Star, 24 February 1914. Turk, Bound by a Mighty Vow. See also Myers, University Coeducation in the Victorian Era, 107–8; Gordon, Gender and Higher Education, 105–6. Levi, “Phyllis Grierson, Margaret Ross, and the Queen’s Hall Girls,” 78–9; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 126–7, 152–3, 184. Kathleen Cowan, diary entries, 14 May 1908, 14 and 19 November 1910, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 131, 351, 352. Tamblyn, These Sixty Years, 125; Ursilla N. Macdonnell, Report of Dean of Women Students, 1928–29, University of Manitoba Annual Reports, uma; Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 106–7; King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 150–3. Joan Sangster notes that women of Asian background and Indigenous women were subjected to voting restrictions until 1949 and 1960, respectively. Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle, 3, 137–71, 203. Laura B. McCully, “What Women Want,” Maclean’s Magazine 23, no. 3 (January 1912): 279–84; Sperdakos, “For the Joy of the Working,” 283–314; Fingard, “Eliza Ritchie.” Murray Wrong, “Some Problems of the University of Toronto,” The Arbor 2, no. 7 (1911): 252. “‘Vic’ Women Object to Man-Made Edicts,” Toronto Globe, 29 November 1913. “Locals,” Acta Victoriana, February 1897, 259. “College News,” McMaster University Monthly, February 1914, 217, March 1914, 263, April 1914, 315. See also “College News,” McMaster University Monthly, March 1905, 271. Minutes of the Victoria College Women’s Student Council, 7 November 1916, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 3, 1990.137V, file 1, vua. “Locals,” The Argosy, February 1908, 215. Mary Trerice, “A Vote! Why Indeed?” The Argosy, January 1916, 229. Evelyn Enid Smallman, “Woman’s Part in the War,” Acadia Athenaeum, June 1915, 482–7; “Political Club,” Acadia Bulletin 8, no. 3 (April 1919): 1. See also, “Aims and Means,” Manitoba College Journal, January 1912, 2. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 275. Florence Murray to her father, 3 March 1916, Robert Murray and Family fonds, ms 2 535 A9, A10, dua. MacKenzie, “In My Day at Dalhousie Law School,” 5–6. Hilda Laird, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 31 May 1978, 5, qua.

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31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38

NOTES FOR PAGES 199–202

Marion [Machum] Bennett, interview transcript, Oral History Project, Interview no. 5, 6 January 1977, 3, maua. “Victoria Women in War Work,” Acta Victoriana War Supplement, 1919, 31; Margaret Wrong, “War Work of University Women at Home,” The Varsity Magazine Supplement, 1918, 133–4; Chancellor’s Report to the Senate, 1916–1917, Office of the Chancellor fonds, McMaster University, box 402, sub group A, Series 5, cba. “An Afternoon at the Red Cross,” Western University Gazette, March 1916, 23; “College News,” McMaster University Monthly, April 1915, 257; October 1916, 27; November 1916, 78–9; October 1917, 34–5; December 1918, 128– 31; “The College Girl,” The Manitoban, November 1915, 26; October 1917, 18; December 1918, 18; “196th Auxiliary,” University of Manitoba Year Book, 1917, 33; 1918, 72; “A Girl’s Experience at Mt Allison,” The Argosy, February 1915, 278; editorials, Queen’s Journal, 10 December 1914, 4; 7 February 1916, 4; Caroline E. McNeill, “Report of the Dean of Women,” Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1916–17, 44–6; 1918–19, 48–50 qua; Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 8. See also Quiney, “We Must not Neglect Our Duty,” 71–94. Margaret Adelle Keeling held the position of adviser to women students between Sheldon and Misener. Schoeck, I Was There, 90–2, 121–3. A Girl of Queen’s, “That Lady Dean!” Queen’s Journal, 30 March 1895, 174. See also “The Ascent of Woman,” Queen’s Journal, 1 December 1894, 43; “A Lady Dean,” Queen’s Journal, 29 December 1894, 74–5; “The Levana Debate,” Queen’s Journal, 16 March 1895, 158; A Girl of Queen’s to Editor, Queen’s Journal, 30 March 1895, 174. May Penwarden, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 21 October 1977, qua; Florence May Mooney, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 2 and 5 August 1978, qua; Mabel Galt, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 3 August 1978, qua. Daniel Gordon, Principal’s Annual Report, Queen’s University, 1910–11, 28, qua. Neatby, Queen’s University, 1: 301. Caroline E. McNeill, “Report of the Adviser of Women,” Annual Reports, Queen’s University, 1911–12, 31–4; 1912–13, 15; 1915–16, 41, qua. Caroline E. McNeill, “Report of the Dean of Women,” Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1916–17, 44–7, qua. Mabel Roberts, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 17 April 1978, 28, qua. In 1951, Charlotte Whitton was elected mayor of Ottawa, becoming the first woman to serve as mayor of a major Canadian city. See Rooke and Schnell, No Bleeding Heart.

NOTES FOR PAGES 202–6

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52 53

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Gibson, Queen’s University, 2: 74; Garvie and Johnson, Their Leaven of Influence, 10–26; Mary MacPhail Chown and Maud Brownlee Harkness, “The Hencoop,” and Hilda Laird, “Ban Righ Hall: The Beginnings,” in Gibson, A Generous Loyalty, 7–10, 39–42. R. Bruce Taylor, Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1922–23, 11, qua; R. Bruce Taylor, Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1924–25, 8, qua; “Levana,” Queen’s Journal, 26 October 1923, 5; 26 February 1924, 5. Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 39–40. Eva Bessie Lockhart, Acadia Snapshot Book, 1913–1916, 5, Eva Bessie Lockhart fonds, 1969.002–loc/21–22, aua. Acadia Athenaeum, May 1884, 2; “The Woes of a College Girl,” Acadia Athenaeum, May 1900, 241–4; Conrad, Rice, and Townsend, Women at Acadia University, 7. “A Decade of Growth,” Acadia Bulletin 2, no. 9 (October 1913): 3; Longley, Acadia University, 104–40; Moody, “Give Us an A,” 40–70; Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 42–5. Esther Clark to her father, n.d. March 1914, quoted by Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 43–4. “College Women’s Residence,” Acadia Bulletin 3, no. 3 (April 1914): 3–4; “Buildings,” Acadia Bulletin 3, no. 7 (August 1914): 1; “College Women’s Residence,” Acadia Bulletin 3, no. 11 (December 1914): 2. Eva Bessie Lockhart, Acadia Snapshot Book, 1913–1916, 6, Eva Bessie Lockhart fonds, 1969.002-loc/21–22, aua. Wright, Blomidon Rose, 176. “Residence for College Women,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 6 (April 1926): 4; “Residence for College Women,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 6 (April 1926): 4; “Whitman Hall,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 10 (February–May 1927): 4. Quoted by Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 41. See also Moody, “Acadia and the Great War,” 155. C.B.L. [C. Bruce Lumsden], “Reconstruction at Acadia,” Acadia Athenaeum, January 1919, 48–51; J.R.G. [Jean R. Goucher], “Ways of Serving Our Nation,” Acadia Athenaeum, January 1917, 84–5; Vera Glisson Ogilvie, “Valedictory,” Acadia Athenaeum, June 1919; “Memorial Gymnasium,” Acadia Bulletin 8, no. 9 (October 1919): 4; Moody, “Esther Clark Goes to College,” 41–2; Moody, “Acadia and the Great War,” 153–6. “Opening,” Acadia Bulletin 8, no. 9 (October 1919): 1. “Personals,” Acadia Bulletin 1, no. 1 (February 1912): 6; “A Dean for Women,” Acadia Bulletin 8, no. 8 (September 1919): 8; “Appointments,” Acadia Bulletin 8, no. 9 (October 1919): 2; “Town Survey,” Acadia Bulletin 9, no. 1 (February 1920): 2; “Appointments,” Acadia Bulletin 10, nos. 8–9 (September– October 1920): 1; “New Appointments at Acadia University,” Acadia

340

NOTES FOR PAGES 206–8

Bulletin 11, nos. 8–9 (September–October 1921): 3–4; “Acadia’s Department of Education,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 6 (April 1926): 7–8. 54 Board of Regents Minutes, Mount Allison University (1899–1920), May 1906, 84, 94, maua; “Ladies’ College Notes,” The Argosy, October 1912, 60–1; Reid, Mount Allison University, 2: 25–6, 123–31. 55 “Ladies’ College Notes,” The Argosy, October 1913, 62. 56 Editorial, The Argosy, October 1911, 41. 57 Marion [Machum] Bennett, interview transcript, Oral History Project, Interview no. 5, 6 January 1977, 1, maua. 58 “Rules and Regulations, Mt Allison Ladies’ College” [c. 1900], Raymond Clare Archibald fonds, mta5, 5501/6/1/4, 183, maua; Women’s Student Council Minutes, 13 April 1915, 18 May 1915, Trueman Memorabilia, 7722/4/2, maua. 59 Women’s Student Council Minutes, 13 April 1915, 18 May 1915, 18 January 1916, Trueman Memorabilia, 7722/4/2, maua. 60 Marion [Machum] Bennett, interview transcript, Oral History Project, Interview no. 5, 6 January 1977, 1–2, maua. 61 A.M., “Woman’s Place in War – Past and Present,” The Argosy, May 1915, 433–9; Mary Trerice, “A Vote! Why Indeed?” The Argosy, January 1916, 229–30; “The College Woman in the World,” The Argosy, May 1918, 317–20; Marguerite Jonah, “Valedictory Address,” The Argosy, June 1917, 423–8; Helen Plummer, “Valedictory Address,” The Argosy, June 1918. 62 Editorial, The Argosy, October 1920, 40; “New Residence for Co-Eds,” The Argosy Weekly, 24 October 1925; Marion [Machum] Bennett, interview transcript, Oral History Project, Interview no. 5, 6 January 1977, 7–8, maua. 63 “Allison Hall,” The Argosy, October 1926, 128–30; Archibald, Historical Notes on the Education of Women, 8–19; Brearley, Female Physicians, 18. 64 Friedland, University of Toronto, 197–284; Selles, Methodists and Women’s Education, 171–92. 65 Margaret Addison, Annual Report of Annesley Hall, 1904–1905, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 2, file 3, vua. 66 Before her marriage, Margaret Proctor Burwash taught at the Wesleyan Ladies’ College in Hamilton, and later was preceptress at Mount Allison Ladies’ Academy. She was active in the foundation of Annesley Hall in Toronto and became a dominant voice on its committee of management. Margaret Addison believed that Burwash undermined her authority as head of the residence. O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 101–87; Ibronyi, Early Voices, 18–37. For the ethic of social service among women students, see Burke [MacDonald], Seeking the Highest Good, 41–60.

NOTES FOR PAGES 209–11

67 68

69

70

71

72 73

74

75

76

77

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Kathleen Cowan, diary entry, 30 September 1907, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 18. Kathleen Cowan, diary entries, 11 December 1907, 10 and 12 February 1908, It’s Late, and All the Girls Have Gone, 63, 91–2, 93. See also diary entries, 12 December 1907, 8 May 1909, 63, 243. Nathanael Burwash to Margaret Addison, 30 January 1911, Victoria College, Dean of Women fonds, file: General Correspondence, 1911, 90.141V, 1–11, vua. Documents for Use of Commission on Annesley Hall, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 1, 1990.146V, box 1, file 8, vua; Sketch of the History of the Committee of Management of Annesley Hall [March 1931], 23–4, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, vua. “‘Vic’ Women Object to Man-Made Edicts,” Toronto Globe, 29 November 1913; Agreement between the Faculty of Victoria College and the Women Students of the College, 25 November 1914, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 3, 1990.134V, Women’s Student Council, vua. Margaret Addison to Charlotte Addison, 30 January 1915, Margaret Addison fonds, 87.168V, box 1, vua. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Report, 8 March 1917, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, file 2, vua. Women’s Literary Society Minutes, 2 February 1921, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 3, 2007.04IV tr, vua. Senate Minutes, 5 June 1891, 224; 11 March 1892, 336; 15 April 1892, 345; University of Toronto, uta; “University College Women’s Residence Association,” circular letter, 30 March 1893, James Loudon fonds, B72–0031, box 8, file 22, uta; “University College Women’s Residence Site, etc.,” Memoirs of James Loudon, typescript, James Loudon fonds, B72–0031, box 16, file 11, 115–20, uta; A. Hoodless, “Women’s Residence, Toronto University,” The Globe, 18 April 1895. Minutes of Queen’s Hall House Committee, 1911–14, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 22, uta; University College Queen’s Hall Constitution for the Self-Government Association, 1914, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 56, uta; Mrs John Campbell to Robert Falconer, 4 June 1914, Robert Falconer to Mrs John Campbell, 8 June 1914, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 27, uta. “Queen’s Hall,” The Varsity, 18 February 1910; “Students Resign,” The Varsity, 26 February 1914.

342

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79

80

81

82 83

84

85 86 87 88 89

90

NOTES FOR PAGES 211–15

Mossie May [Waddington] Kirkwood, interview transcript, 27 March 1973, 35, University of Toronto Oral History, B74–0020, uta. For a sketch of life at Queen’s Hall in the early 1920s, see Prentice, “Elizabeth Allin: Physicist,” 269–70. University College Alumnae Association, 1898–1936, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 14, uta. For Margaret Wrong’s missionary work, see Brouwer, Modern Women Modernizing Men. Agnes MacGillivray trained in office work, and served as the private secretary to the president of the University of Toronto for many years. Agnes Telfer MacGillivray, interview transcript, 22 November 1973, B74–0029, 21, 58–61, uta. See chapter 6. Dean of Women: Report of Committee [1909], Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 50, uta; Minutes of Alumnae Association of University College, 26 November 1898, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 13, 14, uta; Eighth Annual Report of the Alumnae Association of University College, Toronto, 1905–1906, Waddell Family fonds, B73–0028, box 1, file 1. “Boarding Houses,” 1918, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74– 0011, box 1, file 7, uta. Margaret Wrong to Robert Falconer, 13 September 1917, Robert Falconer to Margaret Wrong, 16 September 1917, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 50, uta; Millicent Payne, “A College Education Paid These Girls,” Everywoman’s World 7, no 3 (March 1917): 14. Margaret Wrong, Report of University College Women’s Union, January 1921, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, file 11, uta. “Hutton Lays Down Laws to Residence Girls,” The Varsity, 21 February 1919; editorials, The Varsity, 31 January 1919, 24 and 26 February 1919. Fourth year students at Queen’s Hall to Robert Falconer, 12 March 1919, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 54, file: Queen’s Hall, uta. Editorial, The Varsity, 21 February 1919. “The Insurrection of the Women,” The Varsity, 24 March 1919. See also Levi, “Phyllis Grierson, Margaret Ross, and the Queen’s Hall Girls,” 73–92. Constitution of the Women Students’ Administrative Council of the University of Toronto [1920], University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 2, file 7, uta; Petition to the Senate by the Women Students’ Administrative Council of the University of Toronto, 26 March 1919, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 55, uta. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Report, 13 February 1919, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, file 2, vua.

NOTES FOR PAGES 215–19

91 92

93

94 95 96

97

98 99 100 101 102

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Margaret Addison to Robert Falconer, 1 February 1919, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 51a, uta; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 163. Hutton House was the second women’s residence at University College, as Argyll House had been opened in 1918. University College Council Minutes, 3 October 1919, University College fonds, A69–0016, uta; Margaret Wrong to Edmund Walker, 25 July 1918, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 3, file 2, uta; Acting Bursar to Margaret Wrong, 20 August 1918, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 55, uta; May Pitkin Wallace to Robert Falconer, 8 October 1918, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 55, uta; Margaret Wrong, Report of University College Women’s Union, 1920–1921, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, file 10, uta. Margaret Wrong, Report of University College Women’s Union, 1920– 1921, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, file 10, uta; Minutes of Alumnae Association of University College, 4 December 1919, 8, 12 January, 28 October 1920, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 13, 14, uta; University College Alumnae Association, 1898–1936, University College fonds, A69–0011, box 14, uta. Mossie May [Waddington] Kirkwood, interview transcript, 27 March 1973, 35, University of Toronto Oral History, B74–0020, uta. Margaret Wrong, Report of University College Women’s Union, January 1921, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, file 11, uta. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Reports, 13 February 1919, 15 April 1920, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, files 2, 3, vua; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 162–5, 192–3. Sketch of the History of the Committee of Management of Annesley Hall [March 1931], 23–4, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, vua; Mercy E. McCullouch, “Wymilwood,” University of Toronto Monthly 25, no. 9 (June 1925): 419–21. Hilda Laird, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 31 May 1978, 12, qua. Gidney, Tending the Student Body, 101–23. Milewski, “The Little Gray Book,” 91–111. Bumsted, University of Manitoba, 17–39, 85–6. Editorial, “Household Science,” Vox Wesleyana, December 1902, 42–3; D.M. Hepburn, “Household Science,” M.A.C. Gazette, March 1911, 63–6; Irene K. Best, “Homemakers’ Course,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1912, 79–81; “Home Economics Notes,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1913, 298–9; “New Courses in Home Economics,” M.A.C. Gazette, October 1913, 41–3; “A Girl’s Life at the M.A.C.,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1914, 327–8

344

NOTES FOR PAGES 219–23

103 S.J., “A Brief History of 1915–16 at Wesley College,” Vox Wesleyana, July 1916, 18. For the complex relations between the founding colleges and the university during this period, see Bedford, University of Winnipeg, 100–18. 104 “‘Varsity Parliament,” ’Varsity Year Book, 1914–1915, 7; “University of Manitoba Students’ Association,” “Coeds,” “The ‘Manitoban,’” University of Manitoba Year Book, 1915–1916, 9, 27, 87; “The U.M.S.A., 1916–1917,” “Coeds,” University of Manitoba Year Book, 1916–1917, 7, 31; “‘The Manitoban’” and “Ekolela,” University of Manitoba Year Book, 1917–1918, 23, 45; “Ekolela,” University of Manitoba Year Book, 1918–1919, 73; “University of Manitoba Students’ Union,” Brown and Gold, 1921, 8–9. 105 “The College Girl,” The Manitoban, November 1914, 14; “College Girl Notes,” The Manitoban, December 1916, 15; “The College Girl,” The Manitoban, October 1917, 20, November 1917, 13; “U.M.S.U. Women’s Council,” Brown and Gold, 1922, 29–30; “Women’s Committee of the U.M.S.U. Council,” Brown and Gold, 1930, 11; Bumsted, University of Manitoba, 39–49. 106 See, for example, “Editorial: Residence for Women,” Vox Wesleyana, January 1903, 65; “Ladies’ Department: Plea for a Ladies’ Residence,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1904, 11–12; “Editorial: A Residence for the Ladies,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1911, 4. 107 Women’s Auxiliary of Manitoba College Minutes, 8 April 1920, 1–2, 77.001, file 1, Manitoba College, uwa; John Mackay, Principal’s Report, 1921, 1–3, mc–9–1, file 4, Manitoba College, uwa; Bedford, University of Winnipeg, 44–69, 81, 122, 140–8. 108 Board of Directors Minutes, 19 February 1915, 3–4; 5 July 1916, 1; 20 September 1917, 2, 9, wc–5–7, Wesley College, uwa; “The Ladies’ Residence,” Vox Wesleyana, July 1916, 38–9; “The Ladies’ Residence,” Vox Wesleyana, April 1917, 47; Lillian S. Johnston, Dean of Sparling Hall, Report to Senate, 1921–1922, wc–9–1, file 1, Wesley College, uwa; Convocation Number, Vox Wesleyana, May 1920, 12, 26–7, 42; “Sparling Hall,” Vox Wesleyana, December 1920, 18; Ilo McHaffie Photograph Collection, Welsey College, 1917–1920, uwa. 109 Kinnear, “Disappointment in Discourse,” 271. 110 Ursilla N. Macdonnell, Reports of Dean of Women Students, 1921–22, 1922–23, 1923–24, 1924–25, 1925–26, 1926–27, 1927–28, 1928–29, 1929–30, University of Manitoba Annual Reports, uma. 111 Ursilla N. Macdonnell, Report of Dean of Women Students, 1923–24, University of Manitoba Annual Reports, uma [quoted in epigraph]. 112 Chancellor’s Report to the Senate, 1914–1915, Office of the Chancellor fonds, McMaster University, box 402, sub group A, Series 5, cba.

NOTES FOR PAGES 223–5

345

113 Memorandum of Understanding between McMaster University and the Alumnae Association with Reference to Ladies’ Residence, n.d., Office of the Registrar fonds, McMaster University, box 105, sub group A, cba. 114 Jacqueline M. Norton, “A Women’s Residence,” McMaster University Monthly, March 1919, 259; Enid A. McGregor, “Wallingford Hall: Its History,” McMaster University Monthly, October 1920, 3–5. 115 Women’s Literary Society Minutes, 31 March 1910, n.p., 14–23, McMaster University, cba; Constitution of the Women’s Student Body of McMaster University, 8 April 1921, Office of the Registrar fonds, McMaster University, box 105, sub group A, cba; Constitution of Organized Women Students in Wallingford Hall, n.d., Office of the Registrar fonds, McMaster University, box 105, sub group A, cba; Wallingford Hall Regulations, n.d., Office of the Registrar fonds, McMaster University, box 105, sub group A, cba. 116 Report on Activities of McMaster Women, 17 April 1922, Office of the Chancellor fonds, McMaster University, box 402, sub group A, Series 5, cba; “Wallingford Reception,” McMaster University Monthly, November 1920, 75–6; “Freshette Tea,” McMaster University Monthly, December 1920, 123: “Afternoon Tea,” McMaster University Monthly, March 1921, 257–8; “Wallingford Tea,” McMaster University Monthly, April 1921, 299; “At Wallingford,” McMaster University Monthly, December 1921, 126; Reports of the Women’s Student Body, 1922–23, 1923–24, Office of the Chancellor fonds, McMaster University, box 402, sub group A, Series 5, cba. 117 Ellen Trotter, Reports of the Dean of Wallingford Hall, 1920–21, 1921–22, 1922–23, 1923–24, Office of the Chancellor fonds, McMaster University, box 402, sub group A, Series 5, cba. 118 King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 184–6; Johnston, McMaster University, 2: 30, 33–4, 47–8. 119 “New Appointments to the University,” Dalhousie Alumni News 4, no. 1 (September 1923): 2. 120 “Student Societies,” Dalhousie University Calendar, 1909–10, 117; Eliza Ritchie, “Woman’s Debt to Dalhousie,” Morning Chronicle, 23 November 1911, 1–2; Fingard, “Eliza Ritchie.” 121 “Residence,” Dalhousie University Calendar, 1912–13, 10; 1913–14, 15; Board of Governors Minutes, 28 April 1913, and 7 November 1913, Dalhousie University, dua; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 1: 213, 240–5; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 2: 24–5; Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 11–12. 122 This regulation continued in place until well after the Second World War. Dalhousie University Calendar, 1923–24, 17, 1930–31, 17-18, 1940–41, 16, 1950–51, 19.

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123 E. Margaret Lowe, General Report to the President, June 1930, Shirreff Hall, President’s Office Correspondence, A–252, dua. 124 W. Sherwood Fox to Ruby Mason, 17 April 1926, Office of the Presidents fonds, vol. 11, Series 2, wua. 125 Irene A. Stockwell, “Alumnae Doings,” Western University Gazette, January 1920, 22–3. 126 Relation of the Western University to the Department of Education, Western University Report of the Registrar, 1920–21, Office of the Presidents fonds, vol. 3, Series 2, wua. 127 Western University Report of the Registrar, 1920–21, Office of the President fonds, vol. 3, Series 2, wua. 128 Agreement of Affiliation of Ursuline College, Chatham, with Western University, Western University Report of the Registrar, 1920–21, Office of the Presidents fonds, vol. 3, Series 2, wua; Tamblyn, These Sixty Years, 46–7. 129 Ruby C.E. Mason, “The Education of Women,” 5 130 Editorial, Western University Gazette, December 1919, 11; January 1920, 13; “The Student’s Council of the Student Body,” Western University Gazette, Special Issue, 1921, 15; “The Students’ Council of the Student Body,” Western University Gazette Convocation Supplement, 1922, 13; Ruby C.E. Mason, “The Education of Women,” 1–6. 131 W. Sherwood Fox to Ruby Mason, 22 September 1928, Office of the President fonds, vol. 11, Series 2, wua; Ruby Mason to W. Sherwood Fox, 1 May 1929, Office of the Presidents fonds, vol. 11, Series 2, wua. 132 W. Sherwood Fox to Fred Landon, 3 July 1930, Office of the Presidents fonds, vol. 11, Series 2, wua. 133 Gwynne-Timothy, Western’s First Century, 732, 737. 134 “Ladies’ Department,” The Brunswickan, October 1927, 25. 135 “The Ladies’ Societies,” University Monthly, June 1910, 218–9; M.G.O, “A Girl’s Life at U.N.B.,” University Monthly, January–February 1911, 165–7; “Ladies’ Department,” University Monthly, January–February 1913, 177–9; November 1913, 78–9; January 1915, 24; October 1916, 21–2; March 1917, 137–9; “Customs Old and New,” The Brunswickan, May 1926, 5; Montague, A Pictorial History, 47–86. 136 Corresponding Editor, University Monthly, November 1917, 38; “Ladies’ Department,” University Monthly, November 1918, 24–5; March 1920, 153–4; April 1922, 190–1; “Ladies’ Department,” The Brunswickan, December 1923, 81–2; February 1924, 121–2; February 1927, 25–6; May 1928, 28–9; March 1929, 34–5; Montague, A Pictorial History, 116–7, 134; Hansen, “Those Certain Women,” 21–40. 137 Hilda Laird, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 31 May 1978, 9, qua; R. Bruce Taylor, Principal’s Report, Queen’s

NOTES FOR PAGES 229–34

138 139

140 141

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University, 1925–26, 4, qua; Hilda C. Laird, “Report of the Dean of Women,” Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1925–26, 62–6, qua; Hilda Ridley, “Queen’s Will Have a Woman’s Residence,” Saturday Night, 1 December 1923, 25. Sybil MacLachlan, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 15 May 1978, 5, qua. Hilda Laird, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 31 May 1978, 17, qua; Hilda C. Laird, “Report of the Dean of Women,” Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1930–31, 36, qua; Warner, “It Is a Dancing and Frivolous Age,” 25–45; Garvie and Johnson, Their Leaven of Influence, 34; Gibson, Queen’s University, 2: 77. Marion [Machum] Bennett, interview transcript, Oral History Project, Interview no. 5, 6 January 1977, 5, maua. Mossie May [Waddington] Kirkwood, interview transcript, 27 March 1973, 35, University of Toronto Oral History, B74–0020, uta; Prentice, “Scholarly Passion,” 258–83. M.M. Waddington, “The Woman Student in Toronto,” The Arbor 4, no. 5 (1913): 236. M.M. Waddington, Reports of University College Women’s Union, 1921– 22, 1923–24, 1924–25, 1925–26, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, files 12–15, uta; Laura Mason, “The Feminine of Hart House,” Saturday Night, 27 January 1923, 21. M.M. Kirkwood, Report of University College Women’s Union, 1924–25, University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 1, file 1, uta. M.M. Kirkwood, “On Government in College,” For College Women … and Men, 49. Pauline Jewett, quoted by Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts,” 281–2. J.L. Sheard, “The Last Man,” in Murray and Sheard, Varsity in Cartoon.

Chapter Six 1 2

Nicholas, The Modern Girl; Comacchio, Dominion of Youth; McKillop, Matters of Mind, 408–20. Editorial, The Argosy, April 1921, 334. Dances at Victoria and Mount Allison were not permitted until 1925 and 1927, respectively, and McMaster held out until 1942. On dancing, see also “The Editor’s Mail,” The Argosy Weekly, 25 October 1924, 6; “Alpha Beta on Dancing,” The Argosy Weekly, 15 November 1924, 7; Marion Huber, diary, 1931–1932, Marion Huber fonds, B73–0007, box 1, file 1, uta; Sybil MacLachlan, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 15 May 1978, 5, qua.

348

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7 8

9 10

11

12 13

14 15 16

NOTES FOR PAGES 234–8

Loudon, Studies of Student Life, 5: 158–9. Tamblyn, Those Sixty Years, 75–6. Calvin, Queen’s University, 268–9. Falconer, “The War and Intellectual Development,” in Idealism in National Character, 117. Similarly, A.S.P. Woodhouse refers to 1914 as “the Great Divide” in “The Humanities – Sixty Years,” Queen’s Quarterly 60, no. 4 (Winter 1954): 543. I develop this argument further in Burke [MacDonald], “Dancing into Education,” 95–120; Burke [MacDonald], “Science and Sentiment,” 75–93. Sangster, “Mobilizing Women for War,” 157–93; MacKenzie, “Introduction,” in Canada and the First World War, 3–14; Strong-Boag, New Day Recalled, 7–40. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex, 239–40; Fitzgerald, “Claiming Their Intellectual Spaces,” 1. Zschoche, “Dr Clarke Revisited,” 545–69; Newman, White Women’s Rights, 86–95; Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres, 1–27; Burstyn, “Education and Sex,” 79–89. Wardon A. Curtis, “The Movement against Co-Education at the University of Wisconsin,” The Independent (6 August 1908): 323–6, Ephemera Collection, B83–1288, uta; Olin, The Women of a State University, 56–7, 80– 100. See also Conable, Women at Cornell, 98–133; Haines, “For Honor and Alma Mater,” 25–37; Gordon, “Co-Education on Two Campuses,” 171–93; Hague, “What If the Power Does Lie within Me?” 78–99; Lundt, Poulson, and Miller-Bernal, “To Coeducation and Back Again,” 55–79; Manekin, “Gender, Markets, and the Expansion of Women’s Education,” 298–323; Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 51–61. Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 289–303. “Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire in Regard to a Possible College for Women,” 10 March 1909, Office of the President, A67–0007/026, file: Women’s College, uta; “Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire in Regard to a Possible College for Women,” University of Toronto Monthly 9, no. 8 (June 1909): 286; University of Toronto Senate Minutes, 8 November 1907, 531; 12 March 1909, 212–4; 16 April 1909, 219, uta. I discuss this controversy in more detail in Burke [MacDonald], “Being unlike Man,” 11–31. Nathanael Burwash to Richard Harcourt, 16 December 1902, Ministry of Education fonds, series rg 29–1–51, ao. George Wrong to Nathanael Burwash, 17 January 1908, Ephemera Collection, B83–1288, uta; Adelaide Hoodless to George Wrong, n.d., Ephemera Collection, B83–1288, uta.

NOTES FOR PAGES 238–41

17 18 19

20

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26

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George M. Wrong, “Memoranda for the Consideration of the Committee on the College for Women,” n.d., 1, 3, Ephemera Collection, B83–1288, uta. Nathanael Burwash to Robert Falconer, 28 April 1909, Nathanael Burwash fonds, Series 1, Correspondence, 1992.002V, vua. “Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire in Regard to a Possible College for Women,” 10 March 1909, Office of the President, A67–0007/026, file: Women’s College, uta. University Women’s Club, “Report of the Committee Appointed to Consider the Report of the Senate ‘In Regard to a Possible College for Women,’” 1909, file: Public Interests, 1909–1935, uwca. Minutes of the University Women’s Club, 8 February 1908, 3 March 1908, 15 May 1908, 14 April 1909, uwca; “Committee of the University Women’s Club Appointed to Confer with the Committee of the Senate of the University of Toronto in Regard to the Proposed College for Women,” n.d., Cartwright Family fonds, ms 120, box 10, file: St Hilda’s College Correspondence, 1909–20, tca; Petition to the President, University of Toronto, from Undergraduate Women of University College [March 1910], Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 26, uta. Toronto Star, 19 April 1909. For press coverage, see also “Is Co-Education a Failure?” Canadian Magazine 31, no. 2 (June 1908): 177–8; “The Varsity Girl of Today,” Toronto Globe, 21 October 1908; “New College for Women,” Toronto Star, 17 April 1909; “Co-eds Have to Wait,” Toronto Telegram, 19 April 1909; “Toronto University and Co-Education,” Canadian Magazine 33, no. 2 (June 1909): 180–1; “Exchanges,” University of Ottawa Review 12, no. 3 (December 1909): 113–4; Francis Asbury Carman, “A College for Women and an Atavistic Professor,” Saturday Night 23, no. 18 (February 12, 1910): 9. Toronto Star, 19 April 1909. Submission to the Commission appointed by the Government of the Province of Ontario by the Alumnae Association of the Ontario Medical College for Women [1905]; Memorial of the Alumnae Association of the Ontario Medical College for Women to the Board of Governors of the University of Toronto, 17 November 1906, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 3, uta. “Appendix,” Augusta Stowe Gullen, A Brief History of the Ontario Medical College for Women (n.p., 1906), 10–11, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 41, lac; Calendar of the University of Toronto, 1906–07, 17–21; 1907–08, 24–31. Augusta Stowe Gullen, A Brief History of the Ontario Medical College for Women (n.p., 1906), 2–3, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 41, lac.

350

27

28 29 30

31 32

33

34

NOTES FOR PAGES 241–3

Augusta Stowe-Gullen graduated from Victoria, not Trinity, but she was probably elected as Trinity’s senate representative because of her connection to the former Ontario Medical College for Women, which had been affiliated with Trinity. “The Senate: Elected Members,” Calendar of the University of Toronto, 1910–11, 18–19; Minutes of the University College Alumnae Association, May 1909, University College fonds, A69– 0011/014, uta; “To the Senate of the University of Toronto,” [14 May 1909], Office of the President, A67–0007/026, file: Women’s College, uta; University of Toronto Senate Minutes, 14 May 1909, 236–8, uta; United Alumnae Association Minutes, 30 March 1910, United Alumnae Association fonds, B65–0030/001(03), uta; Circular letter, 30 June 1910, United Alumnae Association, B65–0030/001(05), uta. “To the Senate of the University of Toronto,” [14 May 1909], Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 26, file: Women’s College, uta. John M. Lyle, Proposed Building for Women, University College, Toronto, April 1920, Office of the Bursar bonds, A87–006, box 3, uta. Executive of the United Alumnae Association of the University of Toronto Minutes, 24 June 1914, 25 November 1919, 24 November 1920, 15 March 1921, United Alumnae Association fonds, B65–0030, box 1, file 6, uta; Constitution of the Women’s Undergraduate Association of University College, n.d., University College Dean of Women fonds, B74–0011, box 2, file 7, uta; Memorandum from the Committee on New Buildings for Women in University College, 31 March 1919, Office the President fonds, A67–0007, box 52b, uta. Jean Graham, “The Housing Problem of the ’Varsity Girl,” Saturday Night, 17 April 1920, 25. Massey College, a residential college for graduate students financed by the Massey Foundation, opened in 1963 on the University of Toronto campus. Under the terms of Vincent Massey’s bequest, the college did not admit women as resident junior fellows until 1974. “Use of Hart House by Women,” 28 September 1944, “S.A.C. to Massey,” 26 February 1946, Hart House fonds, A73–0050, box 56, file: Women in Hart House, uta; Montagnes, An Uncommon Fellowship. Helen McMurchie Bott graduated from Toronto in 1912. She worked with her husband, Edward A. Bott, at the Institute of Child Study, and would become a prominent writer on child development. “What Is Wrong with Co-Education in the University of Toronto?” The Arbor 4, no. 4 (February 1913): 199. This article was reprinted in Saturday Night, 14 March 1914, 25. “The Ladies,” Torontonensis, 1913, 241. It is notable that this separate “Ladies” section appeared for the first time in 1913, as previous volumes

NOTES FOR PAGES 244–8

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

44

45 46 47

48

49

50

351

of Torontonensis had integrated the pages for women’s organizations, athletics, and residences throughout the yearbook. M.G.R. “A Plea for Co-Education,” The Rebel 4, no. 3 (December 1919): 122. “Women Not to Be Admitted to U.C. Literary Society,” The Varsity, 24 November 1920. Levi, Comings and Goings, 93–5. Francis, Frank H. Underhill, 36. Leacock, “On the Need for a Quiet College,” 298. See also, Leacock, “Woman’s Level,” 91–102. Leacock, “The Woman Question,” 139–59. Leacock, “Leacock Roasts Co-education: McGill Professor Says Men and Women Need Different Mental Diet,” Maclean’s Magazine 35, no. 2 (January 1922): 28. This article provides excerpts from Leacock’s chapter “Oxford as I See It,” published in My Discovery of England (1922), 79–115. Leacock became very well known for his humorous Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, published shortly before the war. Moritz and Moritz, Leacock: A Biography. Eileen Flanagan, “Class Memories, 1917,” in Remembering Leacock, 72–3. “The Case against Co-Education,” Acta Victoriana 47, no. 5 (January 1923): 19. See also “The Case for Co-Education,” Acta Victoriana 47, no. 5 (January 1923): 12–15; Editorial, Acta Victoriana 47, 5 (January 1923): 24–5. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Report, 8 November 1923, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, file 6, vua; Editorial, Acta Victoriana 48, no. 3 (December 1923): 17; “Much Ado about Nothing,” Acta Victoriana 48, no. 5 (February 1924): 26–9; Sissons, History of Victoria University, 281–2. Varsity, “Consider the Lily,” Queen’s Journal, 20 March 1923, 1. L.E.G., “Heaven Helps Those Who …!” Acta Victoriana 53, no. 2 (November 1928): 21. Margaret Addison, Dean’s Report, 15 June 1927, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, Series 2, 1990.064V, box 3, file 9, vua; O’Grady, Margaret Addison, 9, 112–7, 190–9, 205. M.E.T. Addison, Questionnaire to Victoria College Women, 7 October 1929, Records Relating to Women at Victoria University Collection, fonds 2069, vua. Sissons, History of Victoria University, 241. See also “Heresy: An Editorial,” Acta Victoriana 54, no. 4 (January 1930): 23–4; “Co-Education: An Editorial,” Acta Victoriana 59, no. 5 (March 1935): 31–3; “The Monocle,” Acta Victoriana 59, no. 6 (April–May 1935): 29–30. R. Bruce Taylor, Principal’s Reports, Queen’s University, 1922–23, 11–12; 1923–24, 12–13; 1924–25, 12–13; 1926–27, 8; 1927–28, 10, qua.

352

51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59

60 61 62

63 64

65 66

NOTES FOR PAGES 248–53

R. Bruce Taylor, Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1926–27, 8, qua. “Lateness: A Diatribe Directed against Women,” Queen’s Journal, 20 March 1923, 4. Editorial, “Co-Education,” Queen’s Journal, 1 February 1924, 6; “Arts Dinner,” Queen’s Journal, 1 February 1924, 5; “Levana Dinner,” Queen’s Journal, 4 March 1924, 1–3; Calvin, Queen’s University, 240. Caroline McNeill, “A Message from Dean of Women,” Queen’s Journal, 4 March 1924, 1. Hilda Laird, interview transcript, Oral History Project: History of Queen’s Women, 31 May 1978, 17, qua. Hilda C. Laird, “Report of the Dean of Women,” Principal’s Report, Queen’s University, 1930–31, 36, qua; Warner, “It Is a Dancing and Frivolous Age,” 25–45; Garvie and Johnson, Their Leaven of Influence, 34; Gibson, Queen’s University, 2: 77. King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 184–6; Johnston, McMaster University, vol. 2, 30, 47–8. Montgomery, “A Girl’s Place at Dalhousie College, 1896,” 151. “Student Government at Dalhousie,” “The Delta Gamma Society,” “The Midlothian Society,” and “The Unicorn Club,” Dalhousie University Yearbook, 1927, 11, 13; 1928, 62, 72, 73; 1929, 99, 101, 112; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 1:, 181, 213, 240–5; Waite, The Lives of Dalhousie University, 2: 28–32, 46; Fingard, “University Women of the Great War Generation,” 9. E. Margaret Lowe, General Report to the President, June 1930, Shirreff Hall, President’s Office Correspondence, A–252, dua. Ibid. “Alice Speaks: Startling Disclosures Regarding the Co-eds of the Present Day,” Dalhousie Gazette 63, 9 (3 December 1930): 5; “The Social Whirl,” Dalhousie Gazette 63, no. 9 (3 December 1930): 2; see also “Letters to the Editor,” and “A Suggestion,” Dalhousie Gazette 63, no. 13 (4 February 1931): 2, 3 [originally cited by Catherine Gidney]. Bumsted, St John’s College, 46–7. Lilian Ponton Saul to Mrs Gilbert McColl, 22 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; E. Cowley, “St John’s College Ladies’ School,” St John’s College Magazine, February 1887, 11–13; “The College,” St John’s College Magazine, January 1893, 855; Bumsted, St John’s College, 84–107. Quoted by Bumsted, St John’s College, 107. “To the Senate of the University of Toronto” [14 May 1909], Office of the President fonds, A67–0007, box 26, file: Women’s College, uta.

NOTES FOR PAGES 253–7

67 68 69 70

71

72 73 74 75

76

77

78 79 80 81

353

Editorial, “Woman and Education,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1911, 13–14. Eighth Annual Report of the Alumnae Association of University College, Toronto, 1905–1906, Waddell Family fonds, B73–0028, box 1, file 1, 6, uta. Gelman, “Women Secondary School Teachers,” 80. Ethel M. Chapman, “Your Girl at College and After,” Maclean’s Magazine 31, no. 11 (September 1918): 111. See also Ethel M. Chapman, “Your Daughter’s Career,” Maclean’s Magazine 31, no. 3 (January 1918): 106–7, 109; Kathleen Carscadden, “The University and a Girls’ Vocation,” Western University Gazette, May 1920, 18–19; Gertrude E.S. Pringle, “What Shall I Do with My B.A.?” Maclean’s Magazine 35, no. 12 (June 1922): 60–2. Heap, Millar, and Smyth, “Introduction,” in Learning to Practise, 1–11; Gidney, “‘Madame How’ and ‘Lady Why,’” in Learning to Practise, 27; Woodger and Stone, “One of the Boys,” 47–67. Smyth, Acker, Bourne, and Prentice, “Introduction,” in Challenging Professions, 3–22; Levi, “‘There Is a Definite Limitation Imposed,’” 134. Mossman, First Women Lawyers, 67–112. Backhouse, Petticoats and Prejudice, 293–326. Kinnear, In Subordination, 21, 78–97; Morgan, “An Embarrassingly and Severely Masculine Atmosphere,” 19–61; Leiper, “Gender, Class, and Legal Education,” in Learning to Practise, 239–63. Emily H. Stowe (no. 8), Jenny Kidd Trout (no. 9), Session 1871–72, Register of Students, Medical Department, 1858–1875, Victoria University, 1858– 1875, Department of Medicine fonds 2083, 1987.144V, box 10S, file 1, vua; “College of Physicians and Surgeons, Ontario, Matriculation Examination, April 1871,” Canada Lancet 3, no. 9 (May 1871): 373; “Ontario Medical Council Examinations,” Canada Lancet 11, no. 10 (June 1879): 312; Augusta Stowe, 1882, 1883, Register of Students Examined by the Medical Board of Examiners, 1880–1892, Victoria University, Department of Medicine fonds 2083, 1987.144V, box 10S, file 2, vua. “Co-Education,” Canada Medical Record 18, no. 5 (February 1890): 118–20; “Co-Education,” Canada Medical Record 18, no. 9 (June 1890): 215; “Women Graduates, 1887–1907,” typescript, Women in the University of Manitoba, Presidents’ Papers, 1888–1976, ua 20, box 3, file 003–024, uma; Murray, Noble Goals, Dedicated Doctors; Kinnear, In Subordination, 20–1, 53–77; Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 132–5. Jennie Smillie, “Women Students of the Class ’09,” Torontonensis, 1909, 174. Strong-Boag, “Canada’s Women Doctors,” 118, 128–9. de la Cour and Sheinin, “Ontario Medical College for Women,” 75; Gidney and Millar, “‘Medettes’: Thriving or Just Surviving?,” 215–33. Harris, History of Higher Education, 174–8.

354

82 83 84 85 86

87

88 89

90 91 92 93

94 95 96 97 98

NOTES FOR PAGES 257–62

Shore, “Nebulous Penumbra,” 93–125; de la Cour, “The ‘Other’ Side of Psychology,” 44–6. Adams, “A Real Girl and a Real Dentist,” 315–38. Stieb, Coulas, and Ferguson, “Women in Ontario Pharmacy,” 129. de la Cour, “The ‘Other’ Side of Psychology,” 44–6; Gul et al., “Reconstructing the Experiences,” 94–104. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 149–203; Ainley, “Gendered Careers,” 265; Kinnear, In Subordination, 3–29; Fitzgerald, “Claiming Their Intellectual Spaces,” 1–12. Prentice, “Early History of Women in University Physics,” 94–100. Cynthia O’Donnell writes that there was a prohibition against women attending geology field camps for much of the twentieth century due to concerns of sexual promiscuity, referred to as “sex on the rocks” by E.R. Warde Neale in a 1973 address to the Geological Association of Canada. O’Donnell, “Alberta Women in the Field,” 92–3. See also Prentice, “Elizabeth Allin: Physicist,” 264–87; Prentice, “Three Women in Physics,” 119–40. Harris, History of Higher Education, 352; Millar, Heap, and Gidney, “Degrees of Difference,” in Learning to Practise, 171. Heap, Millar, and Smyth, “Introduction,” in Learning to Practise, 1–11; Gidney, “‘Madame How’ and ‘Lady Why,’” 27; Smyth, Acker, Bourne, and Prentice, “Introduction,” in Challenging Professions, 3–22; Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 354–76; Burke [MacDonald], Seeking the Highest Good, 78–99. Neatby, “Preparing for the Working World,” 53–72. Clark, Creating the College Man. See also Peril, College Girls, 105–39. King, “Embracing the Modern,” 69–88; King, “Experience of the Second Generation,” 47–71; Pitsula, “Student Life at Regina College,” 143–60. Burke [MacDonald], Seeking the Highest Good, 78–99; James, “Professional Enactments,” 69–92; Walkowitz, “Making of a Feminine Professional Identity,” 1051–75. J.J. Kelso to T.R. Robinson, 7 July 1932, J.J. Kelso fonds, mg 30, C 97, vol. 6, file: School of Social Work, University of Toronto, lac. Wilson, “Certified Women,” 1–17; Heap, “From the Science of Housekeeping,” 141–70; Rowles, Home Economics in Canada, 1–35. C.C. Benson, “Household Science,” University of Toronto Monthly 7, no. 3 (January 1907): 63. Margaret Addison to Robert Falconer, 4 May 1909, Office of the President fonds, A67–0007/026, file: Women’s College, uta. Fitzgerald, “Claiming Their Intellectual Spaces,” 1–12.

NOTES FOR PAGES 262–5

99

100

101 102

103 104 105

106

107 108

109 110

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“Reorganization of the Work of Acadia Collegiate Academy and Acadia Ladies’ Seminary,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 7 (June 1926): 12–14; “Another Year at Acadia,” Acadia Bulletin 13, no. 8 (July–November 1926): 4; Longley, Acadia University, 104–40; Moody, “Give Us an A,” 40–70. Massey Foundation Commission, “Mount Allison, Sackville,” Report of the Massey Foundation Commission on the Secondary Schools and Colleges of the Methodist Church of Canada, 1921 (Toronto: Massey Foundation, 1921), 56–70; Archibald, Historical Notes on the Education of Women, 8–19; Reid, Mount Allison University, 1: 240–2; Reid, Mount Allison University, 2: 82–4. Ross, Moments Make a Year, 75. Advertisement for Halifax Ladies’ College, St John Sun, 8 August 1906; Dalhousie University Calendar, 1926–27, 28; 1930–31, 44–5; 1936–37, 50; 1937–38, 48–9; 1944–45, 51–5; MacLeod, History of The Halifax Ladies’ College, 15, 45. Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch, 143–89; Gelber, University and the People, 30–3. J. Cochrane Smith, “The Necessity of a Domestic Science Course,” M.A.C. Gazette, March 1908, 30. Editorial, “Household Science,” Vox Wesleyana, December 1902, 42–3; D.M. Hepburn, “Household Science,” M.A.C. Gazette, March 1911, 63–6; Irene K. Best, “Homemakers’ Course,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1912, 79–81; “Home Economics Notes,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1913, 298–9; “New Courses in Home Economics,” M.A.C. Gazette, October 1913, 41–3; “A Girl’s Life at the M.A.C.,” M.A.C. Gazette, February 1914, 327–8; Bumsted, University of Manitoba, 17–39, 85–6. Harris, History of Higher Education, 407. A significant exception is the University of British Columbia, which did not establish household science courses until 1942. Stewart, “The Politics of Women’s Education,” 261–81. McPherson, Bedside Matters, 26. “Pioneer Graduates in Public Health Nursing,” Saturday Night 35, no. 50 (9 October 1920): 36; Harris, History of Higher Education, 411–14; Stuart, “War and Peace,” 186; Kinnear, In Subordination, 21–2, 98–122; Kirkwood, “Blending Vigorous Leadership and Womanly Virtues,” 175–9; Jardine, “An Urban Middle-Class Calling,” 176–90. McPherson, “Science and Technique,” 71–101; McPherson, Bedside Matters, 21. Gertrude E.S. Pringle, “God Bless the ‘Girls in Green’! Story of a New Vocation for Women – Occupational Therapy – in Which Dominion of Canada Leads the World,” Maclean’s Magazine 35, no. 4 (15 February 1922): 48–50; Heap, “Training Women,” 135–58; Friedland, Restoring the Spirit; Heap, “Emergence of Physiotherapy,” 295–9.

356

NOTES FOR PAGES 265–73

111 “Wonderful Work Is Done at Hart House with Returned Men,” The Varsity, 13 February 1918. 112 Heap, “Training Women,” 135–58; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 362–3. 113 Jackson and Gaskell, “White Collar Vocationalism,” 173. 114 Winifred Barnstead, interview transcript, 1 April 1974, 6–47, University of Toronto Oral History, B74–0041, uta; DeWolfe, Acadia and Women, 3–18; Harris, History of Higher Education, 295, 417; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 363. 115 Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 67, 90–3. 116 Editorial, “Women in Professional Life,” Manitoba College Journal, December 1910, 5. 117 Axelrod, Making a Middle Class, 152; Harris, History of Higher Education, 352. 118 Bessie Scott Lewis, diary entry, 21 October 1889, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 1, file 3, uta. 119 Maurice Hutton, “Fifty Years’ Retrospect,” in The Sisters Jest and Earnest, 144. 120 M.G.R., “A Plea for Co-Education,” The Rebel 4, no. 3 (1919): 121 [quoted in epigraph]. 121 Dangerfield, Strange Death of Liberal England, 14. I am grateful to Todd Webb for bringing this quotation to my attention.

Conclusion 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8

Jennie Stork Hill to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 39, lac. Ladies Editorial, “Woman and Education,” Manitoba College Journal, November 1911, 13–14. Editorial, “Co-Education in Universities,” The Globe, 27 July 1894. Elizabeth Smith to Charlie Roberts, n.d., A Woman with a Purpose, 234. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Corporate Planning and Policy Division, Report on Women in Science and Engineering in Canada, October 2017, 3; Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, ocufa’s Status of Women and Equity Committee Statement on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2020. Poulson and Miller-Bernal, “Conclusion,” in Going Coed, 309–16. See also Miller-Bernal and Poulson, eds, Challenged by Coeducation; Miller-Bernal, Separate by Degree. Llewellyn and Smyth, “Gender and Teachers,” 406–7. O’Connor, Harford, and Fitzgerald, “Mapping an Agenda,” 131–7. This article introduces a special issue focusing on gender equality in higher

NOTES FOR PAGES 274–6

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

357

education emanating from a symposium hosted in the Royal Irish Academy in 2018. Cote-Meek, Colonized Classrooms. Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, ocufa’s Status of Women and Equity Committee Statement on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2020. Judith Butler, “The New Yorker Interview,” New Yorker, 9 February 2020. Mrs T. Trotter, “Results of the Higher Education of Women,” Acadia Athenaeum, February 1900, 137. The Canadian Federation of University Women (cfuw) was founded in 1919, uniting university women’s clubs across the country. See, for example, Annie Jean Lavinia Stewart, “My Aunt Harriet” or “Life with Auntie,” typescript, n.d., 13–14, Harriet Starr Stewart fonds, 8254/1, maua; W.M. Tweedie to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 27 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 33, lac; Mabel Sterling, Alumni Oration, May 1939, case 67a, box 2, Encaenia Addresses, unba; Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac; Jessie Holmes Munro to Mrs McColl, 23 March 1937, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 32, lac; Jessie Livingstone Holmes, “First Woman Graduate Gives Her Impressions,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d., Women in the University of Manitoba, Presidents’ Papers, 1888–1976, ua 20, box 3, file 003–024, uma. Nellie Spence to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 12 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. Boutilier, “Women’s Rights and Duties,” 51–74; Morgan, “Of Slender Frame and Delicate Appearance,” 195–212. Nellie Spence to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 12 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac. Jennie Stork Hill to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 39, lac. A. MacMechan to Mrs Wheeler, 7 February 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 40, lac; Jennie Stork Hill to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 22 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 39, lac; Nellie Spence to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 12 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 38, lac; Nellie Spence, How Women Won Admission to the University of Toronto, typescript [1932], Keys Family fonds, L44, Series 1, box 5, trl; M.E. Spence, “Eliza May Balmer,” University of Toronto Monthly 33, no. 5 (February 1933): 146–9; Thelma Craig, “First Co-Ed at the University Crashed Gates 50 Years Ago,” unidentified

358

19

20

NOTES FOR PAGE 277

newspaper clipping, n.d., Department of Graduate Records fonds, Eliza May Balmer, A73–0026, box 18a, file 17, uta. Bessie Scott Lewis’s daughter, Edith Clement, donated her mother’s academic gown and diaries to the University of Toronto Archives. Academic dress, Bessie Mabel Scott Lewis fonds, B80–0033, box 2, uta; Edith Clement, phone interview by Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], 2 February 2000. Alumnae often remembered their mothers and their teachers encouraging them to go to university. Frances F. Dale, personal interview by Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], St Mary’s, Ontario, 8 November 1996; Frances Dale, letter to Sara Z. Burke [MacDonald], 10 November 1996; Agnes Telfer MacGillivray, interview transcript, 22 November 1973, University of Toronto Oral History, B74–0029, 21, 58–61, uta; Mary Kingsley Tibbits to Mrs Digby Wheeler, 14 July 1924, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 35, lac; Mary Kingsley Tibbits, Account of Entry to unb, n.d., Hathaway vertical file #983, Associated Alumnae fonds, unba. Mrs J.L. Marsters to Elinor M. Wheeler, 13 August 1923, Canadian Federation of University Women fonds, mg 28, I 196, vol. 8, file 25, lac.

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INDEX

academic dress, significance for women, 11, 276–7; at Acadia, 156; at Dalhousie, 158–9; at Mount Allison, 151, 158–9, 207; at Queen’s, 57–8; at University College, Toronto, 92, 166 Acadia Ladies’ Seminary, 24, 61, 130–1, 144, 158; household science at, 131, 262–3; as undergraduate residence, 130–1, 156, 203 Acadia University, 31, 34, 35, 67, 150, 202; admission of women, 58–61; early years of coeducation at, 150, 156–8; women’s residences and dean of women, 202–6 Adams, Mary Electa, 32, 35–6, 42, 44–6 Addison, Margaret, 192, 215, 216, 217; defence of women’s selfgovernment, 208–11; views on separate women’s college, 239, 246–7 Alberta, University of, 111–12, 200, 263, 264 Albert College, Belleville, 24; Alexandra women’s division, 127 Allison, David, 36–7, 39–40, 41, 58 Alma Ladies’ College, 24, 113, 125 alumnae: and defence of coeducation, 233, 238–41, and importance of arts degree, 7–8, 252–3, 270–1; social memory of, 10, 275–7 Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, 75, 81 Andrews, Nellie C. Greenwood. See Greenwood, Nellie C. Arey, Harriet, 40

Astell, Mary, 14, 16 athletics, women’s, 158, 175, 183, 219, 220; lack of facilities, 160, 170, 177, 180, 242–3 Austin, Benjamin Fish, 113, 125, 320n48 Balmer, Eliza, 93–4, 97, 276 Barnard College, Columbia University, 17, 20 Bates, Helen Marjorie, 1 Bates, Lavinia C. See Read, Lavinia C. Beatty, Elizabeth R., 57 Bengough, Helena (Nellie) Siddall, 71, 88 Bengough, J.W., 71, 87, 88, 89, 97–8, 120 Bennett, Marion Machum, 199, 206, 207, 229 Benson, Clara C., 261–2 Bishop Strachan School, 25, 121, 123 Bishop’s University, 115–16; admission of women, 123–4; Bishop’s Medical College, Montreal, 123, 255 Body, C.W.E., 106, 121–2 Bott, Helen McMurchie. See McMurchie, Helen Brantford Young Ladies’ College, 42, 54 Brescia College, Western University, 141, 225, 226 British Columbia, University of, 112, 261, 264 Brookhurst Academy, 24, 32, 42, 44–6 Bruyère Academy, 25; and affiliation with University of Ottawa, 140–1

394

Bryce, George, 106–7, 108, 180 Bryce, Marion Samuel, 106–7, 108 Bryn Mawr College, 17, 247, 315n159 Burwash, Margaret, 154, 208, 210, 340n66 Burwash, Nathanael, 154, 210, 237, 261 Calkin, J.B., 62, 65 Calkin, Lillie B., 63, 158, 159 Cambridge, University of, 16, 21, 236 Canadian Federation of University Women, 276 Canadian Literary Institute. See Woodstock College Canadian Suffrage Association, 197, 198 Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association. See Toronto Women’s Literary Club Carpenter, Marjorie, 224, 249 Cartwright, Mabel, 123 Cary, Mary Ann Shadd. See Shadd, Mary Ann Catholic Church: and convent academies, 25–6; and leadership taken by women religious, 25–6, 34, 137, 143, 271; and women’s colleges, 34, 112–13, 136–43 Chicago, University of, 20, 200, 236 Chipman, Alice Shaw. See Shaw, Alice Clark, Esther, 157, 203, 204, 205 Clarke, Edward H., 109, 112, 125; and attacks on coeducation, 73–83, 236–7 classical education: in girls secondary schooling, 36, 51, 132, 135, 136; importance for boys, 3, 15, 17, 21–2, 23, 117; as requirement for matriculation,

INDEX

1, 37–8, 47, 52, 55, 101–2, 108, 116, 118, 184 Clement, Edith, 11, 276, 358n19 coeducation debates: and College for Women controversy at Toronto, 237–43; and Edward H. Clarke’s Sex in Education, 73–83; and expulsion of women from Queen’s medical school, 89–92, 103–4; and feminization of arts faculties, 235–43, 246–7; and Newfangle debates, 81–2; racial theory in, 68–9, 72–83, 109–10; and radical potential of equal education, 2–3, 14, 51–2, 109–10, 271; and renewed attacks on coeducation, 235–52 coeducational image, 246, 260; and dancing, 181, 234, 245–6, 249–51, 268, 347n2; and flappers, 234–5, 247–8, 268 Cornell University, 19, 20, 236 Coté House, Montreal, 80, 114–15 Cowan, Kathleen, 148, 197, 209–10, 325n8 Cowan, Mary L., 187 Crocket, William, 101, 103, 110 Crossen, Mary, 45 Curzon, Sarah Anne, 71, 77, 78–9, 80, 89, 276 Dalhousie University, 34, 35, 54, 67, 150; admission of women to, 61–4; early years of coeducation at, 158– 60; proposal for separate classes at, 249–51; and women at Halifax Medical College, 255; women’s residences and dean at, 224–5, 249 Davies, Emily, 16, 17–18, 46, 75, 117 Dawson, Grace Annie. See Lockhart, Grace Annie

INDEX

Dawson, J. William, 28, 50, 53; as advocate for separate women’s college, 113–20 Dawson, Margaret Mercer, 115 dean of women, and student government, 192–4, 217–18, 230–1; at Acadia, 202–6; at Alberta, 200; at Dalhousie, 224–5, 249–51; at Manitoba, 218–23; at McMaster, 223–4, 249; at Mount Allison, 206– 8, 229; at New Brunswick, 227–8; at Queen’s, 200–2, 217, 228–9, 247– 9; at University College, Toronto, 211–16, 229–30, 238–9; at Victoria, 208–11, 245–7; at Western, 225–7 dentistry, women in, 6, 256–7, 267 de St Rémy, Elizabeth, 50–2, 54, 56, 65 Douglas, Alice Vibert, 231 Edgehill Church School for Girls, 25, 133 England, Octavia Grace Ritchie. See Ritchie, Octavia Grace Enlightenment, ideas about women’s education, 14–15 Falconer, Robert, 139, 213, 215, 234, 238 Farris, Evelyn K., 158 Fenwick, Thomas, 89–90 fine art and music, 22, 24, 26, 46, 121–37, 142, 262–3 First World War, 199–200; and concerns over women’s behaviour, 192–3, 204–5, 206–7, 234–5, 268–9, 321–2 Fitzgerald, Eliza, 55, 58, 65, 86, 300n164 Flanagan, Eileen, 244–5 Foote, Barbara M., 45

395

Fowler, Annie, 55, 58 Foxton, Hattie, 255 Freeman, Ellen. See Trotter, Ellen Freeman Gardiner, Ella, 94, 96, 98, 99, 161 Gibson, John M., 92–3, 94, 96, 97 Girton College, University of Cambridge, 16, 17–18, 20, 42, 46; as model in Canada, 106, 113–14, 117, 121, 123, 269 Gordon, Daniel, 201–2 Grand Pré Seminary, 24, 31 Grant, George Munro, 1, 41, 61, 64, 106, 107; as advocate of coeducation, 53–6, 58, 91, 176; on Herbert Spencer’s law of progress, 82–3; interaction with women undergraduates, 177, 179–80; support of Anglo-Canadian women’s movement, 80, 81, 90 Greek. See classical education Greenwood, Nellie C., 47–8, 96, 128, 153 Gregory, Helen, 122 Gronlund, Sarah Shenton, 130, 151 Haanel, Eugene, 45, 47, 48 Haanel, Julia Darling, 48 Halifax, University of, 41, 53, 61, 85, 138 Halifax Ladies’ College, 24, 62, 64, 131–3, 144; household science at, 132–4, 262–3; as residence for Dalhousie, 132 Halifax Medical College, Dalhousie University, admission of women at, 255 Hall, Katie. See Marsters, Katie Hall Harcourt, Richard, 92–3, 96

396

Harrison, Thomas, 101, 103, 171, 173 Hart House, University of Toronto, 234, 265; exclusion of women from, 241–3 Hellmuth Ladies’ College, 25, 135–6, 187 Hill, Jennie Stork, 83, 270, 276, 307n65 Holmes, Jessie Livingstone, 109, 181, 276 Horton Academy, 24, 31, 58, 60–1, 130–3, 223, 262. See also Acadia Ladies’ Seminary household science, 125–7, 261–4, 235–43; at Acadia, 131, 262, 264; at Alberta, 263–4; at Brescia College, 141; at Halifax Ladies’ College, 132–4, 262–4; at Manitoba, 219–20, 263–4; at McGill, 120–1, 264; at Moulton Ladies’ College, 135; at Mount Allison, 128–30, 262–4; at Mount St Bernard, 138; at Mount St Vincent, 142; at Saskatchewan, 263–4; at Toronto, 237, 262, 264 Houston, William, 71, 77, 92–3, 94, 96–7 Howard University, 19–20 Howe, Julia Ward, 75, 81, 167 Hunt, A.S., 13, 40–1 Hunter, Eliza, 171 Hurlbatt, Ethel, 143 Hutton, Maurice, 213, 215, 268 Inch, James R., 36, 39–40, 41, 95 Jackson, Adella G., 130, 158 Kelso, J.J., 261 King, John Mark, 108, 181 King’s College, University of, 133–4

INDEX

Kingston Women’s Medical College, 51, 57, 90–1, 239 Kirkwood, Mossie May Waddington, 211, 215, 229–30, 231 Knight, A.P., 51, 90, 298n133 Ladies’ Educational Association, 16, 50, 77; in Kingston, 48; in Montreal, 54, 115–18, 123; in Toronto, 83–4, 86, 87 ladies’ schools, Protestant, 124–36, 143–4; practical and cultural orientation, 22, 46, 124–7 Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, 18, 113 Laing, Robert, 64, 131 Laird, Hilda C., 199, 217, 228–9, 248–9 Lamarckian evolutionary theory, 9–10, 40, 72, 274 Latin. See classical education law, women in, 254–5 Lawler, Gertrude, 139, 241, 323n87 Lawson, Elizabeth M., 166 Leacock, Stephen, 149, 244–5 Lewis, Bessie Scott, 11, 166, 167, 276 library science, 6, 266–7 Liddy, Edith Beatty, 207–8 literary and debating societies, women’s, 147–8, 189–91; at Acadia, 156–8, 199; at Dalhousie, 159–60; at Manitoba College, 183–4; at McGill, 119; at McMaster, 185–6, 198; at Mount Allison, 151– 2, 191; at New Brunswick, 174–5; at Queen’s, 176, 177–80, 200–2; at University College, Toronto, 167, 170, 244; at Victoria, 148, 155–6, 198; at Western, 189 Lockhart, Bessie, 157, 202–3, 204

INDEX

Lockhart, Grace Annie, 12, 37–8 London, University of, 16, 20, 41 Loretto Academy, 25; affiliation with St Michael’s College, University of Toronto, 139–40, 245 Loudon, W.J., 147, 160, 234 Lowe, E. Margaret, 216, 224–5, 231; on separate classes for women, 249–51 Lyman, Hannah Willard, 80, 114–15, 135 Lyon, Mary, 16, 114, 135 MacDonald, Helen S. Grant, 144–5 Macdonald College, McGill, 120–1 Macdonnell, Ursilla, N., 192, 218, 222–3, 231 MacGillivray, Agnes, 212, 242n80 Machar, Agnes Maule, 71, 80–1 Machray, Robert, 106, 109 MacLachlan, Sybil Spencer, 228–9 Manitoba, University of, 141, 251; admission of women, 105–9; early years of coeducation, 180–4; and women at Manitoba Medical College, 255; women’s residences and dean, 218–23 Manitoba College, University of Manitoba, 105, 106, 107–9, 183–4, 219, 221 Manitoba Normal School, 28 Marshall, Clara Belle, 61, 150, 203–4 Marsters, Katie Hall, 1, 104–5, 131, 156–7, 190, 277 Martin, Clara Brett, 254 Mason, Ruby C.E., 225, 226–7 Maudsley, Henry, 74 McCully, Laura, 197 McGill Normal School, 28 McGill University, 21, 28, 34, 50, 53, 177; admission of women to, 114–

397

21; Donalda classes, 118–19; Royal Victoria College, 119–20, 141, 143–4, 244; women in medical faculty, 255–6 McGillivray, Alice, 55, 57, 91 McHaffie, Ilo, 220, 221, 222 McHenry, D.C., 46, 47, 65 McIntosh, Annie B., 205–6 McMaster, Susan Moulton, 134–5 McMaster University, 60, 134–5; early years of coeducation at, 184–7, 198, 223; relocation from Toronto to Hamilton, 224, 249; women’s residences and dean, 223–4, 249 McMurchie, Helen, 243, 350n33 McNeill, Caroline, E., 201–2, 228; defence of modern women, 248, 268 medical education, for women, 255–6; at Bishop’s Medical College, Montreal, 123, 255; and closure of Ontario Medical College for Women, 239–41, 255–6, 269; and establishment of women’s medical colleges in Kingston and Toronto, 57, 255; and expulsion from Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, Queen’s University, 56–7, 89–92, 255–6; at Halifax Medical College, Dalhousie, 255; at McGill and Western, 255–6; at Toronto School of Medicine, Victoria University, 42–4, 255; at University of Toronto, 239–41, 255 Mill, John Stuart, 15, 49, 68, 73–4, 78 Misener, Geneva, 200 Mistress of Liberal Arts (mla) diploma, 26, 35–6, 37, 128

398

Montgomery, Lucy Maud, 132, 159 Montreal High School for Girls, 26, 116, 117 More, Hannah, 15 Moulton Ladies’ College, 24, 134–5, 223 Mount Allison Ladies’ College, 128–30, 144; closure, 130; as girls’ academy, 24, 26, 32, 35–6, 39; as home of Massey-Treble School of Household Science, 128–30, 262–3; as undergraduate women’s residence, 129–30, 206–7 Mount Allison University, 21, 32, 67, 150; admission of women, 34–41; creation of vocational and professional programs, 128–9; early years of coeducation at, 150–3, 191; women’s residences and dean, 130, 206–8, 229, 249 Mount Holyoke Seminary, 16, 17, 31, 114 Mount St Bernard Academy, 25, 137–8 Mount St Vincent University, 141–3; chartered as separate women’s college, 142; Mount St Vincent Academy, 25, 142 Murray, Christine Cameron, 180 Murray, J. Clark, 48, 49–50, 52, 53, 54; conflict with J. William Dawson over coeducation, 116–17, 119 Murray, Margaret Polson, 49, 116, 119 Murray, Walter, 180 Narroway, Bessie, 151, 207 Nelles, Samuel S., 44–5, 91 New Brunswick, University of, 160; admission of women to, 100–5; conflict between men and women undergraduates at, 170–5, 227;

INDEX

women’s residence and dean, 227–8 Newcombe, Margaret, 63–4, 65, 132, 158 Newnham Hall, University of Cambridge, 17, 113 normal schools. See teaching, women in Notre Dame Academy, 25; affiliation with University of Ottawa, 140–1 nursing, women in, 6, 264–5, 266 Oakeley, Hilda D., 120 Ontario Ladies’ College, Whitby, 24, 32, 127 Ontario Medical College for Women [Women’s Medical College of Toronto], Trinity University, 57, 90–1, 121, 207; closure, decline of enrolment, and loss of women faculty, 239–41, 255–6, 269 Ontario Teachers’ Association, 45, 65, 76, 96, 110. See also teaching, women in Osgoode Hall Law School, 254 Ottawa, University of, 34, 143; affiliation of Notre Dame and Bruyère colleges, 140–1 Oxford, University of, 18, 21, 236 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 183, 197, 224 pharmacy, women in, 6, 256–7, 267 physiotherapy, and occupational therapy, women in, 264, 265–6 Pinkham, W.C., 106, 110 professional education, 252–67; exclusion of women, 7–8, 253–6; separate programs for women, 235, 258–9, 260–7 Protestant churches: and denominational universities, 13,

INDEX

33–4, 64–5; and girls’ academies, 13, 23–5; and ladies’ colleges, 113, 124–36, 143–4 psychology, women in, 257–8, 261 Queen’s University, 1, 6, 34, 67, 150, 160; admission of women at, 48–58; conflict between men and women undergraduates at, 175– 80; and establishment of Kingston Women’s Medical College, 90–1; expulsion of women from medical school, 56–7, 89–92, 255; renewed attacks on coeducation, 247–9; women’s residences and dean, 200–2, 217, 228–9 racial discrimination: in higher education, 6, 19–20, 273–4; in public schooling, 29; residential schooling for Indigenous children, 29; and segregated schools for Black children, 29; in teaching profession, 29–30; in women’s movement, 68–9, 72–83 Radcliffe College, Harvard University, 17, 21, 102 Rand, Theodore Harding, 134 Raymond, Clara Belle Marshall. See Marshall, Clara Belle Read, Lavinia C., 1, 55 residences for women, 192–4, 233–4; at Acadia, 202–6; at Alberta, 200; at Dalhousie, 224–5; at Manitoba, 218–23; at McMaster, 223–4; at Mount Allison, 206–8, 229; at New Brunswick, 227–8; at Queen’s, 200–2, 217, 228–9; at University College, Toronto, 211–16, 229–30; at Victoria, 208–11; at Western, 225–7

399

Ritchie, Eliza, 63, 158, 198, 224–5 Ritchie, Octavia Grace, 123, 255, 270 Roberts, Mabel, 202 Robertson, Madge [Greta], 163, 164, 166 Ross, Annie, 172, 191 Ross, Charlotte, 166, 167, 170, 241, 329n82 Ross, George W., 136, 144, 161, 162, 170; and support for coeducation, 92–3, 97, 100, 110; on university within provincial school system, 94–6 Ross, James, 41, 61–2, 63, 92 Ross, Victoria Burrill, 263 Rowat, Jessie, 188, 335n180 Rowell, Mary C., 221 Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, Queen’s University, 44, 51, 53, 255; expulsion of women, 56–7, 89–92, 175 Royal University of Ireland, 18 Royal Victoria College, McGill University, 119–20, 141, 143, 244 Salter, Letitia, 161, 169, 212 Saskatchewan, University of, 112, 180, 244 Saul, Lilian Ponton, 181 Sawyer, Artemus W., 60, 61, 156–7 science, women in, 7–8, 10, 57, 118, 185, 235, 239–40; increasing marginalization of, 258–9, 272–3. See also universities, Canadian Scott, Bessie. See Lewis, Bessie Scott secondary schooling for girls, 21–6; in Catholic convent academies, 25–6, 136–43; in Manitoba, 105–7; in Protestant academies and ladies’ schools, 22–5, 46, 124–36; in

400

public high schools and collegiate institutes, 23, 26; and vocational and technical subjects, 125–7 Seely, Clara W., 63, 159 Shadd, Mary Ann, 70 Shaw, Alice, 31 Sheldon, Helen McHugh, 200 Shenick, Adeline, 46, 65 Shortt, Elizabeth Smith. See Smith, Elizabeth Siddall, Helena (Nellie). See Bengough, Helena (Nellie) Siddall Smillie, Jennie, 255 Smith, Elizabeth, 43–4, 51, 53, 255; experience at Royal College, Queen’s University, 56, 57, 89–91, 149, 176, 271 Smith, Goldwin, 83, 112, 116; and opposition to coeducation, 68, 86– 100; use of racial theory to oppose women’s rights, 76–8, 100, 109–10 Smith College, 17, 20, 112 Social Darwinism, 9–10, 68–9, 273–4. See also Spencer, Herbert social work, women in, 6, 260–1 Somerville College, University of Oxford, 18, 113, 120 sororities, 195–7, 211, 212, 227, 249 Spence, Nellie, 68, 111, 276 Spencer, Herbert, 9–10, 73–4, 109; on law of progress, 54, 72–3, 82–3 St Boniface College, University of Manitoba, 34, 105, 106, 109, 141 St Francis Xavier University, 34, 137–8, 143 St Hilda’s College, Trinity University, 122–3, 143, 192, 213, 214, 229 St John’s College, University of Manitoba, 34, 105, 106, 109, 183; and suspension of women’s admission, 251–2

INDEX

St John’s College Ladies’ School, 106, 109, 251 St Joseph’s Academy, 25; affiliation with St Michael’s College, University of Toronto, 139–40, 245 St Mary’s Academy, 25; affiliation with St Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, 141 St Michael’s College, University of Toronto, 34, 139–40, 143, 245 Sterling, Mabel, 104, 173 Sterling House, Kingston, 50–1, 56 Stewart, Harriet Starr, 36, 38–9, 41, 150–1, 207, 276 Stewart, Phillips Thomas Brown, 163, 328n71 Stone, Lucy, 12, 17, 18 Stowe, Emily Howard, 67, 98; as advocate for equal education, 57, 71, 78; and Anglo-Canadian women’s movement, 70–1, 78–83; and attendance at Toronto School of Medicine, 42–4, 255; and disagreement with Jenny Kidd Trout, 56–7, 90–1; and establishment of Women’s Medical College of Toronto, 90–1; and racial theory, 68–9, 79–80 Stowe-Gullen, Augusta, 44, 48, 56–7, 255, 350n27; and defence of medical coeducation, 239–41, 269 Taché, Alexandre-Antonin, 106, 107–8 Taylor, R. Bruce, 202, 247–8 teaching, women in, 26–32, 36, 41, 51, 120–1, 142, 181; connection to women’s higher education, 58–66, 92–6, 100–7, 110, 116; importance of degree for teachers, 161, 202–3, 226, 253; racism within profession,

INDEX

29–30; and women religious, 25, 32, 140 Tibbits, Mary Kingsley, 102–5, 276, 315n159 Toronto, University of, 21, 47, 53, 55, 150, 160; admission of women to University College, 67–8, 83–100; and conflict between men and women undergraduates at University College, 160–70; and controversy over College for Women, 237–43, 252–3; and federated arts colleges, 208; and racial theory in campaign, 68–9, 72–83, 109–10; student strike at, 167–70; women’s residences and deans at, 211–16, 229–30 Toronto School of Medicine, Victoria University, 42–4, 48, 56, 71, 255. See also medical education, for women Toronto Women’s Literary Club, 68, 70–2; and campaign to admit women into University of Toronto, 87–98, 109–10; and women’s rights, 78–83 Treble, Lillian Massey, 128–9, 238 Trinity University, 21, 34, 106; admission of women, 121–3, 143– 4; federation with University of Toronto, 123; and Ontario Medical College for Women, 57, 90–1; and St Hilda’s College, 122–3, 192, 213, 214, 229 Trotter, Ellen Freeman, 60, 223–4, 225, 275 Trout, Jenny Kidd: attendance at Toronto School of Medicine, 42–4, 71, 255; disagreement with Emily Stowe, 56–7, 90–1; and establishment of Kingston Medical College for Women, 90–1

401

Trueman, Margaret Newcombe. See Newcombe, Margaret Truro normal school, 28, 29, 58, 62, 65, 142 Underhill, Frank, 244 universities, Canadian: and centrality of arts degree in Victorian period, 7–8, 32–3, 110, 252–4, 258, 271; and emergence of professional programs, 235, 252–67, 272; and growth of science and specialized research, 33, 47, 57, 110, 258–9, 271–2; and increase of student social life after war, 234–5; and men’s undergraduate culture, 146–50, 160, 162–6, 176; and professorial connection to Britain, 21, 93, 113–14; and undergraduate enrolments, 6, 67, 83, 162, 267 University College, Toronto. See Toronto, University of Ursuline College. See Brescia College, Western University Vassar College, 17, 20, 112, 115 Victoria College, University of, 24, 32, 34, 67, 71, 84, 150; admission of women to, 41–8, 95–6; concern over rising women’s enrolment at, 237, 245–7; and early years of coeducation at, 153–6; and federation with University of Toronto, 155, 208; women’s residences and dean at, 208–11, 217 Waddington, Mossie May. See Kirkwood, Mossie May Waddington Watson, John, 52, 53, 54

402

Watt, Madge Robertson. See Robertson, Madge [Greta] Webster, Estelle Cook, 11 Wellesley College, 17, 20, 102, 112, 247 Wells, Eliza P., 184 Wells, George Anderson, 252 Wesleyan Female College, Hamilton, 24, 26, 32 Wesley College, University of Manitoba, 105, 183, 219, 221–2 Western University, 135–6, 141; early years of coeducation at, 187–9; women in medical school at, 255–6; women’s residences and dean at, 225–7 Whitton, Charlotte, 202, 338n38 Wilson, Daniel, 101, 113, 118, 119; as advocate of separate education, 86–7; and interactions with undergraduate women, 160–2, 167; and sustained opposition to coeducation, 53, 87–9, 91–100 Wisconsin, University of, 19, 236

INDEX

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 15, 290n8 Women’s Medical College of Toronto. See Ontario Medical College for Women, Trinity University women’s movement, 12–13; and abolitionist and feminist activism of Black women, 70; AngloCanadian, 22–3, 67–72; in Britain, 14–18, 20–1; in Ireland, 18; and racial theory, 19–20, 68–70, 72–83, 109–10, 273–4; in Scotland, 20; and suffrage campaign, 37, 183, 195, 197–9, 200, 231, 244; in the United States, 18–21 Woods, Kate Tannatt, 167 Woodstock College, 24, 134 Wright, Esther Clark. See Clark, Esther Wrong, George M., 212, 232, 246, 262; and College for Women controversy, 237–43 Wrong, Margaret, 212–13, 215–16, 229, 231