Canadian women, they’ve always had it.
Married to a man over twice her age, Frances Simpson came to Canada by ship and to Manitoba’s Red River by canoe. Her life in Canada was lonely and difficult. George Simpson was looking for a wife. The busy Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur-trading business centred in Canada’s wilderness, George was respected and […]
The Rupert’s Land Act, 1868, set out the terms for the purchase of nearly 8 million acres from the Hudson Bay Company, but not all were pleased. The fur trade was slowing by the 1860s, the profit line dwindling for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The time was drawing nigh to rethink the firm’s businesses. Selling […]
While not permitted to serve as pilots, over 17,000 women joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during WW2 in jobs ranging from clerical duties to driver to air frame maintenance “We serve that men may fly.” The promotional poster words encouraged young Canadian women, aged 21 to 41 to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. […]
Beautiful, heartwarming native art, the works of Aboriginal painters and a sculptor, were components in series of postage stamps for Canada Post, issued Christmas 2002. Every Christmas, Canada Post issues festive postage for the holiday mailings of seasonal cards and packages. In 2002, a special series was produced: a set of three exceptional stamps featuring […]
Living in Amsterdam with her Dutch husband, Mona Parsons helped rescue downed Allied troops during WWII. But then the Nazis found the safe haven. Sentenced to death for treason, Mona escaped during a bomb raid. “Meine Herren. Guten Morgen.” The calm, steady voice took the German judge and the Nazi court by surprise. A woman […]
Charlotte Schreiber set several “firsts” for women artists in Canada, her realism painting skills opening doors in Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and others “The human hand, the finger nail, the foot, every portion of the living body, the parts of a flower, are divinely beautiful… it is a joy to paint them as they […]
An artist with immense talent in etching, Caroline Armington was commissioned in 1918 to create artwork for the Canadian War Memorials Collection. Emanating from her light and intricate touch, the artworks created by Caroline H. Armington captured the essence of the serene urban scenes. The hands that created memorable art through the delicate use of […]
Completing 11 missions as a black man, a black woman and a white man, Emma Edmonds of New Brunswick gathered information against the Confederates. The Union Army put out the call. Soldiers were needed to battle the Confederates in the American Civil War in 1861. After his fourth attempt, Franklin Thompson was accepted as a […]
A sharp eye for artistic style and an aptitude for science are essential for many categories of construction. Add bio-science skills—botany, ecology, plus environmentalism and psychology—and you might have an aptitude for landscape design. Lorrie Dunington and her husband Howard Grubb did. They left their mark throughout southern Ontario as Dunington-Grubb landscape architects. Howard Grubb […]
Distinguished Canadian artist Pegi Nicol MacLeod devoted her short life to creating brilliant oil and watercolour paintings filled with vibrancy and verve. A fine art painter in oils and watercolours, Pegi Nicol MacLeod’s canvasses “seem to literally pulsate and throb with life,” said Stuart Allen Smith in 1981, in the Artist Profile of Gallery 78. […]
Elizabeth Smellie rose from hospital night supervisor to high-ranking military officer. Inspiring the members of the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC), she then rose to Chief Superintendent of the Victorian Order of Nurses. Elizabeth Lawrie Smellie, “Beth”, was born on March 22, 1884 in Port Arthur, near Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. A member of a […]
Molly Brant and her husband, Sir William Johnson, worked to keep peace between Colonists and natives. A Loyalist, Molly and family fled to Canada in 1777. “Her features are fine and beautiful; her complexion clear and olive-tinted… She was quiet in demeanor, on occasion, and possessed of a calm dignity that bespoke a native pride […]