Canadian women, they’ve always had it.
Cairine Mackay Wilson dedicated her time to bettering the lives of women, children and refugees Cairine Wilson was born Cairine Reay Mackay on February 4, 1885 to the upper-class Mackay family who made their home in Montreal, Quebec. They were a strict Presbyterian family of Scottish background. Her father was Robert Mackay, politician and member […]
A girl from small-town Canada immersed herself in the cosmetics trade and then initiated a company that grew into a world wide phenomenon – Elizabeth Arden. On December 31, 1878, a baby girl was born to the Graham family in Woodbridge, Upper Canada. The baby was named after a beloved and renowned nurse, Florence Nightingale […]
Ahead of her time, Maud Menten was a physician, pathologist, bioscientist and professor. Her scientific discoveries included the Michaelis-Menten Equation. Beautiful, brilliant and artistic, Maud Menten not only could create exhibit-worthy paintings and learn languages with ease, she also had the insatiably curious mind of a scientist. Imbued with a zest for life, the young […]
Montreal was the childhood home of actress Norma Shearer. The star of silent movies and talkies, the beautiful Shearer overcame her own shortfalls. The Shearer home in Montreal, Quebec was an unusual place. It seemed that parents Edith and Andrew Shearer did not have a close attachment, but the home was still held a pleasant […]
With no formal training, Maud Lewis painted the colourful scenes and character of rural Nova Scotia using random art supplies and painful hands Her hands gnarled into untenable positions, her shoulders permanently hunched and with a chin marred at birth, Maud Lewis sat at the window in her tiny home and created bright, cheerful scenes […]
The medical establishment wasn’t ready for women, so Dr. Trout finished her training in the USA. She opened the Kingston Women’s School of Medicine on October 2, 1883 A career in medicine is something young women may choose easily today. They train at universities and medical colleges without a second thought. But in Jennie Trout’s […]
Dehydrated, exhausted and with feet cut and bleeding, Laura Secord pressed on to reach Lt. Fitzgibbon with the message that Upper Canada was about to be taken by America Quietly, unobtrusively, Laura Secord served the evening meal to the American soldiers billeted in her home against her will in June, 1813. Her husband, James Secord, […]
Packing up their three children, the Héberts sailed across the ocean to New France. With little to work with, the family made a good life caring for natives and settlers It was an offer too good to pass up. Pack up the Hébert family, a French fur-trading company said, and sail from France to the […]
Music, refrigeration, carpeting, plumbing and rootbeer – it sounds like today’s home. Many of the comforts we consider newer were created over one hundred years ago. Imagine the average middle-class Canadian home. The kids are in the kitchen getting root beer from the refrigerator and doing a quick check on the ice. Mom comes into […]
The Royal Montreal Golf Club was the first official permanent golf club in Canada, established in 1873. Men, women and children enjoyed the lush private club facilities. A beloved sport for several hundred years in Scotland, and then by Scottish immigrants in Canada, golf found its first official permanent Canadian home in the province of […]
Canadian Nursing Sisters in WWI – courageous women provided soldiers emergency medical care in the field, and security and comfort that only caring women could provide. Through earsplitting, thunderous explosions and fearful eerie flashes in the distance, the nurses of the Canadian Army Nursing Service in WWI waited for the inevitable arrival of wounded soldiers. […]
Harriet Brooks was the first graduate student of Ernest Rutherford, earning an MA, and one of Canada’s great scientists in nuclear physics. Physicists were a rare breed at the turn of the 20th century and women in the nuclear science fields were even more sparse. Harriet Brooks “was the most outstanding woman in the field […]