Elevating the story of Manitoba Women in Women's History Month
Tracey Turner Consulting PhD (c), MA, BHEC
Consultant, Director, Curator, Museums Creative
Women’s History Month is happening now from Friday, March 1 - Sunday, March 31, 2024. It's a day established to commemorate and elevate women’s contributions to history, culture and society.
All this month the Manitoba Historical Society (MHS) is honouring some very important Women that have been featured as Memorable Manitobans - as we commemorate, and elevate our feminine counterparts that made history. The following are excerpts from three different archived publications of the MHS, the first "from the MHS publication, Manitoba Pageant 1959, then from our publication, Manitoba History, 2006, and the final two pieces, a biographical summary from our online website mhs.ca featuring Memorable Manitobans on the Canadian artist, Mary Riter Hamilton (1873-1954), and one of our very own, art historian, educator, and former MHS writer, Angela Elizabeth Pizzey Davis (1926-1994).
Those Women - by Irene Craig - From our Archives: Manitoba Pageant, September 1959, Volume 5, Number 1
When the pioneers in petticoats came to grips with the problem of Equal Suffrage they stepped out; they knew what they wanted and they meant business ... they wanted “Votes for Women” and they got it.
On this continent, Lucy Stone was the woman who started it, in the far-away Victorian days. Lucy was a farm girl but Lucy went to college — in Massachusetts; she earned money towards her expenses there by doing housework in the Women’s Residence at three cents an hour. Any girl who works for three cents an hour seems entitled to talk about women’s rights. Incidentally, Lucy Stone not only talked out loud herself, she organized the first debating society ever formed among college girls. Graduating in 1847, she gave her first formal Women’s Rights lecture that same year, well over a hundred years ago.
Lucy didn’t storm about and raise general “ned” all over the place. No, she was a very feminine person with great charm; her gentle manners captivated her public, and as she was blessed with a singularly sweet voice, mobs would sometimes listen to Lucy when they howled down every other speaker. Later this active little lady founded the Women’s Journal in Boston, and served as its editor until her death in 1893. Evidently the American Lucy Stone, with her cameo fastened in her snow-white fischu, was a personality to be reckoned with; advocating as she did, that married women continue to use their own names.
All this happened in the U.S.A. but women are the same the world over. Canadian women wanted equal rights too. Yet, it was not until a comparatively few years ago in this Canada of ours, on the afternoon of 20 March 1918 that the “Votes for Women” Bill was finally passed at Ottawa.
Three Manitoba Pioneer Women: A Legacy of Servant-Leadership by Carolyn Crippen - Manitoba History: Number 53, October 2006
The pioneer women of Manitoba hold an important place in Canadian history. No record of our country’s past will be of greater interest or more inspiring than the record of their lives, if ever their lives are adequately recorded, as they should be. [1]
William J. Healy (1867-1950), the Provincial Librarian for Manitoba, wrote a tribute to the women of an earlier day (1806-1873) entitled, Women of Red River: Being a Book Written From the Recollections of Women Surviving from the Red River Era. The above statement appeared near the close of his book. The following article responds to Healy’s plea by reviewing records pertaining to the lives of three pioneer women in Manitoba who contributed to our moral imperative through their service, leadership, and tenacious spirit and are indeed, an inspiration. [2]
In the fall of 2001, I discovered a small book called Extraordinary, Ordinary Women that had been prepared by the Manitoba Club of the Canadian Federation of University Women. [3] The text included two-page vignettes about many Manitoba women, most of whom had not had much written about their lives. It was through reading these vignettes and pondering their portraits that I was introduced to Margaret Scott (1855-1931), Margret Benedictsson (1866-1956), and Jessie McDermott (1870-1950). Like other remarkable women of their day, they found ways to overcome social restrictions and prevailing attitudes of femininity through service and initiative in their communities. I was intrigued and started searching for other references about them. My research revealed a perspective unusual at that time: woman as leader. I wanted to know why and how this was accomplished. Although several historians had chronicled their life stories, [4-15] I studied their “service” as a platform for leadership, a special form of leadership, known as servant-leadership, named in 1970, approximately 100 years after these women lived. Read the entire article here...
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Women's History Month Feature: Memorable Manitoban - Mary Riter Hamilton
In 1926, artist Mary Riter Hamilton gave two hundred and twenty-seven of her oil paintings, pastels and drawings to the Public Archives of Canada. The collection had been offered to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, but had been refused and subsequently sent to Ottawa. [1] Among the works were paintings which made the artist well known and appreciated in Europe and the United States, [2] and which earned her praise as “Canada’s First Woman Artist.” [3] She was not, of course, the first woman artist in Canada; there were many others before her. At the time the critics’ praise referred to quality, not chronology.
But who today has heard of Mary Riter Hamilton? Where is she in the books of Canadian art history? With the exception of local exhibitions and catalogues, her work and her name are lost to those interested in the history of Canadian art. If, as seems obvious, she was famous at one time both at home and abroad, why has she been ignored?
It seems that there are a number of factors to consider. For one thing she was a woman. For another, she lived in western Canada. Then too, just as she reached her peak of creativity the type of art which she produced began to go out of fashion (Read more here...)
Women's History Month Feature: Art Historian, Writer, Educator, and Memorable Manitobans: Angela Elizabeth Pizzey Davis
Born at Hansworth, Middlesex, England on 22 September 1926, daughter of Winifred Remnant and George Frederick Pizzey, she was educated at The Lady Eleanor Holles School, and graduated in 1945. She then entered King’s College Hospital and graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1948. Following her graduation, she worked at King’s College Hospital as Staff Nurse in charge of the Ear, Nose and Throat Ward and then as Staff Nurse in charge of the Private Patients’ Ward. She returned to her former position as Staff Nurse in charge of the Ear, Nose and Throat Ward for the duration of her employment there.
On 27 April 1950, she married Dr. Royden A. Davis FRCP and moved to Canada the following year, with her husband stationed at Vancouver with the Royal Canadian Air Force. During the 1950s and 1960s, she devoted herself to her family and community. They had five children: Sara, Christopher, Jonathon, Rowan, and Michael. While the family was living at Regina, Saskatchewan in the mid-1960s, she was a founding member of one of the first cooperative childcare centres. After having been a Registered Nurse and a full-time mother, she began her next career in the mid-1970s when she returned to school.
In 1977, Davis graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a BA (Honours) in History. She completed an MA degree in 1979 and had the distinction of being the first graduate of the Joint Masters Program in History between the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. Davis continued with her studies and received her PhD in History from the University of Manitoba in 1987. Davis specialized in British social and cultural history, 1815-1914; Canadian social and cultural history, 1870-1921; Canadian art history, 1840-1950; and European art history, 1750-1930. Other areas of research were Canadian illustrators and engravers, 1840-1940; Canadian women artists, pre-1950; and Western Canadian prairie women, 1900-1930.
She spent the years 1975 to 1994 employed in various positions by the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. In 1988, she became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Manitoba and remained in that position until 1994 (Read more here ...)
Do you know of any noteworthy Memorable Manitobans that were women? Let us know! You can reach the Memorable Manitobans Administrator at biographies@mhs.mb.ca
About the MHS: The Manitoba Historical Society (MHS), founded in 1879, is the oldest organization in Western Canada, and the second-oldest in all of Canada, dedicated to preserving our past for future generations. Anyone can become an MHS member. Over time, the MHS amassed impressive collections of books and artefacts which became the basis of today’s Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg Public Library, and Manitoba Museum.
Want to learn. more about Manitoba and Prairie History? The MHS currently publishes the highly acclaimed magazine, Prairie History - Journal of the West, and is available online or in print format at: https://www.mhs.ca/prairie-history/
Tracey Turner, is the Executive Director of the Manitoba Historical Society, and works as a Consultant, Curator & Museum Creative in Winnipeg, MB.