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• First Women's Institute 1897, The
  The world's first Women's Institute was organized at Squire's Hall, Stoney Creek, in 1897. Erland Lee, a founder of the Farmer's Institute, assisted by his wife, arranged the meeting. About 100 women from the Saltfleet Township district attended and were persuaded by Mrs. Adelaide Hoodless to form an organization of their own to improve their skills in the arts of homemaking and child care. Here, in the Lee home, Mr. Lee subsequently helped to draft...

• Chloe Cooley and the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada
  On March 14, 1793 Chloe Cooley, an enslaved Black woman in Queenston, was bound, thrown in a boat and sold across the river to a new owner in the United States. Her screams and violent resistance were witnessed by a neighbour, William Grisley, who informed Peter Martin, a free Black and former soldier in Butler's Rangers. They brought the incident to the attention of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe who immediately moved to abolish slavery...

• Maud Leonora Menten 1879-1960
  An outstanding medical scientist, Maud Menten was born in Port Lambton. She graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1907 and four years later became one of the first Canadian women to receive a medical doctorate. In 1913, in Germany, collaboration with Leonor Michaelis on the behaviour of enzymes resulted in the Michaelis-Menten equation, a basic biochemical concept which brought them international recognition. Menten continued her brilliant career as a pathologist at the...

• Harriet Ross Tubman c.1820-1913
  A legendary conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman became known as the "Moses" of her people. Tubman was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation and suffered brutal treatment from numerous owners before escaping in 1849. Over the next decade, she returned to the American South many times and led hundreds of freedom seekers north. When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed slave owners to recapture runaways in the northern free states, Tubman...

• Lady Aberdeen 1857-1939
  A passionate advocate for social reform, Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks was born in London, England. Following her marriage in 1877 to John Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen, she established several humanitarian associations in Great Britain. Widely respected for her firm public commitment and remarkable organizational skills, Lady Aberdeen served as president of the International Council of women from 1893-1939. During her husband's term as Governor General (1893-1898), she helped form the National Council of Women of...

• Mary Ann Shadd Cary 1823-1893
  African Americans came to Canada in increasing numbers after the United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Some settled in segregated communities: others, like Mary Ann Shadd, promoted full integration into society. A teacher and anti-slavery crusader, Shadd immigrated to Windsor in 1851. She started the "Provincial Freeman" in 1853 to encourage Blacks to seek equality through education and self-reliance. Two years later she moved to the newspaper to Chatham, where it operated...

• Molly Brant
  Born about 1736, Molly Brant (Degonwadonti) was a member of a prominent Mohawk family. About 1759, she became the wife of Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Province of New York and a powerful figure in that colony. Well-educated and a persuasive speaker, Molly Brant wielded great influence among the Iroquois and was responsible for much of Johnson's success in dealing with them. Following the outbreak of the American Revolution she and...

• Madeleine de Roybon d'Allonne
  Of noble French birth, de Roybon was the first European woman to own land in what is now Ontario. She came to Fort Frontenac (Kingston), probably in 1679, where she acquired property from René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, governor and seigneur of the fort. In 1681 she loaned him money to finance his explorations, and about this time he granted her a seigneury extending westward from Toneguignon (Collins Bay). On this land she built a...

• Fool's Paradise
  This property sits on the ecologically sensitive, geologically significant Scarborough Bluffs that display sediments left by glaciers over 70,000 years during the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch. Aboriginal peoples may have inhabited this site as early as 8,000 B.C. Scottish immigrant James McCowan settled this land for farming in 1833, calling it "Springbank" because of the springs running from the ancient shoreline of Lake Iroquois (predecessor of Lake Ontario) to the north. In 1939...

• Aimee Semple McPherson 1890-1944
  The celebrated evangelist and faith healer Aimee (Kennedy) McPherson was born on a farm west of here. She led revivalist meetings in Ontario in 1915-16 and then barnstormed the United States, drawing large crowds in tents, concert halls and sports arenas. Capitalizing on her vast popularity, she founded the Church of the Foursquare Gospel and built the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles in 1923. Sister Aimee preached her message of Christian love daily in the...

• Anna Jameson 1794-1860
  Born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in London, this famous 19th century author, illustrator and social reformer joined her husband, Robert Jameson, Attorney General of Upper Canada, at Toronto in 1836. The following June, unescorted, Mrs. Jameson travelled to Port Talbot, Detroit, and Mackinaw. From there she journeyed by bateau to Sault Ste. Marie, descended the rapids, and attended an Indian Assembly at Manitoulin. She travelled on to Toronto by way of Georgian Bay and...

• Associated Country Women of the World, The
  A non-political international women's organization, the Associated Country Women of the World was formed largely through the efforts of Collingwood-born Margaret Watt. Mrs. Watt was a member of the Women's Institute, a Canadian association devoted to the concerns of rural women, and she introduced that organization to Great Britain during World War I to help in work to counteract food shortages. With the expansion of the Women's Institute movement to Commonwealth and European countries after...

• Charlotte Elizabeth Whitton, O.C., C.B.E. 1896-1975
  The first woman mayor of Canada's capital, 1951-56 and 1961-64, Charlotte Whitton was born in Renfrew, educated there and at Queen's University. In 1920, she became secretary of the Canadian Council on Child Welfare (later the Canadian Welfare Council) and as its first executive director, 1926-1941, worked energetically to improve the condition of indigent mothers. Fiery and controversial, Charlotte Whitton represented Canada on the League of Nations Social Questions Committee and investigated Alberta welfare practices...

• Charlotte Schreiber 1834-1922
  An accomplished British artist who gained prominence in Canadian cultural circles, Charlotte Morrell was born in the country of Essex, England. She studied art in London and, while still a young woman, achieved distinction for her paintings and illustrations. Following her marriage to Weymouth Schreiber in 1875, she came to Ontario, finally settling in this area. Here, inspired by local scenes and phenomena, Schreiber continued to pursue an artistic career. Elected the first woman member...

• Colonel Elizabeth Smellie 1884-1968
  This celebrated Canadian army nurse and public health authority was born in Port Arthur. In 1909 "Beth" Smellie became night supervisor at McKellar General Hospital. Joining the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1915, she served in France and England. Elizabeth Smellie was demobilized in 1920 and three years later became Chief Superintendent of the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada. She re-entered the army in 1940 and a year later supervised the organization of...

• E. Pauline Johnson
  In this house "Chiefswood", erected about 1853, was born the Mohawk poetess Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). Her father, Chief G.H.M. Johnson a greatly respected leader of the Six Nations, built "Chiefswood" as a wedding gift for her English mother, a cousin of the well-known American novelist William Dean Howells. By her writing and dramatic recitals from her own works in Great Britain and throughout North America, Pauline made herself the voice of the Indian race in the English-tongue. No book of poetry by a Canadian has outsold her collected verse, "Flint and Feather".

• Almanda Walker-Marchand and the Fédération des Femmes Canadiennes-Françaises
  Almanda Walker-Marchand was the founder and president of the Fédération des femmes canadiennes-françaises (FFCF). Born in Quebec City in 1868, she moved with her family first to Montreal and then to Ottawa. Her last home overlooked this park. In 1914, days after the declaration of the First World War, Walker-Marchand encouraged a group of more than 400 French-Canadian women to form an organization dedicated to helping French-Canadian soldiers and their families both during and after...

• Edith Kathleen Russell 1886-1964
  A distinguished Canadian educator, Kathleen Russell was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia. She graduated in 1918 from the Toronto General Hospital School of Nursing and, in 1920, became first director of the University of Toronto's Department of Public Health Nursing, established to prepare personnel for the expanding field of public health service. An outspoken advocate of progressive reform in nursing education, she soon became dissatisfied with the inadequate training provided at many Canadian hospitals. As...

• Eileen Vollick 1908-1968
  Canada's first licensed woman pilot, Eilleen Vollick was born in Wiarton and cam to Hamilton about 1911. She was fascinated by aviation and in 1927 enrolled in the flying school established near her home on Hamilton Bay by Jack V Elliot, a Hamilton businessman and pioneer in Canadian commercial aviation. The spirited Eilleen Vollick devoted her spare time to flying and soon mastered the school's Curtiss JN-4 training aircraft. On March 13, 1928, she passed...

• Elise von Koerber and Swiss Settlement
  In 1873 a small group of Swiss immigrants arrived in the Parry Sound District and formed the basis for a Swiss colony. The settlement was organized and directed by Elise von Koerber, a native of Baden, Germany, who had been living in Canada for some sixteen years. Appointed immigration agent by the federal government in 1872, she actively promoted immigration as an outlet for poor and socially dislocated persons and by 1877 had brought several...

• Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe 1766-1850
  The wife of the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim was born at Whitchurch, Herefordshire, England. Orphaned at birth, she lived with her uncle, Admiral Samuel Graves, and subsequently married his god-son, John Graves Simcoe. She accompanied her husband to Upper Canada where she travelled extensively. Her diaries and sketches, compiled during these years, provide a vivid description and invaluable record of the colony's early life. In 1794, near this site, Mrs. Simcoe...

• Emily Ferguson Murphy 1868-1933
  A leading Canadian feminist, journalist and reformer, Emily Murphy lived in Chatham from 1890 to 1894 when her husband was rector of this church. In 1916 she was appointed police magistrate for Edmonton. Her authority was challenged by a lawyer who claimed that under the British North America Act women were not legal "persons" and could not hold crown appointments. Women's organizations tested the law repeatedly by submitting female candidates for the Senate. All were...

• Emily Howard Jennings Stowe, M.D. 1831-1903
  The first female physician to practice medicine in Canada, Emily Jennings was born in Norwich Township to Quaker parents. For some years she taught school, then, in the early l860's she decided to pursue a career in medicine. Refused admission to an exclusively male institution in Toronto, Stowe enrolled in the New York Medical College for women. She received her degree in1867 and, returning to Canada, established a successful practice in Toronto. A passionate advocate...

• Jean Lumb, C.M., 1919-2002
  Jean Lumb was born Jean (Toy Jin) Wong in British Columbia, and came to Toronto in 1935. She was soon operating a profitable fruit store and, by 1959, she co-owned the well-reputed Kwong Chow restaurant with her husband, Doyle Lumb. Energetic and outgoing, she established strong links with prominent politicians and, in the 1950s, lobbied successfully for the removal of discriminatory immigration regulations in Canada. Wide-ranging community work earned her numerous honours, including appointments to...

• Jeanne Lajoie, 1899-1930
  Jeanne Lajoie, a dedicated teacher and advocate for the establishment of French schools in Ontario, was born in Lefaivre, near Hawkesbury, in 1899. In 1923, Lajoie helped a group of francophone parents to establish the first independent French school in Pembroke. The school ensured that their children were educated in their own language. The creation of L'École Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc was one of the last major events in the Franco-Ontarian struggle against Regulation 17, which from...

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