1 Roberta Elizabeth Tilton

Born in Maine, Roberta Tilman moved to Ottawa with her husband in 1868 and became an important social reformer and active member of the Anglican Church. Imposing and indefatigable, Tilton devoted her life to the temperance movement and campaigns to curb what she perceived to be the excesses of commercialism and secularization. In addition to being a founding member of the National Council of Women, she served as vice-president of the Ontario Women’s Christian Temperance Union and director of the Protestant Orphans’ Home and Refuge for Aged Women. She is best known for being the founder of the Women’s Auxiliary (WA) – a branch of the Anglican Church’s Missionary Society. In 1908, when Tilton retired as president of the WA after 22 years of service, the organization had grown to include 23 diocesan boards with 1,300 senior branches and a total of 32,057 members. It was the largest women’s organization in the Anglican Church. Now named the Anglican Church Women, it is the Church’s oldest continuous national organization. In recognition of the important role she played in helping to redefine the role of women in the Anglican Church, Roberta Tilman has a day of observance devoted to her in the Canadian Calendar of Holy Persons.

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