Ishbel Maria Couts Marjoribanks Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, was not governor-general, as Saturday Night states, but possibly it was just that she was considered the power behind the throne. The governor general was her husband, Lord Aberdeen, a social crusader like his wife. Canada’s first aristocratic feminist, Lady Aberdeen (1857-1939) did not […]
Tag: Women’s rights
First woman lawyer trumps misogynists
Among the pantheon of leaders who crashed the doors and shattered the glass ceiling that held women back from the professions and business, few have done as much crashing and shattering as Clara Brett Martin (1874-1923) of Toronto. A member of a prominent Anglican-Irish family, Martin was an iconoclast even as a teenager. At […]
Bloomers ignite an apoplectic fit of misogyny
Women who wore trousers in the mid-nineteenth century were known as Bloomers, after Amelia Jenks Bloomer, U.S. campaigner for temperance and women’s rights. The impending arrival of Mrs. Bloomer in Toronto caused the Daily Leader to suffer this apoplectic fit of misogyny, September 12, 1853. Bloomerism, women’s rights ism! and the Maine Law ism […]