Advertisement 1

Ontario-born suffragette's influence felt far

Article content

Emily Spencer fought long and hard for the right of women to vote and for the betterment of women in general.

And she did it her whole life, from Paris, Ont., to Calgary, Alta.

At the age of 75, she explained to a group of men who argued against women having the vote — and this was in 1935 — “Some fine morning you will . . . wonder what has occurred. It will only be our educated, efficient, twentieth century women showing their ability to shove. You may call it the woman’s revolution if you like. It will be bloodless, but it will hit your silver and gold hard.”

Born of Loyalist stock in Toronto in 1860, she was raised in a religious family. Her father edited the Christian Guardian before moving to Brampton to minister in the Methodist church there and then to Paris, Ont.

Emily attended elementary school in Southwestern Ontario before returning to Toronto in her early 20s to study to become a teacher at the Toronto Normal School. She returned to Paris after graduating and met her future husband, George Kerby, in 1886. George was a student supply preacher and the pair married in 1888.

They moved to Woodstock where George had his first posting at Dundas Street Methodist Church. They moved often, as his assignments took him to Hamilton, St. Catharines, Brantford and even Montreal.

George was sought as a minister, and offers to work in old, established churches in Eastern Canada came in regularly, but an offer to work in Calgary attracted him most.

And it was in Calgary where Emily really started to flex her muscles as a proponent for the women’s vote. She was 43 and she was not a quiet, stay-in-the shadows preacher’s wife. Smart, resourceful, well educated, she was not above going after even her husband’s church. When the United Church of Canada was created, she demanded that it move to bring in women for the ministry as well, writing in Woman’s Century (Toronto), the New Outlook (Toronto), the Christian Guardian and the Calgary Herald.

Meanwhile, she was working at bringing a YWCA to Calgary.

She was a joint principal with her husband of Mount Royal College of Calgary and helped form a number of organizations and clubs aimed at women and raising their political and social awareness.

In 1912 she helped reopen the Calgary Local Council of Women. She worked for higher ages of consent for marriage, greater access to higher education for women, labour reform, mothers’ pensions, access to birth control, sex education and, above all else, women’s suffrage.

She teamed up with another Ontario woman, Helen Letitia McClung, better known as Nellie McClung or Nellie Mooney, and helped organize for a venue for suffragette speakers in Calgary.

She also maintained a high profile on the social scene, helping to establish the Canadian Authors Association in 1921 at the age of 61.

Emily died Oct. 3, 1938, at the age of 78, with her husband at her bedside. As the obituary in the Calgary Herald said, the Toronto-born, Paris-Ont. raised Emily had “a profound and lasting influence, not just in her church, not just in Calgary but in the social fabric of the whole nation.”

Tom Villemaire is a writer based in Toronto and the Bruce Peninsula

Tom@historylab.ca

 

Article content
Advertisement 2
Advertisement
Article content
Article content
Latest National Stories
    News Near Kingston
      This Week in Flyers