“A factor to be reckoned with”: The Saskatoon Local Council of Women in its First Ten Years

In September of 1916 in Saskatoon, several prominent women of the city met to organize the Saskatoon Local Council of Women. The Council was to be a local chapter of the National Council of Women in Canada (NCWC), formed in 1893 during what historian Veronica Strong-Boag has termed the “woman’s club movement” in which women formalized their efforts concerning reform, philanthropy, education, politics, professions, and religion. The NCWC acted as a coordinating organization for women’s volunteer groups, believing knowledge of one another’s work would lead to larger public sympathy and therefore more effective action.[1]

I read through the Saskatoon Council’s meeting minutes books held at the provincial archives and used contemporary newspapers to gain insight into the organization’s first 10 years and the important role they played in the growing Prairie city.

At their first meeting on November 23, 1916, the Saskatoon Council chose Christina Murray as their president and created its first four executive committees – education, immigration, law, and home economics. 18 local women’s groups chose to join the Saskatoon Council. Along with Saskatoon’s Equal Franchise League (EFL), the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), more than half of the groups were women’s auxiliaries of local churches and a few were from the University of Saskatchewan.[2]

The following day, the Saskatoon Daily Star expressed confidence about the new Council’s prospects: “That the Local Council of Women is a factor to be reckoned with in the future life of Saskatoon was evinced yesterday afternoon.”[3]

First Minute Book of the Local Council of Women, Saskatoon. Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, B-82, Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I. 1. Minute Book, 1916-1919.

The Saskatoon Council was one of the limited ways women of the city could enact broad change. Saskatchewan women had only attained provincial franchise months before the Council’s creation.[4] While The Regina Morning Leader reported that Premier Walter Scott had given “the women the franchise and placed every adult in this province on the same footing,” the vote did not result in women taking up positions of power in large numbers.[5] Saskatchewan’s first female MLA, Sarah Ramsland, gained office in 1919, but it would take another 25 years for a second woman (Beatrice Trew) to be elected to the provincial legislature.[6]

With official political positions largely unattainable, the Local Council of Women offered an opportunity for some of Saskatoon’s women to have influence in their community. I say “some” because the majority of club women were married, educated, jobless (able to attend weekday afternoon meetings), British, and Protestant.[7] Additionally, while the majority of the women were unemployed, they were intimately connected to the business world, often as the wives and daughters of professional men and politicians.[8]

Although I don’t have enough biographical information to decidedly say that all the Council women were of British origins, the Council’s discussion of their Asian, Indigenous, and eastern European neighbours in their minute books makes it clear that they were speaking about women unlike themselves. For instance, in the very first full meeting of the Council, corresponding secretary Miss Irvine read a letter “requesting that the matter of Mrs. Canon’s circumstances be looked into. Mrs. Canon being a colored woman living in Saskatoon.”[9] Despite their rather narrow characteristics, the Saskatoon Council claimed to speak for all women of the city.

First and foremost, the Council was a space where middle to upper-class women could discuss important matters affecting their families, their communities, and Canada. This space fostered some of the only social contact between women that was not simply a function of their husbands’ social lives.[10] President Christina Murray insisted council members take an interest in the pressing concerns of their community: “Let me urge upon everyone that the only way in which a local council can succeed is by every member . . . reading as much as possible about [the issues] and being prepared to discuss them intelligently.”[11] The women heeded Murray’s call. To address issues deemed important, the Council sent letters to local politicians, organized community events, fundraised for worthy causes, and worked to mould public opinion.

The First World War dominated the Saskatoon Council of Women’s first three years of work. Beginning in 1917, the Canadian Food Controller persuaded Canadians to follow a “war menu” by eating less meat and wheat to conserve food for Allied forces.[12] The Saskatoon Council held a mass meeting to teach the women of the city how to combat waste and save essential food items.[13] They devised city-wide recommendations including meatless Tuesdays and Fridays, the ban of refreshments at social functions, and the substitution of other cereals for wheat.[14] Members also contributed to a “Thrift Column” in the local newspapers with tips on how to can and dry fruits and vegetables.[15]

The Council framed their war efforts in ideals of patriotism and imperialism and employed peer pressure tactics. In January 1918 they handed out 2,500 pledge service cards across Saskatoon to be signed by the women of each household and displayed prominently in the window as a sign of loyalty to the British Empire.[16]

The end of the war allowed the Saskatoon Council to focus on issues nearer home and unique to their position as a chapter of a national organization in a growing western city. In 1919, committees on law, education, home economics, public health, taxation, employment, and immigration filled the Council’s agenda, with immigration garnering the most attention. A rapid change in demographics, with an increasing number of continental European-born settlers, resulted in wide-spread anti-immigrant sentiment in the province in the post-war years from which the Saskatoon Council was not exempt. [17] In 1917, the Council discussed plans whereby women of the “better classes” in Britain could be persuaded to come to Canada, seen as a way to build the British population of Saskatchewan after many British-born men from the province had perished in the war.[18]

At the 1918 annual meeting, Mrs. Robertson argued that what Canada needed was more families, however, she condemned the federal government’s attempt “to foist on Canada by the carload or shipload, the type of female who would consent to the travesty of a marriage ceremony with a stranger.” She urged the Council that “it would be doing as much service to the province in discouraging the importation of the parasitical female as in encouraging the bona fide wage earner.”[19] Evidently, the Council’s support of women did not extend to all women.

These discriminatory views, along with fears of foreign radicalism, led the Saskatoon Council to engage in Canadianization efforts. In 1920, they carried out a “program of social work among the younger Ukrainians in the city [to] educat[e] the new Canadians according to our national ideals.”[20] By 1922, the Saskatoon Council proudly spoke of their fortnightly meetings with Ukrainian women, “spent in speeches, lessons, and lectures given by men and women prominent in the community. The National Anthem [was] always used.”[21] Through the Council, women worked to teach immigrants the skills and values they deemed important.

Relatedly, the Council was also concerned about the denigration of their “imperial race” in working-class homes.[22] Beginning in 1918, they organized a Public Health Demonstration where local doctors, dentists, and nurses could give advice on raising healthy babies and children. They also distributed 6,000 pamphlets to Saskatoon mothers with instructions on how to “properly” feed babies.[23] Since Council women believed maternal negligence was the principal cause of juvenile delinquency, they spent much of their efforts in the 1920s unsuccessfully advocating for a provincial institution for “feeble-minded” children, preferably located on a farm.[24] They also helped implement mental inspections in schools, and the use of auxiliary classes for “backward” children.[25] Moving unfit children away from their working-class homes would, in the minds of the Saskatoon Council, correct their deviant behaviour and create a safer and more moral Saskatoon.

Saskatoon Council of Women’s mothering demonstration. University of Saskatchewan Special Collections, I. Walter C. Murray, B. Christina Murray, 3. Clippings.

This emphasis on morality was prevalent throughout all their work. They supported prohibition, advocated for supervised playgrounds, and fought for the enforcement of a local curfew.[26] In the early 1920s, the Council sought to ban so-called “unscrupulous” literature from entering Canada. S. Craig Wilson argues that the NCWC viewed certain foreign media as immoral because the narratives often depicted permeable class and gender boundaries and portrayed women with sexual desires.[27] The Saskatoon Council even urged the city to censor the advertisement of an upcoming film, arguing that a prominent poster on Saskatoon’s street was “demoralizing to the young of our city.”[28]

When their efforts at censorship fell short, the Council worked to counteract immoral media by creating wholesome, educative alternatives aligned with Victorian ideals. Members volunteered choosing new appropriate books for the Saskatoon library, and implemented Saturday afternoon programs at Victoria school consisting of story-telling, singing, and gramophone accompaniment.[29] Conceiving this work as crucial for healthy childhood allowed Council women to enter the public sphere and cultivate the type of moral Saskatoon they envisioned.

One of the more surprising facets of the Saskatoon Local Council of Women’s work is the degree to which they worked with their agrarian counterparts. The Saskatoon Council of Women recognized its unique position as a chapter of an eastern-focused national organization located in a western, chiefly agrarian province, and undertook several initiatives to work with its rural neighbours. For instance, each June, the Local Council organized a tea for the rural women attending the Homemakers’ Convention in the city, an event which gave “expression to the cordial feeling existing between the rural and urban women.”[30]

They also supported rural women in tangible ways. In 1918, the Council sent letters of support for agrarian women’s fight for homesteading privileges. When the women’s section of the Grain Growers’ Association fought to relieve farm wives of overwork and household drudgery, the Saskatoon Council successfully petitioned the provincial government to create a system for registering city women to help relieve farm women’s burden.[31]

By 1922, all western farming organizations withdrew their affiliations from the National Council after disagreements over resource exports and its general commercial and urban bias, but the Saskatoon Council continued working with rural women.[32] The Saskatoon Council thus does not fit the common narrative of a decisive split between rural and urban women within the ranks of the NCWC in the 1920s. Given that agrarian women’s associations were also cast in the Anglo-Saxon mold, supporting their initiatives was perhaps congruent with the Local Council’s broader attempt to prevent the degeneration of the British race in Saskatchewan.

In their first decade, the Saskatoon Council of Women worked to build Saskatoon during a time of international conflict and then rapid westward settlement. Their work on issues of patriotism, public safety, motherhood, immigration, and morality allowed them to, in the words of council member Mrs. Myers, “face the future with confidence that the University City of Saskatchewan [would] not fall below the high standard she must place before others.”[33] Urban women were actively engaged in, and influencing, the public life of Saskatoon.

TYLA BETKE is a History PhD student at Carleton University, focusing on settler colonialism, borders, and identities. Before moving to Ottawa, she obtained a BA and MA from the University of Saskatchewan.

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Endnotes

[1] Veronica Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women: That National Council of Women of Canada, 1893-1929, Doctoral Dissertation (University of Toronto, 1975), 2.

[2] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan (PAS), 129-33.

[3] “First Business Meeting of Saskatoon Local Council,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 6 January 1917/

[4] Elizabeth Kalmakoff, "Women in Saskatchewan Politics, 1916-1919," Saskatchewan History 46, no. 2 (1994): 3.

[5] “Women Receive the Vote from Scott Government,” Regina Morning Leader, 15 February 1916.

[6] Cristine De Clercy, “Women and the Public Sphere in Saskatchewan, 1905 to 2005,” in Women’s History, vol. 5 of History of the Prairie West Series ed. Wendee Kubik and Gregory P. Marchildon (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2015), 87.

[7] Susan D. Phillips, “Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women’s Organizations,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 24, no. 4 (1991): 762; Nadine Small, “The ‘Lady Imperialists’ and the Great War: The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire in Saskatchewan, 1914-1918,” in “Other” Voices: Historical Essays on Saskatchewan Women, ed. David De Brou and Aileen Moffatt (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1995), 79; Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 165.

[8] Kalmakoff, "Women in Saskatchewan Politics, 1916-1919," 12.

[9] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 23.

[10] N. E. S. Griffiths, The Splendid Vision: Centennial History of the National Council of Women of Canada: 1893-1993 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 154.

[11] “First Annual Meeting of Local Council of Women This Aft’rnoon,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 30 January 1918.

[12] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 109.

[13] “Food Questions to be Discussed by Local Women,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, undated clipping, I. W. C. Murray Collection, III. 2. Council of Women, 1917-1926 (USA).

[14] “Women’s Council Discuss Matters of Importance,” The Saskatoon Phoenix, undated clipping, I. W. C. Murray Collection, III. 2. Council of Women, 1917-1926, (USA).

[15] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 77-79.

[16] “First Annual Meeting of Local Council of Women,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 30 January 1918.

[17] Nancy M. Sheehan, “The WCTU on the Prairies, 1886-1930: An Alberta-Saskatchewan Comparison,” in Women’s History, vol. 5 of History of the Prairie West Series, ed. Wendee Kubik and Gregory P. Marchildon (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2015), 24; De Clercy, “Women and the Public Sphere in Saskatchewan, 1905 to 2005,” 85.

[18] “First Business Meeting of Saskatoon Local Council,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 6 January 1917.

[19] “First Annual Meeting of Local Council of Women,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 30 January 1918.

[20]NCWC, The Year Book of the National Council of Women of Canada (Ottawa: 1920), 214.

[21] Ibid, 141.

[22] Sarah Carter, “Britishness, ‘Foreignness’, Women and Land in Western Canada 1890s-1920s,” Humanities Research 13, no. 1 (2006): 47.

[23] Saskatoon Local Council of Women, Ten Years in Retrospect, 1926, Pamphlet LIX-22, University of Saskatchewan Archives, 49.

[24] Minutes, 1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.2, PAS, 4.

[25] NCWC, The Year Book of the National Council of Women of Canada (Ottawa: 1920), 144.

[26] “Local Council Records Advance in Past Year,” The Saskatoon Phoenix, 30 January 1919; Minute Book, 1926-1931, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.4, PAS, 21.

[27] S. Craig Wilson, “‘Our Common Enemy’: Censorship Campaigns of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Council of Women of Canada, 1890-1914,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 10 (1998): 446-48.

[28] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 89.

[29] “Women’s Council Discuss Matters of Importance,” The Saskatoon Phoenix, undated clipping; Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 65.

[30] Saskatoon Local Council of Women, Ten Years in Retrospect, 53.

[31] Minute Book, 1916-1919, B-82 Saskatoon Local Council of Women, I.1, PAS, 159-161.

[32] Griffiths, The Splendid Vision, 162; Strong-Boag, The Parliament of Women, 116.

[33] “First Annual Meeting of Local Council of Women,” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 30 January 1918.