Introduction

Daniel Wilson, President of the University of Toronto (1880–1892) felt that the system of separate colleges “under lady principals and other efficient oversight… is the one best calculated to promote the refined culture and high intellectual development of women.” He was concerned about the moral breakdown that might result from “bringing scores of young men and women into intimate relations in the same institution at the excitable age of 18 to 22.”

—Martin Friedland, University of Toronto: A History, p. 89.

The Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) was born out of the struggle by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women to gain admittance to Canadian universities. The educational pioneers who became the organization’s founders were a small, privileged group of unusually accomplished women—scandalous “blue-stockings” in the eyes of many. But there was another issue that arose almost immediately: once they had graduated, what would they do with their education? Would they forsake motherhood and marriage for the professions, or would they follow more traditional “feminine” roles? This question has driven much of CFUW history.

These early women graduates came together in local clubs, starting with Toronto in 1903 and Vancouver in 1907, in the hopes of preserving their university experience through opportunities to continue learning and maintain friendships with like-minded women. As more clubs formed, in 1919 they decided to create a federation that articulated a founding philosophy of education as a privilege, albeit one that included a social obligation. This notion of noblesse oblige reflects their status as white, Euro-Canadian members of an economically, politically, and educationally privileged group in Canadian society. Still, as women, they were restricted from full participation in all aspects of Canadian life and, by fulfilling their obligation to serve their communities, they sought to prove that the resources used to educate them had not been wasted—as their critics too often charged. Through service to their communities, their families, and their nation, they also sought to prove their competence, to wear down entrenched gender prejudices, and eventually improve the status of all women. As such, the federation later known as CFUW, built a longstanding tradition of service, much of it in areas that fit within accepted gender roles and the duty of middle-class women to do “good works”—education, culture, and charitable work. University women’s clubs funded local libraries, worked with settlement houses, and raised money for scholarships. By extending their activities further into the arena of political reform, however, a few clubs and club members also began to ally themselves with the first-wave feminist movement in projects that sought to improve women’s status. They helped establish political and social policy to support women in the workforce, in the professions, in the family, and in the voluntary sector. On their own and with other organizations, these policy initiatives sometimes led to important legislative reforms. As well, the federation established a unique women-only scholarship program that gave important support to women scholars—truly the centrepiece of the organization’s work.

The idea for this book originated with the CFUW board as a way to celebrate the organization’s 100th birthday in August 2019. They formed a CFUW History Committee, chaired by President Grace Hollett, with Gail Crawford, Doris Mae Oulton, and Eleanor Palmer. The committee decided to engage a historian and non-member to write the book in order to get a broad perspective on the issues that CFUW has faced over the past one hundred years. While a member would have brought more inside knowledge and personal experience of the organization to the project, they felt that someone with knowledge of the history of the women’s movement would be able to view it through a wider lens. As a centennial history, the committee asked that it bring CFUW up to the present day. This was done with some trepidation as writing about the recent past is an exercise fraught with perils. Historians need distance to contextualize and analyze the past, and to take advantage of sources written by contemporaries after the fact. Thus, the reader may find the final chapters read quite differently than earlier ones. Another CFUW initiative to mark the historic occasion is the 100th Anniversary Scholarship Project, which raised more than $215,000 for scholarships and fellowships across the country (a mainstay of the organization), and funded increases to the scope and amounts of the academic awards presented.

The pertinent sources that were used in putting this volume together are the federation publication the Chronicle, the CFUW material deposited at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and secondary historical literature. Happily, conscious of contributing to history, CFUW has kept its records in excellent shape, thus making the work easier. In addition to the archival sources in Ottawa, the author had access to many of the individual club histories and, keenly aware of how unique and special each club is, tried to incorporate as many aspects of these as possible. The author thanks all the clubs who provided material and her only regret is not being able to use all of them. The book unavoidably reflects the author’s own areas of expertise and interest in social history and the women’s movement and may inadvertently have neglected to explore, for example, the intimate details of the financial or constitutional history of the organization. The aim of this book was to shape a history of this multifaceted organization made up of affiliated clubs across Canada that would focus on its advocacy and community work and highlight its place within the history of the Canadian women’s movement. Women’s agency in history is too often neglected and we hope the book will instil in its readers—members and non-members alike—a sense of pride in the organization’s historic accomplishments and lead to a better understanding of the role CFUW played in the formation of Canadian social, educational, and political institutions.

To document CFUW’s changing socio-economic and political realities over its first centennial, the book has been organized in a largely chronological fashion, with chapters following a decade-by-decade progression. Two topics, however, have been treated separately. Chapter 13 deals with the organization’s scholarship program for women, trying to highlight, as much as the sources allow, the accomplishments of its winners, all outstanding academic achievers who made significant contributions to research, teaching, and women’s entry into academia. Chapter 14 explores CFUW’s involvement in international women’s and human rights movements, largely through their affiliation with the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), recently renamed Graduate Women International (GWI). These activities include their role in helping Jewish academic women escape from Nazi-controlled Europe prior to World War II and, later, bringing the influence of international human rights—particularly through the United Nations—home to benefit Canadian women.

History always presents challenges with regard to terminology that changes over time. This is especially problematic in the case of married women. The History Committee decided that, wherever possible, the names of members in the book would be expressed using their given names followed by their surnames and only using titles in the case of “Dr.” A concerted effort has been made to use women’s own names without the “Miss” or “Mrs.” notations that were commonly used in the records until at least the 1970s—sometimes longer. While this affects the historical authenticity, the committee felt that it was more respectful to use women’s own names in place of their husbands’. Accordingly, we have exchanged an old-fashioned—and to many, offensive—naming tradition for a more modern one. Mrs. R. H. McWilliams, for example, will appear in this book as Margaret McWilliams, and Miss Margaret MacLellan, will appear as simply Margaret MacLellan. However, Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw will remain Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw. In those few cases where we cannot find a woman’s given name—a casualty of past naming customs—her designation will remain as it is in the source. This is especially apparent in photograph credits. It should also be noted that CFUW sources typically use the title “Dr.” to recognize women with honorary doctorates, and the author has, by and large, followed that custom. In addition, an effort has been made to convert historical terms used to refer to Indigenous peoples such as “Indian”—which was still in use in the 1970s—to the contemporary, inclusive, and generally preferred term, Indigenous. And in an effort to facilitate the ease of reading a book-length text, the writing style is less formal, minimizing the use of capitalization.

As mentioned above, this book places CFUW in the context of the history of the women’s movement, specifically that of late-nineteenth-century Canadian women’s organizations that were largely made up of middle-class and culturally homogeneous Euro-Canadian women, with whom CFUW shared many goals and initiatives. In an earlier period of women’s history, many of these organizations became the subject of academic studies that largely focused on the period of first-wave feminism that led up to World War I. Diana Pedersen has looked at various aspects of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA),1 and Sharon Cook has examined the history of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Canada, with its critical support of the woman’s suffrage campaign.2 CFUW shared many common goals with the influential National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC), which has been studied both by Veronica Strong-Boag in the early days of women’s history in Canada, and by Naomi Griffiths, who wrote a later centennial history.3

By contrast, CFUW has been relatively neglected in the academic literature on women’s history with only two theses written—one by Wendy Hubley on the federation from 1919 to 1931, and another by Laurie Smith that takes the organization up to 1960 through the lens of the Ottawa Club.4 Some aspects of the CFUW story have been incorporated into the larger narrative of women in Canada, such as the role of Laura Sabia in the creation of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) in 1967.5 However, the trail goes cold there as Sabia left the organization and was critical of it in the years following her departure. Given CFUW’s propensity to produce leaders, it is not surprising that some have been the subject of biographies, such as Margaret McWilliams: An Interwar Feminist by Mary Kinnear that links her work at CFUW with her active participation in other organizations.6 Similarly, Helen Gregory MacGill and, more recently, Laura Jamieson, also active in CFUW as well as many other organizations, have been the subject of biographies.7 These prominent figures in the women’s movement who helped give rise to major reforms also brought the CFUW membership into a global community of organized activism.

We hope that this comprehensive history of one women’s organization will not only enlighten readers but will also spark interest among future researchers to explore other, more specialized areas of its work. Many possibilities come to mind. As yet, there is no biography of Laura Sabia, nor of the first Canadian woman astrophysicist and first Canadian president of the International Federation of University Women, A. Vibert Douglas. Such a biography may well illuminate Canadian involvement in the heroic support given to female war refugees escaping from Nazism in their home countries. In general, the history of graduate women’s organizations at the international level is poorly known, and an academic or popular history of the IFUW/GWI story in the post-1960s era would be most welcome.

Another gaping hole in the literature relates to Margaret MacLellan, a pivotal figure who made early links between post-World War II internationalism, the growing human rights movement, and Canadian feminism at home. As well, the story of CFUW scholarship winners, their subsequent careers, and the organization’s efforts to place them in academic positions certainly merits a narrative of its own. A focus for further research might also include studies at the club level—the role of educational reform within the clubs that has been directed at the provincial and school board levels, for example, and the clubs’ cultural activities. The satirical plays written and performed by members, often on women’s issues, are especially fascinating. These productions, still being written and performed today, are reminiscent of the mock parliaments of suffrage days in which humour was used to make pointed but non-threatening political statements. Amateur artists who occasionally exhibited their work at conferences, or organized their own shows, also remain in the shadows of the organization’s history, as does CFUW’s role in fostering artistic expression.

What this book can tell us is that CFUW, like some of the more broadly based middle-class women’s organizations, brought women together for fellowship and learning, and to influence social attitudes through public education. In its early years, the organization represented the small minority of women with a university education, an elite within an elite, a group of unusually bright and privileged women. Later, as university education became much more common for women, the membership’s socio-economic status broadened somewhat, although its dependence on fees makes it inevitably more restrictive than other women’s organizations.

With their focus on serving the needs of their communities, CFUW clubs joined other women’s organizations in providing low-cost services, relying on volunteer labour and often serving marginalized populations. Some historians who have studied these women’s organizations have reduced their efforts to a cynical attempt to instil mainstream, middle-class social values into the “great unwashed” and, in the case of immigrant communities, to Canadianize them. While it is undeniable—and perhaps unavoidable—that they brought their own cultural bias along with the health, educational, and other services they provided, they did fill a need. Their pilot projects sometimes went on to become part of the social welfare and the educational infrastructure that we now value so highly. And the policy that emerged from their resolutions sometimes led to social, political, and legislative reforms that benefitted all women. The activism of CFUW and its affiliates at the local, federal, and later provincial levels was able to help bring about changes precisely because its members could exploit their upper-echelon political and social connections.

In the early studies of suffrage and first-wave feminism, CFUW, like other women’s organizations that directed many of their charitable works toward women and children, were labelled maternal feminists. As we shall see, however, the actions of the CFUW from its very earliest days indicate that it also was concerned about equal rights for women and thus comes out looking more modern than many of its contemporaries. The CFUW was not doctrinaire and drew on both maternal feminism and equal-rights feminism as needed in its support for women’s suffrage and women’s education, as well as for other gains for women. It filled a niche for university-educated women, especially in those early years when the leadership was dominated by a small cohort of academic women. With a significant number of professionals in its ranks, especially teachers, CFUW even occasionally argued for combining careers and motherhood. Starting with the first $1,000 Travelling Scholarship awarded in 1921, the federation established and funded through its own efforts a substantive program of scholarships for women. Not only did it allow promising academic women to pursue advanced degrees abroad, it also tried to place them in academic teaching positions in Canada once they graduated. Later these efforts were extended to other professions and the civil service.

Historians now understand the maternalism/equal rights dichotomy to be a false one and indeed many CFUW members were relatively wealthy mothers and wives who used their education to pursue voluntary roles in the community, often at an elite level. Influenced by maternalism, some pursued family law reforms, sometimes joining forces with other women’s organizations to give themselves more clout. Although CFUW primarily focused on teachers and academics, the organization, like the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women (CFBPW), worked to defend women—particularly married women—who came under attack for working for wages during the Depression. CFUW also worked with the YWCA, CFBPW, and others to push for the establishment of the federal Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labour in the 1950s, one of the first government bodies concerned with research and legislative improvements for women. Under Laura Sabia’s leadership, CFUW played a major part in the coalition that led to the appointment of the RCSW in 1967, which in turn ushered in what has come to be known as the second wave of the women’s movement.

Most of the academic sources on women’s history that relate to CFUW’s first century end their analysis at about the time of the RCSW. There are, however, a few exceptions: Jill Vickers, Pauline Rankin, and Christine Appelle have studied the National Action Committee on the Status of Women through the lens of the political scientist, looking at the efforts to implement the RCSW recommendations.8 As well, there is a growing body of memoirs by individual activists that have begun to appear, including Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution by Judy Rebick and Rebel Daughter: An Autobiography by Doris Anderson. Histories of organizations rooted in the provinces and territories are scarce, as are histories of organizations devoted to specific issues such as daycare or domestic violence. One of the few exceptions is White Gloves Off: The Work of the Ontario Committee on the Status of Women, edited by Beth Atcheson and Lorna Marsden, the study of a post-RCSW women’s organization in Ontario. Like this book, it was published through Second Story Press and the Feminist History Society, which is dedicated to documenting second-wave feminism in Canada.

Given this dearth of literature on the women’s movement of the modern period, this book, covering one hundred years, offers a rare glimpse into one organization—CFUW—that promoted the status of women from the first wave of the feminist movement to its re-emergence in the 1960s and beyond. It delineates CFUW’s role in formulating policy through research and resolutions that drew on input from its clubs and the national level and shows how the organization adapted to changing realities. The Royal Committee on the Status of Women, secured by a coalition led by CFUW president Laura Sabia, set a new tone, and the new women’s liberation movement blossomed.

CFUW officially joined the lobby to implement the RCSW recommendations, many of which reflected their own policy resolutions, but the organization also shifted its emphasis toward another of its numerous goals. Stressing women’s leadership, CFUW marked International Women’s Year in 1975 with a project to promote a roster of qualified women for senior academic, government, and business appointments. In the 1980s, the organization returned to advocacy and defined itself as a “moderate voice in public affairs” in order to distinguish itself from what it viewed as radical women’s groups. Focusing on quiet influence and exploiting its elite political and social connections, CFUW established a channel to government through regular consultations. In response to the horrific massacre of fourteen young women engineering students in Montréal, CFUW joined a successful coalition on gun control and later helped bring about an international treaty on landmines, contributing political connections and their usual solid research. Matters again changed course in the millennial years with threats to women’s organizations through funding cuts and restrictions on non-profit organizations in the 2010s. CFUW, now an equality-seeking organization, joined the protest coalitions and marches calling for an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and an end to women’s poverty and violence against women.

Right from its inception, CFUW prided itself on its research capacity—not surprising given its highly educated membership—and contributed several important research reports in the movement toward reform. Responding to its members’ changing needs, CFUW conducted a major study on women and continuing education in the 1960s. Despite the domestic mystique, baby boom, and suburban explosion of the 1950s, many members expressed frustration with their inability to use their education or to have their community volunteer work recognized for its true value. This foreshadowed an economic revolution that pulled more married women into the workforce. CFUW demographics were changing.

As more and more women obtained university degrees, its membership began to broaden socio-economically and to include some French-speaking clubs. Its leadership also changed from the academics of the early years to women who identified as mothers and wives, many of whom were affluent enough to forego salaries in order to hold executive roles in voluntary organizations at the community, provincial, and national levels. It is certainly true that the leadership of CFUW is, and has been, largely white, middle-
class, Christian, and moderate in its political views. However, the organization is made up of member clubs that control their own membership lists, so it is difficult to know how many ethnically and religiously diverse women are members. Nonetheless, CFUW is aware of the need to do more to attract members to better represent the growing cultural diversity of the Canadian population. There have been efforts to do so in the past but these have largely failed.

Coming full circle from its days of funding and promoting women scholars to fill academic positions, CFUW in 1992, and again twenty-five years later, conducted studies on women’s experience at university. The first was a comprehensive look at women’s roles as professors and students that recommended ways to improve the environment on campus, and the later study, among other proposals, recommended ways to address the scourge of sexual violence against women on campus.

CFUW has been particularly adept at a certain type of advocacy that draws on political connections, on the importance of good research, and on quiet influence. The organization developed an elaborate resolution and advocacy machinery, had a well-educated membership, and was focused on the political and constitutional process. As such it provided a solid training ground for women who were interested in roles in executive leadership in government, business, and politics. Indeed, many CFUW members have successfully run for office, including such luminaries as Flora MacDonald, Monique Bégin, Thérèse Casgrain, and Elizabeth May. Seen by some women in CFUW as an effective strategy for furthering the status of women and a way to prove women’s competence, there are nonetheless members who remain reluctant to embrace politics and the organization is officially non-partisan.

Such contradictions are understandable in an organization such as CFUW that is composed of a network of diverse and autonomous clubs, a federation, and some regional and provincial bodies. A complex organization, it has many, sometimes contradictory, goals. Its core values, rooted in the friendship and lifelong learning that has contributed to the richness of its members’ lives, have allowed it to withstand the test of time. At the same time, CFUW has, over the years, pursued its wider goals of advocacy, community service, and improving the status of women to fulfil its founding obligations. CFUW’s community projects and advocacy efforts benefit a much wider group than just its own members and its influence has extended locally, provincially, nationally, and internationally. True to the founders who stormed the doors of Canadian universities, CFUW members have tried to make this a better world for all, especially for women and girls, while welcoming women for fellowship and learning.