100 More Canadian Heroines

by Merna Forster

  Having developed an international perspective on women’s education through her work in the United States and a trip to Great Britain, Mary introduced demanding academic curricula in the influential institutions where she taught, proving that women could excel in subjects assumed to be masculine. She played a significant role in reforming women’s education in New Brunswick, Ontario, and throughout British North America, and also brought in new approaches to studying modern languages and literature for both sexes.

  Her leadership role is remarkable given the barriers to women at the time. Mary developed high-calibre women’s institutions and programs where females could demonstrate their worthiness to pursue university educations. The women’s colleges eventually closed as students were able to pursue their studies in co-ed universities.

  Significant progress had been made by the time Mary retired in 1892 (approaching her seventieth birthday), after nearly fifty years of leadership at prestigious women’s colleges. She moved west to help her nephew establish cattle ranches in what is now Alberta, and perhaps to enjoy her favourite pastimes of painting and writing poetry.

  Mary E. Adams as an older woman.

  Mount Allison Archives, Picture Collection, 2007.07/254

  Mary was a determined educator who had a profound influence on individuals, as well as the educational system. Peers, such as Nathanael Burwash of Victoria College, recognized her outstanding achievements, noting that “no Canadian educator of Canadian women has surpassed Miss Adams either in the perfection of her work or in her far-reaching influence in the development of larger opportunities for higher education for the women of Canada.”[2] In 2004, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board designated Mary Electa Adams as a national historic person due to her outstanding and lasting contribution to Canadian history.

  Quote:

  “I dread the idea of living uselessly.”[3]

  She Fought the Law and the Law Won

  Sally Ainse

  circa 1728–1823

  As settlers moved west, one brave Indian woman fiercely defended her land.

  Sally Ainse was a Native woman ahead of her time — a prosperous trader, landowner, and diplomatic courier in the borderlands between what would become the United States and Canada. She fought for her property in both the American republic and the British Empire. In the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, she was widely known and respected by many notable figures of her day.

  Sarah Ainse, often referred to as Sally, was probably an Oneida. She was the half-sister of the famous Chief Skenandon who was a Conestoga adopted by the Oneida. Sally grew up on the Susquehanna River in what is now New York State and may have learned English at a colonial school. She also mastered a multitude of Native languages, and was able to understand and read most of them. Sharp-witted as well as striking, the tall and graceful woman soon captivated a flamboyant colonial adviser named Andrew Montour.

  At age seventeen, sometime before 1753, Sally became Mrs. Montour, wife of the influential interpreter, scout, and Indian Agent. An Oneida chief, Montour had both French and Native blood. During their short and tumultuous marriage, the couple lived through the turmoil of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), as Great Britain and France fought for control in North America. The Montours lived in what would become New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio while Andrew advised the British. They camped with George Washington at the Battle of Fort Necessity in 1754; Washington referred to Sally in some correspondence.

  Despite their comfortable life together — Sally owned luxury items, including eleven pairs of stockings — Andrew was a big drinker and his young bride left him in about 1756. Montour placed their two older children, Polly and Andrew Jr., with colonial families in Philadelphia. After the split, Sally gave birth to their third child, Nicholas. She and the baby went to live with some of her Oneida relatives in Kanonwalohale.

  When the British established a post at nearby Fort Stanwix in 1758, Sally became a fur trader. In 1762, she convinced the Oneida to grant her a good piece of land near the fort; they trusted her to help protect it from settlers. But Sally couldn’t compete with the powerful friends of Sir William Johnson, her ex-husband’s employer, who also saw the commercial potential of the property. In 1772, he gave the land to a cartel of his buddies, which included the governor of New York.

  With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British gained control of North America. Sally soon began trading in the Great Lakes country, buying furs from the Mississaugas on the north shore of Lake Erie, and then moving north to Michilimackinac at the entrance to Lake Michigan.

  By late 1774, Sally Ainse had moved to Detroit, where she became a prosperous trader with a large-scale business, a town lot, and several slaves. She eventually owned two houses in Detroit, as well as cattle and horses and a good supply of flour for trading. With the American Revolution raging, the successful entrepreneur wanted to make sure she had refuges on both sides of the new border. Sally arranged to purchase a prime piece of land along both banks of the lower Thames River in what is now Chatham, Ontario. She paid £500 in goods to her friends, the local Ojibwa, for this 150-square-mile tract. At this time she married an English trader, John Wilson.

  After the end of the American Revolution and creation of the United States, Sally moved onto her land along the Thames. She built a house, planted an orchard, and fenced in a field, and thrived as a farmer while continuing to trade. She intended to use some of the land to grant private property rights to individuals of her choice, but the Detroit land board rejected her right to do this. Squatters invaded her land, and the board granted them legal deeds of ownership.

  Sally began a legal battle for her land that continued for decades, showing that while attempting to develop a form of Native land ownership within settler society, she could function in the systems of that society. However, she had two strikes against her: not only was she Native, but she was a woman entering colonial society where only men could own property.[1] And she was claiming ownership of the most valuable piece of land in the region.

  In 1790, the British Crown purchased land from the Chippewas in the area in a transaction called the McKee purchase, excluding the tract sold to Sally Ainse. Based on this exemption, as well as her Chippewa deed, Sally petitioned numerous times for the title to at least some of her land. As many as eighteen Indian chiefs confirmed her purchase with the Chippewas and many influential men supported her case, including Lieutenant Governor Simcoe, Sir John Johnson (who managed Indian Affairs), and Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant. Sally was related to Brant through marriage, and helped him in his efforts to unite Aboriginal people by enabling communication between tribes in various areas. A skillful negotiator, she obtained information, provided advice, and carried Brant’s messages to Natives in the Detroit and Thames valleys.

  The support of these powerful men was not enough to withstand the growing demand of white settlers for land, and the fear that allowing a Native to keep her land would set a dangerous precedent that would threaten settler land titles. In 1792, Sally had so impressed Simcoe that he directed the Detroit land board to award her 1,600 acres (about 1.7 percent of her original petition); the board delayed implementing his ruling. They also launched a smear campaign, writing letters to discredit her character, land claim, and improvements. When the frustrated Simcoe ordered that Sally Ainse be issued her deed, the necessary survey was delayed. The surveyor insisted that Sally did not exist, though there was a Sarah Wilson. She was told she couldn’t claim the property because common law prevented a married woman from holding legal title to real estate.[2]

  A bush farm near Chatham, Ontario, 1838.

  Philip John Bainbrigge, Library and Archives Canada, 1983-47-21

  In 1798, the Detroit land board dismissed Sally’s reduced claim to just 200 acres. Tragedy struck when a fire destroyed her barn — and the entire harvest stored there. The Moravian mission provided her with shelter and the Christian faith, reporting that she began attending daily meetings. She
relied on charity to survive.

  Sally may not have known that her son, Nicholas Montour, had become a prosperous fur trader, businessman, and owner of a seigneury in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The feisty Sally Ainse outlived him, settling in Amherstburg and continuing to fight for her rights; however, she had resigned herself to asking only for compensation in wild land for the property she lost. She submitted claims in 1808, 1809, 1813, and again in 1815, demonstrating such amazing persistence and longevity that, at the time of the last claim, the Executive Council insisted she had to be dead.

  Deemed by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography to be “a clearly exceptional person,”[3] Sally Ainse was almost ninety when she died in 1823. A historical plaque in Chatham, Ontario, commemorates the life of this tenacious woman.

  Sally Ainse’s signature, featuring a horse.

  Quote:

  “Though I am an Indian Woman (& guilty of great indecorum in presuming to write to you in this manner), I see no reason why I should be openly plundered of my property.”[4]

  — Sally Ainse writing to the surveyor general for the Detroit land board.

  Maud Allan in costume for The Vision of Salomé, 1908.

  The Dancer

  Maud Allan

  1873–1956

  She didn’t create modern dance. But her artistry, imagination, and musicality helped usher in a dance revolution.[1]

  A sex symbol of the Edwardian age,[2] Maud Allan was a Canadian-born dancer and choreographer who defined her art as poetical and musical expression. A pioneer in modern dance, Maud developed a distinctive style that both enthralled and shocked audiences. In her famous Salomé dance she performed barefoot, midriff bare, in scanty costumes of gauze, strings of pearls, and bejewelled breastplates. Maud Allan was a talented dancer who dared to be different and helped make theatrical dancing a respectable occupation.

  Though this gifted performer gained much of her worldwide celebrity for her provocative dance, The Vision of Salomé, Maud choreographed over fifty dances and toured in many countries. She became famous for her dance interpretations, in which she brought to life the music of Chopin, Rubinstein, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. While Isadora Duncan, her contemporary, gained enduring fame for both dancing and personal tragedies, Maud was considerably more popular in the prime of her career during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

  Born Maud Durrant in Toronto in 1873, she was the daughter of shoemaker William Allan Durrant and his wife Isabella Hutchinson (who was adopted in Ontario but assumed to be the love child of Adolph Sutro, a flamboyant German-Jewish engineer and arts patron who was mayor of San Francisco from 1894 to 1896). Maud spent her early childhood in Toronto, taking piano lessons from the accomplished musician Clara Lichtenstein. When she was six, the Durrants moved to San Francisco. There they connected with Sutro; Isabella hoped that her daughter would become a world-famous concert pianist.

  In February 1895, Maud left San Francisco to study piano in Germany, expecting her beloved brother Theo to join her for his post-graduate studies. By April, however, she received the horrifying news that Theo had been accused of brutally murdering two young women in the church where he taught Sunday school. The sensational media coverage of Theo’s “crime of the century,” and his execution in 1898 changed Maud forever. At her family’s urging, she stayed in Europe throughout the ordeal. She concealed her relationship to Theo by using her father’s middle name and adopting the stage name Maud Allan.

  Maud stayed in Germany to continue her musical education. She was strongly influenced by her mentor Ferruccio Busoni, the famous composer and pianist, and his colleague Marcel Remy, who later composed the music for her Salomé. Maud soon abandoned the idea of being a concert pianist, deciding instead to become a dancer. After several years of research and experimentation to develop her unique mode of expression — Maud always boasted she had no formal dance training — she had her debut at Vienna’s Conservatory of Music in December 1903. It was a gutsy move: a thirty-year-old woman just beginning her life in theatrical dancing.

  Her career was launched by none other than King Edward VII, who was entranced by her performance at a spa in Marienbad. Thanks to his support, Maud soon made her debut at London’s Palace Theatre, where she was promoted as Alfred Butt’s latest discovery. He was the city’s leading impresario and the man who had managed the debuts of stars like Maurice Chevalier and Fred Astaire. Hailed as the personification of grace and elegance, Maud Allan was a hit.

  The London Observer raved about Maud: “She is a reincarnation of the most graceful and rhythmic forms of classic Greece … music turned into moving sculpture … in The Vision of Salomé her writhing body enacts the whole voluptuousness of Eastern feminity.”[3]

  Other critics echoed their praise, and Maud Allan became the darling of the social, political, and cultural elite of London. Prime Minister Asquith and his wife became close personal friends; Margot Asquith even paid for Maud’s luxurious apartment. The dancer’s eighteen-month engagement at the Palace Theatre was the height of her career, bringing her wealth and celebrity. She earned £250 per week and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.

  Maud was a dedicated and determined artist at a time when theatrical dancing was widely considered “a form of female erotic display performed by women of questionable moral status.”[4] She dared to depict an aggressively sexual woman (albeit an Eastern woman, which made it a bit more acceptable to her audience). As a respectable middle-class female, bearing a stamp of approval from the cultural elite, Maud helped bring greater acceptance of women on the stage.

  Maud’s performances drew women of all ages and backgrounds, from schoolgirls to matrons, working girls to aristocrats. Maud was so popular with women that the Palace Theatre ran special matinee performances of her dancing — banning smoking, as the women preferred. Many admirers watched Maud to learn her movements and then try them out at home. Wealthy women held parties at which they dressed in replica’s of Maud’s Salomé costumes and practised her movements. Even the Woman Worker encouraged its trade-union supporters to attend Maud’s performances and emulate her movements to build “the Body Beautiful.”[5] She helped encourage greater body awareness, an acceptance of expressing female sexuality, and participation in social dancing.

  While Maud became a celebrity, she also had critics. Her Salomé made her notorious. Many condemned Maud Allan as a sensual temptress, labelling her performances in scanty costumes (that she designed herself) as scandalous.

  Her career was damaged irrevocably when she dared challenge a British member of parliament who had slandered her in an intentionally provocative article called “The Cult of the Clitoris,”[6] near the end of the First World War. The article suggested that a private showing of Oscar Wilde’s controversial play Salomé, starring Maud, would be attended by members of a group of prominent, sexually perverse Brits who were at risk of blackmail and treason. The MP insinuated that Maud was a lesbian, and that her knowledge of the word clitoris demonstrated moral depravity. She sued him in 1918; the revelation that her brother was a murderer ruined her reputation.

  After the trial, Maud performed in India, the Far East, Australia, Canada, the United States, Europe, South America, and Africa but did not receive the critical acclaim she had enjoyed at the height of her career in London. For a 1916 tour in North America, she performed with The Maud Allan Symphony Orchestra, a company of forty directed by Ernest Bloch. Maud also starred in the silent movie The Rugmaker’s Daughter (1915). She established a dance school for slum children in London in 1928.

  For a ten-year period ending in 1938, Maud lived with her secretary Verna Aldrich, who was rumoured to be her lover. During the Second World War, Maud drove an ambulance for the Red Cross and worked for an aircraft factory. She died in poverty in Los Angeles in 1956, at the age of eighty-three.

  Years after her sensational success, some still remembered Maud Allan. English art critic Sir Herbert Read recollected that Maud “was the Marilyn Monroe of my youth.”
[7] Now recognized primarily by dance historians, Maud Allan was an extraordinary performer whose significance in modern dance continues to be debated in a multitude of publications. The Canadian Encyclopedia praises Maud as a pioneer of modern dance. Dance Collection Danse, a private archives in Toronto, has a collection of Maud Allan memorabilia, including several of her famous Salomé costumes.

  Quote:

  “While I am dancing I know nothing but the surge of the music.”[8]

  Elizabeth Arden, 1947.

  Behind the Red Door

  Elizabeth Arden

  1881–1966

  She became one of the richest and most powerful self-made women in the world.[1] A multimillionaire who revolutionized the cosmetics industry, she landed on the cover of Time magazine as the queen of horse racing.

  Florence Nightingale Graham often took the reins of her father’s horse-drawn cart when they went to sell vegetables and flowers at his stall in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market; there she honed her haggling skills. The Grahams lived on a tiny farm in Woodbridge, Ontario. After her mother died of tuberculosis when Florence was just four, she and her siblings tried to support their father as he struggled to feed and clothe his family while fighting depression. She never forgot the days of shivering in their cold house, or stuffing newspapers in her shoes to keep her feet dry. Florence dreamed of becoming “the richest little girl in the world”[2] ; when she did, she lined her handmade shoes with newspaper and lived in overheated homes.