100 More Canadian Heroines

by Merna Forster

  Despite the remaining Beothuks’ efforts, Demasduit’s baby died two days after she was abducted. The raiding party took Demasduit to Twillingate and the grieving widow was placed in Anglican missionary John Leigh’s home. She quickly learned some English and worked with Leigh to compile a list of about 200 Beothuk words — an important record that helped preserve the language. For the first time, their actual name became known: the Beothuks.

  Demasduit significantly changed public opinion about the people previously known as the Red Indians. She was transported to St. John’s in May, where she became known as Mary March, denoting the month of her capture. She was a frequent guest of Governor Hamilton, who noted she was “of a gentle and interesting disposition and acquiring and retaining without much difficulty any words which she was taught.”[3] Lady Hamilton painted her portrait and the personable young woman was regarded with affection by all who met her.

  Until Demasduit’s arrival, the local residents had generally considered the island’s Natives savages, murderers bent on preventing the settlers from earning an honest livelihood. The Europeans failed to recognize they were pushing the Natives from their traditional territory, depriving them of a means of survival. Demasduit transformed some of the hostility felt toward Beothuks into understanding of their situation. One anonymous writer recognized this important shift in an article published on May 27, 1819:

  In consequence of the habitual persecution and cruelty which every well informed person in this island knows to have occurred, we could not but believe that the Red Indians were the most ferocious and intractable of the savage tribes. And it is with no less astonishment than pleasure that we find in the young woman which has been brought amongst us a gentle being, sensibly alive to every mild impression and delicate propriety of her sex. Is it not horrible to reflect that at the very moment, while we set down at our fire sides in peace and composure, many of her country men … are exposed to wanton cruelty.… We might remember that as far as priority possession can convey a right of property, the Red Indians have the better title to the Island.[4]

  Some well-intentioned citizens in St. John’s decided to help Demasduit by raising money for her return home. They didn’t realize that in Beothuk culture anyone who had contact with white people (who belonged to the bad spirit) was considered corrupt and would face rejection and death if he or she came back.[5] Several attempts to return Demasduit to her people failed when they couldn’t find any Beothuk camps. A final attempt was being made when she died of tuberculosis onboard the HMS Grasshopper on January 8, 1820.

  Her body was carried back to Red Indian Lake where she had been captured the year before. Her niece Shanawdithit and a few surviving Beothuks watched in the nearby woods as Demasduit’s pine coffin was placed inside a tent. After the spring thaw, the Beothuks placed her body in the nearby cemetery beside Chief Nonosabasut and their infant.

  One of the last survivors of the Beothuk people, Demasduit was recognized as a national historic person. She has also been commemorated by the Mary March Regional Museum and Mary March Provincial Park.

  Quote:

  “Kaw-injemeesh.”

  — A Beothuk phrase meaning “Let us shake hands.”[6]

  Flora MacDonald Denison, circa 1911.

  Born a Rebel[1]

  Flora MacDonald Denison

  1867–1921

  She was a radical feminist who became a powerful voice for women’s suffrage. And created the wilderness retreat that would become Bon Echo Park.

  Flora was so passionate about women’s rights that she served guests at Bon Echo with suffragist dinnerware, featuring slogans such as “Votes for Women.” Flora MacDonald Denison (née Merrill) played an important role in obtaining the vote for women in Canada and New York. She was an accomplished businesswoman, journalist, spiritualist, labour activist, suffragist, and an ecofeminist before the term was coined. [2]

  Flora’s independent lifestyle was no doubt nourished by her childhood. The daughter of a genteel family who’d fallen on hard times, she was born in a shanty in the Ontario bush where her adventurous father, George Merrill, was prospecting. Her mother, Elizabeth, supported the close-knit family of eight children in Belleville when George’s mining venture failed and he turned to drink when he couldn’t find steady work. The family believed in the supernatural; some of them had psychic powers, including Flora’s older sister, Mary, who she wrote about in her novel Mary Melville, the Psychic.

  Flora’s upbringing made her open to new ideas and opportunities, and gave her a tendency to question accepted beliefs and institutions. She found orthodox Christianity stifling, preferring mysticism to churches where “most women were given such a miserable position within its sacred portals.”[3] Flora had to leave school at fifteen to work. After a brief stint of school teaching, which she found “little more enticing … than solitary confinement,”[4] she did office work in Toronto. In the mid-1800s, she joined relatives near Detroit where she began her journalism career.

  There she also met a travelling salesman named Howard Denison, with whom she had a marriage of sorts in 1892. Their relationship was complicated by the fact he was already married, though they might have had a legal ceremony after his first wife died in 1904. Their union wasn’t a successful one, aside from the birth of her beloved son Merrill in 1893. The couple eventually separated. One biographer suggests that she may have had a secret lesbian lover.[5]

  Like her mother before her, Flora had to be the breadwinner since her husband wasn’t successful. They settled in Toronto, where she began work as a dressmaker; it would become the primary source of income during her lifetime. She became well known as a clothing designer for wealthy women, first as manager of the custom dress department at the Robert Simpson Company and, as of 1905, the owner of a profitable business of her own. Flora combined this with a writing career, starting with articles in Saturday Night magazine and a regular column in the Toronto Sunday World from 1909 to 1913.

  As a journalist, Flora became a vocal advocate for women’s independence, supporting controversial topics, such as divorce, birth control, and free love. She encouraged economic and political equality for women, state-funded daycare, respect and improved conditions for working women, vegetarianism, and saner clothing — no tight corsets, pointed toes, and high heels. Pioneer suffragist Emily Howard Stowe introduced her to the women’s movement in 1903, and Flora blossomed into a self-confident leader. She soon became a key figure in the suffragist movement in Toronto as well as a player on the international stage.

  Flora brought enthusiasm to the national suffrage association. She promoted the women’s movement through her newspaper articles and speaking engagements, made significant financial contributions to the suffrage cause, and brought prominent speakers to Toronto from the United States and Britain.

  She gave her first suffragist speech to an audience of more than 5,000 at the Lily Dale spiritual resort in New York, becoming such a successful speaker that she made vocal feminist Augusta Stowe-Gullen jealous.[6] Flora was the Canadian Suffrage Association’s secretary before becoming president in 1911. She represented Canada, at her own expense, at two world conventions of the International Suffrage Alliance, in Copenhagen in 1906 and Budapest in 1913. Flora also led the Canadian delegation to a suffrage rally in Washington, D.C., that year.

  Flora admired and befriended suffrage leaders in other countries, including Americans Susan B. Anthony and Charlotte Perkins Gillman, as well as the English militant Emmeline Pankhurst. While in England in 1913, Flora participated in the London Pavillion protest, and concluded that militancy was sometimes necessary. She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union there, and spoke at a Caxton Hall meeting. She was more radical than many of her Canadian sisters and was one of the few activists in the country who was a self-proclaimed feminist.[7]

  Flora was often critical of her conservative colleagues and, perhaps because of her lower social status, she was never fully accepted. She was forced to resign from t
he CAS in 1914. Her talents were still appreciated south of the border: the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association hired her as a full-time lecturer in the campaign that brought the franchise to New York State in 1917.

  In 1910, Flora purchased the rustic Bon Echo Inn on the shores of Lake Mazinaw, Ontario. After she returned from New York, she focused on the wilderness property. She hoped to transform Bon Echo into a nature retreat for artists, reformers, spiritualists, and socialists — a haven dedicated to Walt Whitman’s ideals of democracy, freedom, and the love of nature. Active in the Theosophical Society, the Whitmanite movement, and the Association for Psychical Research of Canada, she attended seances that made contact with both her sister, Mary, and Old Walt. As a tribute to the poet, she arranged to have the massive granite cliff along Mazinaw Lake dedicated to Whitman on the centennial of his birth, in August 1919.

  The dedication to “Old Walt” in 1919. Flora is sitting below the P.

  Flora died of pneumonia on May 23, 1921, at the age of fifty-four. Her devoted son, Merrill, continued to manage Bon Echo. He ensured that the beautiful natural area was preserved in perpetuity for everyone to enjoy. Many authors, photographers, and artists — including Group of Seven members — found inspiration there. Merrill eventually transferred ownership to the province of Ontario. His gift became Bon Echo Provincial Park in 1965, at which time the nature reserve was dedicated to Flora MacDonald Denison and Merrill’s first wife.

  Quote:

  “It is easy to conform: it is easy to avoid criticism: just be nothing, say nothing: but there will be whole worlds that you will never enter and exquisite joys that you will never know the meaning of.”[8]

  Portrait of Viola Desmond by David MacIntosh, 2010.

  Courtesy of Government House, Nova Scotia

  On Trial for Being Black

  Viola Desmond

  1914–1965

  Her defiance of segregation galvanized the black community, inspiring others to fight racial discrimination in Canada.

  Viola Desmond’s car broke down on February 8, 1946, in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Stranded for the night, the young lady decided to see a movie. The shocking events that followed changed her life — and ushered in a new era of race consciousness in Canada.

  At just thirty-two, she was already the owner of a prosperous beauty salon in Halifax. She asked to buy a ticket at the Roseland Theatre and found a seat on the main floor; she was quickly asked to move upstairs, since the lower level was reserved for white people. Her offer to pay the extra penny tax for her seat was rejected, but Viola politely and firmly refused to budge. The petite woman (under five foot, weighing less than 100 pounds) was dragged from the theatre by a burly white policeman, arrested, and taken to jail. She was forced to spend the night in a cell with male prisoners. The charge? Tax evasion under the provincial Theatres, Cinematographs, and Amusements Act.

  The next morning, the local magistrate convicted Viola Desmond and fined her $26. The fact that theatre patrons were assigned seats according to their race wasn’t discussed during the short trial; in fact, race wasn’t mentioned at all. Provincial legislation was used to support racial discrimination. Viola didn’t have a lawyer; she wasn’t advised of her rights to seek adjournment or have counsel. As one newspaper would later write, she wasn’t actually tried for a felony, but for being a negress.[1] Angry and humiliated, Viola paid the fine and went home.

  Viola Desmond (née Davis) was the daughter of a prominent black family. She was married to a successful barber named Jack Desmond. Growing up in Halifax she attended racially segregated schools. Eager to pursue a career as a beautician, she had to train in Montreal because beauty schools in Halifax weren’t open to black people. Viola also went to New York and Atlantic City to study. She established Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture in 1937 in Halifax — where her clients included the legendary classical singer Portia White — and created a line of beauty products.

  Viola travelled around Nova Scotia to provide beauty supplies and services to black communities. She also started the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, which attracted black students from around the province, as well as New Brunswick and Quebec. An ambitious and prosperous entrepreneur, she dreamed of setting up a franchise of beauty parlours for black people across the country. She was a strong, highly respected woman, touted as a model of success.

  When Viola returned home after the trial, her husband was understandably concerned, but urged her to forget the ordeal: “Take it to the Lord with a prayer.”[2] Among those who encouraged her to take action were Pearleen Oliver and her husband Reverend William Oliver. The influential black couple were strong proponents of racial equality. They convinced the bruised and battered Viola to get medical attention for the injuries she suffered when she was dragged out of the theatre. Viola also decided to contact a lawyer, and the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP) agreed to raise funds to support the costs and hold public meetings to bring attention to the case.

  Unfortunately, her laywer mishandled the case. He missed an important appeal deadline and failed to directly attack racial segregation. The legal actions failed, and Viola never received public vindication for the discrimination she had endured. While some black people in Halifax objected to her activism and feared a backlash, Viola’s courageous legal challenge resulted in a major growth in racial consciousness. Viola’s lawyer did not charge the NSAACP for his legal fees, so the funds were used to fight other cases of racial discrimination. Reverend Oliver saw the significance of the case: “Neither before or since has there been such an aggressive effort to obtain rights. The people rose as one and with one voice. This positive stand enhanced the prestige of the Negro community throughout the Province.”[3]

  As for Viola, she was “bitterly disappointed.”[4] The case took a heavy toll on her personal life. Her husband, who thought she was stirring up trouble, refused to support her. They eventually separated. Viola’s business suffered and she lost her enthusiasm for the national franchise. She closed her shop, and moved to Montreal and then New York, hoping to work as a consultant in the entertainment industry. She died suddenly in New York in 1965, at fifty, from a gastro-intestinal hemorrhage.

  A civil rights icon, Viola Desmond is recognized by many as a heroic leader in the fight against racism in Canada. Her story has been well-documented by legal historian Constance Backhouse[5] and retold in articles, stories, and radio dramas. In April 2010, the government of Nova Scotia granted Viola Desmond a free pardon — a rare act, acknowledging that the courageous woman was innocent of the crime she was convicted of. She would no doubt have been pleased to know that the pardon was signed by Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis, a black woman.

  Quote:

  “I didn’t realize a thing like this could happen in Nova Scotia — or in any other part of Canada.”[6]

  Pauline Donalda’s debut in the title role of Jules Massenet’s Manon in Nice, 1904.

  Library and Archives Canada/Pauline Donalda fonds/MUS 72 nlc-6442

  The Prima Donna

  Pauline Donalda

  1882–1970

  She dazzled audiences in the world’s major opera houses. Then returned home to make Montreal a city of great opera.

  Singer Pauline Donalda got her big break at London’s Covent Garden in June 1905. Legendary opera singer Nellie Melba was playing the lead role in the hit production of La Bohème when she suddenly fell ill. The twenty-three-year-old Canadian soprano, her understudy, came to the rescue. She had just four days to master the opera in Italian — though she knew it in French — and the audience loved her performance opposite Enrico Caruso.

  Born and raised in Montreal, Pauline grew up in a Jewish family with eleven children. She was the daughter of Russian immigrant Michael Lichtenstein (anglicized to Lightstone) and his Polish wife, Fanny Goldberg. Michael, a hatter, worked hard to give the children a good education, including musical training. Pauline won a singing prize at the age of ten; h
er remarkable voice drew considerable attention after she sang a solo in a choral performed for the Jewish Zion Congress in 1901.

  Recognizing Pauline’s potential, the choir director arranged for an audition with the acclaimed musical director at the Royal Victoria College, Clara Lichtenstein (no relation). “I think the diamond has been found,”[1] she remarked after hearing the young woman. Pauline got a full scholarship to the college, but Miss Lichtenstein recommended that she develop her talent in Europe. After experts at the Metropolitan Opera confirmed that Pauline had great potential, she departed for France in 1902, thanks to the financial support of arts patron Lord Strathcona (Sir Donald A. Smith). He awarded her a scholarship of $50 per month to cover tuition and living expenses.

  Pauline adopted the stage name Pauline Donalda in honour of her sponsor. Thrilled to be in Paris, and anxious to live up to great expectations, Pauline began taking voice lessons with Edmond Duverney at the Paris Conservatoire. She also studied stage technique with Paul Lhérie, improved her French with Pierre Breton, and took Italian lessons with Babette Rosen. After two years of study, she made her debut in Nice on December 30, 1904, playing the leading role in Manon.

  “Pauline Donalda dared to appear for the first time before the public in the role of Manon,” wrote one critic. “Only Pauline Donalda could have had that boldness and succeed. She possesses an unusually exquisite physique; a strong, brilliant, flexible and wide-ranged voice; a finesse and intelligence underlined by remarkable acting and sparkling eyes that open to life or are full of love.”[2]