Encouraged by the praise, Pauline courageously approached Covent Garden, one of the world’s greatest opera houses. Astonished to be offered a three-year contract, Pauline debuted there in May 1905 as Micaela in Carmen and began winning leading roles. Covent Garden was Pauline’s base for nine years, but she also performed at Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the Manhattan Opera House in New York, where she received an impressive $5,000 a month. After a six-month illness and threat of tuberculosis, she wed baritone Paul Seveilhac in 1906 despite her family’s strong opposition to her marrying outside the Jewish faith.
In a stellar career that lasted from 1905 until 1922, Pauline toured Canada, the United States, Russia, Hungary, Holland, Germany, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. In addition to her public performances, she also gave private concerts in the homes of London’s elite. Pauline performed with the greatest opera stars, conductors, and musicians of her time, including conductor Sir Landon Ronald, violinist Mischa Elman, pianist Ignaz Jan Paderweski, and composer and violinist Efrem Zimbalist. She made several recordings, but few remain.
Pauline Donalda in Covent Garden’s production of Romeo and Juliet, 1905.
Library and Archives Canada/Pauline Donalda Fonds/MUS 72 nlc-6463
At the outbreak of the First World War, her Australian tour was cancelled, and Pauline spent the war years in Canada. With her husband and three brothers on the front, she gave many performances (including the Donalda Sunday Afternoon Concerts) to support the war effort through the War Relief Fund, the Patriotic Fund, and the Red Cross. During the war, she even tried vaudeville in New York, where she shared billing with Harry Houdini.
She returned to Europe in 1917 and, after her marriage ended in divorce, she wed a Danish tenor named Mischa Léon; this marriage also ended in divorce. Pauline continued to sing in the great opera houses of Europe for five more years, before retiring at the age of forty due to exhaustion.
Pauline opened a studio in Paris in 1922. There she taught hundreds of gifted singers before moving back to Montreal in 1937. Eager to stimulate excellence in operatic performances in the city of her birth, Pauline founded the Opera Guild in 1942 and directed it until 1969. Under her leadership, the Guild produced twenty-nine operas and provided performance opportunities for notable Canadian singers, such as Maureen Forrester, Clarice Carson, and Robert Savoie. Pauline was still teaching in her eighties when she died in 1970.
Pauline Donalda received a multitude of honours, from an honorary doctorate to the Order of Canada and Montreal’s Outstanding Citizen Award. She is still widely recognized for her brilliant career as an international opera singer, in addition to her dedication to the development of opera in Montreal. As the Montreal Star wrote, she was “a commanding figure in the history of Canadian music.”[3]
Quote:
“From my own personal experience, I most certainly do not think a singing career and marriage mix well at all. If a career is to be successful … one must be ready to simply give everything, sacrifice everything to it, everything.”[4]
Onésime Dorval (at right) with Georgine d’Amours.
Courtesy of St. Vital Parish
The Lady in Black
Onésime Dorval
1845–1932
The first certified teacher in Saskatchewan, she laid the groundwork for a system of French and English education in the province.
How could a woman deemed too frail to become a nun survive the hardships of the northwestern wilderness? With great courage and determination.
Onésime Dorval was a petite farm girl, born in Ste-Scholastique, Quebec, in 1845 to Esther Brunette and Ignace Dorval, a farmer and carpenter. She attended convent schools in the Laurentians and earned a first-class teaching certificate. Onésime was intensely religious and wanted to devote her life to God by becoming a nun.
She joined the Sisters of Good Shepherd in New York. There she learned English, but was not permitted to make her final vows because she was too frail. Never robust, she eventually grew stronger. When she heard that Bishop Vital Grandin, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was looking for resourceful women to work as teachers and housekeepers, the adventurous Onésime jumped at the chance to travel west and serve in the Roman Catholic missions.
In the summer of 1877, thirty-two-year-old Onésime arrived at Fort Garry in Red River, accompanied by Marie Giroux, a young orphan girl she’d adopted. Onésime taught English for several years and established a school at Baie St. Paul for Métis and French-Canadian children. In 1880, Onésime moved on to Saskatchewan, travelling west on a demanding two-and-a-half-month trek by Red River cart. Despite the rigours of the trip, she often walked ahead of the nineteen carts in the brigade, marvelling at what she considered “this beautiful nature which had the power to charm the saddest of hearts.”[1]
Onésime devoted her life to serving the Oblate missions of the northwest. She became a member of the Order of St. Francis, formally signing over her income for the regular rights of the order. She taught in Manitoba for more than forty years, and also established schools and taught in Saskatchewan at St-Laurent-Grandin, Battleford, Batoche, and Duck Lake. While working in St-Laurent, she helped create a grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1913, St. Michael’s School in Duck Lake celebrated Mademoiselle Dorval’s fifty years of teaching, even though she didn’t retire until 1921.
She faced many challenges during her early years on the Prairies, including physical hardships and poverty at the rudimentary missions. During the North-West Rebellion in 1885, Onésime and thirty-two others sought safety in Fort Battleford, fearful at news of hostilities such as the Frog Lake Massacre.
Onésime was the first certified schoolteacher in Saskatchewan, and one of the few bilingual educators in the West. She played an important role in sustaining the bilingual system through the 1875 North-West Territories Act. Though she shared the popular notion that she should be converting the Aboriginal peoples, this zealous Roman Catholic teacher also loved and respected her Métis students, and they admired her for it.
Onésime was always smiling; she even allowed a bit of mischief in the classroom. Fond of children, she adopted a second daughter, Georgine d’Amours, a Métis orphan. The esteemed teacher was also a talented painter, woodworker, and carpenter; she helped construct the schoolhouse at Battleford, and household furniture.
When she retired, Onésime continued serving the community and working on her memoirs. As always, she lived a modest life and dressed conservatively in black. She died at eighty-seven. The pioneer teacher was buried in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, at the St. Michael’s school cemetery. “She was admired by all who came in contact with her, for her remarkable memory, sound judgment, her cheerful disposition and edifying piety.”[2]
The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recognized Onésime as a person of national historic significance in 1954. That same year, the Saskatchewan government named four small islands in the North Saskatchewan River in her honour. Visitors to the Duck Lake Regional Interpretive Centre will find a little harmonium that Onésime once used to teach music, and in Batoche National Historic Site they can see one of her paintings on display.
Quote:
“Austere poverty was evident everywhere; not far from the church a miserable structure serving as a kitchen, classroom, dining hall.”[3]
— Onésime’s first impressions of the mission at Saint-Laurent de Grandin, 1881.
Allie Vibert Douglas.
An Astronomical Success
Allie Vibert Douglas
1894–1988
A renowned astronomer and astrophysicist, she paved the way for women to study sciences at university.
There was a definite chill in the air when Allie Vibert Douglas was studying for her Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Women had to sit at the back of the lecture room at Trinity College, while the first two rows — beside the stove — were reserved for men. While the cold made concentration difficult, she was more concerned that, as a woman, she wouldn’t
receive a degree from Cambridge, despite fulfiilling the academic requirements.
Allie’s path toward scientific distinction was long and winding. She was born in Montreal in 1894 to accountant John Vibert and Alice Douglas. Alice died soon after giving birth and John was struck with tuberculosis. Allie and her brother, George, were raised by their grandmother, Marie Pearson Douglas, and two unmarried aunts, Mary and Mina, in London, England, and Montreal.[1]
Allie was always interested in science. She faced her first gender barrier when a high-school club refused to accept her because she was a girl. Her brother helped her circumvent the exclusion by leaving the door ajar during the lectures she wanted to hear so she could listen from the hallway. Allie decided to fight women’s inequality with determination and a little creativity.
In 1912, Allie enrolled at McGill University in honours mathematics and physics. When her studies were interrupted by the Second World War, she went to London to work in the War Office. She received the silver cross as Member of the Order of the British Empire for her work before returning to McGill to complete her B.A. and M.Sc.. Allie then studied at the Cambridge Observatory and the Cavendish Laboratory in England. There she worked on radioactivity with Ernest Rutherford before getting hooked on astronomy.
Allie volunteered at an observatory in Wisconsin, then returned to McGill. She completed her doctorate in physics in 1926, and was the first woman in Canada to become an astrophysicist. A popular lecturer, she was once told that “if you were a man I would say that that was a damn fine lecture, you took them by storm.”[2]
Though Dr. Vibert Douglas gave lectures in astrophysics at McGill, she was “never offered a proper academic position.”[3] In 1939, she accepted the position of dean of women at Queen’s University, eventually becoming a full professor in astronomy and astrophysics. She taught there until 1960. Dr. Vibert Douglas played an important role in facilitating women’s entrance into science programs, particularly engineering and medicine. She was an inspirational role model and mentor to countless young women, including Member of Parliament Pauline Jewett.
Anxious to help scholars in Europe who’d been displaced after the wars, Dr. Vibert Douglas joined the International Federation of University Women. She served as president from 1947 to 1950. She was also president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (the first woman to hold the position) and attended more conferences of the International Astronomical Union than any other Canadian astronomer. A widely published scientist, she wrote an acclaimed biography of the famous astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington, with whom she studied at Cambridge. At a time when there were few female astronomers in the world, she attained an international reputation.
An adventurous woman who explored many countries, Allie was fondly remembered by family and friends as unique and intrepid. She was passionate about her work and dedicated to ensuring women’s access to educational opportunities.
Allie received honorary doctorates from Queensland, Queen’s, and McGill Universities. Queen’s University created the Dr. A.Vibert Douglas Scholarship to commemorate her life and career — as a scholar, humanist, and champion of women in the sciences. The Canadian Federation of University Women recognized her as a twentieth-century heroine and set up a fellowship in her name. A crater on Venus and an asteroid were also named after the acclaimed astrophysicist.
Quote:
“Why are women not equally accepted at Queen’s?”[4]
Mary Two-Axe Early.
Courtesy of Rosemary Two Rivers
Set My Sisters Free
Mary Two-Axe Early[1]
1911–1996
Her relentless crusade for equal rights for Aboriginal women improved thousands of lives.
When Mary Two-Axe Early’s friend died of a heart attack in 1966, it was a case of death by discrimination. Her friend had been forced to leave the Kahnawake Reserve and sell her house because she’d lost her Native status. Mary knew that the stress of the situation was behind her death. Mary channelled her anger into a crusade to regain equal rights for Aboriginal women who’d lost their Indian status after marrying non-Natives.
Born on the Kahnawake Reserve in Quebec in 1911, Mary Two-Axe was the daughter of a Mohawk named Dominic Onenhariio Two-Axe and his wife, Juliet Smith, an Oneida teacher and registered nurse from Wisconsin. When the marriage dissolved, Mary lived with her mother in North Dakota until Juliet died during the Spanish flu epidemic. Mary grew up with her Mohawk grandparents in Kahnawake.
After moving to Brooklyn, New York, as a young woman, Mary married an Irish-American electrical engineer named Edward Early. Mary and their two children, Edward and Rosemary, spent every summer in Canada on the Kahnawake Reserve. Though she was no longer considered an Aboriginal under the law, Mary was young and in love and didn’t think much about her status.
Like all other Aboriginal women who married non-Natives, Mary had lost her status under the provisions of the Indian Act of 1876. Unlike Aboriginal men who married non-Natives, the women were denied all rights and benefits of Aboriginal status, such as health and education services, and the right to live, own property, vote in band elections, and be buried on reserves. After her friend’s death in 1966, and her public-awareness campaign about this gender discrimination, Mary’s anguish grew. She travelled across Canada, listening to stories from Native women who’d been exiled and robbed of their cultural identities. “They were no longer considered persons — it was as though they were dead,” she recalled.[2]
Mary was fifty-five when she became a political activist, writing letters to politicians and the press, giving presentations, and making submissions to the federal government. After consulting with women’s rights advocate Senator Thérèse Casgrain, she led a group of thirty Quebec Mohawk women to submit a brief to the Royal Commission on Women in Canada. Male First-Nations leaders, among the strongest opponents she faced, expressed their reservations about the high cost of extending rights to deregistered Aboriginal women and their offspring. Mary continued fighting for the birthrights that she and her sisters had lost.
After her husband died in 1969, Mary moved back to Canada to live in the log house she’d inherited from her grandmother. Band leaders reluctantly permitted her to live on the reserve, but when she had to turn ownership over to her daughter (who had married a Mohawk man), Mary became “a guest in her own house.”[3] The Kahnawake band council was still displeased with the arrangement and, in 1975, announced plans to evict Mary.
The 1970 report from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada recommended that some sections of the Indian Act be repealed to ensure that Aboriginal women and men had equal rights and privileges. In 1975, Mary brought national and international media attention to the discrimination of Aboriginal women after sharing news of her eviction notice at the International Women’s Year conference in Mexico.
With Quebec premier René Lévesque’s support, Mary pleaded her case to reluctant ministers at the 1983 constitutional conference. When the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms took effect in 1985, the government of Canada passed Bill C-31, which restored Aboriginal status and rights to the many First Nations women who had married non-Indians, as well as to their children. The change in legislation made about 16,000 women and 46,000 descendants eligible for status.
Mary Two-Axe Early played a major role in the revision of the Indian Act. On July 5, 1985, Mary became the first woman to regain her Aboriginal status at a special ceremony in Toronto. David Crombie, minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, presented the seventy-three-year-old lady with a document recognizing her achievement: “I could find no greater tribute to your long years of work than to let history record that you are the first person to have their rights restored under the new legislation.”[4]
The battle was not over and Mary continued to fight. Some bands refused to accept Aboriginal women who had regained their status. Mary spoke out in 1993 when she testified before the Federal Court of Canada after some powerful First Nations g
roups challenged the right of the federal government to decide on band membership. At eighty-three, the tenacious activist helped win another legislative victory.
Mary lived in Kahnawake until her death. As journalist Janice Kennedy observed in 1991, “Heroism lives in improbable places. Sometimes it settles modestly at the end of a quiet road, in a wooden frame house painted blue.”[5]
Mary Two-Axe Early is remembered as an inspirational leader. She received considerable recognition for her achievements, including the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, the Order of Quebec, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree from York University. The heroic modern-day warrior was buried on the Mohawk reserve where she was born. It was her final victory.[6]
Quote:
“Please search your hearts and minds, follow the dictates of your conscience, set my sisters free.”[7]
Portrait of Sarah Emma Edmonds, as depicted in her book.
Just Call Me Franklin
Sarah Emma Edmonds
1841–1898
A fearless Canadian soldier, spy, and nurse, she survived some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
A visiting peddler gave young Emma Edmonds a book about a female pirate captain called Fanny Campbell, a brave, swashbuckling heroine who shot panthers and rode wild horses. Told that she was so courageous and noble that she “shouldst have been a man,”[1] tomboy Fanny cut her hair, dressed as a man, and hit the road. Enthralled by the book and inspired by Fanny’s exploits, Emma would follow a similar path.
100 More Canadian Heroines Page 11
