100 More Canadian Heroines

by Merna Forster

  By the fall of that year, May Irwin had landed a spot in Tony Pastor’s New York Music Hall. She performed in his vaudeville and burlesque company for six years. After joining Augustin Daly’s stock company in 1883, she made her first dramatic appearance in the play Girls and Boys. While employed by Daly, she sailed in 1884 for London, England, where she debuted in Dollars and Sense and performed at Toole’s Theatre for several seasons. By this time the young woman was busy working and caring for her two toddlers; she had married Frederick Keller, a theatre employee, when she was sixteen and they had started a family the following year.

  May often played widows in the burlesques, plays, and musical revues that made her famous. At twenty-five she became a widow herself, when her older husband died of tuberculosis in 1886. The ever-jovial single mother continued to smile through her tears and support her sons as an actress and vaudevillian. Her gift was farce-comedy and audiences loved the buxom, blue-eyed blonde who helped make the 1890s gay and full-figured women fashionable. As one of her contemporaries wrote, “Miss Irwin is a famous fun-maker; of jolly, rotund figure, and with a face that reflects the gaiety of nations, she is the personification of humour and careless mirth, a female Falstaff … refined and recast in a nineteenth-century mould.”[3]

  Beginning in 1887, May toured with Howard Athenaeum’s vaudeville troupe, then switched to a notable farce-comedy company called the City Directory. She returned to New York to do some burlesque and then legitimate stage work. After years of developing her skills, May became a Broadway star in 1895, performing a lead role in the hit of the season, The Widow Jones. The comic songstress was a great success and a series of farce-comedies followed. One of the most popular entertainers of her time, she gave her last performance on Broadway in 1922.

  When Thomas Edison was experimenting with moving pictures, he convinced May and her co-star John C. Rice to re-create their kissing scene from The Widow Jones for film. The Kiss, a mere twenty-two-second segment, was the first cinematic kiss — scandalizing preachers and other guardians of morality. It was also the first movie shown in Canada. May appeared in another silent film, Mrs. Black Is Back, in 1914.

  May was one of the pioneering women in comedy, when men dominated the profession and many people doubted that women had a sense of humour. She gave a command stand-up comedy performance for American President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War and he jokingly appointed her the Secretary of Laughter. During this time, she also marched to support the suffragists’ campaign.[4]

  Poster for The Widow Jones.

  Strobridge Lith. Co., ca. 1895

  May wrote lyrics for some of her songs and had a talent for picking out winners. She paid aspiring composer Irving Berlin $1,000 for rights to one of his songs. The famous tune “After the Ball” was produced after she heard a guitar player picking out the music and encouraged him to complete it and add lyrics. May introduced ragtime songs on Broadway, though she never appeared in blackface. Her songs sold well as sheet music and she recorded a few on the Victor and Berliner labels.

  One of the top-paid female actresses and singers of her time, May earned as much as $2,500 a week by the age of twenty-five and daringly established her own theatre company in 1897. She was a shrewd investor and made more than a million dollars (the equivalent of $20 million today) by selling her extensive Manhattan holdings.

  May retired to her private island, Irwin Isle in the Thousand Islands, where she lived happily with her second husband, Kurt Eisenfeldt. She built a pink-granite mansion (with a stained glass window featuring May as the Statue of Liberty), and raised cattle, chickens, and racehorses. May frequently entertained on her island; she played softball with Babe Ruth, listened to Irving Berlin play the piano, and passed on the now-famous recipe for Thousand Island Dressing to the owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. A renowned cook, she also published a popular cookbook that included poems and jokes.

  May died in 1938, donating much of her wealth to theatrical charities.[5] The Whitby Central Library proudly developed the May Irwin Collection as a tribute to the girl who went from rags to riches.

  Quote:

  “It is hard enough being penniless in places like New York or Camden, New Jersey, but nothing to jingle in Whitby, Ontario, is something terrible. Being penniless, my sister, Flo, and I were what you might call in reduced circumstances.”[6]

  Eliza Jones.

  Types of Canadian Women, 1903

  Making Bitter Butter Better

  Eliza M. Jones

  1838–1903

  A leader in scientific agriculture, she was the best known dairywoman in North America.

  Even a large basket couldn’t hold all the medals Eliza Jones won for her purebred Jersey cattle, let alone the silver cups and services from competitions in the United States.[1] The prominent dairywoman from Brockville, Ontario, earned international acclaim for her herd and bestselling butter. She was one of the most successful stock-raisers and horse breeders on the continent.

  Born in Maitland, Ontario, in 1838, Eliza Maria Harvey was educated in Scotland and Montreal. She cared for her five siblings after her mother’s death and helped on the family farm. A great animal lover, she was thrilled when Chilion Jones gave her a black horse as an engagement gift. The couple wed in 1859. When the Prince of Wales laid a cornerstone for Ottawa’s first Parliament Buildings, designed by Chilion Jones’s firm Fuller & Jones, the new bride rode horseback in the welcome procession.

  The young couple settled in Brockville, where John A. Macdonald would join them for a supper whenever he was in town. During the 1860s, Eliza gave birth to four of their seven children and began a dairy farm. Though the Joneses only owned a small piece of property, she also rented two farms. Her income became a vital source of money for the family.[2]

  She purchased an outstanding purebred Jersey from the Royal Herd at Windsor and eventually built a large herd. Her model farm incorporated gas lights, steam-powered equipment, sanitary conditions, and carefully rationed feed that maximized milk production. She managed every aspect of the operation, and hired three male labourers to assist her. Every morning, after rising at 6:00 a.m., eating breakfast, and reviewing her accounts, Eliza donned her cap and inspected the barns and stables.

  At the time, most of the butter produced by small farms in Ontario was poor-quality and best-suited for axle grease; Eliza experimented until she developed the best butter on the market. She sold it at a premium price to prestigious clients in Canada and the United States, including Ottawa’s Rideau Club and the CPR’s dining cars. By the 1890s, she was shipping more than 7,000 pounds of butter a year. In 1893, the now-famous farmer served as a judge of butter for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

  Beginning in the 1880s, Eliza began showing her purebred cattle at fairs and exhibitions in Ontario, Quebec, and New York state. She won numerous awards and sold her prize-winning stock throughout North America. Eliza was an active member of the Canadian Jersey Cattle Breeders’ Association and wrote for agricultural publications such as the Farmer’s Advocate. After her rented farmland was sold in 1896, she kept half her herd and began diverting her energy to raising racehorses and carriage horses and writing short stories.

  Unable to respond to the flood of letters from farmers seeking her advice, Eliza wrote Dairying for Profit; or, The Poor Man’s Cow, first published in 1892. It became an instant bestseller and was acclaimed by the Farmer’s Advocate as the “best book ever written.”[3] The Ontario Department of Agriculture purchased 50,000 copies.

  Eliza was an accomplished farmer, breeder, butter producer, and writer with widespread recognition. Her son, F.P. Jones, established the Eliza M. Jones Award at McGill University in her honour. Her descendants continue to demonstrate their love of animals as owners of Brockville’s Franklands Farm, which supports the Canadian Equestrian Team. Granddaughter Prudence Heward (also featured in this book) became a gifted painter.

  Quote:

  “This little book is dedicated — to m
y sisters in toil, the tired and over-tasked women, who are wearing their lives away in work which has little hope and less profit.”[4]

  Dr. Kelsey in a laboratory with Dr. E.M.K. Geiling, late 1930s.

  History Office, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

  Thalidomide Heroine

  Frances Oldham Kelsey

  born 1914

  Defying a powerful drug company, she prevented thousands of babies from being born severely deformed.

  From the time she was a little girl on Vancouver Island, Frances Kathleen Oldham knew she wanted to be a scientist. “To this day, I do not know if my name had been Elizabeth or Mary Jane, whether I would have had that first big step up,”[1] she mused. Read on to hear the story of mistaken identity.

  Frances was born in 1914 on a farm at Cobble Hill, British Columbia. Her mother encouraged her to go to college. Frances attended St. Margaret’s School in Victoria before continuing at Victoria College in Craigdarroch Castle. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in science from McGill University in 1934, and her master’s the following year.

  The young graduate was thrilled to be accepted to a fellowship under the renowned pharmacology researcher E.M.K. Geiling at the University of Chicago, but noticed that her acceptance letter was addressed to “Mr. Oldham.” Geiling had assumed the applicant was male because of her name. Frances was concerned that “when a woman took a job in those days, she was made to feel as if she was depriving a man of the ability to support his wife and child.”[2]

  Her professor at McGill urged her to accept the job, despite the gender confusion; Frances signed the offer (and added “Miss” in brackets before her name). Professor Geiling was appalled when he discovered that he’d hired a woman, but Frances soon proved her worth as she worked on synthetic cures for malaria.

  Frances earned her Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Chicago in 1938 and subsequently taught there. After marrying fellow faculty member Dr. Fremont Ellis Kelsey, she earned her medical degree and gave birth to two daughters. In 1960, the Kelseys moved to Washington, D.C., following her stints teaching pharmacology and practising medicine at the University of South Dakota. In Washington, she began her distinguished career with the Food and Drug Administration.

  Dr. Kelsey’s first assignment for the FDA was supposed to be a straightforward review of a harmless sleeping pill that was already being used around the world. Pregnant women were also taking the drug to relieve morning sickness. From her malaria research, she knew that drugs could pass through the placenta from a mother to her unborn child. Her concerns about this, and other safety issues, led her to demand further testing of the drug being marketed as Kevadon, now know as thalidomide.

  Despite intense pressure from the drug company, eager to get Kevadon distributed throughout America, Dr. Kelsey stood firm. She was worried about possible dangerous side effects in patients who used it repeatedly. Her refusal to approve the drug sparked a two-year battle with manufacturer William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati. The FDA ended up banning thalidomide in the United States.

  Her worst fears about thalidomide were confirmed by reports that some users experienced numbness in their toes and fingers. Cases emerged in the United Kingdom and Germany of pregnant mothers who gave birth to babies with severe birth defects after taking the drug. In Canada, about 115 such infants were born before the abnormalities were linked to thalidomide. It’s estimated that more than 100,000 deformed babies were born in forty-six countries.[3] Because Dr. Kelsey kept the harmful drug out of America, she prevented thousands of babies from being born without arms or legs, or with other severe birth defects.

  Dr. Kelsey receiving the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service from President John F. Kennedy, 1962.

  History Office, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

  A front page story in The Washington Post on July 15, 1962 — “Heroine of FDS Keeps Bad Drug Off of Market” — thrust Dr. Kelsey into the limelight. President John F. Kennedy presented her with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest honour available to a civilian. President Kennedy noted that “her exceptional judgement in evaluating a new drug for safety for human use has prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities in the United States. Through high ability and steadfast confidence in her professional decision she has made an outstanding contribution to the protection of the health of the American people.”[4]

  Dr. Kelsey continued to work for the FDA, helping develop and enforce tough drug regulations that ensured patient protection. Though she retired when she turned ninety, she continues to be recognized as a role model in public health and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in the United States.

  In September 2010, Dr. Kelsey became the first recipient of the FDA’s first Kelsey Award, named in recognition of her “excellence and courage in protecting public health.” As the New York Times noted in announcing the latest honour, “though her story is nearly forgotten, she was once America’s most admired civil servant — celebrated for her dual role in saving thousands of newborns from the perils of the drug thalidomide and in serving as midwife to modern pharmaceutical regulation.”[5]

  Here in Canada, students at Frances Kelsey Secondary School in Cobble Hill, British Columbia, are proud of the woman who is its namesake. Dr. Kelsey attended the school’s groundbreaking ceremony in 1994. Canadians still like to claim her as one of their own.[6] The Canadian-born heroine “helped write the rules that now govern nearly every clinical trial in the industrialized world.”[7]

  Quote:

  “They gave it [the review of Kevadon] to me because they thought it would be an easy one to start on. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that easy.”[8]

  The Newfoundland Planter

  Lady Sara Kirke

  circa 1611–1683

  The first female entrepreneur in English Canada, she ran the most successful plantation in Newfoundland.

  For close to three decades, Lady Sara Kirke was a planter who operated the Poole Plantation on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. Plantations in seventeenth-century Newfoundland were waterfront properties for fishing operations. And a planter was a European settler who owned boats and plantations. Lady Sara was a fish merchant — a wealthy one.

  Sara Andrews came from Middlesex, England. In 1630, at nineteen, the daughter of Sir Joseph Andrews married thirty-three-year-old Dieppe-born Englishman David Kirke. The eldest son of a family of prosperous wine merchants, he was also an adventurer, trader, and colonizer. Under commission from Charles I, he’d led an expedition that resulted in the conquest of the French in Quebec in 1629, and the capture of his onetime hunting buddy, Samuel de Champlain. Kirke was knighted in 1633, and Sara became Lady Kirke.

  When Lady Kirke was twenty-seven, she arrived in Newfoundland with Sir David, their children, and about thirty servants. Sir David Kirke became the first governor of Newfoundland, brought over about

  Letter written by Lady Kirke.

  Courtesy of the Colony of Avalon Foundation, Ferryland, Newfoundland. Image modified by Wendy Churchill, 1999. Text of letter transcribed and edited by Dr. P.E. Pope, Archaeology Unit, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland. Original letter housed in the British Library (Egerton ms 2395, 258 MHA 16-C-1-041), London, England.

  100 colonists, built forts, and shrewdly developed a highly lucrative business. This included trading salt-dried fish for wine and fruit in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and selling these for a significant profit in British and Dutch ports. Sir David was a big fish in a very big pond.[1] As a royalist, he supported Charles I in the English Civil War. After the Puritan government took control and Charles lost his head, Sir David was recalled to England to face tax-evasion charges. The recall was also an attempt to ensure that he wouldn’t launch a counter-revolution from Newfoundland. He died in prison in 1654.

  During the years that her husband had been away on his many overseas adventures, during the war, and through t
he legal wrangling, Lady Sara had already superintended the family business in Newfoundland and abroad. A strong and resourceful woman, Lady Sara’s literacy helped her run the business.

  After her husband died, Lady Sara could have returned to England. She also might have considered remarrying in Newfoundland, but given her social standing and the small population, the odds of finding a suitable match on the island weren’t good. Lady Sara never remarried, and decided to remain on the Avalon Peninsula and continue managing the Poole Plantation.

  The business prospered under Lady Kirke’s leadership, despite the many obstacles she faced. After Sir David died, Sara still had to deal with a debt of £60,000 and a challenge from the heirs of Ferryland’s first owner, Lord Baltimore. In 1660, she wrote an eloquent letter to King Charles II, pleading for her husband’s powers and titles to be transferred to her oldest son, George. Her petition wasn’t granted. Lady Sara ignored the second Lord Baltimore’s successful claim to her plantation, even though the threat of eviction remained. She also faced the threat of attacks on her business from England’s enemies. In 1673, Ferryland was bombarded by a Dutch squadron and the plantation was plundered and much of it burned. The Kirkes rebuilt.

  Lady Sara managed Poole Plantation until she retired in 1679. She was the most prosperous fish merchant on the English shore and the largest planter in all of Newfoundland.[2] Lady Sara’s sons and her sister supported her, but she ran the operation independently.