100 More Canadian Heroines

by Merna Forster

  Her name was Charlotte Small, born in 1785 at Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan. Her father, Patrick Small, was a senior partner in the North West Company before he retired to England in 1791, leaving behind his Native “country wife” and their three young children.

  Though Charlotte’s father left when she was just six, she benefited from the legacy of his last name. Charlotte’s life was soon entwined with fur trader, explorer, and surveyor David Thompson, a poor boy who became one of the greatest geographers in North America.

  “This day married Charlotte Small,”[2] Thompson wrote on June 10, 1799. In a simple ceremony attended by her mother and sister, thirteen-year-old Charlotte wed David Thompson, twenty-nine, at Île-à-la-Crosse. In the following years the couple journeyed across the continent as he explored and mapped for the North West Company by horseback, birchbark canoe, and on foot. Their children would frequently be lulled to sleep by the song of canoe paddles dipping into the waters of Canada’s lakes and rivers. During the early years of their marriage, Charlotte travelled at least 20,000 kilometres,[3] from the headwaters of the Columbia River in the West to Montreal. She covered at least three and a half times more ground than the famous American explorers Lewis and Clark.

  “My lovely Wife is of the blood of these people, speaking their language, and well educated in the English language; which gives me great advantage,”[4] wrote Thompson. Charlotte’s knowledge, skills, and experience living on the land helped her husband immeasurably. She helped him communicate and maintain relationships with Natives. Charlotte also played a pivotal role in obtaining food and shelter and making clothing and equipment.

  Thompson retired in 1812, moving east to Rupert’s Land with Charlotte and their five children. They had eight more children there, all recorded in the family Bible.

  David and Charlotte had their children baptized in the St. Gabriel Street Church in Montreal. The couple also formally wed there, as David demonstrated his devotion to the love of his life. Far from the woods and streams of her youth, Charlotte lived the next forty-five years in what was a strange new world. From the 1820s on, the couple faced poverty as David documented his travels and completed maps of what would become Canada and the United States.

  No picture of Charlotte exists, just testimony from her grandson that she was about five feet tall, wiry, and active, with black eyes and almost copper-coloured skin. She left no written records of her thoughts and dreams. Her husband’s few personal remarks in his writings and the family Bible reveal his sensitivity, yet he shared little about the family.

  Charlotte and David spent their last days living with daughter Eliza and her family near Montreal. The couple spent many evenings outside watching the stars, perhaps remembering their many starlit nights camped in the wilderness. The modest woman who explored North America extensively died just a few months after her companion of fifty-eight years. She was buried with him in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.

  Her gravestone reads: “Charlotte Small Thompson, Beloved Wife of David Thompson, September 1, 1785–May 4, 1857. Woman of the Paddle Song.”[5]

  Colonel Elizabeth Laurie Smellie C.B.E., R.R.C., L.L.D.

  CWM 20000105-054, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, © Canadian War Museum

  The Colonel

  Elizabeth Smellie

  1884–1968

  She served in two world wars, built the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, and led the Victorian Order of Nurses for decades.

  In 1944, nurse Elizabeth Smellie became the first female to be ranked colonel in the Canadian Army — a milestone for women in Canada.[1] Colonel Smellie was an impressive leader, courageous and committed to her country and the nursing profession. She was a model of self-sacrifice, recognized as an energetic and efficient administrator.

  So how did Beth Smellie of Port Arthur become a colonel? Despite her father’s objections, she pursued a nursing career and graduated from the internationally recognized John Hopkins Training School for Nurses in Baltimore. After the outbreak of the First World War, Elizabeth enlisted in the Canadian Army Nursing Service in January 1915 and soon set sail for Europe.

  Nursing Sister Smellie served in both England and France. In addition to caring for the sick and wounded, she did transport duty. She was mentioned in dispatches in 1916 and in 1917. King George V awarded her the Royal Red Cross for exceptional service in military nursing. By the end of the war, she’d become the assistant to the army’s matron-in-chief, Edith C. Rayside. Elizabeth continued studying at Simmons College in Boston, where she completed the Public Health Nursing Course. Back in Canada, she became the assistant director of the School for Graduate Nurses at McGill University.

  Elizabeth was later appointed superintendent of the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) in Canada, a position she held from 1923 to 1947, except for four years during the Second World War. Under her leadership the VON expanded, becoming a strong national organization providing home-nursing services across the country. She received the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) from King George V in 1934. In 1938, she was awarded the Mary Agnes Snively Medal for outstanding leadership in nursing.

  Elizabeth worked with the World Health Organization.[2] The Rockefeller Foundation also sought her expertise, sending her on a twelve-country tour to study maternal welfare. She also became a fellow, and later the first vice-president, of the American Public Health Association.

  Elizabeth rejoined the army in the Second World War. Named matron-in-chief of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, she served from 1940 to 1944. She was also called up to organize and administer the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC), which was created in 1941 in response to the demands of women who wanted to support the armed forces in an official capacity. The following year military authorities finally agreed to integrate the organization into the Canadian Army. Demonstrating her superior leadership skills during the Second World War, Elizabeth was promoted to colonel in 1944.

  Under the management of Colonel Smellie (and then Joan Kennedy), CWAC proved to be what military historian C.P. Stacey has called “a triumphantly successful experiment.”[3] During a five-year period, more than 20,000 Canadian women served in CWAC, showing the possibilities for integrating women in the Canadian military.[4]

  Some of Colonel Smellie’s medals.

  CWM 20000105-049a, © Canadian War Museum

  Colonel Smellie returned to the VON after the war, retiring in 1947. She was highly respected by her colleagues, who noted her charming personality and ability to work well with everyone. In 1960, Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery presented her with the Red Chevron award for her contributions to military nursing. Along with humanitarian Pauline Vanier, Elizabeth is featured on a stamp issued by Canada Post in 2000. The University of Western Ontario gave this Canadian heroine an honorary doctorate of law, and the government of Ontario erected a historical plaque in her hometown of Thunder Bay.

  Quote:

  “… to nurse, the hands cannot be divided from the head and the heart.”[5]

  Lois Smith in Les Sylphides, November 1951.

  Photo by Gene Draper. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives.

  Bringing Ballet to Canada

  Lois Smith

  1929–2011

  Canada’s first prima ballerina entranced audiences — and inspired a new generation of dancers.

  When Lois Smith died on January 22, 2011, in Sechelt, British Columbia, newspapers across the country covered her passing. Though Lois was far from a household name, according to dance critic Max Wyman, “She gave ballet to the country.… Not a bad legacy, you know.”[1]

  Born in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby in 1929, Lois was a poor kid who never dreamed of dancing until a neighbour suggested she try ballet. The girl was incredibly agile because her father had been teaching her gymnastics. But her parents couldn’t afford ballet lessons. Her older brother Bill, who worked at a shoe factory, offered to pay for classes. At ten, Lois began taking classes at the Brit
ish Columbia School of Dancing in Vancouver. Despite her teachers’ encouragement, she had to drop out in less then a year when Bill lost his job.[2]

  Family finances improved when Lois was fifteen. She eagerly took lessons with the Ballet Russe–trained Rosemary Deveson, who had a studio on top of the stately Georgia Hotel. Rosemary encouraged her to train seriously, so Lois dropped out of Templeton High School and paid for her daily lessons by demonstrating for other classes. At seventeen she landed a job with Theatre Under the Stars, performing in summer musical presentations in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for five years. “We were paid almost nothing,” Lois remembered. “Fifteen dollars a week to start.”[3]

  Since there were few opportunities in Canada for talented and ambitious young dancers, Lois supplemented her summer work by performing with the Civic Light Opera, an American group that put on musicals in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She also danced in Song of Norway and Oklahoma! with an American touring company. Lois fell in love with a handsome dancer from Winnipeg, David Adams, who joined her as one of the two leading dancers in Oklahoma! They married in 1949.

  When Celia Franca created a national and professional ballet company in Toronto, she invited David Adams, with whom she had danced in London, to join the troop. She agreed to hire Lois based on David’s recommendation and a photograph. Lois was a bit tall for a ballet dancer, lacked extensive training, and had never danced in a professional ballet company. But Celia gambled on her potential: “with her beautiful legs and feet, natural classical line, and zeal she was destined to become our first principal ballerina.”[4]

  From the first exhibition performance in 1951 of the company that become the internationally acclaimed National Ballet of Canada, Lois Smith and David Adams were unofficially presented as the star dancers. They lived up to the great expectations. With intensive training from Celia Franca, Lois worked incredibly hard to develop technical skills such as speed, agility, and attack to expand her naturally expressive abilities and lyrical quality. She became Canada’s first and foremost ballerina and a major audience draw.

  During the difficult first years of the National Ballet, Lois faced a host of challenges. She gave birth to her only child, Janine, shortly before being invited to join the company. David’s parents stepped in to care for the baby. The company was struggling to survive, so Lois and David literally laboured for love rather than money. During their first winter in Toronto, the young couple lived rent-free with other dancers in a large house, burning newspapers for heat.

  Lois practised for long hours in makeshift studios, including drafty ramshackle rooms above a feed and grain store. The dancers never practised with the orchestra or with sets and lighting. During tours in Canada and the United States — scheduled between late fall and early spring — the company was often caught in blizzards. On a western tour in 1952, they gave a performance in Calgary after stepping off the train they’d been on for three days and two nights. When Lois danced outdoors at the Canadian National Exhibition grandstand show in Toronto that year, she could hardly keep her balance in a vicious wind and rain storm.

  Everyone danced through the difficulties, dedicated to building a thriving national ballet company. Because there was no free medical care, the dancer’s injuries sometimes didn’t receive the best medical attention. Lois once had to dance with a cracked rib; there was no understudy. She was forced to quit the National Ballet in 1969 due to a knee injury; David had already left to dance in England in 1964, resulting in the end of the marriage.

  Lois played a variety of roles during her eighteen years with the National Ballet. She delighted audiences with her leading roles in Giselle, La Sylphide, Coppelia, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. A versatile performer, Lois also appeared on the television show The Wayne & Schuster Hour in 1963 in a sketch called The Swan Lake Murder Case.

  Elegant and extremely talented, “she defined Canadian ballet for a long, long time,”[5] Max Wyman noted. Lois was idolized by aspiring ballet dancers like prima ballerina Karen Kain, for whom Lois “was a continuous source of inspiration” and “paved the way for all of us.”[6]

  The beloved ballerina established the Lois Smith Dance School in Toronto. It was eventually incorporated into the Performing Arts Program at George Brown College for which she was the chairman. She also choreographed productions for CBC Television, the Winnipeg Opera Company, and the Canadian Opera Company. In 1988, she moved to the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, where she created another dance school and continued to perform occasionally.

  Lois Smith received the Order of Canada in 1998 for her contribution to Canadian dance. Fans remember her as “the Canadian ballerina.”[7]

  Lois Smith and Earl Kraul in Swan Lake, 1967.

  Photo by Ken Bell. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives.[7a]

  Quote:

  “What makes a prima ballerina? It is hard to say. I know I was fortunate to have the right kind of body for ballet, but I knew I had to work, and work hard.”[8]

  Ethel Stark.

  Library and Archives Canada/Ethel Stark fonds/MUS 242 © William Notman & Son Ltd.

  The Conductor Who Built a Great Symphony Orchestra

  Ethel Stark

  born 1916

  She rebelled against sexism on the symphony stage and helped usher in podium feminism[1] by founding and conducting the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra.

  It was 1940 and women in Quebec had finally won the right to vote. But women were usually excluded from professional symphony orchestras and struggled to earn respect as classical musicians. Ethel Stark dared to start an all-woman orchestra in Montreal and mount the podium as conductor. “We were a strong current in the rising tide that would sweep away the barriers to women musicians,” she remembered.[2]

  A Montreal native, Ethel was a brilliant violinist, a fine pianist, and an inspirational teacher. She was the first Canadian to win a fellowship at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and was the only woman to sign up for Artur Rodzinski and Fritz Reiner’s conducting classes. In 1934, while playing with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, she was the first Canadian woman soloist on a program broadcast across the United States. She founded the New York Women’s Chamber Orchestra in 1938.

  Ethel started the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra (MWSO) after an amateur violinist named Madge Bowen asked her to direct some female string players. Ethel said she was only interested in working with a full orchestra, so Madge recruited more women. Since female musicians were generally considered suited for piano or strings, only a couple of the young women who signed up could play the flute; none could play wind or brass. Some were keen to learn new instruments, so the work began.

  The women, most of them workers with little spare money, overcame many hurdles with the help of Montrealers who donated old instruments, loaned rehearsal space, and helped teach them. After scrounging to repair instruments and buy chairs, the musicians practised in basements, lofts, and churches. Nobody got paid. Ethel poured her energy into moulding the women into an orchestra and demanded nothing but the best from them. “If she heard wrongdoings, she could roar like a lion,” one musician recalled.[3]

  With Ethel as conductor, the MWSO gave its first concert on July 29, 1940, in front of the Mount Royal Chalet. Thousands turned out to see Canada’s first all-female orchestra. One of the first of its kind in the world, the MWSO was composed of eighty women and performed for more than a quarter of a century. In 1947, they were proud to become the first Canadian orchestra to play at New Carnegie Hall — a performance lauded by New York critics. The MWSO also played in Toronto and London, but had to decline offers to perform in Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan due to lack of funds. After decades of surviving without regular financial support, the volunteer orchestra disbanded in 1960. But the company’s success helped women establish themselves in other orchestras.

  Ethel was the first Canadian woman to gain international renown as a conductor. She performed as a guest conductor in Canada, t
he United States, Israel, and Japan. She also founded the Ethel Stark Symphonietta (1954) and the Montreal Women’s Symphony Strings (1954–1968). Ethel appeared as violinist or conductor in at least 300 radio programs broadcast throughout North America and Europe.

  Ethel earned much of her living as a violin teacher. She taught at the Catholic University of America in Washington as well as at the Provincial Conservatory of Music in Montreal and Concordia University. She received many accolades for her accomplishments, including the Order of Canada, the Order of Quebec, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the Canada 125 Medal, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England, and an honorary doctorate of law from Concordia. Heartbroken by the theft of her cherished eighteenth-century violin in 1990, she never played again.

  “It is irreplaceable,” she said. “People just don’t realize that for 40 years, six to eight hours a day, seven days a week, that violin was under my chin. I gave it my heart and soul and it responded in kind.”[4]

  Ethel was a groundbreaker, opening doors for other female professional musicians and conductors. She raised the status of women in music by providing them with an opportunity to perform — and demonstrating herself that women could be great violinists and conductors. While Ethel didn’t experience overt discrimination during her career, sexism was more evident in the opportunities that never came: “Where were the people to say, ‘Let’s take her and send her on tour as a guest conductor?’ ”[5]