A Winnipeg teacher and historian is hoping Manitoba Co-operator readers will help her find the names of pioneer women who once served as school trustees.
“You can’t find the records easily,” says Linda McDowell, who took up the project because she’s interested in how women in Manitoba became involved with politics.
McDowell is also a member of the Nellie McClung Foundation, which this month is gearing up to host a play re-enacting the ‘mock Parliament’ McClung and her peers held 100 years ago as they pushed for women’s right to vote.
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Even though women didn’t gain that right until 1916, they were permitted to serve as trustees from 1890, said McDowell. So she’s combing archives and rural history books to see if she can find references.
There’s not one mention of a female trustee before 1915. She tracked down a few in the years shortly after that. Two women served as school trustees in her own tiny hometown of Manson, near the Saskatchewan border, said McDowell. The year was 1921. One was a Jean Asselstine (nee Potter) and the other listed only as ‘Mrs.’ Fisher.
“To have two that early on is interesting,” she said. “It was a very small community.”
McDowell’s search is doubly challenging in that it’s not just hard to find records of trustees’ names before 1950, but the lists she can find often list just initials for the first names. You can’t tell if they were men or women.
“Or what you find is they may list all the teachers but they don’t list the trustees,” she said.
Therefore, McDowell’s decided to take a different tact with her research. Would readers of Manitoba Co-operator recall a female family member who was school trustee in those early decades? She wants to hear from them.
“It would help me a lot if someone could remember if their grandmother or their aunt had been one,” she said. “I’d like to get some of their stories. I’d like to know how they made a difference as trustees, or if it was difficult for them to be trustees. I’d like to know if they went on to do something else.”
These early trustees’ stories would help shed light on women who trail blazed into public office, as this was their first opportunity to officially serve. They have an important story to tell, she said.
“I’d like us to remember them,” she said. “It was at a very low level of government if you will, but that’s where women got their start.”
Or did they? Until she’s done more research, it’s impossible to say whether any number of women took up the opportunity. If not, why not, is McDowell’s other question.
At some point in time, many women took up the opportunity and now actually outnumber men as serving trustees today. According to the Manitoba Association of School Trustees there are now more women (162) than men (149) on provincial school boards.
The same can’t be said for serving municipal leaders. She may delve into the history of that next, said McDowell. “That’s my next thought, that I should go looking at that,” she said.
Nearly a third (31 per cent) of all rural municipalities are governed only by men in 2015 and just 15 per cent of all councillors are female.
Women make up just a scant two per cent of all present-day reeves and mayors.
October is Women’s History Month, declared to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It’s marked in October in Canada to coincide with the date of October 18, 1929 when a decision of the highest court in the country finally clarified that women were “qualified persons” under the British North American Act.
Readers who may have a name of an early-serving rural trustee to pass along can contact:
Linda McDowell
260 Carpathia Road
Winnipeg, Man.
R3N 1S9
or email: [email protected]
