Girl power: a feminist timeline of success
A look at women from past to present who made waves for feminism in Canada.
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” — Maya Angelou
The road to success is long, twisted and arduous, especially for marginalized groups. For centuries, women have been on the receiving end of oppression, hate, abuse and dehumanization. However, there have been influential female icons who not only fought for their own goals but for other women as well, and their hardships and succession should not go unnoticed.
In chronological order, here are Canadian women who have paved the way for feminism.
1860: Nahnebahwequay (Catherine Sutton)
Nahnebahwequay was a First Nations Ojibwa woman who became famous in the mid-19th century when she fought against colonial policies that stripped the First Nations of their land. She was inspired to become an advocate at a young age when she went on a missionary trip to England with Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby), who petitioned the Crown for Indigenous land rights. While Jones’ petition failed, Nahnebahwequay was influenced to follow in his footsteps.
In the late 1850s, she became involved in a land dispute between the Indian Department and Anishinaabe at Nawash. As a result of her involvement, community leaders elected to have Nahnebahwequay represent them in their case before Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria did allow her to own the land, but the Canadian government never honoured the Queen’s approval. Nevertheless, Nahnebahwequay never stopped fighting for Indigenous peoples’ rights to land. A few years later, the Indian Department eventually permitted her family to purchase the land, but only in the name of William Sutton, her white husband.
1893: Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was an African American writer, teacher, lawyer, and activist whose family participated in the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape. At age 10, she moved to Pennsylvania where she got an education in teaching. In helping to free slaves, the Shadd family put their lives in danger as the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act made it legal to force freed slaves, and anyone who helped them escape in the first place, back into slavery.
Cary moved to Ontario and opened a desegregated school for children where she wrote and lectured about the importance of freedom while living in Canada. Her works turned her into the first Black female newspaper editor in North American history with her antislavery paper, The Provincial Freeman.
Cary went to Harvard Law School to become a lawyer while still working as a teacher and wrote for an African American newspaper called The New National Era during these times. She also founded the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association, joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, and advocated for the 14th and 15th Amendments at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
1950: Kathleen “Kay” Livingstone
Kathleen “Kay” Livingstone was a Canadian activist who, in 1973, helped create the first National Black Women’s Congress, a national forum that addressed the concerns and issues Black women faced during those times. Livingstone also co-founded the Canadian Negro Women’s Association. She served as the Association’s first president from 1951 to 1953.
She was also involved with the United Nations Association (Toronto Branch), the Women’s Auxiliary, the local YWCA Foreign Affairs Committee, the National Black Coalition of Canada, the Canadian Council of Churches, the Legal Aid Society, and Heritage Ontario.
1993: Maryka Omatsu
Maryka Omatsu is a Japanese judge who first started out as a human and environmental rights lawyer in the 1970s. Omatsu’s novel, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience, discusses her journey as an active member of the Japanese redress movement.
She made Canadian history in 1993, being the first woman of East Asian descent to be appointed as a judge by the Ontario Court of Justice. Omatsu has spent many years teaching and lecturing about law in Canada and abroad, as well as working for all levels of government. She even chaired the Ontario Human Rights Appeals’ Tribunals.
Omatsu made a short film, Swimming Upstream, in 2018 that won a Making a Difference Award (MADA) at the 2019 Toronto Community Film Festival.
Omatsu is a co-founder of the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers and the first Canadian to be awarded the American National Asian Pacific Bar Association’s Trailblazer in 2015.
2021: Phyllis Webstad
Phyllis Webstad is a Northern Secwepemc (Shuswap) author, activist, ambassador, and residential school survivor. She is the one who instated the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.
In April 2013, Webstad’s journey as an activist began during St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School Commemoration Project at Williams Lake. Here, she told her personal story of surviving a residential school. Her story related to the orange shirt she wore in remembrance of those days. It quickly gained traction on social media, and more survivors came forward with their stories to connect and sympathize.
All of this snowballed into the creation of Orange Shirt Day, held every Sept. 30, to educate people about residential schools and to honour the experiences and lives of Indigenous children. Sept. 30 is said to be the day when most Indigenous children were taken from their homes to be put in residential schooling.
In 2021, Canada officially made Orange Shirt Day a statutory holiday, with the tagline “Every Child Matters” to establish the meaning behind the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Webstad has received many accolades for her work, including the 2017 Community Impact Award from Thompson Rivers University, where she is recognized as a distinguished alumnus, the First Nations Communities Read Award for Best Indigenous Literature for her book Beyond The Orange Shirt Story in September 2021 and the 2021 Doris Anderson Woman of the Year award. In January 2022, Webstad was awarded the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Cross in the civil division, given to Canadians whose accomplishments have brought honour to Canada.
Women have been key drivers of historical and social justice movements. This timeline, while short, shows the bravery and strength of these women as they reach their goals. Their names and accomplishments shall live on forever in Canadian feminist history.