Chapter 1 Creating This Place: An Introduction Linda Cullum and Marilyn Porter Creating This Place: Women, Family and Class in St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1900-1950 addresses a set of core, but usually neglected, questions about the 20 th century formation of Newfoundland as a self-conscious national entity. 1 How might we understand gender relations in this formative period, in different class positions, different ethnicities and religious denominations, and in different family forms? What were the complex interactions and practices of these relations? How did ethnicity and/or religion also shape class and gender relations? In what ways were upper and middle class worlds in St. John’s constituted in and through the everyday work of women? How were those worlds part of creating Newfoundland as a society and culture in the 20 th century? In response to these questions, the authors in this collection look at the specific ways in which distinct and self- aware middle and upper classes in St. John’s constructed themselves, and were constructed, between 1900 and 1950, and 1
Transcript
Chapter 1
Creating This Place: An Introduction
Linda Cullum and Marilyn Porter
Creating This Place: Women, Family and Class in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
1900-1950 addresses a set of core, but usually neglected,
questions about the 20th century formation of Newfoundland as a
self-conscious national entity.1 How might we understand gender
relations in this formative period, in different class positions,
different ethnicities and religious denominations, and in
different family forms? What were the complex interactions and
practices of these relations? How did ethnicity and/or religion
also shape class and gender relations? In what ways were upper
and middle class worlds in St. John’s constituted in and through
the everyday work of women? How were those worlds part of
creating Newfoundland as a society and culture in the 20th
century? In response to these questions, the authors in this
collection look at the specific ways in which distinct and self-
aware middle and upper classes in St. John’s constructed
themselves, and were constructed, between 1900 and 1950, and
1
especially at the role that gender played in that construction.
The activities and experiences of these specific groups of women
- middle and upper class, predominantly white, most of whose
families had originated in the British Isles, but who were living
in St. John’s in the period 1900-1950 - are central to this
volume. Yet we always see these women and their activities, in
relationship with women of other class backgrounds, ethnicities
and religions. We chose to focus on the period 1900 to 1950
because it encompasses not only a number of traumatic and
formative events, such as the First World War, but also because
it culminated in the disappearance of Newfoundland as an
independent polity when it became the tenth province of Canada in
1949.
St. John’s as a site of class and gender formation is under-
researched compared with the political history of the province or
the anthropological and sociological foci on outport society
prior to Confederation. There is a significant literature that
examines the history of the economy and the polity of
Newfoundland, public events that occurred and people (almost all
men) who reached political, economic and social eminence. Earlier
2
writers, such as David Alexander, whose Atlantic Canada and
Confederation formed a baseline for contextualising political
history within an economic framework, and Sid Noel, James Hiller
and Peter Neary who established the background for the later
debates about Confederation and its aftermath2, have led on to a
flurry of more recent work. Some of these attempt large and
relatively impartial overviews3 some are detailed accounts of
particular aspects4, some are gloriously partial, especially in
the matter of Confederation.5 Newfoundland historians, social
scientists and other writers and artists6 portray a complex
history, interwoven with both Canadian and European histories,
but reflecting unique situations and responses. Some of the more
recent general histories discuss women and their activities,
especially the suffragist struggle7, but usually women’s
activities are invisible. Some of these gaps have been addressed,
especially in terms of the history of women in rural fishing
communities8 or primary resource industry towns9, and more
recently theses and articles have begun to develop other aspects
of the history of women in Newfoundland10, although there is
still much to be done.
3
Creating This Place began life as a series of animated
conversations between the editors about one historic property,
Bannerman House on Circular Road, in the heart of historically
upper class St. John’s. After the death of her husband John
Mitchell (Michell) in 1846, Ann March Mitchell (Michell)
inherited and developed the property into one of the first “sub-
divisions” in St. John’s in the mid-1800s. Ann sold off 12 lots
of land along what is now Circular Road, earning herself the
considerable sum of £2,219.50.11 From the late 1840s onward,
substantial homes were constructed on these lots by socially,
politically and economically influential Newfoundlanders.
Circular Road and surrounding streets became one of the
concentrations of middle and upper class residences in the last
decades of 19th century and continues so today. In our
conversations, the beginnings of a rich vein of history and
social analysis became apparent, and as we explored records and
archives on the area, we found other scholars writing about
various aspects of women’s lives and work in the early 20th
century. We decided to fill a gap in the literature on women in
Newfoundland by examining the roles, activities and impact of
4
middle and upper class women and how their lives intersected with
those of women of different classes, religions and ethnicities in
St John’s in the crucial first half of the 20th century.
Not all political change occurs at the macro level of
society, in large historical economic and political processes. If
we turn our eyes to the everyday, micro level of life in St.
John’s and the country as a whole, we find that women took on
public roles as leaders of oppositional groups, represented women
as vocal activists in the suffrage struggle before and after the
First World War, addressed rural women’s needs through St.
John’s-based organizations, and articulated their desires for the
lives of their families at the turn to Confederation.12 Women
also appeared as the wives and daughters of the male elite,
albeit wives and daughters who wielded influence and power in the
gendered social and political scene of St. John’s. As we came to
understand more about those lives, and the way the actions of
women of all classes shaped the social life of St. John’s and
Newfoundland in the period, we realised we were learning how
women were actively “creating” the place that eventually became
the tenth province of Canada in 1949.
5
A generation of feminist historians, such as Lenore Davidoff
and Catherine Hall, Judith Newton et al., Mary Ryan, Joan Wallach
Scott, Franca Iaccovetta and Joy Parr13, have documented the
importance of women in the construction and emergence of middle
class families crucial to the development of modern capitalist
societies in western Europe and North America. They point to the
often hidden nature of women’s roles and specifically to the
complex intersections between gender and class mediated through
particular family forms. In turn, the changes in family were
negotiated and developed primarily by women acting in their
household roles. The family is clearly one of the central
institutions in organizing social reproduction, which includes
class and gender reproduction.14 Women, as many feminists have
pointed out, are key to how the family is organized both
internally and externally. Daniel Bertaux and Catherine Delcroix,
who refer to the family as “small mirrors of general culture”15,
argue that these dynamic processes are structured by the gendered
division of labour and, indeed, as part of domestic labour.
Women’s reproductive lives, in this view, include the
reproduction of the family as a social and ideological unit
6
“through particular concrete actions of ordinary women”16 in
specific historical periods.
The family, however, was not the only institution with an
interest in moulding particular kinds of people. With this in
mind, we also pay attention to those institutions that played a
central role in producing both society and classed and gendered
relations: the churches (Morgan), the schools (Porter,
Stanbridge), charitable organisations (Cullum), the government
(Stanbridge, Boon), and emerging labour unions (Woodrow). Thus,
this collection presents a different, more rounded, picture of
how political ideas, social and economic relationships,
institutional structures and religious affiliations shaped, and
were then disseminated, through classed and gendered relations in
St. John’s.
Understanding class
While “class” is central to our analysis of how society
worked in the period 1900-1950, both we and our authors have
found it difficult to pin down precise class boundaries. British
sociologists today still use “class” as a primary classification
7
and the class definitions provided by the male biased Registrar
General’s Classification of Occupations17; Statistics Canada
refuses to define “class” as such, preferring more nuanced
classifications defined primarily by education and income
levels.18 Most of our authors, including ourselves, use some form
of Weberian status group indicators, based largely on the male
occupation in the family but including elements of prestige and
power.19
Class status may be interpreted and understood through
different lens. In this volume, not all authors locate families
and individuals within the same social class category. Bonnie
Morgan, notes, “income, property ownership and access to
education are important indicators of social standing,” along
with city address, family ties and literacy.20 These identifiers
point to people and families with wealth, political and social
power - the fish merchants, businessmen, government officials and
some professionals. Morgan sees the first two groups as forming
the upper class or elites, and the latter two groups of
government workers and professionals as middle-class proper. On
the other hand, Margot Duley argues that these four groups
8
constitute the upper middle class, with the “social apogee” being
the vice-regal couple inhabiting Government House at any given
time. Marilyn Porter suggests that the boundaries between the
most elite - the Governor and the best established of the
merchant and professional families - and the lesser merchants,
owners of middle-sized businesses and so on were permeable, with
the social mix in the schools sometimes making the class
boundaries more permeable, and sometimes reinforcing them. The
period under discussion saw considerable movement into, and out
of, the upper classes as a consequence of the loss of many young
men during the First World War, the economic crises of the 1920s
and 1930s and the movement into professions by young, upper class
men. Vicki Hallett’s study of Phebe Florence Miller suggests a
different way of understanding class, seeing Miller’s literary
salon as an idyllic space where friends meet across class and
gender locations to pursue conversation, debate and writing.
These families and individuals, broadly defined as “upper” class,
dominated the public life of the capital city and as Duley notes,
the country. Duley locates privileged members of society across
the denominational spectrum, predominantly Anglican, Methodist,
9
Presbyterian and Congregationalist, but also including some Roman
Catholic members.21 Porter’s discussion of upper class girls’
schools also looks at the congruence of privilege and
denomination, while Morgan examines how class differences emerged
in different churches of the same denomination.
While most contributors to this book illustrate the active
roles these white, middle and upper class women played, three
chapters take up the perspective of working class women and
struggles for respectable paid work and social justice for more
marginalized working class women in Newfoundland society. Linda
Cullum, explores the relatively sparse literature to highlight
the experience of working class women domestics, their work in
social reproduction, and the way it changed over the period.
Helen Woodrow examines the social gospel approach of Julia Salter
Earle in her work with factory labourers and Sonya Boon, drawing
on a specific and later period, highlights the social and family
issues that women brought to Premier J.R. Smallwood’s attention.
The centrality of gender in the construction of class
Gender is always key to understanding social structures.
10
Women of all classes play an important role in Newfoundland and
Labrador society and economy today, and this was also true in the
half-century before Confederation with Canada in 1949, even if
women were less publically visible in openly political roles. The
struggle for the vote in early 20th century Newfoundland clearly
provided a way for women to influence their society, but they
also played key roles in, for example, supporting the war effort,
addressing the economic distress of the Depression, responding to
the particular conditions of Commission Government and
formulating women’s perspectives on Confederation and the
alternatives to it. The chapters in this book illustrate
different ways in which the social and economic structures
developing in St. John’s in the early 20th century, were both
caused by, and influenced, the public political changes that took
place during that time. For example, Boon’s examination of the
letters women wrote to Joey Smallwood illustrates both the
conditions under which women were struggling to raise their
families and their sense of political identity and rights.
To a large extent all kinds of power - social, political and
economic - resided in the middle and upper classes in St. John’s.
11
They provided the key players in the development of the whole
society. However, the activities and perspectives of working-
class women, and some men, labouring as servants of all sorts in
the families and homes of the middle and upper classes are also
important, for those homes, and the activities inside and outside
of them, were made possible through their labour, a point for
which Cullum, in “Below Stairs: Domestic Service in 20th Century
St. John’s,” provides evidence in this collection. As well,
Porter examines the tension between schools’ duty to produce
appropriately classed wives and mothers and the (mostly single)
women teachers’ own independence and ambitions.
The writing in this collection recognises the impacts of the
salient and public political changes that took place during the
period - the First World War, the suffrage movement, the
Depression, the Second World War, and at the end of our period,
Confederation and Newfoundland’s conflicted and contested entry
into the Canadian polity - on the gendered activities they
discuss. A significant portion of Duley’s previous work has
centred on the women who fought for suffrage in the early 20th
century, and in her contribution to this collection, she stresses
12
the interconnection between Armine Gosling’s participation in
suffrage activities and other equally classed and gendered
activities such as the Church of England Cathedral Bazaar, the
Girls’ Friendly Society, the Women’s Patriotic Association and
the Newfoundland Society for Protection of Animals. Woodrow
explores the very public political activities of a middle class
working woman in the service of women and men of the working
class in her chapter. Cullum’s chapter on the Jubilee Guilds is
explicit in her explanation of the Guilds’ role in creating a
certain kind of classed and gendered society. Both Boon and Karen
Stanbridge look at ways in which perceptions of class duties and
entitlement were evolving in the changed economic and political
context at the end of our period.
Unspoken or elided categories
In this collection we have paid less attention to the issues
of ethnicity because the overwhelming “whiteness” of all classes
in St. John’s in the period rendered ethnic identity invisible to
the participants. There were, of course, non-white people in the
country; diverse aboriginal populations, M’ikmaq, Métis, Inuit,
13
and Innu, lived on the island andhere, especially in the
geographically distant Labrador, the boundaries and ownership of
which were finally settled in 1927. There were also small but
significant groups of immigrants, especially Chinese, Lebanese
and Jewish peoples who arrived during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.22 Despite the presence of aboriginal populations and
ethnic immigrant groups, between 1900 and 1950 Newfoundland was
still one of the most Caucasian parts of Canada. Those holding
power were overwhelmingly white, and this white racialized
positioning of the state and society, and its contribution to
Newfoundland’s sense of identity, is implicitly evident. It also
contributes to Newfoundlanders’ stronger identification with the
“Mother Country” of England, especially during the First World
War, as noted by Hallett and Porter.
We have tried to challenge the taken-for-granted nature of
“whiteness” but the data are not helpful in providing explicit
references or discussion. Most of the authors here found it
difficult to include information or evidence about race,
ethnicity, racism and - equally - heterosexism or discussion of
other sexualities. These were largely “unspoken” categories in
14
the period; much of what can, and is, commented on is framed by
absence rather than presence in the discourses of 1900-1950. For
example, in the 20th century, census collections did not
consistently record “race” or ethnicity of the population,
although nationality, in particular Irish or English origins, are
recorded. However, despite (and because of) these gaps, wherever
possible authors have included evidence of local and historical
perceptions of, and their reflections on, ethnicity and religion
in relation to class and gender in the themes they explore.
In the next section, we see the historical development of
the population and the economic, social and political
circumstances created, in part, by women’s active participation
in the life of the colony, dominion, city and province.
Newfoundland: A brief introduction
Newfoundland and Labrador, like the rest of North America,
had been settled for many thousands of years before the Europeans
arrived. Successive waves of different groups, the Thule and
Maritime Archaic peoples, the Beothuk23 and the Mi’kmaq gradually
established themselves around the coastline and inland. We know
15
little about the family structures or women of these groups,
although for example, Ralph Pastore and Dorothy Anger both record
that some Mi’kmaq women were shamans with considerable power, and
historical accounts from the late 1800s describe native women’s
knowledge of the woods and skills such as handling a canoe, and
carrying heavy loads, which matched those of men.24 Women of all
groups had other survival skills which men did not, such as
cooking, tanning hides and keeping clothing in good repair.25
The settlers in the 1600s were white Europeans, thus
founding an ethnically homogenous society that has continued to
this day. It was a resource-based economy, with the fishery
dominating well into the twentieth century. The early European
settlers were overwhelmingly male fishers, who gradually asserted
their right to settle and raise families around the six thousand
mile long, heavily indented coastline, establishing many small
communities.26 There was, and still is, very little agricultural
activity, and certainly Newfoundland did not attract settlers
with offers of agricultural land, as happened in most of the rest
of southern Canada.27 The most significant waves of European
immigration to Newfoundland came in the eighteenth and nineteenth
16
centuries, nearly all from southeast Ireland or southwest
England. As elsewhere in Canada, the invasion of European
settlers led to a systematic decline in the way of life and
economic prospects of all aboriginal groups in Newfoundland.
In the nineteenth century, an embryonic form of government
developed in St. John’s, with tentative and fragmentary control
over the many outports. The emerging middle class successfully
agitated for Representative Government in 1832. Women appear in
this nation-building story by way of asserting their economic
rights. The first House of Assembly met in a tavern located near
the waterfront, owned by Mrs. Mary Travers. Between January and
June, 1834, the House of Assembly held its first legislative
session, however, the Members neglected to pass an appropriation
for rent, so Mrs. Travers ejected them from her premises, seized
the Speaker's chair and hat, the mace of the Sergeant-at-Arms,
and desks, books and papers belonging to the House of Assembly.
The government recovered the goods only after the rent was
paid.28 According to Hiller, the decline of merely colonial
status began in 1855 with the election of the first Premier,
Philip Little. Hiller notes that with Responsible Government,
17
“the basis of the Newfoundland state that was to last until 1934
began to emerge,” based in St. John’s, and run in collusion with
the merchant elite and the various Protestant and Catholic
churches.29
The inshore salt cod industry was a cornerstone of social
life and the economy in Newfoundland as it was the single most
important source of employment and market income in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Local merchants in
rural communities acted as fish buyers for St. John’s-based
merchant families engaged in the international salt fish trade.
In exchange for salt fish, and sometimes fresh berries30, outport
fishing families received staple foods such as tea, flour, sugar
and molasses to carry them through the winter months, and a stake
in the form of fishing gear for the start of the next fishing
season. This cycle of subsistence activity sustained outport
families in good seasons, but seldom allowed them to develop
surplus resources, so families were often continually in debt to
merchants for goods and supplies. Thus, fishing communities
remained in economic thrall to the fish merchants, who
consolidated their economic and political power in St. John’s.
18
In the early 20th century, communities grew up around
timber, pulp and paper industries that were established in Corner
Brook and Grand Falls, while mining operations provided the
economic basis for a number of communities, especially in
Labrador. All these initiatives were primarily extractive
industries and centred on male work.31 Women had few
opportunities to work outside the home, although they continued
to contribute through their unpaid work in the household.
Training in women’s work began early for girls, often as young as
five or six, and skills and knowledge were passed from mother to
daughter as the young girls learned their household duties.32 In
urban areas like St. John’s, young women learned womanly tasks as
well, ones which reflected the class position of their family and
the social stratification of the city.
Aboriginal groups were hidden from view in Newfoundland
social, political and economic life. At the beginning of the
period covered in this book, government contact with aboriginal
peoples in Newfoundland was very limited. Religious groups such
as the Moravians and companies exploiting resources, such as the
Hudson’s Bay Company, were the only effective contact points in
19
Labrador, and aboriginal groups on the island, such as the
M’ikmaq, were similarly ignored. Confederation brought health,
education and social services to the Inuit and other groups, but
at the cost of threats to their language and culture. The
geographic isolation of the Innu and Inuit communities in
Labrador has contributed to their neglect and consequent acute
social and economic problems.33 In the period covered in this
book, the aboriginal peoples were almost completely invisible to
the white population, except to a few missionaries and to the
medical staff working at the Grenfell Mission in St. Anthony and
Labrador.34
Throughout the late 19th century and into the 20th century,
elite white merchant and business families earned considerable
fortunes through various industries - harvesting, manufacturing,
importing and processing goods such as wool, berries, seals, boot
and shoes, bread and crackers, and lumber. They introduced new
ways of processing and shipping fish. They sold insurance,
schooners, bankers, coastal and cold-storage vessels and
steamships. While many of these privileged families resided in,
or maintained close ties to St. John’s, in each community there
20
was a local merchant elite as well, often forming a network of
connections through migration to St. John’s, or marital and
business relationships which facilitated capitalist endeavours.
One example of these patterns of class migration occurred when
Ann March, with whom we opened this Iintroduction, from a
prosperous Church of England merchant family in Old Perlican,
Trinity Bay, married John Mitchell (Michell), a Dorset-born
Protestant immigrant butcher’s apprentice. Together they bought
the land on what later became Circular Road and established a
market garden, thus providing John with a route up the social
class ladder and the March family with a base in St. John’s.35
Social, political, religious and economic life were
intertwined in St. John’s. At the turn of the twentieth century
we see the formation of class-based clubs, such as the Bally Haly
Golf and Country Club (1908) or the fishing and country club at
Murray’s Pond (late 1800s)36 just outside the city, or social
events, such as fundraising occasions or parties for the Girls
Guides or other women’s organizations like the Jubilee Guilds
where members of the upper classes could meet. Churches of all
denominations also provided a common ground for meeting, and for
21
the everyday negotiation of class and gender relations.
The Role of Denominational Religion
The place of the different religious denominations was also
negotiated, and Newfoundland’s history reflects the presence of,
and sometimes conflict between, denominations. These were all
Christian denominations; other religions, if practised, were
completely invisible except for Jews. A few Jewish families, for
example the Perlins, rose to social eminence in Newfoundland
society. However, there appears to have been anti-semitic
sentiment and informal policies in the period.37 The three main
Christian denominations - Catholic, Anglican and Methodist - were
significant forces in early 20th century St. John’s. Anglican
families tended to occupy the highest echelons socially, but both
Catholic and Methodist families (the latter often intermingled
with the Anglican elite) established powerful social networks of
their own. Tensions sometimes flared between the Anglo-
Protestants and the Irish Catholics, such as during the notorious
“Orange-Catholic Affray” at Harbour Grace in 1883.38 Mostly,
however, the denominations practiced a clear, if informal,
22
segregation. Rural communities were often single denomination and
the schools were run by the appropriate denomination. In St.
John’s, children of all classes attended schools run by their own
denomination. In this collection, upper class denominational
schools are described by Porter, and Cullum explains the careful
negotiations that went on to determine the appropriate
denomination for the Jubilee Guilds’ field workers. There were
prosperous Catholic and Protestant merchants and owners of other
enterprises, and unspoken, but clear agreements about the
allocation of jobs according to religious affiliation, and the
division of influential positions between Catholics and
Protestants.
As we see in this collection, there were marked differences
within denominations too. Morgan’s “Activist Anglicans and
Rector’s Wives: The Impact of Class and Gender on Women’s Church
Work in Turn-of-the-Century St. John’s,” contributes insights
into class experiences, gender (and feminist) ideologies and the
formation of church voluntary organizations in her comparison of
two Anglican congregations - St. Mary’s located in the working-
class West End of St. John's, and St. Thomas’s in the upper and
23
middle class East End. She uncovers how secular class differences
and gender relations shaped institutional developments in
patterns of financing and administration, liturgy, church
architecture and decoration in the first decade of the 20th
century.
The First World War
The First World War had a profound and lasting effect on
Newfoundland, and both men and women were caught up in the
struggle. Out of a total population of about 250,000, over 12,
000 men joined up, nearly 5,500 men went overseas, nearly 1,500
were killed and 2,300 wounded.39 The loss or severe wounding of
approximately 660 men in the futile attack at Beaumont Hamel on
July 1, 1916 affected all parts of Newfoundland and all classes.
The Ayres, for example, a leading St. John’s Methodist merchant
family, lost two brothers and a cousin that morning. For the few
young women - Frances Cluett, Henrietta Gallishaw, Bertha
Bartlett, Ruby Ayre or Clare Janes for example - who participated
actively as nurses, voluntary aid workers and ambulance drivers,
the horror and sadness of war became quickly evident40, but the
24
war also brought excitement, new experiences and a new
confidence. The liberating aspects of the war were evident in the
decade following, not only in the renewed suffragist struggle but
also in the energetic young elite women riding bicycles, playing
sports, exploring the countryside and developing their artistic
talents.41
Despite the evident energy and talents of this new
generation of middle and upper class women, few of them concerned
themselves with formal public office or affairs beyond
traditional women’s issues like feeding poor children or
supporting other church and charity efforts.
Poet Phebe Florence Miller (1889-1979) was an exception. She
wrote often about the war and its impact on her own life and that
of many Newfoundlanders. Hallett’s investigation of Miller began
with her work as a writer, but there was much more to Miller than
her writing. Miller became the centre of a vibrant artistic
circle - The Blue Castle - which she ran from her home in
Topsail, Conception Bay, where she was also the postmistress. In
“A Class Unto Itself: Phebe Florence Miller’s Outport Literary
Salon,” Hallett explores the multiple facets of Miller’s identity
25
as a Newfoundland woman, how this identity was structured by her
place(s) in the world, and how her identity, in turn, affected
the places of which she was a part, in particular her informal
literary salon created just after the First World War.
Organizing and Educating
Union organizer Julia Salter Earle (1878-1945) offers a
marked contrast to Phebe Florence Miller, although both
contributed to new possibilities for women. Woodrow explores
Earle’s contribution to the union movement, as well as the forces
that motivated her alliance with the working class in “Julia
Salter Earle: Seeking Social Justice.” As a middle-class woman,
and a strong and vigorous voice for social justice, Earle worked
and campaigned in the public fora of St Johns, especially for the
rights of working women in the years following the First World
War. She was a labour candidate for city council in 1925, and is
also remembered for her engagement with the suffrage issue,
although she clashed at times with the upper class suffrage
leaders. Earle devoted most of her energies to the struggles for
social justice waged by the St. John’s working class, especially
26
as President of the Ladies Branch of the Newfoundland Industrial
Worker’s Association (NIWA), the first union in the colony made
up of an exclusively female membership.
Women were not active in formal politics at this time - no
woman was elected until a 1930 Newfoundland by-election, despite
active suffrage efforts from the late 19th century.42 Newfoundland
women were late in gaining the vote. In 1921 propertied women
living within the city limits were allowed to vote, and in 1925
women who were 25 years of age and older were given the right to
vote and sit as members in the House of Assembly. Then, in 1928,
over 52,000 women - some 90% of eligible women voters43 across
Newfoundland and Labrador - cast their ballots in a general
election. Of course, not all women were considered “eligible.” As
Margaret Conrad and James Hiller note, it was not until the entry
into Confederation in 1949 that people of Labrador voted in
democratic elections, and “status Indians in the region were
denied the right to vote federally until 1960 and began voting
provincially at about the same time.” Until then the privilege of
voting was confined to specifically raced women and men in
Newfoundland.44
27
Suffrage and struggles around labour relations were both
ways in which the established class order could be challenged.
Throughout this period, however, differently classed groups of
people were working to support the privileges of the upper
classes and to provide them with the freedom to live lives of
comparative leisure. Domestic servants were not just employees in
homes and institutions. Rather, in private homes, they
constituted markers of the social standing, leisure, and wealth
of the middle and upper class families who employed them. The
activities of working-class women, and some men, labouring as
servants of all sorts in the homes of the middle and upper
classes were essential to those homes and families, and to the
activities outside them. In “Below Stairs: Domestic Service in
20th Century St. John’s,” Cullum examines the work and
contribution of domestic servants employed in St. John’s between
1900 and 1950. Their efforts supported the social and public life
of the city, underpinned a family’s social standing in the
community, and freed women of the middle and upper classes in St.
John’s to engage in social, charitable and political work.
In “Armine Nutting Gosling (1861-1942): A Full and Useful
28
Life,” Duley brings to life a woman central to much of this work
in St. John’s. Armine Nutting Gosling (1861-1942), provided
intrepid intellectual and organizational leadership to the
suffrage generation, and played important leadership roles in a
host of civic, patriotic, and charitable organizations. In
addition to ameliorating social conditions in a generally
reformist way, these organizations provided a focus for middle
class women’s evolving sense of citizenship in an emergent
Newfoundland nation. Gosling was at the forefront in asserting
women’s right to expand their sphere, and especially to
participate in the formation of public policy. While there is a
lingering sense of “women’s special sphere” in her activities,
it is clear that the intense discussions of the period were
influencing Gosling and her colleagues to develop a more
political and engaged image of women’s place in society.
One place women could be found was in school leadership
positions. The churches, from their arrival in Newfoundland, had
laid great stress on education. The Methodists in particular, had
been successful in establishing schools in many communities
around the province. The upper classes had also seen education as
29
crucial for their sons (and, surprisingly soon, for their
daughters). There were attempts in the 19th century to establish
secular schools, but as early as the Education Act of 1843 the
pattern of denominational education was established, only to be
finally secularised in 1997.
From the middle of the 19th century, schools were
established in St. John’s by the three major denominations
explicitly for the education of the middle and upper class
children. The Catholics and Anglicans established separate
schools for boys and girls, but the Methodists always educated
their children coeducationally (although often in separate
classrooms). The St. John’s elite were concerned that their
daughters be educated in a suitable environment and sent out into
the world fully equipped to play their role as wives and mothers
in elite Newfoundland families. But while the families of the
girls who attended these schools may have been focused on social
respectability and social skills, the women teachers were also
concerned that the girls be provided with an academic education
equal to that of boys, and encouraged to think in terms of
careers and wider lives than their mothers had had. In “ ‘She
30
knows who she is’: Educating girls to their place in society,”
Porter explores the tensions and accomplishments in the most
prominent elite girls schools in St John’s - Bishop Spencer
College, (Our Lady of) Mercy College, St. Bride’s College and the
Methodist College - through the journals, magazines and other
school publications, focusing especially on the period between
the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the 1930s.
A Bumpy Road
Losses in the First World War, the resulting war debt and
subsequent Depression, along with political turmoil in the
Dominion government, had a devastating effect on Newfoundland.
During the 1920s and 1930s, high war-time inflation, profiteering
by local merchants and limited improvements in living conditions
in Newfoundland despite a war-time economic boom, fuelled unrest
in the general population.45 Government administration was highly
centralized in St. John’s, and did not reach very far into
outport communities. Nor was the government able to provide
resources, given its increasingly parlous economic situation. In
cases of destitution, the churches or the relieving officer were
31
often the final sources of aid. A 1932 riot in the city succeeded
in establishing new and slightly higher rates of relief payments
and the abandonment of a proposed “workfare” scheme for men.
Still malnutrition and semi-starvation remained.46 Nearly one-
third of the population were on government relief - the dole - of
six cents per person per day.47 The outcome of the impoverished
and weak government of Newfoundland was the cessation of the
independent Dominion government and the appointment of Commission
Government, made up of three Newfoundland and three British
representatives and a British governor.48 The loss of independent
Dominion status was contentious at the time and remains so to
this day. Commission Government lasted from 1934 until
Confederation with Canada in 1949, a substantial part of the
period covered by this book.
By the mid-1930s, local newspapers and prominent citizens
were promoting women as the primary moral and productive force in
rural and urban communities, as the ones who would lift the
nation out of the mire. Many middle and upper class women of St.
John’s participated actively in these reconstruction efforts,
contributing substantially through community, religious, gender
32
and class-based organizations, many of them voluntary
associations. The leisure of these women, facilitated by the
conscientious work of their domestic servants, allowed them the
time and energy to make such commitments. In “ ‘It’s Up to the
Women’: Gender, Class and Nation-Building in Newfoundland, 1935-
1945,” Cullum examines the sustained efforts of women in the
construction and maintenance of class and gender relations, and
in the process of nation-building through the organization and
programs of the Jubilee Guilds of Newfoundland. But even women’s
collective efforts could only achieve so much, and the economic
situation in Newfoundland continued to be critical.
The Second World War and Confederation
Ironically, it was the outbreak of the Second World War that
provided a much-needed stimulus for Newfoundland, as it became
the site of military bases and convoy departure points for
Europe. In addition to the direct economic gains from the bases,
Newfoundland was changed by the infusion of a great many service
personnel from Canada, United States and Britain, who brought
with them ideas, movies, mores, activities, interests and a
33
general sense of connection to the culture that emerged after the
war.49 For some Newfoundlanders, including young women, new,
different and better-paying jobs, exciting intimate
relationships, and opportunities not thought of before were
suddenly possible. Many Newfoundland women married men stationed
in Newfoundland during the war and left for family life
elsewhere.50 In the other direction, Newfoundland servicemen
serving overseas married and imported War Brides, as happened all
over Canada.51
In the 1940s and 1950s, a new form of nation-building was
underway, with the debate about Newfoundland’s political future.
Pro- and anti-confederates and economic unionists all campaigned
for their points of view and preferred outcomes. A slim majority
in a referendum voted to join Canada, and Newfoundland became the
newest province of Canada on March 31, 1949. Questions remain
about the legitimacy of the final vote, and the deep divisions
that emerged reflected profoundly important differences in
cultural, political, class and social identity in Newfoundland
and Labrador which continue today.
Meanwhile, the Commission Government included the moulding
34
of thrifty, cash-oriented citizens in the modernizing country as
one of its goals. Illustrative of its approach is its focus on
children within the traditional family structure during the late
1940s. In “Thrift and the Good Child Citizen: The Junior Thrift
Clubs in Confederation-era Newfoundland,” Stanbridge considers
this different aspect of family life as she examines the Junior
Thrift Clubs operating in elementary schools throughout
Newfoundland between 1946 and 1953. These Clubs encouraged boys
and girls to save for stamps toward the purchase of Newfoundland
Savings Bonds; they emerged in a context characterized by a long
history of struggle between the churches and the state over the
hearts and minds of Newfoundland children. Government officials,
in alliance with the Newfoundland Savings Bank, urged teachers to
fulfil their moral duties as educators by initiating the program
in their schools, and thus, to “blaze the trail toward a higher
standard of living, of sufficiency,” in the country and later,
the province.52
The Junior Thrift Clubs targeted poor and working class
children, especially in rural and outport communities, but with
Confederation just around the corner, and political debates in
35
public and on the radio across Newfoundland, women seized the
opportunity to demand better lives, socially and economically.
People living in rural and urban areas, especially women, were
attracted by the economic and health benefits that Joey Smallwood
promised would accrue from Confederation. As the new Liberal
Premier of Newfoundland, Smallwood had high aspirations for his
new province: roads and other infrastructure, schools, an
educated workforce, new industrial development. But many
Newfoundlanders remained impoverished and lacked access to many
of the goods and services of “modern” life. Smallwood received
hundreds of letters personally addressed to him, seeking redress
of the uneven effects of modernization. In “ ‘I am very badly in
need of help’: Promises and Promissory Notes in Women’s Letters
to J.R. Smallwood,” Boon considers letters written by women
residents of St. John’s and rural Newfoundland in the first five
years of Confederation. Boon reads themes of economic security
dominating in women’s letters: finding paid work, improving
working conditions and income. These women claim the authority to
address the Premier himself, and in the process inserted
themselves, and their voices, directly into Newfoundland’s
36
political process, leveraging their voting power as newly-minted
citizens of the tenth province of Canada.
Conclusion
Even in this very brief account we can see that the history
of Newfoundland and Labrador is very different to other parts of
Canada. Its initial settlement based on rich natural resources
and primary extraction industries was common across Canada,
although the significant dependence on the fishery was unique to
the island. The small, scattered population and lack of services
has hampered (and still hampers) the development of the province.
Newfoundland has had a distinctive and homogenous white and
European cultural identity, despite the presence and activities
of important indigenous groups, as well as small but significant
groups of non-European immigrants. This identity is based on the
combined influences of settlement history, small rural
communities, poverty and endurance, and, above all, the fishery.
The story of Newfoundland, subsequently Newfoundland and
Labrador, is, therefore, not only interesting in itself, but
contributes a core, and often neglected element to the story of
37
how Canada came to be put together politically, socially and
regionally. Inevitably there are omissions and silences. This
collection is not intended to be exhaustive; there are some
matters that continue to tantalize us, and as we noted earlier,
for which we do not have the data to satisfy our curiosity. The
specifics of women’s work in social and political causes is not
fully recorded either. Many names and activities remain hidden
from view, lying beneath and behind the ones we have examined
here. Future historians may be able to uncover more material or
make closer analyses of what exists. For this volume, we are
content to present a few layers of this fascinating history, to
provide insight into the vital the role of women in the formation
of St. John’s and Newfoundland. We, and the contributors to this
volume, are convinced that an understanding of the intricate
political, social and cultural reality that is Canada today comes
from a careful and systematic dissection of our history.
Newfoundland, often ignored, is an essential part of this complex
whole, and its unique history sheds light on the history of
Canada. And, as in Canada, it is the largely hidden actions and
experiences of women that reveal some of the most important
38
aspects of our identity and heritage.
ENDNOTES
39
1 In this volume, the name Newfoundland is used in keeping with the
historical period under discussion. The name Newfoundland & Labrador
for the 10th province of Canada was not adopted until 2001.
22 Hiller and Neary, Newfoundland; Noel, Politics in Newfoundland.
33 Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador; Newfoundland Historical Society, A Short History.
44 O’Neill, The Oldest City.
55 Long, Suspended State; Major, As Near to Heaven; O’Flaherty, Leaving the Past
Behind. Most recently Malone, Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders showed that the
issue is far from settled even today. One of the most balanced
collections on the Confederation debate is the Newfoundland Studies
Special Issue, 14, no. 2, Fall 1998.
66 The significance of the debate about Confederation with Canada and
the competing possibilities is illustrated in the continuing rich
body of creative and artistic work that Newfoundland writers and
artists produce. See for example: the film Secret Nation by Riche;
novels like Johnston, Colony of Unrequited Dreams; Butler, Return of the
Native; Dohaney, The Flannigans; Rising Tide Theatre’s productions of Joey
and Downey’s Peter’s Other War; the Avion Players production As Loved Our
Fathers; poems such as Walsh, “March 3, 1999 - Notes on an upcoming
anniversary”; in song see Hewson, “Don’t Vote Confederation” (“Hero
of ’48”).
7 Duley, Where Once Our Mothers Stood.
8 Heath Rodgers, “Work, Household Economy”; Murray, More Than 50%;
Porter, “Women and Old Boats”; Porter, “ ‘She Was Skipper’ ”; Porter,
“Peripheral Women”; Wright, A Fishery for Modern Times.
9 Parsons, “Passing the Time.”
10 Cullum, Narratives At Work, “ ‘The Way to a New Newfoundland’ ,” “A
Woman’s Place,” and ‘Under Construction”; Flaherty, “Out of Date”;
Haywood, “ ‘Delinquent, Disorderly’ ”; Keough, The Slender Thread, and
“the Old Hag”; Martin, “Students, Sisters”; Penney, “To Each ‘Her’
Own”; Wheaton, “Women and Water Street.”
11 Fitzgerald, “A History of Bannerman House,” 6.
12 See chapters in this volume and also “A Newfoundlander to be Proud
Of,” Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website,
http://www.heritage.nf.ca. Accessed December 11, 2011.
13 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; Newton, Ryan and Walkowitz, Sex and
Class; Ryan, The Cradle of the Middle Class; Scott, Gender and the Politics of History;
Iaccovetta, “Recipes for democracy?”; and Parr, The Gender of
Breadwinners.
14 Bezanson and Luxton Social Reproduction.
15 Bertaux and Delcroix, “Case Histories,” 71.
16 Bertaux and Delcroix, “Case Histories,” 75.
17 Class 1 Professional; Class 2 Managerial, Lower Professional;
Class 3N Non-manual Skilled;
Class 3M Manual Skilled; Class 4 Semi Skilled and Class 5 Unskilled.
