| April
1 |
Tobie
Thelma Steinhouse.
(née
Davis) Born Montreal, Quebec 1925. This artist was a printmaker and
painter. Her specialty
is intricate abstracts that gleam through effects of prism - coloured
glass, fishnets or cobwebs. |
| April
2 |
Lise
Thibault. (née Trudel)
Born Saint-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Quebec 1939. As Lieutenant Governor
of Quebec she has earned the right to use the title The Honourable
Lise Thibault. She has worked with many public and community organizations.
She has served as an adult education teacher, worker for Health
and Safety Board, the Canadian Red Cross, she served for disabled
person for the Quebecers NO Committee, the Liberal Party of Canada,
and founded journals and associations to promote women in Canada.
Among her many awards is the Personality of the year award from Chatelaine
Magazine. |
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Stephanie
Lemelin. Born 1960.
She studied her beloved music all the way through university. She
was the winner of the Canadian Music Competitions in 1977, the CBC
National Competition in 1979, the Robert Casadesus International Competition
in 1983 and has performed on the piano as a soloist and with orchestras
across Canada, the U.S., France England, Ireland, Switzerland, Hungary
and Brazil! She is frequently heard on the CBC Radio and has recorded
for CBC Records. She taught music at Yale University before returning
to teach in Canada at the University of Alberta. |
| April
3 |
Margaret
Anglin.
Born Ottawa, Ontario 1876. Died January 7, 1958. Margaret was actually
born in the Speakers Chambers of the House of Commons in 1876.
Her father was the Speaker of the house! She acted on stage
in New York, toured Australia and recently toured in Canada.
She had her own classical acting company in 1913.
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Nanette
Bordeaux. Born St Georges,
Quebec 1911. Died September 20, 1956. Her real name was Helene Olivine
Veilleux. She was an actress who is perhaps best remembered for roles
she played in a series of movies with the Three Stooges in the early
1950's. |
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Sandra
Bell Lundy. Born 1958.
She studied French at Brock University but it would be her talent
as an cartoonist that would become her profession. She is the author
of the worldwide syndicated comic strip "Between Friends".
She is married and the mother of two active children. |
| April
4 |
Karen
Diane Magnussen. Born North Vancouver, British Columbia 1952. A accomplished
free-skating performer, Karen was Canadian champion in 1968. She withdrew
from 1969 world championships because of stress fractures in both
legs but returned to become Canadian champion 1970-1973 and world
champion in 1973. The
doll that was made and sold as the Karen Magnussen doll did not have
any of the characteristics of the determined young athlete.
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Reference source
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Evelyn
Hart.
Born 1956. An award-winning ballerina, Evelyn Hart is an international
renowned dancer and one of Canada’s most treasured artists. She was
the first Canadian to be awarded a Gold Medal at the international
Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria as well as the rarely awarded
Certificate of Exceptional Artistic Achievement. |
| April
5 |
Minna
Keen.
(née Bergman). Born Arolsen,
Germany 1861. Died November 1943. A self taught photographer
in the pioneering days of photography she was the first woman to become
a fellow to the Royal Photographic Society. She came to Canada in
1913 where commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to photograph
the Rockies. She opened her studio in Toronto and was recognized with
awards from Japan, South Africa, and Australia. The National Archives
of Canada and the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S.A. collect her
works. |
| April
6 |
Maria
Campbell.
Born 1940. In Edmonton she assisted in founding a halfway house for
women and a women's emergency shelter. She began writing because she
was upset that so few people knew about historic and contemporary
Native Cultures. She has written screenplays and books.
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Margaret
Gibson.
Born 1948. This writer started off with a bang when one of her first
published works, The Butterfly Ward, made her a co-winner of
the Best Canadian Short Story. She shared this award with Margaret
Atwood. It would later be made into a TV movie for CBC. The movie
Outrageous was also based on her work entitled Making it.
More recently the made for CBS TV movie For the love of Aaron
was based on an aspect of her life. |
| April
7 |
Elsie
Dorothy Knowles.
Born 1927. She is an artist who enjoys water colour landscapes
as her form of expression. She has been able to have her works
shown in Vancouver; Edmonton; London, England; Paris, France, Chicago;
Los Angeles and more recently in a 1994 traveling exhibition
by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. |
| April
8 |
Lois
Miriam Wilson.
(née Freeman) Born Winnipeg, Manitoba 1927.
After 15 years as a homemaker she became an ordained minister
in the United Church of Canada. In 1976 she became the first woman
to be president of the Canadian Council of Churches, and in 1980 she
was appointed as the first woman to the top position of Moderator
of the United Church. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has
received the Pearson Peace Prize and the World Federalist Peace Award.
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| April
9 |
Katherine
(Kit) Brennan Watters.
Born 1957. During her studies at Queens University she received awards
including the Lorne Green Award. She acted for several years but prefers
writing plays. One of her works, Spring Planting has received
the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award. |
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Karen
Clark. Born 1972. She
is a member of our Canadian Olympic Synchronized Swim Team. She earned
a sliver medal at the Atlanta Olympic Gamed in 1996. She holds several
Canadian titles and has won medals at the Pan American Games and the
World Cup. She is also continuing her studies at the University of
Calgary. |
| April
10 |
Esther
Wheelwright. Born Wells
Massachusetts (now Maine), U.S.A. 1696. Died November 28, 1780.
Born to a Congregationalist protestant family, she would be re-baptized
as Marie-Joseph dite L'Enfant-Jésus when she became a nun in Quebec.
She was kidnapped by the Indian allies of the French who were at war
against the British. The French missionaries introduced her to the
Catholic Faith. Her family tried to obtain her return home but there
were too many barriers and the girl was placed in a school run by
the Ursuline Sisters. She decided to become an nun and refused to
return to her home. She would become the Mother Superior and maintain
good relations between the Ursulines and the new British authorities
after the fall of Quebec. She helped her religious community to become
strong through 20 of its most difficult years. |
| April
11 |
Agnes
Dennis.
(née Miller). Born Truro, Nova Scotia 1859. Died April 21, 1949. President
of the Victoria Order of Nurses (1901 - 1946) and the Halifax Council
of Women (1906 - 1920) she mobilized women in World War I for the
Red Cross for which she was also President at the provincial level
(1914-1920). She also helped co-ordinate relief efforts for the Halifax
Explosion of 1917. Even with all this work she found time to raise
ten children of her own! |
| April
12 |
Patricia
Lorraine Tutty. Born 1953.
Known as Paddy, she and her sister began performing folk music in
the late 1960's. She developed a serious interest in English and Celtic
traditional music. She traveled to England to perform and collect
fold music. She is and active member of the Canadian Fold Music
Society and has produced albums of this popular and growing form of
music. |
| April
13 |
Margaret
Marshall Saunders.
Born Milton, Nova Scotia 1861. Died February 15, 1947. Margaret
originally wrote under the name Marshall Saunders to hide her identity.
While it was just becoming somewhat respectable for women to be writers
when Margaret was publishing her works, writings by women were not
best sellers. In 1894 she wrote Beautiful Joe, a story of
an abused dog, for a competition sponsored by the American Humane
Society. It won first
prize! Beautiful Joe would became the first Canadian
book to sell more than 1,000,000 copies.
It was translated into more than 14 different languages.
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Source/copyright
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Lydia
Longley.
Born Groton, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 1674. Died July 20, 1758. When
she was 20 she was captured by the Abenakis , who were Indian allies
of the French during the war against the British. She was taken to
Ville Marie (Modern Montreal) where she became accustomed so much
to life in New France that she refused to return to the US when captives
were exchanged at the end of the war. She embraced the religion of
her new home and entered life as a nun in 1695 as Sister Sainte-Madeleine.
In a romantic novel, author Helen A. McCarthy called her "the
First American Nun". |
| April
14 |
Nina
Raginsky. Born 1941. Choosing
a career as a photographer, by 1964 she was doing freelance work for
the National Film Board of Canada. She first expanded her photographic
expression by hand colouring sepia prints and then began to create
oil paintings based on photographs. She is perhaps best known
for her formal full figure portraits. She is an Officer in the
Order of Canada. |
| April
15 |
Hugette
Labelle.
(née Rochon). Born 1939. This
nursing teacher was one of the few women of her generation to achieve
senior administrative status with the federal government.
She was appointed to nursing's highest administrative position
as principal nursing officer at Health and Welfare Canada in 1973.
She became under secretary of state in 1988 and Deputy Clerk
of Privy Council in 1985. |
| April
16 |
Fifi
D’Orsay.
Born
Montreal, Quebec 1904. Died
December 2, 1983. Could you guess that this is a stage name?
Her real name is Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier.
After several successful acts in Vaudeville, she began
her Hollywood movie career in 1929. She was in movies and television
as well as live stage for 40 years and worked with famous male stars
like Will Rogers. Billed as a French bombshell from Paris, she
never even traveled outside of North America. Her life story was featured
on the TV show This is your life. |
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Lily
Dougall.
Born Montreal, Quebec 1858. Died October 9, 1923. She visited England
and in 1900 decided to make it her permanent residence. However, as
a novelist and religious writer she set the background for 4 of her
novels in her home country of Canada. Her works are carefully structured.
She used humor and lively dialog to describe her unusual plots and
twists. . |
| April
17 |
Marguerite
Bourgeoys.
Born Troyes, France 1620. Died January 12, 1700. She Came to Canada
as a nun to work in the colony of New France. She would founded the
Congregation de Notre-Dame de Montreal to encourage young women to
work for their community with Devine guidance. The Sisters taught
and set up schools in New France.
Today the order has several thousand members and has expanded
their work to the USA and Japan.
Mother Marguerite Bourgeoys was canonized ( declared a Saint in the
Roman Catholic Church) in October 1982. |
© Canada Post Corporation |
| April
18 |
Jane
Austin Coop.
Born 1950. A pianist
and teacher she has played with a number of Canadian orchestras. In
the 1990’s she extended her playing tours to the Orient.
She has developed a significant reputation as an artist of
insight and splendid musicianship. |
| April
19 |
Sharon
Pollock. Born Fredericton, New
Brunswick 1936. Her birth name was Mary Sharon Chalmers. Her
first published play , A compulsory Option, won the 1971 Alberta
Playwriting Competition. After teaching at several western Canadian
institutions she became, in 1984, the first woman artistic director
of a major western Canadian theatre. She has written several
plays of children as well as TV and radio scripts. Her play DOC
earned her the 1984 Governor General's Award. In 1988 she was
awarded the Canada-Australia Literary Prize. |
| April
20 |
Elizabeth
Goudie. (née Blake) Born
Mud Lake, Labrador 1902. Died Happy Valley, Labrador 1982. She was
a wife and mother in Labrador. After the death of her trapper
husband in 1963 she wrote her autobiography, Woman of Labrador
(published in 1993).The book became an international best seller.
It is the first recorded history of family life in the wilds of Labrador.
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| April
21 |
Jenny
(Jennie) Kidd Trout
(née Gowanlock) Born Kelso, Scotland 1841. Died November 10, 1921.
After her marriage in 1865 Jenny decided to become a medical doctor.
However, no Canadian medical school accepted women.
She studied in the United States.
In 1875 on passing the Ontario registration exam she became
the first Canadian woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.
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Judith
Crawley.
Born Ottawa 1914 Died September 15, 1986. A film producer, director,
and scriptwriter, she and her husband Frank “Budge” Crawley formed
Crawley Films, which became one of Canada’s foremost independent production
companies. She was also
president of the Canadian Film Institute. |
| April
22 |
Rita
Margaret Johnston. (née
Leichert). Born Melville, Saskatchewan 1935. She was first elected
to the Surry, British Columbia, city council in 1970. In 1983 she
was elected to the British Columbia provincial assembly becoming Minister
of Municipal Affairs and Transit in 1986. In 1991 she became
the first woman to serve as a provincial premier in Canada. |
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Suhana
Meharchand.
Born 1962. She is a television
news journalist who was inspired by her uncle, also a journalist,
who ran an underground newspaper in her native South Africa. She is
a graduate of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. Before becoming
the host of the CBC Evening News in Toronto, she worked at TV stations
in Hamilton, Windsor, and Ottawa She has received 2 Gemini
Award nominations for her work. |
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Robbyn
Hermitage.
Born Montreal, Quebec 1970. Her
profession is her sport of badminton. She states the biggest
thrill in her career was winning the gold medal in the doubles event
at the Pan American Games in 1997. She had also won silver and bronze
medals in 1995 in doubles and single events and was again a medalist
in the 2002 doubles event. Her life goal is to coach young badminton
players so that she can give a return to the sport that has given
her so much. |
| April
23 |
Margaret
Avison.
Born Galt (now Cambridge), Ontario 1918. She was a poet, librarian,
historian and social worker. She won the Governor General's Award
for literature in 1960. She used her writing to bring history alive
for young readers in her "History of Ontario".
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| April
24 |
Violet
Archer.
Born Montreal, Quebec 1913. Died February 21, 2000. She studied
music with the best of her era.
As a composer she has produced a wide variety of scores for
voice, instrumentals, films and even a comic opera.
She taught in the U.S. but moved to teach at the University
of Alberta before she retired.
She was named composer of the Year in Canada and was the first
North American woman composer to be honoured with a festival of her
own works. |
| April
25 |
Melissa
Hayden.
(real name Mildred Herman). Born Toronto, Ontario 1923. This ballerina
who trained as a young girl in Toronto, became an internationally
known dancer. She danced
with the New York City Ballet. Upon retiring as a dancer she opened
her own teaching studio in New York City. |
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Francine
Pelletier.
Born 1957. This author has written
14 novels for young adults and several novels for adults. In
1988 she was awarded the "Grand Prix de la science-fiction du
fantastique Quebecoise" for her work, La petite fille de silence,
also the same year she was awarded the "Prix Boreal" for
the work, les temps de migrations. |
| April
26 |
Jeanne
Mathilde
Sauvé . (née
Benoit) Born Prud'homme, Saskatchewan 1922. Died January 26, 1993.
A journalist turned politician she became the first woman appointed
as Speaker of the House of Commons in Ottawa and the first woman to
be appointed Governor General of Canada. Did you know that her hair
was so brilliantly white that she had to put a light blue colour in
it to tone it down for the Commons TV cameras? |
| April
27 |
Janis
G. Johnson. Born 1946.
After university she would follow careers as a businesswoman, and
a consultant . She was appointed to the Senate of Canada in September
1990. |
| April
28 |
Ethel
Catherwood.
Born Haldamond Co., Ontario 1908. Died September 26, 1987. Ethel was
on the 1928 Canadian Olympic team, the first Olympic games to allow
women to compete. She won a gold medal for Canada in the high jump
when she cleared 5 feet 2 inches (1.588m). She is a member of the Canadian
Sports Hall of Fame. |
© Canada Post
Corporation |
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Helena
Jane Coleman.
Born 1860. Died 1953. A poet and
journalist who, for a long period, contributed poems anonymously to
a large number of Canadian and American journals. She did not use
her real name until 1906 when she published her first book “Songs
and sonnets”. |
| April
29 |
Paula
Ross. Born Vancouver,
British Columbia 1941. Her real name is Pauline Cecilia Isobel
Teresa Campbell. She began to study ballet at 5 years of age.
. At 15 she left home to join a traveling performing group from Montreal.
By the early 1960's she had returned to western Canada and had become
a principal dancer in a Vancouver company. In 1965 she opened
her own Paula Ross Dance Company. The Company, although well
presented in western Canada and the United States, dissolved due to
financial problems in 1987. Paula was known for her dance creativity
and continues to work in Canada, Japan, and France. |
| April
30 |
Edith
Margaret Fowke.
(née Fulton). Born Lumsdon, Saskatchewan 1913. Died March 28, 1996.
This folklorist, collector, writer, and teacher was interested in
Ontario folklore. She presented the songs she recorded on the CBC
radio on various shows featuring weekly programs on folklore from
1950 to 1974. She was
a founding member of the Canadian Folk Music Society and editor of
the societies journal. |
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