Women on Campus in British
Columbia: Strategies for Survival,
Years of War and Peace 1906-1920
LEE STEWART

The

young women who entered Canadian universities just before
the First World War had fewer behavioural constraints and considerably
more social and intellectual freedoms than earlier generations. Nevertheless,
this independence was tempered with uncertainty because these women
ventured into largely uncharted territory. True to the dire predictions of
tho~e Victorians who resisted the admission of women to institutions of
higher learning, education not only brought women into direct conflict with
traditional expectations of womanhood, but also into direct competition with
male academics and professionals. 1 These students, then, in the early years of
the twentieth century, devised strategies to cope with this period of transition,
in which the ever widening sphere of women's activities eclipsed familiar
sanctions.
In British Columbia, within a social and economic climate of changing
expectations that became intensified by the exigencies of the First World
War, women found their position on campus and in society both ambiguous
and challenging. The university community, not an island detached from the
larger society, served to focus and intensify the relationship between the
sexes. An analysis of this interaction at an organizational level demonstrates
lhe ways in which women responded to this intense period of transition.
... Prior to the opening of the provincial University of British Columbia
(UBC) in 1915, up to three years of undergraduate courses in Arts and Science
~11d Applied Science were administered to students in British Columbia by
~ontreal's McGill University. Beginning in 1906, classes were held forfortysight students at Vancouver High School, where matriculation courses were
:~Iso conducted. In 1907, the McGill University College of British Columbia,
~s,it was called, expanded to occupy the old hospital buildings on Cambie
~t.reet. The Fairview campus served also as the initial home for the University
ijfrba:a K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
}{1ctona: Camosun College, 1984
.

186 Women on Campus

of British Columbia before buildings were completed in Point Grey. 2 By
1908, the total enrolment in Arts and Science numbered fifty-six, of which
fifty percent were women. In the remaining years of McGill college, women
averaged forty percent of all Arts students, and in the first five years of UBC
(to 1920), the average number of women registered in all faculties was fortyfive percent of the total. The most noteworthy fluctutations in the ratio of
male to female students occurred due to the war. In 1917, women in
attendance outnumbered men by two percent and in the years immediately
following the war returning veterans, chiefly men, caused the most significant
disparity in the ratio of males to females since 1908. Female enrolment in
1919-20 was thirty-eight percent of a total student population of 890. 3 This
pattern of fluctuating enrolment during these years of war and peace, 19061920, in which women initially comprised half the student population, briefly
the majority, and finally the minority, coincided with differing stages of
feminist consciousness: a strategy devised to cope with the conflicting
expectations inherent in the current model of coeducation.
At different times, coeducation has meant education for men and women
in coordinate colleges, education of the sexes together in the same colleges
{but not necessarily the same education for both), and identical education of
the sexes together. 4
In British Columbia, practical ·and economic
considerations combined to ensure that men and women were offered
identical instruction within classrooms where ·only separate seating
arrangements informally recognized male and female differences. 5 In the
nineteenth century, when education remained oriented to theoretical or
metaphysical constructs, feminists fought for the right of women to receive
the same instruction, examinations, and degrees as men. They refused to
compromise before they had proven their ability to become assimilated in the
academic fraternity. 6 In the twentieth century, when education, in many
instances, has become vocational training, feminists have been divided on
whether women's interests are best served by their assimilation into the status
quo. 7 Identical education might be perceived as a lack of accommodation to·
the presence of women or an insensitivity to their special interests.
In 1920, the young women active in the.Ladies' Literary and Debating
Society of McG:ill University College of British Columbia (MUCBC) were
not so complacent that they accepted uncritically the conditions of their
instruction on campus. Included in their subjects for debate that year was the
resolution "that the system of coeducation is satisfactory in every way. ''8 The
remaining topics scheduled for the women to debate that year indicated some
of the tensions that may have existed between their desire to be assimilated
and their need to be accommodated. These topics included resolutions: that a
Domestic Science course is more useful for a woman than a regular Arts
course; that Physical Culture be compulsory for women students in college;
that the study of French and German is more worthwhile than Greek and
Latin. 9 In fact, the institution adapted slowly to the female presence and their
different needs. More frequently, women adjusted their own expectations
and accommodated themselves to the predominant conditions.
The removal of the more visible barriers to women's participation in
higher education failed to clarify the degree of acceptance or recognition that

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187

a woman might expect to receive in a system that historically reflected maledefined values and priorities. In a photograph in the 1910 MU CBC Annual,
the young women of the "Ladies' Lit" pose for posterity. They appear with
huge hair bows worn at the back of the head like fantastic butterflies. Their
dresses are detailed with starched white collars at the throat and very formal,
very neat neckties. Perhaps these accessories of dress were emblematic of the
ambivalent position that women occupied in what remained essentially a
man's world. A brief survey of the history of the Ladies' Literary and
Debating Society (Ladies' Lit) illustrates the ways in which women
accommodated themselves to the conflicting expectations and demands
inherent in the university community. These demands required women to
compete in a traditionally male sphere while maintaining the outward signs of
traditionally feminine decorum and deference.
1908, the students at MUCBC organized the Undergraduates'
. Literary and Debating Society "to develop and promote the art of public
speaking. " 10 The officers of the new society included a woman as vicepresident and as class respresentative. In the first debate only men
participated, but in subsequent meetings, which took the form of a mock
Dominion Parliament, the "government" introduced a bill to grant the
franchise to women who had reached the age of twenty-one. Two women
spoke to the issue. After a heated debate, the bill passed its final reading.
The participation of women speaking forcefully and with conviction
could not escape even gentle ridicule in the write up of the college annual. It
stated: "Miss Harris and Miss Patterson spoke in a very impressive style and,
Carry Nation-like, dr[ o]ve home their points with a hatchet. " 11 The
hyperbolic comparison to Carry Nation served as a reminder that the image
of women speaking in public remained both uncommon and suggestive of
those qualities not generally admired in women.
In 1909, the inter-college debate against the Methodist Columbia
College, New Westminster, was represented by the McGill team of two men
and one woman,, but the following year no women took any active part in any
of the college debates. The issue of woman's suffrage was again debated, but
apparently women had become reluctant or unable to continue in direct
competition with men. There can be no doubt of women's interest in debating
if judged by their proposal to establish a separate society "for the ladies only"
in 1910. The new Ladies' Literary and Debating Society proclaimed their
main object to be "training in debating"12 which may indicate their own
appraisal of their abilities and their attempts to remedy and improve their
insufficiencies.
In the absence of any evidence to suggest that the men had overtly
excluded the women, it seems apparent that the coed society had been rejected
by the women who preferred not to subject themselves to criticism or failure
in front of the opposite sex. Their reticence had undoubtedly allowed men to
assume the more visible roles in class debates, but the interest of the women
_sought its own expression in a more supportive body. Acutely aware of their
need to participate and not be dominated by the more confident or aggressive
among them, the women modified the activity of their club to include

In

188

Women on Campus

dramatic readings and musical presentations. As stated in the college annual:
... the watchword of the· club is that all must be kept
active members, so those who will not debate give
musical selections ... [and] some dramatic parts ...
The ladies felt that if the club was to be of real help a
critic must be present to point out their faults and to
judge the debate.13
In 1911, the first woman faculty member who was appointed to McGill
College, Isabel Macinnes, MA, consented to be the Honourary President and
critic to the Ladies' Lit.
·
The Ladies' Lit which fostered solidarity among the college women
became a focus for the creative expression of social criticism. The women
presented a play, "The Ladies Speak at Last", which parodied Shakespeare's
female characters who represented their side of the (mostly) unhappy unions
with their famous husbands. Part of the performance was recorded in the
McGill Annual:
The curtain finds Miss Isabel Bodie, as Juliet, moping
because Romeo is where and when he ought not to be.
After several centuries of woefully monotonous
existence she has decided that married life is not what
it is·cracked up to be. Poor Portia agrees with her ...
she unburdens her troubles. Her Bassani'o has turned
out to be a spendthrift, and has with Antonio disposed
of his wife's cash ... Portia is reduced to depend on her
rejected suitor Morocco for entertainment ... 14
The rivalry between the sexes evident beneath the fun and entertainment was
a continuous theme in the presentations staged by the Ladies' Lit. Canadian
women have frequently chosen ridicule and satire as an effective means of
social criticism. A mock faculty meeting held by the Ladies' Lit in 1916 was
modelled after the famous mock parliaments staged by suffragists in western
Canada a few years earlier.1 5
By 1912-13, the Ladies' Lit became increasingly politicized. The
president of the society, Della Currie, was also the Editor-in-Chief of the
McGill Annual which had featured in the previous year an eloquent argument
by Currie for woman's suffrage. 16 Currie was depicted as "a girl of wide
interests ... extremely popular throughout the college--and above all, ... a
born leader."17 Currie moved the debating activity of the women's club back
into competition with the men's society, "the more pretentious body", to
decide once again the suffrage question. The focus for the club's meetings
became increasingly feminist: featured papers were on "Prominent Canadian
Women" by third~year Arts women, "The Inheritance of the Canadian
Educated Woman" by Mrs. Evlyn Farris, President of the University
Women's Club, "The Advantages of College Life for Girls" by Mrs. Laura
Jamieson, University Women's Club, and "Feminism and the Works of Ellen
Key", by Mrs. D. McIntosh, Faculty Women's Club.1 8
Over a period of seven years, the women of McGill College had adapted
the Literary and Debating Society to their own needs. The Society not only
provided a social function, but also a supportive forum in which women could

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189

develop their public-speaking skills. When the new provincial university
opened in 1915, two literary societies were established "on equal footing": the
Ladies' Lit, renamed the Women's Literary Society, and the Men's Literary
Society.' 9 The distinction between the men's and women's societies now had
become formalized~ Social functions, previously the domain of the Ladies'
Lit, were strictly relegated to the Undergraduate Society. The following
statement in the UBC Annual (1916-17) revealed that women became more
self-conscious of the expectation to be academically and not socially oriented
at the new university: " ... the Women's Literary Society has overcome any
tendency to be a social club and has preserved its identity· as a purely literary
society. "20 The Women's Lit emphasized more dignity and formality now and
their subjects for debates reflected these aspirations. In 1916-17, the Women's
Lit had one debate on coeducation, but other topics concerned the reforming
of Canada into a social democracy, and fates of Russia and Constantinople. 21
Women's roles and the attitudes towards their own education took on a
special significance during wartime. During the war years, women became
the instruments of transmission for patriotic nationalistic, and spiritual ·
values. Images of women as wives and mothers became synonymous with
those of home and country. Thus, women at the university, as in the larger
community, became imbued with a sense of miss1on which was both
externaily prescribed and internally conceded. The Women's Lit became the
forum, then, for addresses to confirm women's dedication to noble purposes.
Isabel Macinnes, Professor in Modern Languages, in 1917, exhorted the
women to uphold the quest for truth, to be dedicated to higher standards, and
to maintain a sense of righteousness, truth and honour, as part of her duty to
preserve those supreme· interests for which the men were facing danger and
death. 22 The imperative of war presumed that all men were soldiers and all
women were nurses. Thus some women at the university responded to the call
of the Red Cross; but as women were increasingly expected to be the standard
bearers on the home front, they responded in a variety of ways to the
challenge of the qualified and temporary power they were left to wield, as they
became the m~j ority of the student population.
In 1916, Evelyn Story, motivated by a "sense of duty", ran for the office
of president in the student society elections. Story had been active in the
Ladies' Lit and in the preparation of the college annual. She had also worked
with two other male students to draft the constitution of the Alma Mater
Society to ensure that women had the right to bold office and to vote in
student elections. 23 Story's candidacy proved controversial and unsuccessful;
she lost by one vote due to a last-minute campaign waged by the men in the
Science faculty who were appalled by Story's ambitions as a "self-seeking
woman". 24 Story's efforts set the precedent, and the following year, Nora
Coy, who bad served as the Women's Athletic Association President in 1916,
had no trouble winning the office to become the first women president of the
Alma Mater Society. 25 As women assumed a greater visibility on campus, the
Women's Lit subsided in its importance as an alternate channel for women's
cautious and unaccustomed forays into the public eye. By the end of the war,
women on campus had greater confidence in their public roles, and the
conditions that had precipitated the founding and separating of the men's and

190 Women on Campus

women's literary societies had been forgotten.
A sequence ofletters in the first two months of 1919, in the Ubyssey, the
student newspaper, indicated a resurgence of the old issues of coeducation
and the "need for more progressive policy" in the two literary societies. 26 A
letter signed by "L'Homme Indigne" gave every indication that the sentiments
expressed were an attempt at satirizing grievances which were nevertheless
begining to surface.
It was with great pleasure that I learned . . . that
women were to be excluded from the meetings of the
Men's Lit ... why, oh why, can't women be excluded
from all activities about the college that are primarily
for men? ... we have to put up with coeducation, why
should we allow so many of our societies to be diluted
with the weaker sex . . . now having lowered the
academic standard for their benefit, certain students
would prevent us raising the Men's Lit. above the
feminine level. 27
A letter from Hazel E. McConnell, editor of the UBC Annual, revealed that
women's perceptions and expectations had altered significantly ·over ten
years:
It is felt by many students in the University that the
Men's Lit. Society is making a mistake -in excluding
women from those meetings devoted to debate and
public speaking... such an attitude savors of the last
century when the presuming .. co-ed" was tolerated at
lectures but not expected to interfere in the affairs of
the College. In many of the leading universities today,
the men and women have one literary society, which is
found mutually beneficial. 28
And a final letter in the series suggested a stronger commitment to the ideal
of sexual equality and an enhanced consciousness of women's altered image
in society:
The modern views regarding coeducation are that the
healthy association of men and women is the natural
and benefical system . . . the old notion of higher
education for men only is ou~ of place. The day is now
passed when a woman leads her life in ignorance of
everything but her home duties ... the long centuries,
during which "the weaker sex" were supposed to be
knitting by the fireside, have failed to develop certain
qualities which we find in men. But though women are
entering fields of work formerly regarded as
exclusively masculine, they need not lose any of their
fine qualities. Furthermore, a highminded woman is
above feeling even the slightest resentment when it is
stated that her intellectual standing is inferior to a
· man's. 29
The university women were probably not conscious of the ways in which the
Women's Lit had evolved in response to the need of the participants for a
collective, gender-specific identity. In the period after the war, women felt

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191

that continued segregation of men and women was anachronistic and even
discriminatory. It would appear that it was now the men who felt uneasy in
mixed company; or, at least, they had become accustomed to the status quo.
The next stage in the evolution of the Literary Societies was an attempt
to rejuvenate what had become not only an anachronistic structure, but also
an activity of declining student interest. In the efforts to overcome student
apathy to debating, the formation of a new Literary Club was proposed-the
Literary and Scientific Department--open to both men and women but
"limited to students who were willing to take an active interest in the
society".3° A concerted attempt was made to create an elite group of energetic
participants in order to fulfill the society's first objective in "a province
deficient in public speakers. "3 1
The experiences of women at the university as reflected by their activity
in the Women's Lit Society indicate a pattern of response not dissimilar to
that of women in the larger community. The formation of women's societies
was prompted by a complex set of needs and circumstances and not by the
exclusion of women from the men's societies. Women chose the solidarity of
their own sex in order to develop the skills they needed for a more extensive
interaction and responsiblity within an environment whete expectations and
images of women's roles were rapidly changing. The association of women
fostered a consciousness of their shared experience and nourished a feminist
vision and appreciation of their own sex. Their extended participation during
the war years increased the autonomy of individual women and contributed
to their collective self-confidence. However, in the aftermath of political
equality, the argument for separate but equal spheres of influence appeared
untenable. Moreover, as the male organization clung to the preservation of
the status quo, -the status of exclusively female activities declined by
comparison. Thus, segregated societies which came to be regarded as
conservative not discriminatory, seemed also to be fulfilling antiquated
functions.
These conclusions can be pushed further. Historians have noted
elsewhere that at the end of the war, in coincidence with the suffrage victory,
many women relinquished their increased share of the power structures,
retreated from public life, and suspended their tradition of feminist activity.
While it is clear that women did not press their advantage in a time of social
upheaval, it is imperative to understand in retrospect that the apparent
strengthened status acquired by individual women was undermined by a
concomitant devolution in the status of feminist solidarity. Perhaps this
examination of the activity of women on campus lends some insight into the
process whereby separatist feminist strategies became dismantled in the belief
that they impeded full equality.

192 Women on Campus

Footnotes
1. For an account of the controversies surrounding the higher education of women
in Great Britain, see Joan N. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of
Womanhood (London. Croom Helm, 1980). And for some Canadian views, see
Ramsay Cook and Wendy Mitchinson, eds., "Education", in The Proper Sphere
(Toronto: Oxford, 1976).
2. The University remained in Fairview for ten years. For the early history ofUBC
and also McGill University College of British Columbia, see Frederic H. Soward
&zrly History of the University of British Co/umbia(Vancouver: UBC, 1930), Special
Collections Division, the Library, University of British Columbia.
3. Registration figures established by McGill College Calendars and University of
British Columbia Calendars for the years mentioned, UBC Archives. Before 1916, no
women registered in the Faculty of Applied Sciences. By 1920, Nursing was included
and attracted increasing numbers of female students.
4. Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States Vol. II
(New York: Octagon, 1974): 244.
5. Arts courses were chosen from English, History, Latin, French, German,
Physics, Chemistry, Psychology, Logic, and Maths, with few options.
6. See Sara Delamont, "The Contradictions in Ladies' Education", The Nineteenth
Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, eds., Sara Delamont and Lorna
Duffin (London: Croom Helm, 1978).
7. In British Columbia, maternal feminists in the Local Council of Women
advocated the teaching of Domestic Science at the university. This position was
initially supported by Dr. Frank Wesbrook, newly appointed President of the
University of British Columbia in 1913. However, Evlyn Farris, equal rights
feminist, founder of the U Diversity Women's Club and member of the UBC Senate,
argued that women's education could be devalued if the emphasis lay in the
preparation of women for their socially defined roles and she opposed Household
Science in the curriculum.
8. McGill Annual, 1910-11: 54-55.
9. Ibid.
10. McGill Annual, 1908: 39.
11. Ibid. Carry Nation (1846-1911) was a militant temperance advocate whc,
achieved notoriety with her dramatic saloon smashing raids that took her (and her
hatchet) throughout Kansas.
12. McGill Annual, 1909-10: 86.
13. Ibid.
14. McGill Annual, 1910-11: 56-57.
15. These were staged by the University Women's Club of Vancouver and later by
Nellie McClung in Winnipeg, 1914.
16. "The Woman's Cause" in McGill Annual, 1911-12: 50-52.
17. McGill Annual, 1913: 21.
18. McGill Annuals, 1913-16. Ellen Key was a Swedish feminist whose Love and
Marriage foreshadowed bachelor motherhood.
19. UBC Annual, 1915-16: 71. The change of name from "Ladies"' to the
"Women's" indicates that a kind of democratization had taken place in the self-image
of femininity. Or, perhaps, this change reflected an academic, formal orientation to
university activities. In any event, it reflected a move away from Victorian
connotations of. womanhood.
20. UBC Annual, 1916-17: 62.
21. Ibid.

STEWART 193

22. UBJCEE, January, 1917: 8-10.
23. UBC women took pride in their equality which put them a step ahead of the
country. At the time women at UBC were being elected to office in the AMS, women
at McGill, Montreal, were trying to win the right to membership in the AMS. See
Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill
(Montreal: Eden Press, 1981): 86.
24. Mrs Sherwood Lett (Evelyn Story). History of Women at UBC, Taped
Interview by E.R. Green, August 9, 1975. UBC Archives.
25. No~a Coy was the only woman to be elected to the presidency of the AMS until
1950 when President John L. Haar did not return to UBC and Noreen Donaldson
succeeded him. Coy died in 1921 after illness forced her to discontinue graduate work.
26. Ubyssey, January 30, 1919: 4.
27. Ubyssey, January 9, 1919: 5.
28. Ubyssey, January 30, 1919: 5.
29. Ubyssey, February 6, 1919: 4. Letter from "L'observateur Intelligent".
30. Ubyssey, February 13, 1919: 4.
Bibliography
· Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood. London: Croom
Helm, 1980.
Calendars of McGill University College of British Columbia 1908-1915, UBC
Archives.
Calendars of the University of British Columbia. 1915•1925. UBC.Archives.
Gillett, Margaret. We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill.
Montreal: Eden Press, 1981.
History of Women at UBC Project. 1978. UBC Archives.
Lett, Mrs. Sherwood {Evelyn Story). History of Women at UBC, Taped interview by
E.R. Green, August 9, 1975. UBC Archives.
Logan, Harry T. Tuum Est: A History of the Univ. of British Columbia. Vancouver:
University of British Columbia, 1954.
Macinnes, Miss Isabel, History of Women at UBC. Taped interview by L. Daniels,
UBC Archives.
McGill University College of British Columbia Annuals, 1915-1925. UBC Archives.
Reeve, Phyllis. The History of the University Women's Club of Vancouver,
1907-1982. Vancouver, 1982.
Ubyssey, 1916-25. UBC Archives.
University of British Columbia Annuals, 1915-25. UBC Archives.
University of British Columbia Scrapbooks. UBC Archives.
Woody, Thomas. A History of Women's Education in the United States. Vol. II.
New York: Octagon, 1974.