Mary Ellen Smith: The Right Woman
in the Right Place at the Right Time
ELIZABETH NORCROSS

year or two ago, while researching the life of Mary Ellen Smith, I
had the good fortune to interview a centenarian who had been active in the
female franchise campaign prior to the First World War. This lady said,
understating her own work,"It was something whose time had come." And
then she followed that with a little laugh at herself and the other eager, earnest
young women who had been campaigning--"But we had a lot of fun!" That
story illustrates the political climate in which Mary Ellen Smith first went on
the hustings. There were in British Columbia none of the ugly incidents that
marked the campaign for women's political equality in many other parts of
the western world. Smith rode into political office on a wave of goodwill
towards women. Far from wishing to minimize her personal contribution to
her own success, the point should be made that she was fortunate to have been
born at the right time and to have lived in the right place. As an ambitious
woman with a social conscience and leadership abilities, she was ready to use
the advantages inherent in the social climate of the day. Furthermore, she
served a long apprenticeship.
Mary Ellen Smith's political education began almost in her cradle. She
grew up in a satellite village of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a place named
Framlington, the daughter of a coalminer. The family home was a meeting
place for other colliers and their wives who were keenly and intelligently
interested in public affairs. The children, Mary Ellen and a younger brother,
were encouraged to listen and participate in these discussions. There would
have been plenty of talk since her father who had been a copper miner in
Cornwall, moved in 1865 to Framlington where, during a strike of colliers, the
owners imported hundreds of men from the south of England, among them
Mary Ellen's father, Richard Spear. These men apparently did not know until
they arrived that they were strikebreakers. Some turned around and went
back home; some, I suppose, did not care; and some, like Spear, had sold
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, 1984

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Mary Ellen Smith

everything and could not afford to go home.
Mary Ellen became, at an early age, an elementary school teacher, and
then, without much delay, the wife of a coalminer, a young widower named
Ralph Smith, who had a baby daughter. In the next few years, the couple had
three sons. Ralph had come from a similar background to Mary Ellen's, from
a family very much aware of public affairs. He was one of four brothers, the
sons of a coalminer, all of them miners. A great-niece of Ralph's wrote that
they were all able men who had little schooling but were self-taught.
Little is known about Mary Ellen's life in Framlington. She probably
had little time, even with her great energy, for community activities. However,
she made her mark in spite of domestic responsibilities. The Framlington
Local History Society has identified a semi-biographical novel, entitled
Dusty Diamonds, published in 1910, which dealt with the lives of the colliers,
from the strike of 1865 into the hero's middle age. In answer to a public appeal,
the Society received several copies of the novel, one of which, to their great
delight, had been annotated by the author. The book had only a thin disguise
of fiction. In this special copy the author had identified, in his own hand, the
real people and places: Smith was the romantic heroine of the piece.
The Smiths moved to Vancouver Island in 1891 when Ralph's health
began to deteriorate. She had always been interested, so she told interviewers
later, in the west coast of Canada and Nanaimo was a natural location for a
coalminer. Ralph served as a provincial MLA and later as a Liberal MP,
almost continuously from 1900 to the defeat of the Laurier government. After
a few years in private life, he was back in provincial politics and elected in 1916.
His political career had a direct bearing on Mary Ellen's insofar as Mary Ellen
travelled everywhere with her husband and there is ample evidence that she
was more than just a travelling companion. A columnist reviewing her first
session in the Legislature, said she had served nearly twenty years of
apprenticeship in the political arena.
In N anaimo, Smith was active in the life of her community. She sang in
the church choir, and organized its entertainments. A charter member of the
Hospital Auxiliary, she probably initiated its formation at the end of the
1890s. At any rate, she served as an elected officer for a number of years. She
founded the Laurier Liberal Ladies League. She joined and worked for the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, a very strong advocate of the female
franchise. Nanaimo, however, was a small pond for Smith. A major milestone
was reached when she and Ralph moved to Vancouver at the end of 1911. The
Laurier Liberal Ladies' League sponsored a farewell party in her honour. A
day or two later, Ralph was honoured at a civic dinner, which was attended by
all the community leaders and included men of every political stripe. Both
these events received front page treatment in the local paper.
Shortly before this, Mary Ellen had spoken to the Young People's
Society of her church in a full-length address, reported verbatim in the
Nanaimo Free Press. In her speech to these young adults she explained with
philosophical arguments, current at the time, why women should be
considered and treated as the equals of men and why, as part of the package,
they should have the vote. She identified the benefits that would accrue to the
family and to society when there was full equality. Because this is the earliest

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dated newspaper clipping among Mary Ellen Smith's papers, it must have had
a special value for her: regardless of how strong-minded a woman might be
and of how firmly dedicated to women's rights she was, speaking in public was
just not ladylike. My aunt said that when she had something to say at the
annual meetings of her country church, she whispered her views to her father
so that he became her spokesman. A few years after her address to the young
people, Mary Ellen ~mit~, M_LA, was inv~te~ to ad?ress a m_eetin~ held under
the auspices of the V1ctona Liberal Associat10n, with Premier Oliver and the
member for Victoria sharing the platform. "Ten years ago," she said, "would
you have come to this hall to hear a woman speak? No. In all probability you
would have said,'We get enough of that at home.'"
However, this woman made very good sense, at the same time projecting
a kindliness that won all hearts. Well, almost all. There were those who never
quite forgave her for deserting the ranks of Labour and aligning herself with
the Liberals. Smith, who was primarily interested in achieving justice for the
disadvantaged of society, worked through the Party that had not only the
inclination, but also the power to effect the reforms she wanted.
When she and Ralph moved to Vancouver, that city was just coming to
the end of a heady boom period. Vancouver women--that is, the educated and
the affluent, were in the grip of a fervour to improve the lot of their less
fortunate sisters, as well as to raise the cultural standards of their raw young
city. There, Mary Ellen Smith joined and held executive office in many
women's organizations: she served a term as president of the Vancouver
Branch of the Women's Canadian Club; was president ·of the Women
Ratepayers' Association; and was regent of a primary chapter of the IODE
and of the provincial chapter. Furthermore, she was first vice-president of the
very active Political Equality League. Inevitably, her activities included
membership in the Women's Suffrage League of Canada. However, in the
University Women's Club, which had made the female franchise campaign
their chief concern, Mary Ellen did not hold an executive position. She also
supported with her membership a society which had founded a free nursery
for the children of working mothers. She campaigned for a new institution for
women prisoners. Although she was laying the groundwork for a political
career, Smith probably had little thought of running for public office, even
though the franchise was imminent.
Smith had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time, and
British Columbia had the good fortune that the times brought forth the right
woman to fight for social justice. The community at large was beginning to
develop a social conscience: the idea of "people first, property second," had
taken root. If anyone foresaw a reversal of that philosophy after half a
century, s/he was not very vocal.
At the turn of the century the subject of votes for women could raise a
laugh in the Legislature. Ralph Smith, while he was not the first, was one of
those MLAs who proposed to grant women the franchise, but the general
mood was to regard it as a laughing matter. Always, legislators have had an
occupational disease which is to be a little behind the times. As early as 1895,
the editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist, male we can be sure, wrote the
following: "The world has no more brain than it needs for the proper direction

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Mary Ellen Smith

of its affairs. Why then should any part of it be condemned as inferior, and its
aid rejected without fair trial? Would it not be wise to let the new woman have
a chance to use all her intellectual endowment, and will not the world be better
for the work she does?" The times were changing.
Smith's fame spread. In 1916, she was filling speaking engagements in
Toronto where the idea of votes for women did not have the general
acceptance that it did in the West. A centenarian's explanation for that
difference in attitude was that the pioneering days were not so far in the past
for the West where it was recognized that women had played an equally
valuable role with men in opening up the country. "They were ashamed," she
said, "to withhold the vote." In 1916, in British Columbia, there was an election
and referendum on the issue of the female franchise. The Liberals won the
election and the women won the franchise. Ralph Smith was named to the
post of Finance Minister, but within a few months of assuming that office, he
was dead. Later in 1917, Mary Ellen went to Toronto on another speaking
engagement, this time devoting herself mainly to the campaign of the
Dominion Liberals since an election had been called for December. A
Toronto newspaper described one of her speeches as "belligerent", and
another suggested that many British Columbians had expressed shock that
she should so disgrace her province. British Columbia was not so easily
shocked. When the Premier called a by-election in January, 1918, to fill the
vacancy caused by Ralph's death, Mary Ellen, who was a candidate, won by a
very wide margin. She could honestly say in the Legislature in her first speech:
"Not only did the women of my fair city stand behind me ... but the men were
there, too." Her campaign slogan had been: "Women and children first."
Clear-sighted and practical, for her suffrage was a means to an end, the end
being improvement in conditions for women and children, and social justice
for all through the women's vote.
She took her first step in that regard in March of 1918 by introducing a
Female Minimum Wage Act. While she promoted and supported a great deal
of social legislation in the next ten years, she is given sole credit for this law.
When moving second reading, she reminded the House that men enjoyed the
protection of their labour unions while women, having nothing of that sort,
must be protected in other ways. The Bill was very moderate in its terms. No
actual minimum was set for any occupation, but provision was made for an
inquiry in each case, and no compulsion would be exerted except as a last
resort. The Female Minimum Wage Bill passed the committee stage with only
one major amendment, that the administrative board of two women and one
man be increased to a total of five. The male legislators, however great their
respect for the lone female MLA, were not yet ready to put women in a
dominant position on a board set up to administer a law passed for the
protection of women.
In the next session, the Legislature made one of its first items of business
the passing into law of the Female Minimum Wage Bill. Two years later, the
Minimum Wage Board reported that ever since the law came into operation,
there had been a constant movement towards higher wages and shorter hours
for women and girls. At the same time that this report was presented,
regulations were brought in to require employers to give pregnancy leave.

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When the 1920 session of the Legislature opened, Smith again spoke in
the Throne Speech debate. The Daily Colonist reported her comments at
some length: "The people of this province are not worrying very much these
days over the fortunes of political parties; they are not concerned to any
degree in the Farmers' Party, or even a Women's Party, but they are very
deeply interested in the matters of human needs ... We are sadly in need of
more humane legislation."
There is no reason to suppose that Smith had a career in politics in mind
when she chose British Columbia as a place to live. However, she had chosen
wisely. Her experience as our first woman MLA is in sharp contrast to the
experience of Agnes Macphail, Canada's first woman MP. Smith received an
ovation from all sides of the House when she made her first appearance: the
Premier himself was one of the two members to present her to the Speaker. A
basket of flowers arrived for her in the Legislature and masses more were sent
with congratulatory messages to her suite in the Empress Hotel. Among them
was one from the Local Council of Women with a letter "to tell you how
delighted we are that you have been elected as a representative of Vancouver
City--truly a wonderful realization of our hopes, our dreams, and our labours
of the past thirty-two years."It was roses, roses all the way for Smith. For
Agnes Macphail, it was very different. She did receive the loyal support of her
rural Ontario riding for many years, but in the House of Commons, her
fellow members regarded her as an interloper in an exclusive men's club.
Macphail complained, too, of the lack of support she received from other
women, except for farm women, and the mean criticism she received from
women journalists.
Smith never forgot that her purpose in the Legislature was to promote
more humane legislation. The Twenties were a great decade for social
legislation. After the Female Minimum Wage Act, Mothers' Pensions were
introduced. Poor widows, deserted wives, and unmarried mothers scrambled
for a bare existence for themselves and their children. Society recognized its
obligation not to let them starve, at least neither outrightly, nor obviously.
Apart from the social stigma of accepting charity, most mothers found
themselves only slightly better off if they went to work.
The Premier had named a commission in the fall of 1919 to investigate
mothers' pensions, public nursing and maternity benefits. The report of the
commission in respect to mothers' pensions was presented to the Legislature
in April. It recommended an allowance of $42.50 per month to a widow with
one child under sixteen and $7. 50 per month for each additional child. If these
allowances appear inadequate--and indeed they were, even in terms of their
day--they were higher than those already in effect in the Prairie provinces.
When the Bill came up for second reading in the Legislature, Smith
supported it. The needs of industrial widows and fatherless children were, she
pointed out, precisely the same for the women with children whose husbands
were confined in an asylum. She noticed that there was no specific provision
for the unmarried mother, and she made a special plea for that group. And it
was here she enunciated her famous and oft-quoted philosophy: "Mr.
Speaker, there are no illegitimate children. It may be there are ... people who
will contend there are illegitimate parents but in God's name, do not let us
I

''

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Mary Ellen Smith

brand the child." This statement has since become so much a part of society's
thinking that no one remembers what a startlingly fresh view of the problem it
had been at the time.
Among other social legislation passed during the amazing decade in
which Smith served as an MLA were the Juvenile Courts Act, which provided
for the appointment of women judges in Juvenile Court; the Maintenance of
Deserted Wives Act; the Testator's Family Maintenance Act; the Act for
Registration of Nurses; and the Maternity Protection Act. Most of this was
legislation in which British Columbia, prodded forward by Smith, pioneered
and served as a model for the rest of Canada.
The Female Minimum Wage Act eventually lost its separate identity, but
that was not until 1972. Mothers' pensions, which became known as
allowances, also lost their identity in the general welfare system in 1958. One
other piece of social legislation passed in Smith's time is still with us,
recognizably the same, and that is Old Age Pensions. In the 1920s, British
Columbia boasted that it led Canada in social legislation. Much of the credit
must go to the politically conscious women of the province, with Mary Ellen
Smith in the forefront.
Smith was not only our province's first woman MLA, but also she had
the honour of being the first woman Cabinet Minister in the British
Empire. Had it been otherwise, she would have been the first woman
Speaker. What happened was this: Premier Brewster, who had so gallantly
introduced her to the Legislature, died a few weeks later and was succeeded by
John Oliver. Oliver had no use for women in public life. After the general
election of 1920, in which Smith was elected by another tremendous majority,
he sought to silence her by appointing her Speaker. She declined. "I did not
wish to be so prettily muzzled," she told inquiring reporters. Her constituents
urged the Premier to appoint her to a Cabinet post. Oliver had to give in. He
made her Minister without Portfolio. Before a year was out, Smith resigned
the empty honour. While her letter to the Premier was diplomatic, her
statement to the press was frank: "I felt I was a fifth wheel in the political
coach, having no department to administer and with no responsibility, yet
having to assume praise or blame for the activities of the government."
So back she went to the floor of the Legislature, "enjoying" as she said,
"many a good tilt." In one speech, she declared "that she could fight just as
hard as any other Honourable Member when necessary. If anyone tried to
intimidate her, she was prepared to go to the mat with him." On one occasion,
the schoolboy humour of the legislators upset her. A measure about which she
felt very strongly was an amendment which made the father of an illegitimate
child responsible for that child's support to the age of sixteen. Because she
wished to have the age raised to eighteen, she lobbied all members of the
Legislature until she thought she had secured unanimous support. So she was
deeply shocked when a young war veteran, Captain Ian Mackenzie,
Conservative, asked that the vote be delayed. Mackenzie argued that because
this was a very serious matter he would like time to give it more thought.
Accordingly, the vote was held over. When the proposed amendment came up
again, Mackenzie announced solemnly that he and his fellow bachelor
member, Major Lyons, had discussed the matter with great care and had

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come to the conclusion that they could support it, provided the measure was
not made retroactive. Major Lyons, who told me the story, added that he
"knew nothing about" the escapade of Mackenzie.
Smith did not wish to confine herself to issues affecting only women and
children. But, her male colleagues calmly referred the problems of their
female constituents to her, and she began to feel this a burden as time went on.
Smith was also a national figure. In 1923, the Department of
Immigration sent her on a tour of England to increase interest there in
emigration to Canada. She received generous coverage in the British press;
she was honoured with membership in the Royal Colonial Institute, London,
and the Overseas League; she was presented to the King and Queen at their
holiday home; and she was a guest of Lord and Lady Aberdeen (former viceroyalty in Canada) and Viscountess Rhondda.
In the provincial election of 1928, Liberals were defeated and so was
Smith. The newspapers were immediately full of speculation about her future.
She should run for mayor of Vancouver said one; there was the possibility of a
Senate seat for her, said another. At any rate, they agreed that she should not
be lost to public life. While it was not said aloud, she also badly needed a job,
and what job was there for a woman in her mid-sixties who had known no
career but politics? While the Dominion Government did not appoint her to
the Senate, they did send her in 1929 to Geneva as Canada's sole representative
at an International Labour Conference. The provincial government helped
out, too, but only temporarily. In 1931, Attorney-General Pooley
(Conservative) sounded out the Opposition Leader,T.D. Pattullo, on a
proposal to grant Lady McBride a government annuity. Pattullo pointed out
that there were others meriting similar consideration, and cited Smith, in
particular. So the government decided to make an annual allowance of
twenty-five hundred dollars to Lady McBride, widow of Sir Richard
McBride, late Premier of the province, and an allowance of fifteen hundred
dollars a year to Mrs. Mary Ellen Smith, widow of Ralph Smith, former
member of the Dominion House and Minister of Finance in the British
Columbia Cabinet at the time of his death. The reason they did not cite her
own service to the country seems obvious--they could not make any
corresponding claim for Lady McBride. In April, cheques were forwarded to
the two women with accompanying letters stating that thereafter similar
cheques would be sent monthly, subject to further instructions. Those first
cheques were the last they saw. However, the Conservative Party continued
the allowance to Lady McBride. The Liberals seemed not to have had the will,
or perhaps the means, to do the same for Smith.
Smith continued in public life serving as president of the Provincial
Liberals and chaired their convention in the fall of 1932. In the spring ofl933,
she died of a stroke. The press tributes to her work for the women and
children of the province were lengthy and generous. The Vancouver Sun
summed it up: "Her efforts added materially to the happiness and security of
women in this province. Mrs. Smith was an agent of civilization. Her work
will not soon be forgotten."

364 Mary Ellen Smith

Bibliography
Brief biography prepared by Sybil D. White for the BC Women's Liberal Association
in 1967, and privately printed.
Correspondence and conversations with relations and surviving acquaintances of
Mary Ellen Smith.
Mary Ellen Smith's papers (P ABC).
Norcross, Elizabeth. British Columbia Historical News, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1983: 12-16.
Personal correspondence with the Local History Society in Framlington, Northumberland, England.