The Beginning of the WCTU in the Dominion of Canada
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the Dominion of Canada was founded in 1874. The founder, Letitia Youmans, was an evangelical temperance worker, Sunday School teacher, and stepmother of eight. She attended a conference south of the border where she heard Francis Willard speak about the temperance movement she’d founded. With the help of Francis, Letitia established the first Ontario chapter of the WCTU in Prince Edward County (although the first recorded temperance work was started in Owen Sound, Ontario a few years prior, but not in an official capacity).
Modelled initially after the American organization, the WCTU in the Dominion of Canada eventually took on a very different appearance:
More decentralized in structure, more consciously evangelical in ethic, and less inclined to fight legislative battles, the Ontario WCTU developed a separate identity almost from the start.[1]
Moral Virtues
The work of the WCTU in the Dominion of Canada was about moral virtues, rooted in the evangelical belief system. These virtues included work, sobriety, thrift, duty, and the sanctity of family life. Driven by faith and by a need to protect all families (regardless of class, skin colour, or place of birth), every project the Canadian members took on reflected those ideals.
In order to address local needs, chapters created departments (a committee of women who would do the work). Some of those departments included: evangelization (door to door ministry), flower ministry (visiting the sick and invalids with offerings of flowers, food and encouragement), traveller’s ministry (assisting single women at the train station to find room and shelter in a safe part of the city), temperance (advocating abstention from alcohol and smoking), and prison reform, amongst many others. They raised money to build women’s hospitals, ran shelters for fallen and abused women and children, established reading rooms/lending libraries available at no cost to patrons of any class or ethnicity. They taught reading and conducted literary discussions, provided reading materials and the space for patrons to enjoy a monthly social dance/evening with peers. The WCTU trained educators on teaching temperance through the sciences, established domestic schools for young girls and friendless women equipping them for domestic service to avoid a life of poverty. They worked tirelessly petitioning the government concerning family issues and the treatment of female prisoners. And these things only scratch the surface of what these women did.
The WCTU also worked with other religious charities working amongst the immigrants, poor class, orphans, and friendless women. The organization was closely affiliated with the YWCA and would often find housing placements for those leaving the shelter, within one of the YWCA residences.
Motherhood and the Sanctity of Family
Perhaps one of the strongest driving forces of the WCTU was the moral virtue of the sanctity of family. And that one of women’s greatest contribution to society was motherhood. It was believed that
No nation rises higher than its Motherhood[2]and that women could tame, and ultimately save, the rest of the world.
It eventually became apparent that to affect the kind of change they believed possible in the Dominion of Canada, they needed to have a voice in government. THIS is why the WCTU joined the suffragette movement. When women finally received the vote in 1917 (as part of the Wartime Elections Act: Wartime Elections Act | The Canadian Encyclopedia), it went largely uncelebrated in the WCTU circles.
One might speculate reasons why: was it a necessary result of the war taking place overseas? Was it because it effectively legitimized the anti-immigrant beliefs some held at the time – challenging the work the WCTU was already doing amongst the immigrant population? It is difficult to find citations in meeting minutes or WCTU publications that mention the success of their right to vote campaign.
I believe that for them, gaining the right to vote was a vehicle in which to accomplish their greater purpose: protecting the family unit and building a strong Canadian nation. Women were now in a position to more effectively direct the political landscape of the Dominion, having a say in how the laws would affect their families and the most vulnerable of the population.
Had you known of the WCTU before this article? What surprises you about the origin of the Canadian Woman’s right to vote?
Stay tuned for the next post on the real life murder that caught the attention of the WCTU, and is the inspiration for Though Trials Come.
READ PART ONE of the series
[1] Through Sunshine and Shadow, The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930. Sharon Anne Cook. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Page 18.
[2] Through Sunshine and Shadow, page 14
MORE READING
For more reading on the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union:
Through Sunshine and Shadow, The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930 by Sharon Anne Cook, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press
Campaign Echoes, memoir by Letitia Youmans