Cello music is a curative. It heals over the day’s wounds and calms the spirit. It speaks in low soothing tones or pleads through vibrato. It approaches with fleeting steps or storms about the room without apology. Its dulcet tones summon the imagination and make way for creativity. Continue reading “Cello: A Voice to Love”
Viola Desmond was a Nova Scotian who refused to abide by segregated seating in a public space — nine years before Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus. During Black History Month, Canada celebrates her courage and reflects on her experience. Continue reading “Viola Desmond: Harbinger of Change”
There was a time when lovers carved their initials into trees as a testament to their love. We’re all environmentalists now, so that practice has fallen from favour. Romantics are turning to another expression of devotion — lovelocks.
The first time I saw lovelocks clipped to a bridge railing was this past November on a visit to Ottawa. I had set out with great interest in the Corktown Footbridge. This pedestrian bridge spans the Rideau Canal to link Somerset Street East and the University of Ottawa to Somerset Street West in Centretown. Previous to 2006, the canal could only be crossed when the waters froze over in the coldest winter months.
Couples purchase a lock that they can either write or engrave their names on. They connect it to the railing of the bridge, then toss the key into the water as a symbolic act of commitment. To quote one frustrated observer, “If you’re going to add a love lock to the collection, you are supposed to put your names, a date of significance, and throw away the keys. Combination locks DO NOT have keys!”
The lovelock tradition hales from a footbridge in the Serbian town of Vrnjačka Banja. In the early 1900’s, a local schoolmistress named Nada met there with a soldier named Relja. The couple pledged their love for one another, but when World War 1 called him to serve on the Thessaloniki front, Relja’s affections changed. He fell in love with and married a woman from Corfu, Greece where he remained. Nada died, it is said, from a broken heart.
Young couples began visiting the bridge to pledge their devotion to one another by adding a lock to the rail and tossing the key into the river. The practice grew in popularity after publication of “A Prayer for Love”, a poem by Desanka Maksimovic. Lovelocks appeared on bridges in Rome after Federico Moccia’s I Need You described a couple connecting a lock to a lamp post on the Milvian Bridge. The popularity of lovelocks is spreading across North America and Europe. Adding a lovelock to a railing has even become a popular add on to some wedding ceremonies.
Not everyone is keen on the idea
City officials in Ireland, France, and even Canada have removed lovelocks from bridges citing concerns over aesthetics and the risk of damage to the metal railings. Also, the clusters of locks prohibit views of the railings and other architectural details.
In Paris, officials removed padlock laden railings from the Pont des Arts this past summer, for fear that they may separate from the bridge and crush boats passing beneath. Kentucky has taken steps to ban lovelocks from being attached to their bridges.
These three women are graduates of The Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP). Their accomplishment is made more extraordinary because it was achieved during an era where discrimination based on gender and ethnicity was commonplace. This photograph was taken as a memento of the Dean’s reception on October 10, 1885.
The Quakers of Pennsylvania can be credited with the creation of WMCP, the first women’s medical college in the world! In addition to their active role in the abolitionist movement, the Quakers were also strong advocates of women’s rights. The WMCP is also well known by followers of the popular Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman series, as the college attended by the fictional character, Michaela Quinn.
The story of Dr. Anandibai Joshee is one of inspiration and tragedy. Born to a wealthy Brahmin family in India, she was married at the age of nine to a man twenty years her senior. Her husband, a progressive thinker, encouraged her to learn how to read, write and study, not only in Sanskrit, but in English — an extraordinary pursuit in a time when the education of women was uncommon. Anandibai gave birth to a son when she was only fourteen years old, but the child died ten days later. The absence of lifesaving medical access, motivated her to pursue an education in medicine.
When Anandibai’s health took a downturn, an American supporter forwarded medications but to no avail. Her husband urged her to forge ahead and pave the way for other Indian women with similar interests. She received pressure from all sides. The Americans who offered to help with lodging and college applications, insisted that she convert to Christianity. Persecution by her Hindu community ceased when she gave a public speech promising not to convert. Anandibai also commented on her country’s need for medical practitioners and her intent to return home and open a women’s medical college. The Viceroy and many others from across India gave rupees to help cover her expenses. Although she contracted tuberculosis in America, she somehow managed her studies.
Anandibai graduated from the Women’s Medical Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886 and returned to Calcutta where she was highly celebrated. Even Queen Victoria sent her a message of congratulations. Not only was she the first Indian woman to earn a degree in Western medicine, she is possibly the first Hindu woman to arrive in America. Anandibai succumbed to tuberculosis at age 22, less than a year after her return to India.
Dr. Kei Okami was the first Japanese woman to complete a degree in Western medicine. She began her first career as a teacher Sakurai Girl’s School at the age of twenty. Five years later, she married and emigrated to the United States with her husband.
With the financial support of The Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, Kei was able to attend WMCP. She graduated four years later in 1885. After returning to Japan, Kei was appointed head of gynecology at the Jikei Hospital in Tokyo. She resigned from her post a few years later when the Emperor refused to receive her during hospital visit because she was a woman. Her life experiences continued to be eclectic. She returned to the field of education as a vice principal and again to medicine. Kei opened a small hospital in 1897 that ran successfully for nine years and around the same time, she opened a nursing school. She also served in the mission field of Japan, sharing her strong devotion to the Christian faith.
Less is known about Dr. Sabat Islambooly. She returned to Damascus and it’s believed that she went on to Cairo, Egypt.
Quakers are a part of my heritage. I’ve learned this through family tree research conducted in recent months. The connection delights me. I already had a general understanding of Quakers as peaceful folk who lived simply. I am pondering Quaker involvement in the underground railroad and their anti slavery sentiments.
I’d always assumed that individual Quaker families across the new world chose to assist runaway slaves to freedom, based solely by their observances and personal convictions. I soon discovered this was not entirely the case. They were part of a large and well organized movement.
All people are equal. This is the core belief that accounts for Quaker involvement the anti slavery movement. At worship meetings, even today, there is no evidence of any hierarchal structure; people speak when they feel compelled to do so. A priest is not a necessary conduit as Quakers believe that each person has a direct relationship with God. The collective faith is known as the Religious Society of Friends and members generally congregate at Quaker meeting houses.
Quaker disapproval of the slave trade can be traced back to the late 1600’s. The idea of one man owning another could not be reconciled against their belief that all men are equal. As the Friends travelled between Britain and the colonies, they witnessed atrocities that their disdain for the practice of slavery.
“… if you were in the same condition as the Blacks are … now I say, if this should be the condition of you and yours, you would think it hard measure, yea, and very great Bondage and Cruelty. And therefore, consider seriously of this, and do you for and to them, as you would willingly have them or any do unto you … were you in the like slavish condition.” George Fox, 1676 (Founder of Quakerism)
The Quakers were the first religious organization, in Britain or the colonies, to publicly stand against slavery. In 1783, a Quaker group initiated the abolition movement but their voice wasn’t heard until they combined their efforts with a group of like minded Anglicans. Together they started the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Nine of the group’s twelve members were Quaker; this was problematic as Quaker’s were barred from speaking in parliament. William Wilberforce became their parliamentary spokesman and it is he who popular history identifies as the force behind the movement. However, if not for years of financial support by Quaker merchants and businessmen, history would have looked quite different.
In the Americas, as in Britain, Quaker involved themselves in debates about the slave trade and parliaments were lobbied to end the slave trade. Friends worked to convince their communities to end the practice of slavery through posters and slogans. Protests were held and pamphlets distributed, and anti slavery articles were sent to newspapers. Logos were stamped on items for purchase and women wore pendants bearing the phrase, “Am I not a sister and a woman.”. Quaker groups boycotted goods like sugar, produced by slave labour. In short, their strategies are the same as those of modern day movements.
Thomas Clarkson was a leading force in the abolitionist campaign throughout Britain. After slavery was abolished in his own country, he went on to campaign elsewhere.
Elizabeth Heyrick believed in the immediate emancipation of all slaves. The distribution of her pamphlet played a role in changing public opinion about the use of slave labour.
John Sturge (businessman and philanthropist) and his sister, Sophia Sturge (left figure in fourth photo) visited 3,000 homes to promote a boycott of sugar produced through slave labour. They were appalled by conditions witnessed in the West Indies.
John Woolman worked in Britain and the Americas to end slavery. In 1754, he distributed the first pamphlet denouncing the practice.
Anthony Benezet worked ferverently to demonstrate the equality between the races. He taught poor black children to read. Notably, he also started the first American public school for girls. His work was influential on Thomas Clarkson.
“To live in ease and plenty by the toil of those whom violence and cruelty have put in our power, is neither consistent with Christianity nor common justice…” Anthony Benezet (click to tweet)
Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you!
The very mention of the Klondike Gold Rush conjures images of snowy mountain tops, babbling brooks, burly unshaven men. and robust women– the kind you don’t take home to mother.
There is no denying that prostitution played a role in Yukon. On the infamous Paradise Alley alone, there were seventy small cabins, each housing a different call-girl. Many of these women had fallen prey to charismatic pimps who persuaded them across the Chilkoot Pass. In the end, they were little more than white slaves.
If not plying the oldest profession to a bountiful and captive clientele, what might attract a woman to the Klondike Gold Rush?
Some wanted to escape the confines of Victorian expectations. In the Klondike, a woman could dress like a man and do the work of a man without judgment. At home, only financially destitute women sought employment. They were funneled into mindless factory jobs that required little skill. Even then, they were expected to give their position up to the first suitable male candidate that came along. A woman’s place was, after all, in the home.
In his book The Klondike Quest, Pierre Berton tells the story of one woman’s tenacity. She kneaded dough for bread but it refused to rise in the cold temperatures. The woman carried the dough on her back, next to her skin, so her body heat would cause the dough to rise. She then baked the bread and sold it for a handsome profit to fund her journey.
“What I wanted was not shelter and safety, but liberty and opportunity.” Martha Black (Second woman named to Canada’s House of Commons)
There would have been no Klondike Gold Rush if not for Yukon woman, Shaa Tlaa, also known as Kate Carmack. The discovery of gold is widely credited to the men in her family: George Carmack (husband), Skookum Jim (brother), and Dawson Charlie (nephew). According to author Fred N. Atwood, it may have been Kate who found the first nugget. While salmon fishing at Rabbit Creek during the summer of 1896, gold was discovered by “…while Carmack was resting, his wife in wandering around, found a bit of bedrock exposed and, taking a pan of dirt, washed it and found that she had some four dollars in coarse gold.”– The Alaska-Yukon Gold Book.
Over the course of 52 days, Grace Bartsch and her husband, Chris, drove a herd of 500 sheep, 50 cattle and one goat to Dawson City. Her diary gives an account of the difficult journey made partly on horseback and partly by train.
Dr. Lydia Clements left her successful practice and her dentist husband in Brooklin, to pursue what she thought would be a fruitful medical practice in Dawson. She was the only member of her party to completed the expedition and, quite possibly, the first woman from the eastern USA to cross the Chilkoot Pass. She opened a medical practise in Dawson and staked several mining claims. She travelled home many times but always returned to the Yukon, refusing to be defeated a succession of financial losses.
Belinda Mulroney was legendary in her ability to turn a profit. She made her way to Dawson City carrying items for sale: silk undergarments, cloth, and hot water bottles. Her profits allowed for the purchase of a restaurant that, in turn, generated sufficient funds for the building a two story hotel. Visitors to the hotel offered her valuable information about mining opportunities. Inside of a year, she owned five mines, either outright or in partnership. Her profits here allowed her to establish the luxurious Grand Fork Hotel. She was also invited to manage the struggling Gold Run Mining Company which she did, successfully bringing it into the black inside of 18 months.
Flora Shaw, a newspaper editor, travelled from London to Dawson City to report on the Klondike Gold Rush. In the end, she supported the notion that women could play a role in developing the Yukon. She said that “in the expansion of the Empire, as in other movements, man wins the battle, but woman holds the field.”
Something intoxicating happened on a July morning in 1897. A steamship known as The Excelsior unloaded its first batch of successful Yukon prospectors onto a San Francisco dock. They dragged baggage behind them, loaded to the gills with gold. Gold dust. Gold nuggets. Gold bars. Word spread quickly and when the ship prepared for its return trip to the Klondike, agents were overwhelmed by a demand for tickets that exceeded the ship’s capacity by over ten times.
Is it any wonder that a whisper of prosperity in a far away place could start a two year stampede to parts unknown? The late 1890’s brought with it a period of economic depression that swept the whole of North America. Gold was scarce. Many people struggled to attain the necessities of life. The Klondike and the dream of gold offered an escape from their despair.
Spreading rumours of gold drove throngs of men and women abandoned their homes, surrendered their jobs, and left behind their families. They rushed to port cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Victoria, in hopes of gaining passage on some vessel headed to Dawson City in the Yukon Territory. Memento photographs were fashionable parting gifts for loved ones. Prospectors posed, individually or with travel mates, in front of painted backgrounds featuring Yukon scenes. They dressed in newly acquired mackinaws and held props like rifles, snowshoes or fiddles. Subjects reclined on bearskins and fake snow. One can’t help but wonder how reality matched the fantasy of their adventure.
The first perils of the journey began here at home. Many of these tenderfoots fell prey to unscrupulous businesses and empty promises. One promoter promised a reindeer mail delivery service similar to the pony express.
Suave salesmen oiled the dreams with products to guarantee success for the soon-t0-be-rich. Pierre Berton’s The Klondike Quest lists “coffee lozenges, evaporated eggs, desiccated onions, beef blocks, peanut meal, saccharine and pemmican; and on the less practical devices: mechanical gold pans, nugget-in-the-slot machines, patented gold rockers, collapsible beds, knockdown boats, portable cabins, scurvy cures, even x-ray machines designed to detect the presence of the golden treasure hidden in the dross.” Manufactured goods — soup cans and glasses — were stamped with “Klondike” and flew off the shelves. These items must have littered the Chilkoot Pass, Skagway and White Pass as people cast items off to lighten their loads.
Roughly one hundred thousand people from North America and overseas ventured to the Klondike. The high volume of people and goods streaming through, caused the port towns to balloon to near impossible capacity. City infrastructures were pushed to the limit. On the wharfs, people waited with ten foot stacks of supplies. Prospectors needed sufficient supplies to cover their needs for one year. They boarded ships of questionable construct to transport them and their wares — dangerously overloaded. Men often slept ten to a cabin in rough hewn bunks. Some who ventured to sleep on the deck were swept overboard during storms. Even animals, dogs and horses, suffered injury in their crates and died en route. A few ships had to return to port shortly after departure, to redistribute the weight of their cargo lest they sink.
For many, the dream became a nightmare before they reached their destination. How many would have set out for the Klondike if they were fully informed of the challenges that awaited beyond the end of the dock?
Accomplished and elegant. Supportive and completely relatable. These are words I use to describe the Ingrid Ruthig.
I first met Ingrid last summer at a public reading event in our community. We had a lovely discussion about our writing, after which I reflected on the meticulous nature of her poetry. Soon after, I visited her textwork art on display at The Whitby Station Gallery, where I discovered the creative influences of Ingrid’s architectural background. Months later, I came across an essay she’d written for a literary journal. It spoke about the power of language and the importance of preserving its integrity. At the time, I found myself in need of an editor, and Ingrid was the obvious choice.
I’ve since learned that we share a common interest in genealogy. In each of our family trees there is a several times great grandfather who had some manner of involvement in the textile industry. The weaving together of words and images found in her visual work is a kind of ode to her ancestral history. “Writing is an exploration of the weft and warp of language,” Ingrid tells me over coffee. She does have a wonderful way of expressing things.
What follows is a recent discussion about the importance of language and relationship between writer and editor.
Yesterday, I awoke to a news report about the troubling condition of Toronto’s roads. The extreme cold of the holiday season followed by mild temperatures has increased the number of potholes. “It’s like driving on the moon,” says one driver. Many report damage to their vehicles after plunging a wheel into the abyss.
I reflected on some recent information I’ve collected about the lives of the early settlers. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Canadians have been complaining about state of our roads for years — over two hundred actually, give or take a decade. Our early settlers endured miserable travel conditions. Their lamenting is captured in correspondence shared by Charolette Gray, in her book, Canada A Portrait In Letters.
In 1834, Catharine Parr Trail wrote from her Peterborough, Ontario home, reporting to friends and family in England, about “the badness of roads in this country, the slowness of conveyance, (and) want of proper artifices”. Lady Durham wrote from her Quebec City home in 1834 that she was very near “jolted to pieces” on roads travelling inland from Chauderie Falls. George Child wrote to his mother in 1842 about travelling home after an out of town errand where “the roads were so bad that it took from four o’clock until eleven in going 13 miles”. He stayed in a hotel and tried to continue his journey the next day. The roads were so bad he turned around and went home.
Road ReportSome might think that snow and heavy winters would create the biggest impediment to transportation, but not so. Horse drawn cutters and dog sleds across land or frozen water facilitated effective travel. A spring thaw and heavy rains created major problems for travelers. Muddy roads resulted, exhausted horses and stuck wagon wheels. Dry roads peppered with potholes and the remains of stumps caused a lot of bumping and jostling of passengers in addition to broken axels and wagon wheels. Corduroy roads, created by laying logs side by side, crossways on the road, solved some problems but created new ones such as a bumpy ride for one. Also, the logs heaved with the freezing and thawing, then eventually gave way to rot. Many preferred to travel by foot or by horseback instead of using a wagon.
The early settlers who were awarded land grants, had a contractual obligation to build and maintain roads adjacent to their property. I’m imagining where this duty ranked in the list of survival related tasks like build a home, clear the land, or plant a crop. Removal of trees and stumps was an onerous task in a land thick with timber.
“Pathmasters” were appointed by Upper Canada’s first parliament to oversee road development. Settlers were eventually given the option of paying a fine in lieu of performing road maintenance.
The next time I hit a bump in the road, I will draw a calming breath and be grateful that I don’t have to fix it!
