A few good women

I had a history professor who said Canadians rarely build statues and monuments to our heroes, the greatest honour a Canadian can get is to have an elementary school named after them.

I’m sure an arboretum is an equal honour.  

Local nature lover Minnie Pennell worked to make Cobourg beautiful for decades and this week she was recognized by the town for her effort.

Council decided to name the tree sanctuary at Elgin and Burnham Streets the ‘Minnie Pennell Arboretum’.

Minnie spent years trying to convince the town to create the arboretum and then was instrumental in choosing the types of trees planted in the park.

The town also considered naming the arboretum after Susanna Moodie, an anti-slavery English settler to Cobourg in the early-1800s who was an author best known for ‘Roughing It in the Bush’.

They decided to wait for something related to writing to bear Ms. Moodie’s name. Maybe we can look forward to seeing Susanna Moodie’s name on a new wing of the library.

While the town is naming places after bad-ass Cobourg women, I hope they consider Alice Wilson.

Ms. Wilson was a geologist born in Cobourg in on Aug. 26, 1881. She spent a lot of her childhood outdoors, canoeing and camping with her father and two brothers.

Her early interest in the fossils in the limestone formations around Cobourg turned into a career as an eminent paleontologist. In 1909 she became the first woman to hold a professional position at the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) labelling specimens and keeping records.

Back then women weren’t allowed to work in the field but through her persistence she was eventually assigned the Ottawa-Saint Lawrence Valley. She became known for her detailed studies of the fossils and rock of the lowland.

The Geological Survey gave cars to its male employees but would not give one to Ms. Wilson, so she bought her own.

The GSC gave employees paid leave to further their studies but it took seven years for Ms. Wilson to convince her employer to grant her leave to get her PhD. She was 48 when she earned her doctorate in geology.

In 1935 Ms. Wilson became a member of the Order of the British Empire. Then the GSC finally published her work for the first time and gave her a promotion.

In 1936 she became a Fellow in the Geological Society of America and in 1938 she was the first woman Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada.

At 65 she retired and five people had to be hired to replace her.

Comments

[Wally Keeler]

Other Canadian women need to be acknowledged and celebrated. For example this letter written late 2007 that the Cobourg Daily Star thought unworthy of publication:
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How pathetically correct is this; the editors of the Cobourg Daily Star have no problem with sexist man-bashing, ie. the ad hominen attack on Conrad Black as a “tubby hubby“, or the unsubstantiated slander that unnamed elements of Cobourg Town Council get over their “Stone Age attitude towards women.“

So then they write an editorial (Nov 11) extolling the “The Boys of War“ and not once is there a suggestion that young women are on the front lines in Afghanistan with young men.

I, for one, am busting with pride that Canada, and other NATO allies have sent young women to serve in Afghanistan, to ensure that Afghan women can attend school, among other things, and yes, shoot to kill those misogynists who threaten to prevent such progress.

Those are my kind of Canadian women — beautiful, intelligent and lethal.