Women's Studies Online

Charlotte Whitton - who famously said, “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult” - was not the first woman elected as a Mayor in Canada. That distinction belongs to another woman and she meant business. Woman of the Day teacher Barbara McCallum Hanley born OTD in 1892 in Magnetawan, Ontario, took up a teaching position in Webbwood in 1908, married, adopted a baby girl, founded the town’s dramatic society and served on the Webbwood Public School Board for twelve years from 1923. You know what they say about a busy woman? Webbwood, a small town of 600 people next to the Canadian-Pacific Railway, was badly hit by the Great Depression of the early 1930s, known as the Dirty Thirties. Its largest employer, a power and paper mill, went out of business in 1929. Even the Prairies, the breadbasket of Canada, had suffered crippling drought. People were jobless, hungry, homeless. Barbara decided to do something about it. She stood for election as Mayor in 1936, promising to secure better public works and relief payments for the town. She had twelve months’ experience as a town councillor under her belt; Robert Streich, her opponent, was far more experienced. He’d served four terms as mayor from 1924 to 1934. Webbwood voted 82 to 69 in favour of Barbara - sometimes, 13 is a lucky number - making her the first woman Mayor in Canada. It was fifteen years before Charlotte Whitton became the Mayor of Ottawa and it made the newspapers. Naturally, reporters zoomed in on the most important pressing question for any newly elected mayor: would she still do the housework? Barbara responded, “Yes, indeed. Webbwood is hardly a big enough place for me to give up my housework just to be mayor.” Bingo! The newspapers had their headline: “Ontario’s First Woman Mayor Still Does Housework” - which puts me in mind of the headlines when theoretical physicist Maria Mayer became the second woman to win Nobel Prize in physics in 1963: San Diego Mother Wins Nobel Prize. Womanly duties first, achievements second. At her first council meeting on 19 January 1936, Barbara accepted a motion submitted by the town’s doctor: that the Mayor and councillors forfeit their salaries of $4 and $2 per month respectively to save $200 that year and buy enough turkeys to feed the whole town at Christmas. It passed unanimously. Meanwhile, Barbara was elected by 5,000 delegates as the director of the Ontario Educational Association in April of that year while attending to her civic responsibilities - ensuring schools and the local jail were repaired and improving road safety by installing the first traffic lights - and still doing the housework. Mayors served for twelve months. At the end of her term, Barbara announced she would stand again - "I won't say that I have done better than any man would, but I will say I have done equally well” - and asked whether women really belonged in public life, she said, "The very fact I am in the work gives my answer to that." On 4 January 1937, her record was challenged by the same opponent, Robert Streich, on the grounds of her sex and her support of the poor. I’m saving her reply till the end. This time, she beat him by 20 votes: 86 to 66. At her first council meeting the same month, Barbara rolled up her sleeves, instituted a new relief policy and turned the whole town council into a relief committee, initiating projects that would benefit the town such as setting up vegetable and flower gardens. She stood for eight consecutive terms. Streich gave up the third time and she stood unopposed. That was the year that Barbara combined her civic duties with a public administration course at the University of Toronto - one of only two women out of 150 attendees - and still multi-tasked with ease. During her other terms of office, three men were nominated during but withdrew and ran as councillors instead. In 1941, the only other candidate was a woman but Barbara won by 37 votes. “I don’t consider sex in municipal affairs”. During WW2, she doubled up as chair of the Webbwood Local Ration Board N-10 under the Wartime Prices and Trade Board and only stepped down as Mayor in 1944 but do not think for one moment she was done with public service. Barbara lobbied for a care home for the elderly and was appointed to the committee of the Sudbury District Home for the Aged when it was established. She combined that with her new post as town clerk, finally retiring in 1950 at the age of 58. Barbara died in 1959, aged 76, but what exactly did she say to her political rival? “I believe your two outstanding objections are: One, that I am a woman; Two, that I am too generous with relief. I have no apology to make.”