History Mystery: Canadian Women

October is National Women's History Month, so I thought we'd take a look at some of our Canadian ladies - not all of whom are as well known as perhaps they should be.

1. Born in the UK in 1838, this woman married a Hudson's Bay official, and spent years living in Canada and travelling by canoe. She sketched her adventures, and later turned them into paintings. Her work shows voyageurs in their canoes, and she is probably our best known artist of this kind of work. In 1988, one of her paintings was featured on a Canadian stamp.

2. A suffragette, a teacher, one of the founders of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design were just some of the qualities describing this lady. But this world traveller, born in India in 1931, and buried in Montreal after her death at age 83, is mostly know for her role as a royal governess.

3. Canada's first female Member of Parliament was elected in 1921. "I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality," she said. Equally famous is her quote, "If the preservation of the home means the enslavement of women, economically or morally, then we had better break it." This early feminist was an advocate for prison reform, disarmament, and old age pensions.

4. Born in 1901, this Nova Scotia woman was a nurse, an actress, and a resistence fighter who lived in Holland rescuing downed allied airmen from the Nazis. Betrayed to the Gestapo, she is the only Canadian woman to have been imprisoned and condemned to death by the Germans. She escaped, and returned to Nova Scotia where she died in 1976.

Monday Answers:

This must have been tougher than usual. I intentionally made it that way because friends who know me said I usually make them too easy:( Still got to find that balance.  The answers are....(drum roll):

1. Artist Frances Anne Hopkins
2. Anna Leonowens (of The King and I fame)
3. Agnes MacPhail
4. Mona Parsons

Way to go Julie with a score of 2/4. (kinda reminds me of our marks in 1st year philosophy! Bwa-ha-ha!)