Margaret McWilliams was recognizable to her contemporaries as a public woman. From the perspective of the 1990s, she can be seen as an interwar feminist.

McWilliams’s career was launched when, at the age of thirty-five, she arrived in Winnipeg with her husband in 1910. It was built on the firm foundation of a university education: in 1898 she was the first woman to graduate with a degree in political economy from the University of Toronto. For five years she earned her living as a journalist in Minneapolis and Detroit, then married a barrister, an old university friend. She spent seven...

Maggie May Stovel was born 27 January 1875. Her father was Samuel Stovel, a successful Toronto tailor, and her mother, Tomasina (“Tassie”) Callaway, was the daughter of Margaret Rodger Callaway. The Rodgers were “all Scotch,” and a family legend spoke of an ancestress aiding Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape from England after his defeat in the 1745 Rebellion. Another relative was the engineer in charge of the bridge over the Firth of Forth, a construction marvel of its time. One of three sisters, each of whom was deserted by her husband, Grandmother Callaway was a woman of energy and ability...

In 1910 Roland McWilliams joined the law firm of Sir James Aikins, “the unquestionable leader in every sense of the Western Canadian Bar.”¹ After a year living in the house of a physician, Dr Rorke, the McWilliamses took up residence in one of the newest and most fashionable apartment blocks, Devon Court, at 376 Broadway, only a few blocks away from the legislature and law courts. Built in 1909, the complex was designed by John Atchison, who incorporated advanced notions of heating, ventilation, and light into each of the forty-four apartments.² Apartment blocks, department stores, businesses, and homes were under...

McWilliams’s first decade in Winnipeg gave her multiplying opportunities for women’s work, and this experience served as an apprenticeship for feminism. The University Women’s Club was the keystone of her public service, but she was never confined to it alone. Early in 1911 she applied for membership in the Women’s Canadian Club, and at its fourth annual meeting that fall she became secretary, a post she retained for the next two years, overlapping with her University Women’s Club presidency She kept a close connection with the Women’s Canadian Club thereafter. Secondly, she became a regular member of the newly formed...

In 1950 Margaret McWilliams wrote a brief account of her years as first president of the Canadian Federation of University Women. McWilliams summarized the CFUW’S historical origins, its expanding membership, and its early aims and achievements. The club’s priorities were her own. Of individual members, “almost half were giving their return to the state through leadership in voluntary organizations.” Public service by educated women was, she considered, one of the major benefits the university women’s clubs could provide. The declared first interest of the new federation was “education in all its phases.”¹

Education in at least three phases could be...

“Geography and history are two of the greatest factors in moulding the character and the institutions of a people ... and the conditions of the present are the produce of the past.”¹ McWilliams applied herself to understanding and explaining the present partly because she considered it her duty as a university-educated citizen with certain gifts. She also enjoyed it.

Learning about geography and history through foreign travel was one of her favourite pastimes. Beginning in 1922 McWilliams travelled abroad frequently, preparing for a trip by reading books and articles for months before. Some of her expenses were defrayed by organizations...

In 1933 Margaret McWilliams “felt herself part of a world wide movement that is forcing women to assume the duties of active citizenship.”¹ As a candidate for alderman in the city of Winnipeg, she was continuing her involvement in active citizenship, represented not least by her current events classes, which sought to further the education of an informed electorate. However, she had not previously sought elected office outside women’s organizations.

Although her participation in electoral politics dated from 1917, McWilliams seems not to have seriously considered becoming a candidate herself until 1933.Saturday Nightasked her about this obvious point...

At the age of sixty-six Margaret McWilliams experienced a third momentous change in the rhythm of her life. When she was twenty-eight, she had left employment in a large American city to become a full-time married woman in a small town in Ontario. Seven years later she moved to a large Canadian city and quickly established herself as a woman in the public sphere. Now life again altered abruptly when in October 1940 her husband was appointed lieutenant-governor of Manitoba.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King, an old college friend of both McWilliamses, was able to offer Roland this honour as a...

In 1932 Margaret McWilliams addressed the Canadian Federation of University Women with the topic “When East Meets West,” a theme used more than once to describe her own career. Born and educated in eastern Canada, she had chosen to live and work in the West. This address raised the theme to an international stage as she presented observations on China. She recalled a speech by “a very brilliant French woman lawyer” who began with the words “Now what you are going to see tonight is the mind of a French woman operating.”¹

In this biography we have searched for the...