page_title: History of Canadian women
section_title: Upper classes in 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of Canadian women / Upper classes in 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: The Countess of Aberdeen (née Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks) in the robes which she wore when she received an honorary L.L.D. from Queen's University, the first time an honorary degree was conferred on a woman by a Canadian university. Français&#160;: La comtesse d'Aberdeen (née Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks) vêtue de la robe qu'elle portait lorsqu'elle a reçu un doctorat honorifique en droit de l'Université Queen's; c'était la première fois qu'une université canadienne décernait un grade honoris causa à une femme.
context_page_description: The History of Canadian women is the study of the historical experiences of women living in Canada and the laws and legislation affecting Canadian women. In colonial French and British North America, Indigenous women's roles were often challenged by missionaries, and their marriages to European fur traders often brought their communities into the fur trade. Throughout the colonial period, European women were encouraged to immigrate to Canadian colonies and expand the settler population. After Confederation in 1867, women's experiences were shaped by federal laws and by legislation passed in Canada's provincial legislatures.
  Women have been a key part of Canada's labour market, social movements, and culture for centuries, and yet they have faced systematic discrimination. Women were given the federal franchise in 1918, served in both the First World War and the Second World War, and participated in the second-wave feminist movement from the 1960s onwards. Historians have been researching and writing about women's history in Canada in increasing numbers since the 1970s.
context_section_description: The upper classes of Canada, apart from some Quebec French families were largely of British origin. Military and government officials and their families came to British North America from England or Scotland; some arrived from Ulster. Most business interests were controlled by men of British stock.  French-Canadians remained largely culturally isolated from English-speaking Canadians (a situation later described in Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan).
  English-speaking Canadian writers became popular, especially Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers.  Traill published The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes (1852), and Moodie published Roughing it in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). Their memoirs recount the harshness of life as women settlers but were nonetheless popular.
  Upper-class Canadian women emulated British culture and imported as much of it as possible across the Atlantic. Books, magazines, popular music, and theatre productions were all imported to meet women's consumer demand.
  Upper-class women supported philanthropic causes similar to the educational and nursing charities championed by upper-class women in England. The Victorian Order of Nurses, still in existence, was founded in 1897 as a gift to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, founded in 1900, supports educational bursaries and book awards to promote Canadian patriotism but also to support knowledge of the British Empire. One of the patrons of Halifax's  Victoria School of Art and Design (founded in 1887 and later named the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) was Anna Leonowens. Women began making headway in their struggle to gain access to higher education. In 1875, the first woman university graduate in Canada was Grace Annie Lockhart (Mount Allison University). In 1880, Emily Stowe became the first woman licensed to practise medicine in Canada.
caption: Victorian Order of Nurses founder Lady Aberdeen was the first woman to receive an honorary degree in Canada.[47]
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