The beautifully renovated Bishop’s House in St. Raphael’s was the perfect venue for an afternoon listening to author Ginette Guy Mayer discuss her new book, The Women of SDG & Akwesasne: True Stories of Extraordinary Lives.
In attendance were Glengarry Fencibles Trust directors and women who have advanced arts and culture in Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry.
Mayer chose to discuss three of the 21 ladies featured in her book: Edith Rayside from South Glengarry; Dorothy Dumbrille who resided in Alexandria; and Annie MacDonald-Langstaff, born in North Glengarry. Each of these ladies drew focus to the challenges women faced in the late 1800s and through the 1900s.
Edith Rayside, from a prominent family in Glengarry, attended Queen’s University, achieving her Bachelor of Arts, but instead of becoming a teacher, furthered her training to become a nurse. At the time, the influence of Florence Nightingale and “efficiency nursing” techniques made nursing a choice of profession for middle-class women who valued respectability and social reform. Rayside’s nursing led her to play a major role in caring for wounded soldiers during WW1, and eventually being appointed matron-in-chief of military nurses in Canada in an age of advocacy for social and political change, where the medical world was still dominated by men resisting the intrusion of women.
Dorothy Dumbrille’s writing career began in the late 1930s, with radio plays broadcast on CBC and poetry published in Canadian newspapers. Although her stories reflect Canadian society at the time, she did not garner the deserved attention for her writing, facing attitudes and prejudices where women writers were judged by an elite literary group of men. Despite that, Dumbrille’s poem “Christmas, 1940” was included in “Flying Colours,” published by Ryerson Press, a collection of patriotic verse and poems by authors such as A.A. Milne, Walt Whitman, John McCrae and Rudyard Kipling among others, proving Dorothy’s writing of value as social and historical fiction. She was also appointed as a Board Member of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission and was part of the committee that created Upper Canada Village.
Annie MacDonald-Langstaff was born in Glengarry, but spent much of her life in Montreal, advocating for women’s rights within Quebec’s legal system. She was a single mother; her husband having abandoned her very early in their marriage. After moving to Montreal for work at a law firm as a stenographer, MacDonald-Langstaff attended McGill University where she graduated with First Class Honours. Unfortunately, she was refused admission to the bar under Quebec law. Throughout her career, MacDonald-Langstaff supported change to the laws in Quebec, but it wasn’t until 1942 that women were allowed to be lawyers. In 2006, she was bestowed a posthumous honour by the Montreal bar association giving her the Medaille du Barreau de Montréal in recognition of her accomplishments. MacDonald-Langstaff is further connected to SD&G by her daughter, who was one of the Holy Cross Sisters responsible for education and boarding at The Bishop’s House and Iona Academy in St. Raphael’s.
As a tribute to these women, who offered so much to their communities and furthered the progress and equality of women in Canada, Mayer has chosen to use the sales of the book as a fundraiser for the United Way.
