Forced to drop out of school to work, Florence nurtured her dreams with images from romantic novels and films. She held some clerical jobs in Toronto and tried nursing, but dropped out because she hated the sight of blood. In 1907, when she was twenty-six, Florence decided to follow her brother to New York City, where she found a job working as a cashier in a beauty parlour on Fifth Avenue. She soon convinced her employer to teach her the beauty treatments she performed.
Excited by both New York and the potential of the booming beauty business, Florence partnered with beautician Elizabeth Hubbard to set up a salon in 1909. Within six months, she took over the bustling shop. She renamed it (and herself) Elizabeth Arden, likely because of her admiration for Queen Elizabeth I (who was known to use cosmetics) and Arden, after the country estate of a rich railway baron who raised horses.[3]
Since it would have been unlikely for a bank to loan money to a single woman, Arden’s biographer speculated that her uncle, James Liberty Tadd, may have provided the start-up funds.[4] Whatever the source, Elizabeth Arden seized the opportunity to carve a niche for herself in the beauty industry by developing her own products, procedures, and exclusive salons. Painting the door of her first beauty salon a rich red, she attached a brass nameplate with the name Elizabeth Arden in script. The famous red doors would mark the more than 100 salons she established worldwide.
When she established herself in New York in the early twentieth century, women were just emerging into public life, demanding the vote, and expressing themselves with bobbed hair and shorter skirts. Prior to the 1920s, only actresses and whores dared wear much make-up in public. Elizabeth offered the opportunity for respectable women to discover their inner beauty through good skin care and cosmetic products, as well as a healthy lifestyle involving nutritional food and exercise. Passionate about body toning through yoga, she made a sound recording explaining yoga techniques back in the 1920s and still loved standing on her head during her eighties.
Elizabeth helped create the global beauty industry and became one of the first women to run an international business.[5] She was a tenacious and visionary entrepreneur, working up to eighteen hours a day to build and run her beauty empire. By the time of her death in 1966, she was the sole owner of a corporation doing $60 million in business a year. She operated exclusive beauty salons (decorated in pink) and wholesale outlets around the world, from London and Paris to Rome, Madrid, Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, and Canada.
During the Depression, Elizabeth dared to expand her New York salon to seven floors and employed more than 1,000 staff in various countries. By 1944, her customers could purchase almost 1,000 different beauty products that she’d developed through scientific experimentation and testing for safety, get their hair done in an Elizabeth Arden salon, and purchase something from the popular lingerie collection. Even British royalty were among her fans: both the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II sent letters of thanks for gifts from the collection.[6] When she decided to incorporate a fashion line in her business, she recognized the potential of an assistant designer, thereby launching the career of the legendary Oscar de la Renta.
In addition to the salons, Elizabeth opened America’s first luxury health and beauty farm in 1934 in Maine and later added another in Phoenix. Women checking into the exclusive Main Chance resort were encouraged to eat a light diet and required to drink a pint of fresh vegetable juice, consisting of cabbage and celery, each day. The clients participated in yoga, tennis, water-skiing, sailing, riding, archery, and aerobic workouts, as well as enjoying seaweed baths and deep-tissue massage. Vogue reported that the spa was “like no other place under the sun, where you lived a charmed and incredible life in Sybaritic surroundings, trained as rigorously as any athlete.”[7]
A brilliant and creative innovator in product development, promotion, and packaging, Elizabeth was also a genius in marketing, customer service, and public relations. She hired talented people to develop cutting-edge advertising, mastered corporate sponsorship, and was the first to adopt lifestyle promotion with her products.[8] She demonstrated makeup application on one of the first television shows to air in America. Elizabeth methodically developed her place in society, cultivating friendships with royalty and the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, dining with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, sponsoring cultural activities, and supporting charities. She received many awards, including an honorary doctorate and the Lighthouse Award from the New York Association for the Blind for subcontracting work to the blind.
During her busy life, Elizabeth married twice. She divorced her first husband in 1934 after a private detective discovered his numerous infidelities, and the second (masquerading as a Russian prince) in 1943 after she found out he was a homosexual who’d married in hopes of paying off his huge debts.
Elizabeth had better luck with her hobby: horse racing. She loved horses and participated in races from the early 1930s until her death in 1966. She had property in Kentucky for her horses and stables. In 1945, her stables were the most profitable in America, with winnings of $589,170. Elizabeth’s horse Jet Pilot, trained by “Silent” Tom Smith of Seabiscuit fame, won the Kentucky Derby in 1947.
She never forgot her Canadian roots, and returned twice in the 1950s to open the Black Creek Pioneer Village and then Dalziel Pioneer Park, where she once lived. In 2003, the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame honoured Elizabeth for her contributions to the racing industry. Many publications recognize her important position as a role model: “Since Elizabeth Arden founded her international business empire, Canadian women cannot claim to be neophytes in private enterprise.”[9]
After Elizabeth died in a New York hospital, she was dressed in burial clothes fit for a wealthy beauty queen: a ruffled pink gown designed by Oscar de la Renta. More than 1,000 people attended the funeral of the poor little rich girl from Canada whose enduring legacy is Elizabeth Arden, Inc., which now operates in 100 countries with sales in excess of $1.3 billion.
Quote:
“There are only three American names that are known in every corner of the globe: Singer Sewing machines, Coca-Cola and Elizabeth Arden.”[10]
Newspaper clipping from December 1917, showing Helen Armstrong at far left in the top picture, and second from the left in the bottom photo.
Wild Woman of the West
Helen Armstrong
1875–1947
Even prison bars didn’t stop Helen Armstrong, the lone female leader of the famous Winnipeg General Strike.
Police considered jailed activist Helen Armstrong such a danger during the 1919 Winnipeg Strike that she was denied bail for days before being released. Newspapers in eastern Canada later dubbed the scrappy striker the Wild Woman of the West.
Helen Armstrong (née Jury) was born in Ontario, the eldest daughter among ten children. She was strongly influenced by her father, Alfred Fredman Jury, a successful tailor, prominent labour leader, lobbyist, and organizer of the Knights of Labour. While working as a seamstress in his Toronto shop, Helen witnessed boisterous political discussions during the many gatherings held there. She met a young radical socialist named George Armstrong, who shared her passion for social reform and helping workers.
Helen married George in 1897 in Butte, Montana, where he had gone in search of work. The Armstrongs would move many times in search of employment. When they lived in New York City, Helen was active in the National Women’s Suffrage Association; she was jailed after chaining herself to a fence at the White House during a campaign to win the vote. By the time they moved to the booming Winnipeg in 1905, she was the mother of three girls, and gave birth to their son Frank several years later. Helen was a devoted mother, focusing on the family while George quickly became a leader in the local labour movement. The Armstrongs took in boarders to help make ends meet.
A devoted mother, Helen was devastated when all four children came down with scarlet fever at the same time. All suffered severe hearing loss. Exhausted and depressed, Helen
collapsed and was hospitalized. As the children grew older, Helen was able to join her husband more frequently in efforts to improve the lives of the working class in Winnipeg. Helen wasn’t a socialist and didn’t believe in revolution, but she was a feisty feminist who would stop at nothing to help people in need.
Both Helen and George opposed Canada’s involvement in the First World War. Helen was often the only woman who spoke against conscription in open-air platforms in Winnipeg. One newspaper reported she would often “place herself between the soldiers and the other speakers and was attacked and bruised from head to toe because of her courage.”[1] Helen also took food and clothing to men imprisoned at Stony Mountain for refusing to enlist. She was arrested for handing out anti-conscription pamphlets.
Helen became a women’s labour organizer, fighting for equal pay for equal work, higher wages, healthy working conditions, and shorter working hours. She championed the thousands of women in Winnipeg who were struggling to support themselves and their families in a wide variety of low-paying jobs; she voiced their concerns in the provincial legislature, newspaper articles, police courts, and on the picket line. Helen challenged the notion that women didn’t need the same wages as men because they weren’t the main breadwinners.
Helen became president of the Women’s Labour League (WLL) in Winnipeg, helped educate working girls and women about their rights, and fought for a minimum wage. She founded the Retail Clerks’ Union and served on the Mother’s Allowance Board. In May 1917, she organized a union for female workers at Woolworth’s Department Store and led them to a strike. The company paid the women just $6 a week for working twelve hours per day, six days a week. Many of them were living on coffee and cake because they couldn’t afford anything else. Under Helen’s leadership the women demanded — and won — a raise of $2 per week.
Helen was at the forefront of the fight for a living wage when Manitoba and British Columbia became the first two provinces to pass minimum wage legislation for women in 1918. By this time, she’d earned a reputation as a radical labour leader, and was a woman admired by one female journalist as a “very striking personality … a woman whose ideals are pure and broad.”[2]
When veterans of the First World War returned to Winnipeg in 1918, they discovered few job opportunities; labour unrest grew along with inflation, poverty, and malnutrition. Helen was among those voicing demands for the right to collective bargaining, as well as better wages and working conditions. She was a member of the General Strike Committee, which organized the Winnipeg General Strike. With 50,000 workers off the job, the city shut down on May 15, 1919. Helen organized a soup kitchen in the Labour Temple, serving up to 1,500 patrons a day.
She also organized peaceful demonstrations, regular strike reports, and the maintenance of some essential services, while taunting scabs, defying police, and rallying strikers. She was arrested at least four times during the strike, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police carted her husband off to jail after raiding the Armstrongs’ home. She would later lead children in singing “Solidarity Forever” outside the prison walls.
Helen marched with strikers on June 21, 1919, when provocation of the crowd resulted in a violent confrontation between demonstrators, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and special police: “Bloody Saturday.” Shots were fired, two protesters were killed, and many brutally beaten. As law enforcers attacked the crowd, which included women and children, with batons, baseball bats, and wagon spokes, Helen urged the women around her to stick their hat pins in the rumps of the Mounties’ horses. After the riot, George Armstrong was sentenced to a year in prison along with other key leaders, the strike was called off, and Helen was arrested for inciting violence.
The Winnipeg Strike Committee, with Helen Armstrong in the second row, fourth from the left.
Authorities kept the woman the press called “the dangerous Mrs. Armstrong” in prison for four days before finally granting bail. As the press reported, “The Attorney General has refused bail for Mrs. Geo. Armstrong, he says that is the duty of our judges. For some reason inexplicable to ordinary mortals, this woman is refused bail and must spend day after day in jail.”[3]
After being released and acquitted, Helen looked after her family during George’s incarceration and went on an extensive public speaking tour in eastern Canada to raise money to cover the legal costs of the jailed strike leaders. Praised by the press for her indomitable spirit, she attracted considerable media coverage. She campaigned twice for election as a city alderman in Winnipeg, but didn’t win. When George had trouble finding construction work in the 1920s, the Armstrongs moved to Chicago in 1924. Helen had been corresponding with feminist social worker Jane Addams (who later won the Nobel Peace Prize) and immediately began working with her at Hull House.
When the Armstrongs returned to Winnipeg after the 1929 stock market crash, Helen plunged back into her efforts to improve the lives of women. She’d endured public criticism, arrest, and prison to stand up for her ideals. Helen sometimes wore a medallion engraved with the word courage, a gift from the parents of a boy she saved from drowning in a lake, even though she couldn’t swim.
Helen Armstrong’s significant contributions to the labour movement — particularly her involvement in the Winnipeg strike — were largely overlooked for many years.[4] Film producer Paula Kelly was among those who bemoaned the fact that “Helen Armstrong nearly disappeared off the radar of twentieth-century history” until recently; she released a documentary about Helen in 2001.[5]
Quote:
“Women’s vote has given us the club. Now we want women to use it.”[6]
Dr. Bagshaw after graduation from the University of Toronto, 1905.
Should Parenthood Be Planned?
Elizabeth Bagshaw
1881–1982
A crusader for birth control rights in Canada, she devoted her life to women’s health.
According to Catholic bishop John F. McNally, Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw’s clinic was run by heretics and devils. Funny thing was, the more he preached his opposition to the birth control clinic in Hamilton, Ontario, the more women appeared on the doorstep for help. Many women hadn’t heard about the facility until he unwittingly spread the news.
Dr. Bagshaw, an experienced physician, served as medical director of Canada’s first — illegal — birth control clinic for more than thirty years. Eager to help women plan their families, she courageously accepted the unpaid position in 1932, despite strong objections to the facility from religious leaders and some members of the medical community. Though it was illegal to provide birth control in Canada until 1969, Dr. Bagshaw and her team of nurses and volunteers did just that. How did they manage to avoid the long arm of the law? They kept quiet about the clinic. News spread by word of mouth.
The clinic provided advice about birth control and distributed condoms, jellies, and pessaries to married women. Dr. Bagshaw also inserted diaphragms and provided the necessary information about their use. During the first year of operation, Dr. Bagshaw assisted 390 women. Women who visited the clinic in the early years were married and already had children, and for financial or medical reasons worried about expanding their families.[1]
In later years, methods of birth control changed with advances in contraception and unmarried women began seeking advice at the clinic. The centre was not an abortion clinic, though on a few occasions Dr. Bagshaw performed abortions for medical reasons.
Born and raised on a farm in Victoria County, Ontario, Elizabeth Catharine Bagshaw was the youngest of four girls. She was a spunky child who remembered being frequently strapped at school because she was saucy. A tomboy who relished riding cows and standing up on horses’ backs, as she’d seen in the circus, she was an independent thinker. At the age of sixteen, she decided to become a doctor.
With the support of her father John, (and the disapproval of her mother), Elizabeth attended the Women’s Medical College in Toronto. Before she graduated, tragedy struck the family. John Bagshaw fell from a ladder
and broke his neck — as Elizabeth watched. He died the next day; Elizabeth had to manage the farm. After facing more sexism from the hired men than she had ever encountered at medical school, the young woman eventually fired them all and sold the farm.
Elizabeth graduated as a doctor in 1905, but still had to gain practical experience to obtain her licence. As it was difficult for women to find a hospital in Canada where they would be accepted for the required one-year internship, she hoped to complete the program in Detroit. She gave up her plans, though, because of her mother’s pleas not to be left alone. Instead, Elizabeth completed a one-year, unpaid preceptorship with a female physician who focused on maternity patients.
Dr. Bagshaw settled in Hamilton after filling in for a woman doctor there; she began a lengthy career, primarily caring for women. Most of her work was in obstetrics, and in three consecutive years in the 1920s, she signed more birth certificates than any other physician in Hamilton. She delivered most of those babies at their parents’ homes. In the early years of her practice she rented a horse and buggy for transportation in the mornings, using her bicycle to attend to patients in the evenings. During her career, Dr. Bagshaw brought more than 3,000 babies into the world.[2]
By the time she was forty, her hopes of long-term romance had literally died with the death of two suitors, Lou Honey and Jimmy Dickinson. At forty-five, Dr. Bagshaw adopted the baby of a distant relative who suddenly died. Afraid that her dream of motherhood would die if Children’s Aid got involved, she quietly hired a good lawyer and became a single parent. Her son, John, eventually became a doctor, and, beginning in 1954, both practised in the same building.
100 More Canadian Heroines Page 3