100 More Canadian Heroines

by Merna Forster

  The marriage fizzled and Sophie was single again by 1860. She decided to remain independent, using Morigeau as her surname, though many men drifted through her life. According to one source, “[she] seldom lacked for masculine company if she so desired … some outsmarted her and some merely tried, winding up extinct.”[1]

  Sophie became a free trader. As recounted by her great-grandniece, “Sophie Morigeau, scorning to lead the servile life of a squaw, and of most women who were even half white or red, initiated her own enterprise.”[2]

  When the Wild Horse Gold Rush broke out in 1863, Sophie was caught up in the excitement and headed north, chasing new opportunities as her family had always done. Being a Métis woman — at a time when gender and race often limited your prospects — didn’t stop Sophie from running a pack train from Washington and Montana north to supply the miners. She was a regular visitor to Fort Steele, just a few miles from Wild Horse Creek.

  The new Canadian-American border was no impediment. She roamed the north-south corridor known as the Tobacco Plains, which she had travelled throughout her life and where she had family members. Like the Morigeau and Finley men, Sophie was a sharp trader and turned a good profit. She did business with whites and Natives alike, presenting whatever side of her own racial heritage best suited the situation.

  After Fort Steele closed down in 1870, Sophie returned to her childhood home in the Windermere Valley area of British Columbia to set up her own trading post. In 1872, she obtained 320 acres of land along Lower Columbia Lake. One of the first British Columbian women who dared to claim land on their own,[3] Sophie operated her business from the homestead. She continued to trade along the Tobacco Plains corridor on both sides of the border until about 1880, when she moved south to the Eureka, Montana, area.

  Sophie kept a good herd of cattle, as well as horses, on her new homestead and hired prospectors to find good mining sites. Never one to pass up a business opportunity, she decided to do some trading in Canada where the construction crews were building the transcontinental railway. She took her pack train to Golden, British Columbia, to sell contraband liquor she’d concealed under her goods. When the local suppliers chased her away, Sophie headed east to Calgary, where she made a big profit.

  Sophie then stuck closer to her trading post on Tobacco Plains, where she died at eighty in 1916. She became a legendary figure on both sides of the border, a colourful character who stashed a box of gold coins under her mattress and wore a patch over her eye.[4] Well-liked, she helped those in need and served as a role model for youngsters she befriended. A marvel at adaptation, she was a daring trailblazer and a gracious hostess, serving her guests strawberries, cake, and whipped cream on a white tablecloth.

  Sophie defied convention (and racial and sexual stereotypes) to became a successful businesswoman on the frontier. The remarkable Sophie Morigeau returns to the reconstructed Fort Steele each summer as a popular character in the park interpretive program.

  Quote:

  “Oh, [I] just cut a hole in the bottom of the box and hung ’er over the saddle horn.”[5]

  — Sophie’s response when quizzed about how she managed to transport an entire wagon by pack train.

  Kirkina Mucko at right, with Benjamin Butt, 1909.

  Louise and Edith Hegan photo album. The Rooms Provincial Archives, VA 103-12-1

  A Labrador Legend

  Kirkina Mucko

  1890s–1970

  Dr. Grenfell wept at the sight of her disability.[1] But Kirkina’s life was full of courage and optimism continues to inspire.

  Elizabeth Jefferies (later known as Kirkina Mucko) was about two years old when tragedy struck. After her Inuit mother went into labour with a second child, Elizabeth’s father, Adam, left their isolated cabin on the coast of Labrador to find a midwife. The Scottish/Inuit trapper returned alone several days later, after being caught in a blizzard. To his horror, the cabin was freezing. His wife had given birth to a new baby, but couldn’t manage to tend the fire in the wood stove. Two-year-old Elizabeth’s legs had frozen and her feet had turned black. Gangrene had set in.

  The only hope of saving the child’s life was amputation. After stoking the fire, Adam grabbed his axe and chopped off both her legs below the knees, placing the stubs in a barrel of flour to soak up the blood. He carefully sewed up the wounds with caribou sinew and applied juniper bark ointment to prevent infection. Elizabeth survived, but her father drowned a few days later.[2]

  Several years after the amputation, the famed medical missionary Dr. Wilfred Grenfell — who established hospitals, nursing stations, and orphanages on the coasts of Labrador and northern Newfoundland — discovered Elizabeth. He was dismayed to see the four-year-old clumsily hobbling around on her severed limbs. Dr. Grenfell arranged for the child to undergo surgery on her protruding leg bones in Battle Harbour. The medical staff fitted the child (who’d been baptized as Kirkina) with artificial legs, suddenly bringing her a new world of opportunity.

  When Dr. John McPherson, a physician at Battle Harbour, and his wife returned to New York, they took Kirkina along; she underwent additional surgeries while attending school. After Dr. McPherson transferred to a hospital in Mexico, Kirkina spent summer holidays with the family and received some education there. She was fluent in Spanish by the time she graduated from grade twelve.[3]

  Kirkina travelled with Dr. Grenfell in the United States and Great Britain, recounting her heartbreaking story to help raise funds for the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador. Eventually, he set up a Kirkina Fund.

  When Kirkina was nineteen, Mrs. McPherson died and the young woman returned to Labrador. She worked at the Grenfell Mission for several years. After marrying a French-Canadian Inuit trapper and fisherman named Adam Mucko, she settled in Rigolet. Like many other families in the area, they were poor. The challenge of raising their seven children became even more daunting when they couldn’t afford replacement artificial limbs. Once she had outworn the prosthetics, Kirkina had no choice but to hobble around on her knees, protected only by leather pads.

  Things got worse when the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic hit the coast of Labrador. Adam Mucko died, as did three of the children. Three more died later of other illnesses. After burying most of her family, Kirkina began building a new life for herself and her daughter. She studied nursing and midwifery with Dr. Paddon at the mission hospital in St. Anthony, Newfoundland. After returning to Labrador, Kirkina travelled along the coast for three decades as a midwife — often without artificial legs.

  In the fall of 1950, Kirkina went to St. John’s Orthopedic Hospital to be fitted for new prosthetics, thanks to the donations of some pilots who’d heard about her predicament. After a week of therapy, she could walk again. “It’s nice to have legs again, after being without them for 27 years.”[4]

  Kirkina Mucko, centre.

  Courtesy of Them Days Archive

  Kirkina continued to serve as a midwife and nurse in Labrador, spending her senior years in comfort with her daughter and family in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The courageous woman who had encountered so much misfortune died in 1970. She was ever optimistic in facing adversity and hardship — an inspiration to those whose lives she touched. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador recognized Kirkina’s heroism by including her in a series of twenty educational posters that profile people who have influenced the province’s history and culture.[5] In 2010, the new women’s shelter in Rigolet was named Kirkina House in her honour.

  Quote:

  “I was put in the world to do all I did, and to go through all I did. I had full and plenty and I never had any regrets.”[6]

  Marion Orr in England with the Air Transport Auxiliary.

  Library and Archives Canada/PA-125929

  Born to Fly

  Marion Orr

  1916–1995

  More than a great pilot, she was one of the most amazing women in the history of Canadian aviation.

  “I was always crazy about airplanes,” Marion Powell O
rr said. “I used to try and fly off the roof of the house in homemade contraptions.”[1]

  As a child in Toronto, Marion Powell regularly walked six miles to watch the planes at Barker Field. She read everything she could about flight, and stories of the legendary Amelia Earhart inspired her to succeed in the male-dominated world of aviation. Orphaned at fifteen, Marion had to quit school and work in a factory for $12 a week. Since flying lessons cost $9 an hour, it took six years of scrimping before she could sign up. Marion finally obtained her private pilot’s licence on January 5, 1940.

  She worked as an aircraft inspector for De Havilland in Toronto while working toward a commercial licence, which she received on December 12, 1941. Marion married her flying instructor, Doug Orr, but the marriage was short-lived.

  Hired as manager and chief flight instructor by the St. Catharines Flying Club in 1942, Marion was the first woman in the country to operate a flying club. After a disastrous fire destroyed the planes and hangar, she got work at Goderich Airport. Ever a trailblazer, Marion became the second Canadian woman to qualify as an air traffic control assistant.

  During the Second World War, the young pilot was eager to take to the skies but was turned down by the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though inexperienced men were accepted. She was ecstatic when her friend Vi Milstead told her the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was hiring women pilots to ferry military aircraft from factories to bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Air Force. Along with three other Canadian women, Marion and Vi joined the ATA. Marion flew her first ATA flight on June 2, 1943.

  Marion had the thrill of a lifetime when she flew the fastest and largest aircraft in the world in often dangerous conditions. She operated under visual flight rules (VFR) without radio facilities or instrument training. Marion flew most days of the two years she was stationed in Britain: up to eight flights and four or five different aircraft, including Mosquitoes, Hurricanes, and Spitfires, Marion’s favourite. When she reluctantly left the ATA at the end of the war, the fearless pilot had flown about 700 hours on sixty-seven different types of military aircraft.

  Struggling with emotional letdown following the war, Marion looked for new opportunities to fly. The banks refused to give her a loan, but she scraped together enough money to establish the Aero Flying School in Barker Field in 1949. The first woman in Canada to own a flying club, she trained in aeromechanics so she could maintain the planes herself. Desperate to build her business, she lived in her office for months and sold her car, most of her belongings, and any pop bottles she could find. She bought a Chipmunk aircraft for instrument training with the proceeds.

  After Barker Field was sold, Marion established an airfield and flying school in Maple, Ontario. When anti-development residents passed a bylaw to block the airport after Marion had already spent $5,000 and built a runway, she drove to Ottawa to seek assistance from Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. She convinced him to help, and Marion completed her airport, often by the light of her car headlights. The airport’s grand opening in 1954 featured an air show with Marion and pilots Sally Wagner and Helen Hems flying Fleet Canucks. Reporters marvelled at “Canada’s Only Woman Airfield Boss,”[2] marking another first for a Canadian woman. She soon had seven instructors and ten aircraft.

  Marion Orr at Barker Field, circa 1950.

  Exhausted by the strain of establishing her business and working eighteen-hour days to maintain it, Marion sold the airport and flying school several years later. She joined her sister in Florida. When flying lured her back to Canada, Marion became the first Canadian woman to earn a helicopter licence, in 1961, and then an instructor’s licence. The pilot’s flying days were put on hold after a helicopter engine failed, and her back was broken in the crash. Marion returned to flying after she recuperated and continued to teach until losing her licence in 1994. She died a year later, having flown more than 20,000 hours over fifty years.

  Marion received many honours, including the Amelia Earhart Medallion for her contributions to aviation. She was also named to Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, awarded the Order of Canada, and was among the pioneers honoured by Queen Elizabeth II at the dedication of the Western Canada Aviation Museum in 1984. A CBC documentary called Airborne pays tribute to the pioneer pilot who lived to fly and trusted airplanes more than people.

  Quote:

  “I felt so empty. It was as if my whole life was behind me. I knew I would never get near a military airfield again, never get a chance to fly those fast planes. I had all that experience and I knew that I couldn’t put it to use in Canada.”[3]

  — Marion Orr’s reflections after the Second World War.

  Yoko Oya.

  Japanese Canadian National Museum

  A Fujin [1] Pioneer

  Yoko Oya

  1864–1914

  She arrived with hope for a good life in Canada — and the courage to be the first Japanese woman to settle here.

  Yoko Oya (née Shishido) was born in Kanagawa prefecture in Japan in 1864. As a twenty-three-year-old bride, she said goodbye to her family. She would never see most of them again. A nervous Yoko and her husband, Washiji Oya, boarded a CPR steamship — loaded with tea, silk, rice, mail, merchants, and Japanese workers — in Yokahama in 1887. They were bound for a new and unfamiliar world across the Pacific.

  Washiji had seen Vancouver several years earlier while working on a ship that docked in the city. He vowed to return with a wife and build a life there. When Yoko walked down the gangplank in the scenic port of Vancouver, she became the first Japanese woman to immigrate to Canada. The young woman was likely anxious about settling in a country with a foreign language, laws, and customs.

  It was an exciting time to start a new life, and Vancouver offered many opportunities for industrious new arrivals. Vancouver had 1,000 residents — only about a dozen Japanese — and the city was the Pacific terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In fact, the first passenger train arrived the same year as the Oyas. The couple settled near the Hastings Lumber Mill in what became known as Little Tokyo.

  Washiji worked as a labour contractor at the Hastings Mill, and later built a general store and house on Powell Street. This was Yoko’s new home, in a tree-covered area that was so low-lying that she had to wear rubber boots. She probably worked in their store, the first general store in the community. The Oyas initially felt welcome in their new homeland. But the year they arrived a white mob attacked a Chinese camp on False Creek, and the next year some whites smashed Japanese fishing boats.

  Yoko gave birth to her first son, Katsuji Oya, in 1889. He was the first Canadian-born Japanese child, or Nisei. The following year she gave birth to her second son, Jiro. The Oyas must have been prosperous, as they sent both children to Japan to be educated. The boys returned to Little Tokyo, where Jiro managed the family store at 463 Powell Street until 1942.

  There are few records about Yoko or the challenges she must have faced as an immigrant. Her younger sister, Kinuko Uchida, arrived in 1889, followed by another sister, Ima Suzuki, and Washiji’s niece, Naka Sekine. The four Fujin pioneers supported one another. Though there are no recollections about Yoko, her experiences were probably similar to those of her sister, Kinu, as described by daughter Chitose:

  Like all pioneer wives, mother’s life was one of hardship and work, full of ups and downs, mainly downs. She was the hub of the wheel which kept us all moving while she helped father every step of the way in all of his endeavours.”[2]

  Chitose also noted that her mother didn’t know any English, and presumably Oyo didn’t either. It was possible that they spent their days talking Japanese, having no contact with non-Japanese. By 1897, there was a weekly Japanese-language newspaper.

  With increasing immigration from 1892 to 1894, white Vancouverites grew anxious about competition for jobs and some Japanese had to resort to begging. In 1899, Washiji and Yoko learned that city council had decided to deny Japanese residents the right to vote. The following year Japan halted immigration to Canada, b
ut a loophole in the legislation eventually resulted in a large influx of Japanese. By 1907 there were about 18,000 Japanese people in Canada.

  The surge of immigrants triggered a large anti-Asiatic riot in Vancouver. We can only imagine Yoko’s fear as a mob of white supremists swept through both Chinatown and Little Tokyo on September 7, 1907. The violent rioters smashed windows and damaged sixty homes and businesses on Powell Street.

  The Japanese residents received $9,000 in compensation, but the prejudice against the immigrants remained. In 1909, Japan agreed to restrict emigration to only 400 people per year. We know nothing of how Oya felt about her unwelcoming homeland when she died in 1914, at forty-years-old. She was buried in Mountainview Cemetery.

  Thanks to the grit and determination of pioneers such as Yoko Oya, Japanese immigrants established themselves in Canada. Yoko’s niece, Chitose Uchida, was the first Japanese Canadian to graduate from the University of British Columbia.[3]

  Madeleine Parent, at the time of her trial in 1947.

  Nakash Photo, Saturday Night Magazine. Courtesy of Lea Roback Foundation.

  Walking the Picket Lines

  Madeleine Parent

  born 1918

  Why did Quebec’s Premier Duplessis, the Catholic church, and powerful textile companies try to stop this woman?

  A heroine of the labour movement, Madeleine Parent organized strikes that improved workers’ lives but antagonized those in power. She earned the wrath of the ruthless Maurice Duplessis, who tried to halt her work and had her arrested five times. In 1947, she was charged with seditious conspiracy. Convicted and sentenced to two years in jail, the committed union organizer and activist was never imprisoned. She was eventually acquitted in 1955.