Quote:
“We had a great success. Now I can’t believe our nerve.”[6]
Anna Swan with her husband Martin Van Buren Bates, and an unidentified man of normal height, circa 1878–88.
Albert Almon/Library and Archives Canada/PA-051546
Walking Tall
Anna Swan
1846–1888
When her height seemed a disability, she capitalized on the opportunity to earn a living and demonstrate her talents as a performer.
Anna Swan’s grandmother told her to “stand tall, lass, and be proud of your highland ancestry.”[1] These words guided Anna as she faced the challenge of being almost eight feet. By twenty-two, she weighed 350 pounds.
A woman who struggled to function in a world made for much smaller people, Anna survived and eventually thrived. She earned the respect and admiration of friends, family, co-workers, and an adoring public. Even Queen Victoria was a supporter.
Anna was a normal-sized baby born to Scottish parents in Mill Brook, Nova Scotia, in 1846. She towered over her peers from an early age, and had a hard time joining childhood games. Her family couldn’t afford the extra costs of special clothing and furniture for their large daughter. They reluctantly accepted an acquaintance’s invitation to raise money by touring the province with four-year-old Anna. She was exhibited as “The Infant Giantess,” and adults paid a dollar to see her, children fifty cents.
Already standing five feet four inches when she started school, Anna was teased and taunted about her size. She was soon too big to sit at the family dinner table, so she had to sit on the floor with a special table of her own. By fifteen, Anna stood seven feet.
She’d grown tired of touring country fairs and wanted to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. In 1861, Anna moved to Truro, where she enrolled in teachers’ college and stayed with an aunt. Extremely depressed by the stares and personal questions asked by strangers, the teenager soon begged her father to take her home.
Anna’s unusual size came to the attention of the showman Phineas T. Barnum. From the early 1840s until it burned down twice in the 1860s, he operated Barnum’s American Museum, a combination museum, zoo, aquarium, theatre, and lecture hall in New York City. As many as 15,000 people a day visited the attractions, which featured people with physical anomalies. Author Robert Bogdan notes in his book Freak Show that these performances are now considered despicable and cruel, exploitive and demeaning, but brought fame and fortune to many of the performers.[2] Such was the case for Anna.
After receiving a number of offers from Barnum, Anna and her parents negotiated acceptable terms. Eager to continue her education, the teenager would have a private tutor three hours a day for three years and earn $23 a week in gold (later, $1,000 per month) — an enormous amount of money for the time.[3] She would also study voice and piano. Worried about possible exploitation, the Swans travelled to New York with Anna, and her mother stayed for a year. Throughout her career Anna sent money home.
Anna enjoyed spacious living quarters with luxurious, oversized furniture. A seamstress created beautiful gowns for her, including a dress made from 100 yards of satin and 50 yards of lace. Billed as “Big Ann,” she was the only known giantess in the world. She played the piano, read poetry, and recited from plays. Increasingly self-confident, Anna enjoyed talking to the crowds and working with a family of other performers. Her close friends included Charles Sherwood Stratton (the dwarf, General Tom Thumb) and his wife, Lavinia Warren (also a dwarf), as well as Millie and Christine McCoy (Siamese twins).
A poster describing Anna Swan, circa 1871.
The British Library Board EVAN.2713
Barnum treated Anna with respect and noted that “she was an intelligent and by no means an ill-looking girl and during the period she was in my employ she was visited by thousands of people.”[4] Anna liked her employer, and considered him “a fine, jolly man with a clever sense of humour.”[5] She accompanied him on a European tour in 1863 when she met Queen Victoria and visited her ancestors’ Scottish homeland.
When fire destroyed Barnum’s American Museum in 1865, Anna was nearly burned to death. She was too large to escape through a window, but eighteen men hoisted her out of the burning building by block and tackle. Anna decided to pursue her career independently. In 1871, while travelling to Europe with the Ingalls Troupe, she fell in love with Captain Martin Van Buren Bates, a well-known giant from Kentucky. The happy pair got engaged during their Atlantic voyage, and when they performed for Queen Victoria, she took an interest in their upcoming nuptials.
At the queen’s invitation, Anna and Captain Bates were married in the Royal Parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Anna wore a gown presented to her by Queen Victoria, and both the bride and groom sported gold watches they’d received as gifts from the monarch. The queen also gave Anna a diamond-cluster ring. An engraving in The London Telegraph depicted the tallest married couple in the world on their wedding day.
The newlyweds settled on a farm near Seville, Ohio, living in a special house with fourteen-foot ceilings and customized furniture. They were regulars at the Seville Baptist Church where Anna also taught Sunday school. The kind-hearted Nova Scotian was well-loved and admired in the community, where she enjoyed quilting bees and charity work.
The couple’s two children died at birth. Both babies were abnormally large, and the labour and delivery were agonizing for Anna. Their son, thirty inches long, weighed twenty-three and a half pounds. Anna and Martin were both severely depressed after losing their children.
Anna Swan Bates died of tuberculosis in 1888 at forty-two, leaving behind an impressive estate valued at $40,000. The Anna Swan Museum in Nova Scotia pays tribute to this extraordinary woman, and there is a small monument to the Nova Scotia Giantess in New Annan.
Quote:
“I hate being different from others.”[6]
Émilie Tremblay and her husband Pierre-Nolasque, circa 1905.
Archives nationales du Québec à Chicoutimi, fonds : Société historique du Saguenay,P2-S7 -P00246
The Sourdough from Lac-St-Jean
Émilie Tremblay
1872–1949
One of the first white women to cross the Chilkoot, she scaled the pass years before the gold rush.
“Thanks to God the profession of explorers has not been, even in the North, the lot of men alone,”[1] the adventurous Émilie Tremblay said. The spunky francophone spent her honeymoon on a 5,000-mile journey from Quebec to the Klondike, where her new husband had struck gold.
Émilie was born in St-Joseph-d’Alma, and lived in Chicoutimi and then New York state as a child. Émilie Fortin married Pierre-Nolasque “Jack” Tremblay in a Catholic church on December 11, 1893. She was twenty-one and thrilled to set out for the wilderness with the love of her life, despite her relatives’ fears. After crossing the content by rail the newlyweds took a steamer to Juneau, then began their trek over the Chilkoot Pass with three First Nations packers.
Émilie thrived on the challenges of the journey, even after she was caught in an avalanche on the Dyea Trail. Once they reached Lake Bennett, their party camped for several months to build boats. They survived rough water on the lake, the treacherous rapids at Miles Canyon, then ice floes and sandbars on the Yukon River. Émilie prided herself on cooking good meals for the men, surprising them with omelettes and cookies made using seagull eggs. She would later reflect that “this first trip down the Yukon River remains in my memory, full of romance, joy and love. There was nothing like it in all the world.”[2]
The Tremblays’ destination was Miller Creek. Their first home was a filthy one-room cabin, complete with a pole encrusted with black tobacco spit. They scrubbed the place and made furniture. There were no other women in the isolated mining camp, but Jack had a crew of men to help. Émilie, who spoke only French, began studying English grammar books so she could talk to the miners. She also cooked for them, and treated everyone to a sumptuous meal that Christmas: roast caribou, stuffed rabbit, King Oscar
sardines, boiled brown beans, dried potatoes, sourdough bread, and prune pudding. After surviving a long, dark winter, she began growing lettuce and radishes on a rooftop garden.
In the fall of 1895, the Tremblays headed south to visit their families. It was meant to be a quick visit, but they ended up nursing Émilie’s mother until she died. It wasn’t until spring 1898 that the couple managed to head back north, too late to stake the best claims in the Klondike. Émilie and Jack initially settled on Bonanza Creek and prospected on various claims until 1913, but never struck it rich. They then moved to Dawson City, living above the dry goods shop that Émilie operated for thirty years as Madame Tremblay’s.
Émilie Tremblay was a prominent businesswoman who was devoted to helping others in her community, from delivering babies to organizing bazaars for the church. She welcomed missionaries, widows, and travellers into her home, and raised her niece. During the Second World War, she knitted 263 pairs of socks for soldiers. Émilie also founded the Ladies of the Golden North, served as president of the Yukon Women Pioneers, and became a lifetime member of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire.
Émilie Tremblay died in 1949. The Saguenay Museum holds the medals she was awarded for community service. In 1985, the first francophone school in Yukon was named in honour of this heroine of the North. Madame Tremblay’s store is still a well-know building in Dawson City, where it is a recognized federal heritage building within a national historic site commemorating the Klondike Gold Rush.
Émilie Tremblay on Eldorado Creek, 1898.
Archives nationales du Québec à Chicoutimi, fonds: Société historique du Saguenay, P2-S7 -P01563
Quote:
“I needed a lot of courage to face and endure that kind of life. But, thank God, I had it and I was never homesick or downhearted.”[3]
Mary Schäffer Warren in the Rocky Mountains.
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (VS27/NG-17)
Mountain Woman
Mary Schäffer Warren
1861–1939
The most famous female explorer in the Canadian Rockies, she literally put Maligne Lake on the map. Then made sure it was protected within Jasper National Park.
Prospectors were startled to find a couple of women camped in the wilderness at Tête Jaune Cache, British Columbia, in 1908. The Edmonton Bulletin later reported on the shocking discovery that “The women had no husbands, brothers or other encumbrances, along with them, and needed none.” And just as surprising, “They are described as anything but masculine in appearance.”[1]
The female adventurers were two Quaker friends from Philadelphia. Mary (née Sharples) Schäffer and Mollie Adams were wealthy women searching for the “great un-lonely silence of the wilderness.”[2] After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, a steady stream of tourists headed west each summer. Mary had first visited the Rockies and Selkirks in 1888, at twenty-six, travelling with friend and fellow artist Mary Vaux. At Glacier House, the CPR hotel in Rogers Pass, Mary Sharples met the charming Dr. Charles Schäffer, a Philadelphia medical doctor and amateur botanist twenty-three years her senior. She returned to the mountains the following year as his bride.
The couple spent each summer in the mountains until Dr. Schäffer died in 1903. Mary then worked with a curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia to compile a book of Dr. Schäffer’s botanical materials and her impressive photographs and watercolours. The Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains was published in 1907.
Mary Schäffer continued her summer excursions. Year after year Mary and her friend Mollie Adams had watched enviously as men headed out on expeditions from Lake Louise. One day the duo decided they could cope with the hardships of exploration as well as men. They hired mountain guides to teach them to ride horses and camp and began exploring more as their confidence grew.
In 1907, with Billy Warren as their guide, the women rode out of Lake Louise on a four-month pack trip. Nine-tenths of Mary’s friends and relatives thought she was crazy, and the others just listened to her plans patiently.[3] The pack train headed north to the headwaters of the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan Rivers, though Mary’s “real object was to delve into the heart of an untouched land, to tread where no human foot had trod before.”[4] They searched, without success, for a legendary lake known to the Stoney Nation as Chaba Imne (or Beaver Lake). When the disappointed adventurers rode back into Lake Louise that fall, poet Rudyard Kipling was astounded to spot “two women, black-haired, bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle.”[5]
In 1908, Mary and Mollie continued their search for the lake with their guides Bill Warren and Sid Unwin and two other camp helpers. The party travelled north to Poboktan Pass, then, after crossing Maligne Pass, they found the mystery lake. The ladies were the first white women to see what Mary named Maligne Lake. For three days the group explored the shimmering turquoise lake on a small raft. Through the raft’s cracks, they could see icy blue waters below.
As the explorers passed through the lake’s narrows, they suddenly saw the spectacular southern end of the lake encircled by peaks cradling glaciers and icefields. At 27.5 kilometres in length, Maligne Lake is the largest glacial-fed lake in the Canadian Rockies. Mary named many of the surrounding mountains: Mounts Warren and Unwin for the guides, Mount Mary Vaux for her friend, and Mounts Samson and Leah for the Stoney and his wife who’d provided a rough map to the lake. Her Stoney friends referred to Mary as Yahe-Weha, “Mountain Woman.”
During the winters, Mary entertained audiences in Philadelphia with lectures featuring hand-tinted lantern slides. She would be introduced as “the little explorer, who lives among the Rocky Mountains and the Indians for months at a time, far, far in the wilderness.”[6] Mary also wrote many articles about her travels, and her popular book Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies was published in 1911. That same year she returned to Maligne Lake at the Geological Survey of Canada’s request to conduct an official mapping of the lake using a magnetic compass. She was influential in the successful lobby to ensure Maligne Lake was included within Jasper National Park.
The explorer settled permanently in Banff in 1912, marrying her longtime love Billy Warren. Mary died in 1939, and though her husband was about twenty years younger, he survived her by only four years.
Mary was an accomplished naturalist, writer, public speaker, photographer, and artist. She inspired others to visit the Canadian Rockies, and was an original member of both the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies and the Alpine Club of Canada. She was also a member of the Royal Geographical Society, the Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
In Yoho National Park, Mary Lake, Schäffer Lake, and Mount Schäffer are tributes to the explorer and her first husband. Tourists in Jasper can take guided cruises on Maligne Lake and hear about her adventures, hike along the Mary Schäffer Loop trail, or camp in the Mary Schäffer Campground. Visitors to Banff can stroll by the heritage home at 117 Grizzly Street, where she and her devoted guide Billy Warren lived.
Quote:
“… there are some joys you will never feel, there are heart thrills you can never experience, till, with your horse you leave the world, your recognized world, and plunge into the vast unknown.”[7]
Maud Watt.
Lorene Squire. The Beaver, March 1943.
The Angel of Hudson Bay
Maud Watt
1894–1987
As the beaver in northern Quebec disappeared, the Cree starved. Maud set out on an incredible journey to create a beaver preserve.
Maud Watt was an adventurer, an explorer, and a skillful negotiator said to be as persuasive as the Angel Gabriel.[1] Once a legendary figure in the Canadian North, the pioneering conservationist was referred to as the “Angel of Hudson Bay.”[2] But has she been forgotten?
Born on the Gaspé, Maud Maloney was the tenth child in a family of fourteen. Her Irish father worked as a fisherman, car
penter, and boat builder, while her mother, Elizabeth Poirier, managed the hectic, yet happy household. Maud could bake bread as well as hunt hares and ptarmigan and use Morse code. After the family settled at Mingan, Quebec, the young girl attended classes at the nearby convent. Fluent in French and English, she learned Latin and also picked up some Montagnais.
When Maud was twenty-one, she married a young Scotsman named James Watt, a clerk for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). He’d been offered a job as subdistrict manager of Fort Chimo on Ungava Bay. The newlyweds were soon Arctic-bound on the icebreaker Nascopie. Their honeymoon began a lifetime of adventure in the North.
Eager to visit as much of the country as possible, Maud charmed the captain into allowing them to stay aboard for the planned circuit to Baffin Island and Hudson Bay. During the trip, she scampered over rocky shores, picking Arctic flowers and meeting the Inuit. The fun-living Maud also played poker on the ship, noting that she “lost and won cars, pianos, and jewels enough to cover the Queen of Sheba.”[3]
From her first days in Fort Chimo, Maud welcomed the Natives into her home and treated them respectfully, unlike many of the HBC employees and their wives. The Watts were caring and compassionate, genuinely concerned about the welfare of those who traded with the company. When the supply ship didn’t appear for three years, the Watts made a gruelling 800-mile journey from Fort Chimo to the St. Lawrence for help.
100 More Canadian Heroines Page 28