begins its public survey on a shortlist of a dozen names<\/a>, Brock University scholar and professor Lissa Paul notes that historical information about women\u2019s contributions to society tend to be hidden, absent or undervalued.<\/p>\nPaul has written a book \u2014 and is writing another and editing a third \u2014 on English author and teacher Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840). Among her accomplishments, in the 1830s, Fenwick ran a school for girls in Niagara-on-the Lake and was the much-loved mistress of the Boys Boarding House for Upper Canada College in Toronto.<\/p>\n
During her research, Paul had to do a lot of creative digging to find materials for her books.<\/p>\n
For example, Fenwick was a close associate of William Warren Baldwin and Robert Baldwin, both influential players in the development of parliamentary reform in Upper Canada.<\/p>\n
Paul tried to search the extensive, cross-referenced collection of Baldwin family letters and other documents housed in the Toronto Public Library, but did not find a trace of Eliza Fenwick.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wasn\u2019t in the correspondence files or in any of the references, but when I pulled up the boxes of letters in the correct date range, sure enough, manuscript letters turned up,\u201d says Paul. \u201cThose documents are not named, because those were not regarded as important enough. References to Eliza were regarded as too insignificant and domestic to record.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul applauds the move to have a woman on a bill and says this could be one way of bringing the lives of neglected women of influence to the surface of public attention, and perhaps one step towards bringing women to other public spaces, such as buildings and streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen Eliza knew in the 1830s, William Warren Baldwin and Lieutenant Governor John Colborne, live with us every day in Toronto \u2014 we can walk up the Baldwin Steps to Casa Loma or along Colborne Street,\u201d says Paul.<\/p>\n
For more details of Paul\u2019s research and her take on women\u2019s historical records, see her article in Friday\u2019s Globe and Mail<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most Canadians agree that a prominent Canadian woman should appear on our money next year, according to a recent Angus Reid Institute poll. But agreement on exactly who that woman should be is a lot less clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":39295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,1,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39296,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39293\/revisions\/39296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}