Tag: McGill University

Annie Louise Smith: One of the First Women to Graduate from McGill University

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At the turn of the century, Annie Louise Smith belonged to an exclusive group of young women known as the Donaldas. They were the first women to graduate from McGill University in Montreal. The university began accepting female students in 1884 and Louise and 13 other women made up the Donalda class of 1897.

Louise and the Donaldas

The nickname Donalda was a reference to Donald A. Smith, a Scottish-born businessman who spent many years with the Hudson Bay Company and played an important role in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He provided a substantial endowment to the university on condition that the standard of education for women be the same as that for men.

As far as I know, Louise was not related to Donald Smith. Her father, John Murray Smith, was a bank manager who had come to Canada from Scotland as a child. Louise was lucky because, according to a family story, her father believed in education for women, however, he died in 1894 and did not see her graduate.

Louise was born 11 August, 1875 in Peterborough, Ontario, where her father was manager of the Bank of Toronto. Her mother was Jane Mulholland, the daughter of a Montreal hardware merchant. Louise was one of six children: she had an older brother, Henry (1873-1891), and four younger siblings: May (1877-1953), Fred (1879-1956, my future grandfather), Ella (1881-1964) and Mabel (1884-1966). None of her siblings followed Louise to university.

The family left Peterborough in 1877 when Louise’s father was transferred to Montreal. They lived downtown for the first few years, and, in 1881, they moved into a stone house in a newly developed part of the city on McGregor Avenue (now Docteur Penfield Avenue), on the slope of Mount Royal.

Young women of Louise’s background were not expected to work, even if they had a degree; they were supposed to get married and let their husbands support them. It took Louise several years, however, to find the right man. In 1906, she married Frederic Samuel Macfarlane (1871-1918), who ran a retail lumber business with his father. Their first child, Anne, arrived two years later. In the early years of their marriage, Louise and Fred lived with his parents on Selkirk Avenue, a tiny street just down the hill from the house where Louise had grown up. 

Louise and Fred with Anne and Isobel on vacation at Cacouna

Montreal was a growing city and the lumber business did well. Around 1912, Fred and his father opened a west-end branch of the store and the family moved to a larger house on Sydenham Avenue in Westmount. The house was soon full as Louise and Fred had four children: Anne (b. 1908), Isobel (b.1909), Robert (b.1912) and Alice (b.1914).

Ad in Lovell’s Directory

In 1916, father-in-law Robert Macfarlane died. Two years later, Fred died. Suddenly, Louise was a widow with four young children to raise and a family business with no leadership. She arranged for people to run the store, but they did not have the Macfarlanes’ knowledge of the lumber business, and it soon failed. Fortunately, she had enough money to remain in the house on Sydenham and to send two of her own children to university.

Louise often visited her mother and three unmarried sisters, who still lived together in the house on McGregor, and they all celebrated Christmas and birthdays together. Her brother, Fred Murray Smith, and his wife also lived nearby.  

When daughter Anne got married in August 1934, Louise was described in the marriage register as a librarian. No doubt the job didn’t pay much, but she probably found it satisfying. However, Louise was now living on borrowed time.

In April 1935, her second daughter, Isobel, got married in the family home on Sydenham. This time when Louise signed as a witness, her hand was shaky. She had cancer. In August, Anne gave birth to the first of Louise’s ten grandchildren. Louise died on Sept. 18, 1935, age 60, and is buried with her husband in Mount Royal Cemetery.

Photo Credits: Donaldas class of 97, Old McGill 98, p. 45, http://yearbooks.mcgill.ca/viewbook.php?campus=downtown&book_id=1898#page/56/mode/2up. Courtesy Benny Beattie. Lovell’s Montreal Directory (1842-1992), 1912-1913, p. 1536, bibnum2.banq.ca/bna/lovell/index.html

Notes

See the online article about women at McGill: Blazing Trails: McGill’s Women, https://www.mcgill.ca/about/history/features/mcgill-women

This story relies to a great extent on family stories. I used Lovell’s Directory (bibnum2.banq.ca/bna/lovell/) to track the family’s movements in Montreal, and Ancestry.ca, familysearch.org and cemetery records to check birth, marriage and death dates. I have not found the marriage record; not all Presbyterian records are included in the Drouin Collection of Quebec Vital and Church Records. Nor did I find them in the 1911 census, but that could be an indexing issue; Lovell’s told me where they lived.

My First World War Ancestors: Mills and Lindsay

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In this year that marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, I would like to pay tribute to some members of my extended family who served in that horrific conflict.There may be others, but these are the ones I know about.This is the last in a series of four profiles.

Arthur Lennox Stanley Mills was appointed Lieutenant in the 24thBattallion, Victoria Rifles of Canada in November 1914. He served in France, was promoted to the rank of Major and was awarded theDistinguished Service Order (DSO) for gallantry during the Battle of Vimy Ridge. 

According to the citation that accompanied that medal, “he found a gap between his own and the next company which was strongly held by the enemy. At great personal risk he collected five men and, demoralizing the enemy, he assisted with the capture of 200 prisoners. Throughout he was most courageous and daring in handling the entire line of the battalion front.”

photo credit: Canada Veterans Hall of Valour

The only son of Rt. Rev. William Lennox Mills, the Anglican Bishop of Ontario from 1901 to 1917, and Katherine Sophia Bagg, Arthur was born in Montreal in June, 1890. He attended Queens University in Kingston, ON, obtained an MA from Oxford, and got a law degree from McGill University. 

He married Georgina Smithers in 1918 and the couple had two sons. After the war, he became a stockbroker. He died 20 March 1976, and is buried in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery. 

Two brothers who were Arthur’s first cousins also served in and survived the war. They were Lionel Mitcheson Lindsay, born 1886, and Stanley Bagg Lindsay, born 1889, sons of Robert Lindsay of Montreal and Mary Heloise Bagg. 

When Stanley Bagg Lindsay enlisted in September 1914, he was still an undergraduate science student at McGill University. He had been in the Black Watch militia in Montreal for six years. He joined the 13th Battalion, Royal Highlanders of Canada, and served overseas in 1915. He fought in France and Belgium, and rose from the rank of lieutenant to captain.  

Dr. Lionel Lindsay, photo credit: Old McGill 1909 (yearbook)

After the war, Stanley became a stockbroker. He did not marry and was very generous to his nieces and nephews. He died in 1965 and is buried in the Lindsay family plot in Mount Royal Cemetery.

Lionel Lindsay graduated in medicine from McGill University in 1909, did post-graduate studies in pediatrics in Europe, then joined the staff of the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Montreal. In 1915 he joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps, retiring from the military in 1919 with the rank of captain. When he died in 1966, he was survived by his wife, Dorothy MacPhail, two sons, three daughters and 16 grandchildren. His son Lt. Robert Andrew Lindsay, of the Black Watch, went missing in action in Holland in 1945.

Dr. Lindsay, who was my grandmother’s first cousin, used to make house calls whenever, as a child visiting my grandparents in Montreal, I got a fever or the flu, and I remember him as a kind and gentle man.

Research Notes

In addition to databases available through Library and Archives Canada, McGill University students and alumni who fought in the Great War are included in a book called McGill Honour Roll 1914-1918. You can see a digitized version at http://www.archives.mcgill.ca/public/exhibits/mcgillremembers/Binder1.pdf.

There is additional detail about Mills’ war record, including the quote concerning the medal, in Canada Veterans Hall of Valour, http://www.canadaveteranshallofvalour.com/MillsAL.htm

The Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967, searchable online through Ancestry, provides baptism and marriage records for these individuals. In addition to consulting the Census of Canada, which was taken every ten years, I used the Lovells city directory which tracked the addresses and occupations of Montreal residents annually. I also found information on the Lindsay brothers in undated newspaper obituaries provided to me by their great-niece.