In my line of work, I come across the names of many, many high schools—every high school in Canada, in fact. So I began a tally with myself of the number of schools named after women—at first out of curiosity, and later after developing something of a righteous rage.
Many schools in Canada and the US are named after their towns, and Canada’s wealth of delicious place names gives these schools delightfully evocative and fascinating names—Exploit Valley High School, Whistling Wind School, Rainy River High, Swift Current Academy, and the absolutely peerless Eyebrow School of Eyebrow, Saskatchewan. Other schools get the sort of meh names that sound like the board selected names out of a grab bag or The Big Book of High School Name Suggestions, many of which involve trees: West Elm, Oak Park, North Side, Bayview, Hillside, and so on. (Oaks are particularly popular. I can only guess that board officials have an affinity for the national tree of America and fifteen other countries.) Catholic schools are invariably given an identifiably Catholic name, which accounts for the dozens of Notre Dames, Sts. Michael/Peter/Paul, Holy Crosses, and Trinity(s) scattered across North America.
But the remainder of schools are named after people—between a third and a quarter, depending on the area, and the vast majority of these are named after men. “But wait!” I hear. “There are schools named after women!” Indeed there are! Queen Elizabeth alone accounts for eight high schools and countless elementaries across the country. Mary, the mother of Jesus, has at least sixteen and a Canadian university to her credit. Some saints also make the cut—St. Marguerite d’Youville, a founding mother of Montreal, being the heavy hitter in Canada. The majority of Catholic schools named after individuals, though, are named after men—if not saints, then priests and bishops from the area, and furthermore, many of the schools named after female saints started life as all-girls’ schools. So besides royalty and saints, where are the women?
This is not to disparage the many men whom high schools honour in their names. I love that Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian socialized medicine, has a high school named after him. Sir Frederick Banting, the inventor of synthetic insulin, has two plus a third shared with Charles Best, his co-discoverer. David Suzuki, the environmental scientist, has a school named after him that focuses on environmental impact issues and strives to use as much renewable energy as possible. Terry Fox, who ran over 5,000 kilometers to raise money for cancer while battling his own cancer and using an artificial leg, has a secondary school near his home in British Columbia.
But it is appallingly obvious that in order to have a school named after you, the qualifications for a man are far, far lower than that for a woman. A woman must be royalty, or sainted, or hold some kind of outstanding distinction. For men it is enough to sit on the school board or be an original settler to the area. This is a nationwide phenomenon, not restricted to any one part of the country—in fact, famously liberal British Columbia, oft-derided by the rest of Canada as being full of hippies and pot smokers, has three schools named after women—two of which are named after royalty. The last, Frances Kelsey Secondary School, is named after the brilliant scientist who held back the drug thalidomide from the American market and undoubtedly saved many thousands of children from birth defects.
What other women are found to be worthy enough to name schools after? Nellie McClung, one of the Famous Five who brought a case to the Canadian Parliament that women were persons under the law, has one school named after her in Manitoba—Nellie McClung Collegiate. (The other four of the Famous Five have no such honours.) The artist Emily Carr has one high school, one school of art, and several elementary schools. Laura Secord, a folk hero famed for walking twenty miles to alert the British of an impending American attack during the War of 1812, has a secondary school near the site of her famous walk. There are some inspiring cases, as well: Louise Arbour, the former UN Commissioner for Human Rights and first person to prosecute sexual assault as a crime against humanity, has a secondary school named after her, as does Cairine Wilson, the first female Canadian senator. The high school in Norway House, Manitoba, is named after Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree woman who was kidnapped off the street in The Pas and brutally murdered, making it the only school in the lower ten provinces named after a woman of colour and one who was not otherwise famous or honoured in her community. (In Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories, a large number of schools are named after local chiefs and influential people from the individual nations. There is one school named after Emilie Trembley, the first white woman to travel to the area, in Yukon, and the Northwest Territories has one K-12 school named after Helen Kalvak, an Inuit artist.)
This is not to say that the men who have Canadian secondary schools named after them are not influential men in their communities. But there are so many schools named after men who would have been otherwise forgotten—local reeves and mayors, men who sat on school boards, early settlers to the area who otherwise did not notably contribute to the education system. Harry Colinge High School is named after the first manager of the pulp company that employed a number of adults in the town. T.L Kennedy Secondary is named after a longtime resident and master of the local Masonic lodge. R.D. Parker Collegiate is named after the then-president of Inco, a mining company with a large presence in the town.
So what then of some of Canada’s famous and influential women? Elizabeth Bagshaw, one of Canada’s first female doctors, merits an elementary school. L.M. Montgomery, one of Canada’s most famous authors, has an elementary school. June Callwood, a Toronto journalist and activist who worked tirelessly for women and children; Rosemary Brown, the first black Canadian woman to serve in a provincial legislature; Maud Abbott, another of Canada’s first female doctors and a worldwide expert in heart defects; Harriet Brooks, the first female Canadian nuclear scientist and first woman to receive a Master’s degree from McGill University; Carrie Derick, the first female professor in a Canadian university: none of these women have schools named after them.
The situation is even worse for non-white Canadians of either gender. David Suzuki, as mentioned, and Lincoln Alexander, Canada’s first black Member of Parliament, are the only ones to bear this honour. What, then, of Vivienne Poy, Canada’s first senator of Asian ancestry? Mary Ann Shadd, a black woman and Canada’s first female newspaper publisher? William Gun Chong, a Second World War hero who spent four years of the war traveling through China bringing escapees from occupied territories to freedom? Senator Anne Cools, the first black person in the Canadian Senate and founder of one of Canada’s first women’s shelters? Margaret Gee, the first woman of Asian descent to be called to the bar in British Columbia? Masumi Mitsui, a Japanese immigrant to Canada who served in the Canadian military at Vimy Ridge in the First World War, widely considered to be the cauldron of Canadian nationhood, who was sent to an internment camp in the Second World War despite his status as a decorated war hero? Where are the schools named after these people, who contributed so much to their nation and deserve to be lauded?
But while these men and women go unsought as namesakes for any school, elementary or high school, Canada rejoices in eight Centennials and one Centennial College, seven schools named after Queen Elizabeth, eight after Vincent Massey, six after Winston Churchill, ten after John A. MacDonald, and nine after Lester B. Pearson. That’s forty-eight schools altogether—clearly there is room for more namesakes! There is no danger that Winston Churchill will be forgotten, and no one would say that MacDonald will disappear into the ether of history if fewer schools are named after him.
“Why aren’t you content with elementary school names, though?” They’re automatically coded as lesser. High schools are larger and exert more influence in the community (sometimes a very large amount of influence depending on the size of the community in question), and draw more attention than elementary schools. They receive more funding, teach more students, and form a larger part of the education system in general.
“Why does this matter?” It’s true that it might seem trivial, when women are being treated brutally in other nations and girls being denied the right to education entirely, when children are being treated as disposable slave labour and families are living in abject poverty the globe over. But Canada, having long held itself up as a multicultural mosaic and shining beacon to immigrants of every land, owes more to its children. I want my children and the children of all Canadians to grow up in a land that visibly and publicly honours citizens of every sex and nationality—not only those who are lucky enough to be wealthy white men. And why not? Why not honour a number of visibly diverse people in the names of our high schools? It’s possible—Canadians can do it—and it can only help to increase the number of people we honour in our communities and delight to have inspire our students.
Tags: canada, canadian content, feminism, lindsey palka, something something canada
I went to a private school which was, as many private schools are, named after its two (female) founders. It was British-inspired, as many English private schools are, so it has houses named after these founders. All fine, except that one of the founders was named Cramp, and that house colour is red.
(This is not terribly related to your excellent post, I just like to share.)
I will add, also, that initially there were two houses, and they had the colours green and white, but in the 60s (maybe? who remembers) they added a third house and changed Cramp house from white to red and the new house got blue, which must have involved a lot of secret laughter by someone.
I went to a school that had the girls’ houses named after the founding abbesses of the Cathedral we were next to — there were three sisters, named Torfrida and Withburga and Sexburga. The school houses were Torfrida and Withburga and Hill. Hill because it was at the top of the hill. Somebody really wimped out there.
Our mascot was the beaver!
And this is how I learned that you can’t use “beaver” as an answer to a secret question on most websites.
Did you go to Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s?! I laugh with glee every time I drive past it. I always imagine it as the ultimate Toastie spinster incubator.
And to be clear, I was in Cramp.
Montreal Toasties, represent.
Fist bump.
That school has such a hilarious name though! I judged science fairs there for a few years and it was by far the least snooty private high school of the four or five I did that at. (I’m assuming it’s the same one since surely there aren’t two of them around.)
I graduated a while ago, so I don’t know how snooty it was, but generally I had a pretty good high school experience there.
I went there too! Was wondering if this article would mention it. So funny that it seemed normal at the time but is obviously so extraordinary. Adami represent.
I mean, I never went to a school named after a human being and find it a little weird (the schools I attended when I was a kid were named after the neighbourhoods they were located in). But, assuming that you were looking for a person to name a new school after, why would you pick someone that already had several schools to their name? Like, “Well, let’s just add a ninth Lester B. Pearson Secondary, no way they’re going to get us confused with each other!” Wouldn’t you WANT to go for something more original, like sya an uderappreciated woman’s name? (Also, writing that sentence, it just occurred to me that a lot of airports are also named after dudes. Pearson, Trudeau, Macdonald-Cartier, Billy Bishop…)
Anyway, I found out by accident recently that there’s a public school named after E. Pauline Johnson in Toronto!
There are four elementary schools named after Pauline Johnson and a high school in Brantford, which has been open since 1955! Unfortunately, the only reason that is so is because the land the school sits on was acquired from Six Nations councillors who were given the naming of the school, and they selected Johnson. Since it was 1955, I’m confident that otherwise it would have wound up as “Oak Hill” or something.
Fantastic article. I live in Regina, and I believe all of our public schools named after women are elementary schools. I only know the story behind a handful of the school names, and they’re all either beloved former principals, or people who held major roles in the board of education. To me, that also highlights several gender inequalities here: women being less frequently hired as high school principals, and particularly less likely to become known as beloved high school principals in the community, as well as the tendency (when naming a school after a member of the general public or the Board of Education, previously unconnected to the namesake school) to associate women only with elementary schools.
This inspired me to go look at the Houston school district’s list of names, and confirm that we have 2 public high schools (out of 40ish) and 2 public middle schools (out of 50ish) named after women. The two women who get high schools are Barbara Jordan and Phillis Wheatley; the high schools named after men are about half men of similar note, half “former superintendent of schools” and “important local businessman in the 1920s”. Women at that level (beloved teachers and principals, district administrators, etc.) get elementary schools named after them instead.
(A side note: the school district’s website is just as thorough about explaining who Washington Junior High is named after (“George Washington (1732-1799), who served as the first president of the United States of America”) as it is about all the schools named after random local oilmen and handwriting supervisors and such. Not relevant but kind of charming.)
I had no idea this was where Regina’s random man-named schools came from! When new schools are built, there should be a naming campaign for the namesakes be notable prairie women.
(essay-related side note: I can’t believe Rainy River High is still open. This year’s class -my sister’s- was 22; mine, class of ’99, was about 37).
Just looked up my elementary school (the only one I went to that had a person named instead of a place name) and yup, dude. Dude was school inspector back in the time if one room schoolhouses, or so the website claims. (it’s kind of weird that it has a website, when all my memories of it are pre-internet.)
My elementary school was named after Black women from my community, but my junior high was a Governor General (who has eight other schools named for him) and my high school was a local Captain of Industry TM. Male, natch. I had no idea who he was until I googled him today to find out.
I feel like at this point it should be illegal that Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro don’t have schools named after them.
At least Laura Secord gets a delicious chain of chocolate and ice cream shops with her face on them.
Laura Secord actually has a secondary school named after her in St. Catharine’s http://www.laurasecord.org/ which was built on land acquired from the Secord family!
But many of the Laura Secord shops are being closed or renamed after the BC company that bought them out. I don’t remember the new name except that it isn’t Roger’s and they don’t have Empress Creams.
I just hope they still put a chocolate on top of the ice cream cones.
BLASPHEMY! They’re still Laura Secords here in Ontario. (Or at least the one downstairs from my work is still one.)
Oh, my goodness, I agree so much with this post. And the men that the schools are named after are just such historical non-entities.
I mean, I can give some credit to the ones named after royal personages (Prince of Wales, Prince Edward, etc.) or ones named after Prime Ministers, or even Governor-Generals (although, there definitely need to be as many Adrienne Clarkson schools to balance out the Vincent Masseys), but all the ones named after random local people?
My hometown has schools named after newspaper editors, school trustees, and a local M.P. whose biggest accomplishment was two years as the Minister for Roads and Canals.
This is not something I’ve ever really thought about, but I am so, so on board with this. More women’s names on prominent social entities!
I think McGill’s the only school I’ve ever gone to (like, since kindergarten) that wasn’t named after the street it was on or the town it was in. And one of the legion Lester B. Peasons is in my hometown.
Funny, just last week my father showed me the new school built in his town and remarked that it didn’t have a name yet, and I said “they’ll name it after a dead white guy”.
BLASPHEMY! They're still Laura Secords here in Ontario. (Or at least the one downstairs from my work is still one.)
I graduated a while ago, so I don't know how snooty it was, but generally I had a pretty good high school experience there.
Oh so that’s who Harry Collinge is. (I know someone who went to school there.) TBH, it’d be nice to see more diversity in school names. I was all interested in who all the school namesakes are when I moved to Canada but it only took a year or so for the novelty to go away. They’re all mostly named after dead white dudes anyway. (But I should end the cynicism and actually be curious again.)
I went to a Bev Facey and a Win Ferguson. They might be women.
Since you preface your text with the following sentence “In my line of work, I come across the names of many, many high schools—every high school in Canada” so I was surprised when I didn’t see any Francophone schools in your text. Then again Anglophones don’t really really give us much though unless they are complaining about Quebecors.
Anyways allow me to contribute a few from my hometown:
We have the École Secondaires Beatrice-Deloges named after Béatrice Déloges a Franco-Ontarian educator who along with her sister Diane successfully opposed regulation 17 (which as I’ve learned most Anglophones never even learned about in History School). Regulation 17 was issued in 1912 by the conservative government who wanted to make all French education illegal in Ontario.
We also have École secondaire publique Gisèle-Lalonde named after Gisèle Lalonde, a lady who is very much alive and who fought very hard to keep the Montfort Hospital open when the government wanted to close as part of the 1997 restructuring. Monfort is the only Francophone hospital in all of Ontario.
There’s also Marguerite Bourgeoys who has a host of schools (even a Commission scolaire which overseas several institutions) probably even more than Queen Elizabeth.
He’s not a woman, but we have the a High School in Ottawa, “L’École secondaire publique Louis-Riel” named after Louis Riel a Métis hero for us Francophones but a sworn enemy of the Anglos.
Just a small reminder that all of Canada includes us Francophones, even though we are a linguistic minority.
And yes I do agree there should be more schools named after women.
Although its an elementary school, I think it is also worth noting that there is now a school in Ottawa named after Michaelle Jean. I thought that was neat when I saw that and this article just made me realised why; I suppose I had never reflected on it so much but remained subconsciously aware that most school are named after women.
You’re right to note Gisele Lalonde and Beatrice Desloges! I went to College Catholique Samuel Genest (guy who fought alongside Desloges for francophone school in ON) but I went to St.-Anne elementary school before that.
I was about to get all indignant and offer up at least three schools in my district named after women, but then I realized that they're all elementary schools. Further digging shows that of 202 schools (it's a huge district) only about 16 are named after women, and none of them go past grade nine. Now I'm with you – righteous rage all the way!
Good article. I live in Regina, and I believe all of our public schools named after women are elementary schools.