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The WCTU and Educational Strategies on the Canadian Prairie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Nancy M. Sheehan
Nancy M. Sheehan*
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Policy and Administrative Studies, University of Calgary
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Extract

There has been increasing interest in the past several years in the history of temperance and prohibition in both Canada and the United States. Researchers of women's history, religious history and social history have viewed the temperance movement as a key element in understanding developments in each of these areas. One of the organizations central to the temperance movement, and one which has been given credit as a catalyst in organizing the “anti-drink” campaign, was the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Until quite recently most of the studies related to the WCTU have been parts of much larger works on prohibition itself. Although this women's organization has been credited in these studies with an important role in the campaign, the essence of the WCTU, its philosophy, organization and methodology are lost in the ongoing rush to tell the story of the rise and fall of prohibition. Sinclair's Prohibition: An Era of Excess, Symbolic Crusade; Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement by Joseph Gusfield and James Timberlake's Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 are examples of such work. Norman H. Clark's Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition shows the interest women took in the number of saloons and the problems associated with alcohol. In Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890–1913, James Blocker identifies prohibitionist leaders, both men and women, as “decent citizens.” What each of these works tells us is what women did for temperance.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 101 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Sinclair, Andrew, Prohibition: An Era of Excess. (Boston, 1962); Gusfield, Joseph, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. (Urbana, Illinois, 1963); Timberlake, James, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920. (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

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29. The author has a sampling of teacher biographies in her possession.Google Scholar

30. Besides inspectors' reports on individual teachers (see footnote 28), the Annual Report of the Department of Education also include a summary statement by the inspectors.Google Scholar

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35. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1912, pp. 91–92, and Alta. WCTU AR, 1929, p. 73.Google Scholar

36. Ibid. 1912, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

37. Report of the Annual Convention of the Saskatchewan Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1913, pp. 52, 53 (hereafter Sask, WCTU AR, 1913, pp. 52, 53).Google Scholar

38. Alta. WCTU AR , 1927, p. 31.Google Scholar

39. Alta. WCTU AR , 1929, p. 73.Google Scholar

40. Alta. WCTU AR , 1928, p. 36; Canadian White Ribbon Tidings, November 1929, p. 224; and The Northern Messenger, January 1930, p. 14.Google Scholar

41. The Northern Messenger, January 1930, p. 14.Google Scholar

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44. Alta. WCTU AR , 1918, p. 32.Google Scholar

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46. Alta. WCTU AR , 1927, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

47. Memorandum on Little White Ribboners' Department of Work adopted by Dominion WCTU, B8, F46(E).Google Scholar

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49. Alta.-Sask., WCTU AR , 1905, pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

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51. Alta. WCTU AR , 1927, p. 68.Google Scholar

52. Ibid. Google Scholar

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55. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1911, p. 81.Google Scholar

56. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1908, p. 50.Google Scholar

57. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1911, p. 67.Google Scholar

58. Alta. WCTU AR , 1915, p. 47.Google Scholar

59. Alta. WCTU AR , 1913, p. 56.Google Scholar

60. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1911, p. 67.Google Scholar

61. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1908, p. 50 Google Scholar

62. Alta. WCTU AR , 1917, p. 48 and AR, 1919, p. 32.Google Scholar

63. Alta. WCTU AR , 1919, p. 35.Google Scholar

64. Alta. WCTU AR , 1920, p. 53.Google Scholar

65. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1911, p. 66.Google Scholar

66. Alta. WCTU AR , 1921, pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

67. Alta. WCTU AR , 1921, p. 55.Google Scholar

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69. Alta.-Sask. WCTU AR , 1905, p. 33.Google Scholar

70. Canadian White Ribbon Tidings, October 1929, p. 201. Although the “Y” was aimed at young women, men could become honorary members. They could not, however, hold office, because women needed at least one organization where by constitution they held office and learned how to run a meeting and make decisions. White Ribbon Tidings, July 1905, p. 392.Google Scholar

71. Alta. WCTU AR , 1921, p. 55. The White Ribbon Tidings for April 1921 listed twenty-seven activities a “Y” could do—from editing a temperance newspaper for Sunday Schools and organizing a sunshine band to visit “shut ins,” to putting Bibles and good reading matter in cabooses of freight trains and holding a newspaper clipping evening with prizes for the most temperance clippings.Google Scholar

72. Alta. WCTU AR , 1920, p. 51.Google Scholar

73. Canadian White Ribbon Tidings, March 1928, p. 68.Google Scholar

74. Alta. WCTU AR , 1923, pp. 61–63.Google Scholar

75. Alta. WCTU AR , 1921, p. 56.Google Scholar

76. Clifford, Geraldine Joncich, “Teaching as a Seedbed of Feminism.” Paper presented at the Fifth Berkshire Conference on Women's History, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, June 1981.Google Scholar

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