Behind all great women are more great women.
On the eve of #RemembranceDay2019, meet one of those great women: Beatrice Nasmyth. #LestWeForget #cdnmedia
On the eve of #RemembranceDay2019, meet one of those great women: Beatrice Nasmyth. #LestWeForget #cdnmedia
Her name was a footnote in a story I recently read about Roberta MacAdams, #AB’s 2nd female legislator elected in 1917.
Unfortunately, Nasmyth’s inspiring story has largely been lost to time even though the Stratford native was a trailblazer for equal rights in Canada.
Unfortunately, Nasmyth’s inspiring story has largely been lost to time even though the Stratford native was a trailblazer for equal rights in Canada.
When WW1 broke out in 1914, she rushed to the frontlines. Writing for the @theprovince, Nasmyth would often go to great lengths to have her stories describing the horrors of the Great War smuggled back to 🇨🇦, defying government censors.
‘It was like looking on some dream of a future century, and when the pageant was over we came back to the present with a shudder that such horrors could really be in our own day and night,’ Nasmyth wrote after witnessing a Zeppelin bombing raid in London, England in 1915.
In 1917, she teamed up with Roberta MacAdams as her campaign manager for the military nurse’s long-shot bid to be elected to the Alberta Legislature. Nasmyth even convinced famed portrait photographer E.O Hoppe to take MacAdams campaign head shots.
How big of a deal was this? Hoppe photographed the world’s celebrities and artists, kings and queens. Everyone from Rudyard Kipling to King George to Albert Einstein. And in 1917, thanks to the help and tenacity of Nasmyth, a nurse from faraway #AB.
MacAdams won; her victory was reported in newspapers around the world. She went on to become the first woman in the British Empire to introduce and successfully pass a piece of legislation.
In 1919, Nasmyth witnessed the Paris Peace Conference in France, both as a reporter & publicity agent for the Government of Alberta’s London office. She attended with her second cousin, Arthur Sifton, Alberta’s Premier. #AbLeg
In five short years, Nasmyth witnessed more than most people do in a lifetime. She also helped change the course of journalism & politics in Canada.
On Nov. 11, I will remember Nasmyth & all the other brave Canadian women who bravely travelled to the front lines of wars gone by. From Kit Coleman to Michelle Lang to Rosie DiManno — and everyone in between — thank you. #LestWeForget #RemembranceDay #cdnmedia #cdnpoli #AbLeg
