Eleanor Roosevelt’s week in Western Canada

Article content

It was the week that Eleanor-mania swept western Canada from Winnipeg to Vancouver. Along the way, thousands turned out to see and hear one of the greatest woman voices of her time.

“Eleanor,” of course, was Eleanor Roosevelt, the former American First Lady and tireless champion of human rights who visited British Columbia, as well as Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, 75-years-ago this week.

Article content

Article content

At the Province in Vancouver, women’s page editor Pat Wallace described the excitement she and the entire staff at the paper experienced on March 4, 1949.

“It may have just been Friday, that day when thoughts turn with anticipatory pleasure to thoughts of the week-end’s freedom, to a good many Vancouver people, but around our office it was ‘E Day,’ with an out-size capital E,” she wrote in a front-page column. “Practically every operation within the newsroom hinged on ELEANOR ROOSEVELT’S visit to town. Assignments were shuffled to allow plenty of scope for complete coverage of the famous woman’s arrival and busy itinerary. Cameramen were at a premium. The plane’s late arrival crowded deadlines until editors were close to tearing their hair under the tension. Everybody from the boss to the office boys had her name on their lips, a dozen times. Directly or indirectly every member of the editorial staff was brought into Operation Eleanor.”

The famous visitor was a particular hit with female reporters across the city and province. Roosevelt, wife of the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States from 1933 until his death while still in office in 1945, made a point of meeting with members of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian women’s press club.

Article content

Article content

“Some of the feminine members of the staff got an even closer than pad-and-pencil look at Mrs. F.D.R. when on her way across the lobby of Hotel Vancouver to the civic luncheon, she stopped for a few minutes to meet the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club,” Wallace continued. “Though she paused only long enough to receive a gold CWPC pin and accept an honorary membership in the Vancouver branch, the presswomen fell in love with this gracious personage. Rushed as she was, she shook hands with each of the group (and) thanked them for the ‘honour…’ This all in a space of about five minutes. A beauty which radiates from a heart full of kindness and compassion shines around Eleanor Roosevelt. As one of the press girls remarked, ‘She is an inspiration for any woman who might fear growing old.’”

As she had since 1935, Roosevelt wrote about her 1949 trip to Canada’s West in the famous column she penned six-days-a-week right up to her death in 1962, called My Day.

“It is interesting to find that the people’s interest in civil rights seems to be growing everywhere,” she wrote. “Tuesday in Regina, Saskatchewan, I was given a copy of an act called the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights act, 1947. In speaking of it one person drew my attention to the fact that in enumerating the discriminations that should no longer exist they left out the word sex.”

Article content

“For instance, one article reads: ‘Every person and every class of persons shall enjoy the right to obtain and retain employment without discrimination with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of the race, creed, religion, colour or ethnic or national origin of such person or class of persons.’ The reason given for this discrimination against the word sex was that in the rural areas the men were afraid that if they removed all inequalities the women might forget their rightful place on the farm, and I suppose the men might find themselves occasionally washing dishes.”

While in Regina, Roosevelt also took up Premier Tommy Douglas’s invitation to address MLAs at the Saskatchewan Legislature. She did so from the Speaker’s chair.

“My husband and I have always had a very great interest in Canada and we know the eastern part of the country and always have known that part of the country very well because we have had a house upon an island called Campobello, which is in New Brunswick,” she said. “We have grown to love the scenery and the country very much. Now, for the first time, I am having an opportunity to come into this great western part of Canada. It looks very much like some parts of my own country. As I was flying across it today, I was thinking it must be very beautiful when your wheat fields ripen. I know that you are a great wheat-growing country and I think it must be very beautiful then; just as I have always loved our own fields when they were just at the ripening point.”

Article content

Writing again, in another My Day from Canada, this time from Winnipeg, she noted, of course, the Canadian winter she was experiencing. “The weather here in western Canada is dry, and we have been fortunate in finding it clear,” she said. “Even the cold during our day and a half in Winnipeg did not bother us. I am astonished at the way the cars drive around without snow tires or chains. Local residents tell me, though, that when they venture out into the country, they sometimes get stuck.”

She also wrote about her visits to Calgary and Edmonton.

“Calgary seems to be an up-and-coming city, and they are planning in two years to have a municipal auditorium,” she noted. “But Thursday night, as in Edmonton, I gave my address in the ice arena, and it was really a unique experience. The audience, of about 4,300 people, sat all around the rink. The stage — on which about 12 of us were seated, and from which I spoke — was raised above the ice, and we reached it by walking across the ice on a carpet. It was distinctly cold, so I kept my fur coat on… At the very end, a little girl about five years old, bearing a large bouquet, walked across the rink on the carpet all by herself and presented me with a lovely bunch of roses, not forgetting the appropriate words. I was impressed by her composure and obedience to directions in the vast and rather chilly spot.”

Article content

By the end of her journey to Western Canada that year, approximately 30,000 Canadians had seen her in person. All who did heard her message, delivered at the dawn of the Cold War, of the need for the world to embrace diversity and human rights, particularly through a fledging international organization called the United Nations.

“Everybody realizes peace doesn’t just drop upon us suddenly,” she told Canadians in the unsettled era 75-years-ago. “It is something we will have to work for. I think perhaps we are coming to believe that either we win the peace or our civilization may go under.”

For Eleanor Roosvelt there would be other visits to Canada before her death in 1962. And when she did pass into history that year, it was a Western Canadian who paid tribute to her life and legacy on behalf of an entire nation.

“(She was) one of the great women of her generation and a great humanitarian,” Saskatchewan’s John Diefenbaker said. “In the field of human rights, she worked for all mankind. She maintained an international outlook that had no peer.”

Kingston’s Arthur Milnes is a public historian and political speechwriter. His daily celebration of Canadian political milestones, Art’s History, appears seven-days-a-week on National Newswatch.

Article content