Table Of Content"It's Up to You": Women at UBC in the Early Years
Lee Stewart argues that the notion of university education as a
cultural entitlement, inherent in the literal translation of the Univer-
sity of British Columbia's motto Tuum Est as "it is yours/' has always
been more applicable to male than to female students. Conversely,
the popular interpretation of Tuum Est, "it's up to you," has held
greater significance for women.
Stewart examines the demands, accomplishments, and limitations
of women advocates and educators against the background of the
social and cultural conditions which enveloped them.
The book profiles the experience of women at UBC from the found-
ing of the university early in this century until after the Second
World War. Stewart argues that campaigns to open the university, to
start nursing and home economics programs, to establish the office
of dean of women, and to build women's residences each involved
the persistent efforts of women reformers, and each eventually suc-
ceeded. At the same time, pragmatism, politics, and expedience, far
more than a passion for feminism within the university or in the
province, accounted for the form that these programs and institu-
tions took.
Stewart also describes the experiences of female students and the
strategies they devised to participate fully in the academic, cultural,
and political life of the university. Young women had to juggle the
contradictory expectations of the academic and social communities.
In describing this process the author consciously links women's
experience to the history of the university itself.
Lee Stewart makes an important contribution to our understand-
ing of higher education and to the history of a major Canadian
university. She also expands our sensitivity to women's changing
role in the twentieth century.
LEE STEWART holds a master's degree in history from UBC and is a
historian and teacher. She is currently preparing a history of the
Elizabeth Fry Society in British Columbia.
Consulting Editors
Dianne Newell
Jean Barman
Editorial Board, UBC Academic Women's Association:
Dianne Newell, General Editor
Karen Morgan, ex officio, UBC Press
Jean Barman
Alison Buchan
Laurenda Daniells
Margaret E. Prang
"It's Up to You"
Women at UBCin the
Early Years
Lee Stewart
University of British Columbia Press
for the UBC Academic Women's Association
Vancouver 199
University of British Columbia Press 1990
All rights reserved
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
oo
ISBN 0-7748-0353-3
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Stewart, Lee Jean, 1944-
"It's up to you"
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7748-0353-3
i. University of British Columbia - History.
2. Women college teachers - British Columbia
- Vancouver - History. 3. Women college students
- British Columbia - Vancouver - History. 4. Women
in education - British Columbia - Vancouver - History.
1. UBC Academic Women's Association. II. Title.
LE3.B82S84 1990 378.711'33 C90-091058-5
This book has been published
with the help of a grant from
the University Development Fund,
University of British Columbia.
1915-1990
ANNIVERSARY
UBC Press
6344 Memorial Rd
Vancouver, BC v6T 1W5
Contents
Illustrations vi
Foreword ix
Preface xi
1 Introduction 3
2 A University to Serve the Needs of All the People 11
3 In the Back Door: Nursing at UBC 3i
4 The Proper and Logical Study for Womankind:
Home Economics at UPC 43
5 A Position of Adequate Authority: A Dean's Office for Women 66
6 More than a Roof and a Bed: Rooms of Their Own 79
7 Boys' Rules: The Masculine Institution and the Feminine
Image
91
8 Girls' Rules: Accommodating Women to the Female Reality 107
9 Conclusion 123
Notes 131
Bibliography
153
Index 167
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Illustrations
All photographs are reproduced courtesy of the University Archives, UBC,
with the exceptions indicated below. Photos are between pages 84 and 85.
Evlyn (Kierstead) Farris. R.H. Marlow Photo, 1942
Anne B. Jamieson
Dr. Isabel Maclnnis
Anne Wesbrook
Ethel Johns, RN
Mary Bollert
The first graduating class, UBC "Arts '16"
The Ladies' Literary and Debating Society, 1916
An early class of nursing students and public health nurses at Fair-
view
UBC students at Fairview
Lone woman at a physics lecture in the early 19205
A chemical engineering lab in the 19205
UBC reading room, Fairview, 1918
UBC chemistry lab at Fairview, early 1920S
Sharp and Thompson's architectural plans for the UBC campus, 1911
UBC nursing lab, 1931
1922 student campaign to win public support for completion of UBC
campus
Dr. M. Dorothy Mawdsley
Charlotte S. Black
UBC Outdoors Club on Grouse Mountain, 1920
1933 UBC Alumni Players theatre production of Back to Methusula.
Karsh Photo
Serving coffee at UBC Acadia Camp residence, 1945
viii Illustrations
Shary Pitts, Coed Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball, and UBC President
Norman MacKenzie
"Officers and Their Dates at a Ball"
UBC women in the first RCAF training course, July 1952
Celebrating the new women's residence at UBC, 1956-7
Dr. Phyllis Ross
MUCBC Girls' Grass Hockey Team, 1911
UBC Girls' Ice Hockey Team
UBC Girls' Basketball Team, 1916
Foreword
In this book, Lee Stewart argues that the notion of university educa-
tion as a cultural birthright, inherent in the literal translation of the
University of British Columbia's motto Tuum Est as "it is yours," has
always been more applicable to men than women. On the other
hand, the popular interpretation of Tuum Est, "it's up to you," has
held greater significance for women. Written from the perspective of
women, it is the first general history of UBC since the publication of
Harry Logan's Tuum Est over thirty years ago. It is one of only a
handful of scholarly studies of the history of women in North Ameri-
can and British universities, and in the Canadian setting this is a
pioneering work.
The UBC Academic Women's Association is publishing "It's Up to
You": Women at the University of British Columbia in the Early Years both
to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of UBC and to inaugurate
the Association's monograph series on Women and Universities. The
series is intended to make widely available scholarly studies on
women's connections with university communities, past and pre-
sent. We have never known much about women's experience as
university students and alumni; their careers as university teachers,
planners, and administrators; their interests as researchers and
members of professional associations; or their contributions to the
governing of universities. And as this first volume in the series
reveals, these categories of involvement are not mutually exclusive
over the life-cycle of individual women. Knowing more about wom-
en's involvement in the university community provides us with new
insights into women's changing role in twentieth-century life.
The founding of the AWA in the late 1970S by Margaret Fulton (the
last person to hold the post of Dean of Women at UBC before it was
abolished in 1978), Jean Elder, Hilda Thomas, and others represents a
stage in the very process that Stewart describes in this book. The AWA
