Women Who Lead The Way
As 2009 marks the 90th anniversary of the 1919 General Strike, the Manitoba Federation of Labours Women's Committee would like to introduce you to Helen Armstrong, one of Manitoba’s pioneers in the struggle for some of the same rights that women are fighting for today.
One example of this is pay equity. Pay Equity legislation was enacted in Manitoba in 1985 and did much to alleviate the gender wage gap in the public and near-public workforce in the province. There remains, however, a significant gender-based wage and income gap in Manitoba’s private sector.
Helen Armstrong
"Notorious...Wild Woman of the West...one of those unnatural female bolsheviki..." Sounds like a pretty dangerous person, doesn’t it? These words suggest someone who is out to undo the very fabric of society - certainly not a loving wife and mother or staunch labour activist. And yet, each of these was used at one point to describe the same person - Helen Armstrong.
She was born Helen Jury, daughter of Alfred Jury, a Toronto tailor and prominent member of the Knights of Labour. While she worked in her father's shop she would listen to the social thinkers of the day who gathered there on a regular basis to examine and discuss the current issues. It was there that she met George Armstrong, a master carpenter and one of the founders of the Socialist Party of Canada. They later married in Butte Montana and eventually settled in Winnipeg.
Helen Armstrong wasn't a woman to sit on the sidelines and watch as men ran the city or the unions. She was an outspoken advocate for working women’s rights and in 1917 helped found the Winnipeg chapter of the Chicago based feminist organization, the Women's Labour League. The goal of this organization was simply to bring together the women of the labour movement to support one another in their fight for an eight hour work day, equal pay for equal work and decent wages.
As the country's unions were fighting for recognition from employers and a living wage for members and their families, this "Wild Woman of the West" and the Women's Labour League were trying to fight polite society's comfortable images of the working class. For example, employers chose to believe that a ‘respectable’ woman working outside of the home had a man, either husband or father, to support her and so didn't need to be paid as much money as a man in order to survive. Helen worked tirelessly to dispel this and other ideas that she felt kept women from the equality she knew they deserved.
She was known to bring food and clothing to men serving time in Stony Mountain for evading conscription during World War I and was a strong supporter of the suffrage movement. She was often quoted as saying that the vote was a weapon that women needed and after Manitoba women won the right to vote, she ran twice for city council. Unfortunately she was defeated each time.
An effective organizer and during the Winnipeg General Strike, she focused her considerable energy not only on picketing, but creating, maintaining and even relocating a Labour Cafe which provided a free meal to any female striker. Men were welcome but asked to make a small donation. After all their wages were higher.
She was arrested several times, before and during the General Strike. In 1917 she was arrested for distributing pamphlets opposing conscription. During the strike it was for disorderly conduct - encouraging ‘shopgirls’ and other workers to join the strikers - and even inciting others to "commit an indictable offense". She continued her work to improve the lives of society’s under-dogs well into the Great Depression. She died in California in 1947.
Helen Armstrong was a woman of great ideals and courage. In her day she was belittled, marginalized, arrested and sent to jail for her beliefs. Almost 90 years later, she continues to be recognized and celebrated as the very strong willed woman of principle that she was and for the battles that she fought for all of us today.