I had the great pleasure today of being the Google doodle artist for Google Canada! It is for the birthday of Henrietta Edwards, a kickass lady. See more info on it, and on Henrietta, here in the doodle archive! It can only be seen on Canadian homepages, but the archive is from everywhere!
I want to add here –
We lump the Famous Five in together for obvious reasons, but in recent times, people have called them out for their racism and views on Eugenics. These were all affluent white ladies! To be sure. But these were five separate women. When you talk about those views, the shadows of Nellie McClung and Emily White, better known than the rest, loom large and on top of everyone else. Their opinions are uh, hard to miss. And it’s good indeed that their less noble views are well known now, instead of conveniently “forgotten.”
Henrietta Edwards was a good 20 years older than the rest of the Famous Five, and she was no advocate for eugenics or selective immigration in the same way. She fought for women’s right to property, to health, to work and to education. Here is an article I just read, for example, about her relationship with First Nations communities she lived in where her husband was a doctor. It’s definitely written in her favor, but provides some more context for her life and views beyond “Person’s Case” which is where most Canadian history texts will pick up her name and drop it.
I thought it was an important note to add, because it was important to Google when they contacted me about doing a doodle of one of the Famous Five.