While a war was being waged in the trenches of France and Belgium between 1914 and 1918, the women who remained behind in the Yukon were doing their very best for the war effort. Every social function since the war began had been turned into a fund-raiser. By March of 1916, they had raised $62,000 ($1,200,000 in current value) in a territory with a population of perhaps 5,000.
An article in the Dawson Daily News estimated that Yukoners had donated often and generously at a rate of $12 per capita, compared with a dollar per person in the rest of the country. “It is doubtful, “the article concluded, “if anywhere in the world a larger per capita contribution is given any war fund.” This was a recurring theme in newspaper articles and speeches until the end of the war.
However, Yukon women were not satisfied just to be fund raising; they became socially active on a broader scale. They became a force behind the movement to institute prohibition in the territory. Prohibition, or the ban of alcohol, was the objective of an international movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which believed that alcohol was the root of many social problems.
The onset of war provided the opportunity to make prohibition a patriotic movement as well. Through 1915 and 1916, a ban on alcohol was imposed upon all provinces across Canada, except for Quebec. By 1917, the Yukon was the only other jurisdiction in Canada that had not banned the sale of booze.
During the war, The British Empire Club in Dawson advocated prohibition as a patriotic act. How ironic that, while the people back home were trying to ban the consumption of alcohol, on the front lines, it was the daily shots of rum that kept the soldiers sane amid the dreadful trenches of Europe.
The People’s Prohibition Movement, or PPM, was formed in May, 1916. Among the one hundred and twenty Dawson members, some of them the most prominent citizens in the community, were 15 women. Henry Dook, the manager of the Pacific Cold Storage Company, was elected president; mining millionaire Joe Boyle and all the Dawson clergy were strong supporters of the cause.
Members of the PPM voted almost unanimously in favour of the banning of alcohol. They petitioned the territorial council to ban the production, distribution and sale of alcohol by
January 1, 1917. The petition contained the names of 2,000 people, 1,200 of whom were eligible to vote.
Cornelia Hatcher, President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Alaska spoke to a special session of the territorial council, which was packed with onlookers. Then another session was allowed in response to a petition of 550 names representing the “wets.”
The opponents of the PPM, the Licensed Victualers’ Association (LVA), stood to lose a lot of money if the prohibition campaign succeeded. The hotel business was a major part of the local economy. But it was broader than that, so another organization was formed to combat the anti-booze league. It was called the Association of Business Men, or ABM. The ABM launched their own campaign to counteract that of the prohibition movement.
The ABM argued that prohibition would ruin the economy of the territory. Some years, liquor revenues represented almost twenty five per cent of the territory’s income. To lose that revenue would be disastrous they said. Besides, they pointed out, if a man wants liquor, legal or not, he would find ways to get it. Further, they characterized the prohibitionists as being socialists. Women were behind the movement, they suggested, and women didn’t contribute to the economy like men did. Only a vocal minority, they argued, wanted prohibition.
Pressured by both the PPM and the ABM, the territorial council resolved to put prohibition to a territory-wide plebiscite on August 30, 1916, and let the sober citizens of the territory have the final say. In the end, the vote was hardly decisive; the “Wets” won the day by a mere three votes – 874 to 871. Ninety per cent of eligible electors had turned out to cast their ballot on the matter.
The Yukon ladies who had battled long and hard in the cause of prohibition had been denied the final choice at the ballot box. The women of the Yukon had risen above their household duties and made major contributions to the war effort through their fund raising. They were not about to be pushed back into the kitchen, so they gathered on September 1 and formed the Yukon Women’s Protective League. Born in the ashes of an electoral defeat, the league had the franchise as its aim.
It didn’t take long for the League to take action. A week later, the executive of the newly formed body petitioned Commissioner Black for a meeting. Marie Fotheringham, the secretary of the organization, wrote to him requesting a meeting with the executive of the League, as well as the presence of Mrs. Black, and Mrs. Congdon, wife of the Yukon Member of Parliament.
Mrs. Fotheringham was one of the most vocal advocates for social rights in the community. Fotheringham can be labelled in many ways. She was a labour activist, an author, a journalist and poet, a suffragette, a public pest, a trouble-maker and an ex-con. It doesn’t matter
which label you choose; she is an enigmatic and little-known character from Yukon’s early twentieth century history.
The ladies of the League met Commissioner George Black on September 6, 1916, bringing with them a petition. It was signed by eight women, including Dora Dook, wife of the president of the People’s Prohibition Movement, and Marie Fotheringham.
“There are some who contend that a woman’s proper place is at home,” they wrote, “but when those same critics go farther and insist that woman’s interests, energies and activities should be confined within the four walls of her home, and must not extend to the community at large, we wave such assertions aside with all the contempt they deserve.”
It was the beginning of a long campaign for equal rights at the ballot box.
Read part 2 here
Editor's Note: This column was originally published in print in 2017.
Michael Gates was the Yukon’s first Story Laureate from 2020 to 2023. His latest book, “Hollywood in the Klondike,” is now available in Whitehorse stores. You can contact him at msgates@northwestel.net
