Founder of the University Women's Club of Vancouver, a major force in the establishment and development of the University of British Columbia, and a key player in the election of the first Liberal government of British Columbia, Evlyn Farris was a leader to be reckoned with for thirty years. Yet her name is largely unknown. A Maritimer by birth and education, Evlyn grew up believing in the power of education and the responsibility of the educated to lead. Her Baptist upbringing led her to see women as the helpmates of men, not "feminists" working against them. That left her, as an educated married woman, with the role of influence. Behind the scenes she was a consummate politician, fighting successfully for women's issues, workers and children's rights, and above all for education. In the second decade of the century she was the most prominent leader of middle class women in BC. Biographer Sylvie McClean provides answers to the apparent contradictions between Evlyn's early activity as a social reformer and her later conservatism.

Women's Studies/History, 280 pp, 6 x 9, photos
ISBN 1-55039-074-0, paper, $22.95