Mrs. Letitia Youmans, Founder of the Canadian Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
While most lodges admitted women as members, women were also forming their own temperance societies as early as the 1850s. The largest of these was the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Like the lodges, it was an offshoot of an American organization. The W.C.T.U. was active in a wide range of causes from female suffrage to prison reform, and it pioneered in the teaching of home economics in public schools. It was so active that one provincial premier complained that W.C.T.U. stood for Women Constantly Troubling Us; but, then, his was a government that needed a bit of troubling. Women in the W.C.T.U. were drawn from much the same groups as the men in the temperance movement. Despite much effort, they rarely attracted urban working class women. Mrs. Youmans founded her first union at Picton, Ontario. It should be added that Mr. Youmans did not drink.
Courtesy: Letitia Youmans, campaign Echoes (Toronto: William Briggs, 1893)
