Women shoppers on Queen Street Toronto, outside Simpson's. 1912.
Well, I spent the morning negotiating the construction at Pine and Dr. Penfield streets to get to McGill's Life Sciences Library in the Medical Building... only to find that NO FOOL SHE, the biography of Carrie Derick that is listed in their online catalogue as being on the library shelves isn't there.
The McGill Librarians, as usual, were most obliging...but it was no use. The slim volume by Margaret Gillett is lost or gone and that medical sciences library is the only one that has it.
Anyway, I discovered a paper that cited the book and that claimed that the book was a PhD thesis, so I went to McGill and looked up their theses, which are online. Still didn't find it. (Of course, I didn't. Gillett was a Columbia student.)
Still, I downloaded a couple of these McGill theses, one by an architecture student, Deborah L. Miller, aboutMcGill's Royal Victoria College, near McGill but not too near.. She describes Phillips Square, with Morgan's and Birks and a park with no benches, so no ogling male eyes, as a woman's space. Very interesting!
Double interesting as Edith was assistant warden at RVC in the twenties. I have a letter where she is discussing the unhappy lives of some of the students - for they pour their hearts out to her. Then she praises her own happy childhood. Hmm.
With Threshold Girl finished www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf.
I am writing the sequel, about Edith Nicholson and that story will feature Carrie Derick, Canada's first female full professor. Indeed, I just added a line to Threshold Girl, where I have Flora remark that Carrie Derick studies flowers but does not wear them on her hat! (She is plain, you see, like Flora.)
Carrie Mathilda Derick, of the Eastern Townships, whose only biography doesn't exist, even at McGill's Osler Library, although I am told if I can track down a copy, I should photocopy it and bring it to the library.
