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Edith Jessie Archibald, née Archibald, socialite, feminist, author (born 5 April 1854 in St. John's, NL; died 11 May 1936 in Halifax, NS). She was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 1998.
Career and Accomplishments
Edith Jessie Archibald was educated in New York and London, England. In 1874, she married Charles Archibald, mining engineer and later president of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank). She was president of the Maritime Woman's Christian Temperance Union from 1892 to 1896, president of the Halifax Local Council of Women from 1896 to 1906, president of the Halifax Victorian Order of Nurses from 1897 to 1901, and, as vice-president of the Nova Scotia Red Cross in 1914, chaired the department responsible for Canadian prisoners of war overseas.
An ardent suffragist, Edith Jessie Archibald advised a shift from confrontation to more subtle maternal feminist tactics after the defeat of the suffragist campaign in the early 1890s. She led the suffrage delegation to the legislature in 1917 and later chaired the Halifax Conservative Women's Auxiliary. An eloquent speaker with a fine writing style, Archibald published articles, pamphlets, songs, plays and several books, including one about her father, Life and Letters of Sir Edward Mortimer Archibald (1924), and The Token (1930).
In 1998, the Government of Canada named Edith Jessie Archibald a Person of National Historic Significance.
