Human Rights A Day

Dr. Charlotte Whitton becomes Canada’s first full-time woman mayor. Dr. Charlotte Whitton joined politics after a distinguished career as an academic at Queen’s University. An expert on child welfare, Whitton served as director of the Canadian Council on Child Welfare during the 1920s and 1930s. Although a champion of women’s rights, she held staunch social conservative views unpopular with more progressive Canadians. Whitton had harsh words for mothers who worked outside the home and she was against liberalizing Canada’s divorce laws. Elected to Ottawa’s municipal council in 1950, she was made acting mayor when the mayor died while in office the summer of 1951. Her handling of that role must have impressed citizens because on October 1, 1951, Ottawa councillors voted unanimously to keep her as mayor. That made Whitton Canada’s first full-time woman mayor. She was re-elected as mayor four more times before her defeat in 1964. Even then, she carried on as an Ottawa city councillor until retiring from politics