Helena Gutteridge (1879-1960)

Linking the Canadian suffrage movement with the Imperial Pankhurst “suffragettes,” Helena Gutteridge was unique in making a space for wage-earning women within the predominantly middle-class feminist movement. As an executive member of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council from 1913 to 1921, she represented female workers in the male-dominated trade union milieu, helped organize unions for women, and built bridges between feminist and labour organizations. Elected as the first female member of Vancouver City Council in 1937, she brought disparate groups together to campaign for a federally funded program of low-rental housing, laying the foundations for a social housing movement that would bear fruit in the post-Second World War era.

Helena Rose Gutteridge was born into a working class family in London, England. She trained as a cutter in the tailor’s trade, and studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic and at the Royal Sanitary Institute. Women’s issues sparked her concern, and she associated with militant suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, from whom she learned techniques of activism and public speaking. In 1911, Gutteridge immigrated to Canada, settling in British Columbia, where she worked as a tailor and became active in Vancouver’s suffrage and labour movements. At the time of her arrival in Vancouver, women were a small part of the work force and earned 40 to 50 percent less than men. Women did not have the vote, and support for women’s issues in the labour movement was tepid. Determined to right these wrongs, Gutteridge joined various organisations aimed at promoting suffrage specifically, and at improving women’s conditions generally; these included the British Columbia Political Equality League, the Local Council of Women, and the Pioneer Political Equality League, at whose meetings she often spoke. She was the first woman on the council of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), an umbrella organisation for Vancouver’s labour movement.

Helena Gutteridge worked tirelessly in the labour movement on feminist issues, and convinced the VTLC to support equal pay for equal work. She also testified before the Royal Commission on Conditions of Labour in B.C., wrote a regular column for the B.C. Federationist, became the women’s correspondent for the federal Department of Labour’s Labour Gazette, and helped found the Women’s Employment League and the Carvell Hall Cooperative Settlement, which provided women with employment and shelter.

                                                                 - 30 -