Caroline Dessaulles-Béique

Caroline Dessaulles-Béique
Caroline Dessaulles-Béique
	Béique, c. 1940
Born	Carolina-Angélina Dessaulles; 13 October 1852; Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada
Died	8 August 1946 (aged 93); Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Other names	Caroline Béïque
Occupation	Social activist, feminist
Years active	1893–1940

Caroline Dessaulles-Béique (a.k.a. Madame F. L. Beique, 13 October 1852 – 8 August 1946) was a Canadian social activist and feminist. She was one of the founders of the Provincial Housewife's School (French: L'École Ménagère Provinciale), which later became the home economics department of the Université de Montréal, and an advocate who pressed for the founding of juvenile courts. She was a co-founder of the first national feminist organization, the National Federation of Saint John the Baptist (French: Fédération nationale Saint-Jean-Baptiste) for French-speaking Canadian women.

Early life

Carolina-Angélina Dessaulles was born on 13 October 1852 in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada, to Catherine-Zéphirine (née Thompson) and Louis-Antoine Dessaulles.[1] Her father was a prominent politician, lawyer, and writer in Quebec and had served as mayor of Saint-Hyacinthe. Her uncle Georges-Casimir Dessaulles was also a mayor of Saint-Hyacinthe and went on to serve in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec and the Senate of Canada; his daughter Henriette Dessaulles, Caroline's cousin, became a noted writer. Her mother was a distant cousin to her father, through her mother, Flavia Truteau,[2] who was connected to the distinguished Papineau family, like her father's ancestry.[3][4] Dessaulles and her family moved to Montreal in 1860, where she attended the Ladies of the Sacred Heart school.[5] On 15 April 1875 at Saint-Jacques Cathedral in Montreal, she married Frédéric-Liguori Béique, a lawyer who became president of the bar association and a senator.[4][5] The couple raised their ten children in Montreal.[6][5]

Career

Federation nationale Saint-Jean-Baptiste 1907

Dessaulles-Béique began working as a social activist in 1893, when she became involved in founding the Montreal Local Council of Women (MLCW), a subsidiary organization of the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC).[5] In 1899, Frédéric became president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste[7] and four years later, Dessaulles-Béique established the first women's organization that catered to preserving the culture of the French-speaking women of Canada. Des dames patronesses de l'Association Saint-Jean-Baptiste (the ladies' patronage committee of the association of Saint-Jean-Baptiste) provided women a way to become involved in the promotion of French-Canadian interests, including preservation of the French language and Catholicism. The committee, with Dessaulles-Béique as its president, was responsible for the founding of the Provincial Housewife's School (French: L'École Ménagère Provinciale)[8][5] in 1906. The school served as a normal school, but also included courses to teach students how to cook, sew, manage a household, and offered classes on hygiene.[9]

Joining forces with Marie Gérin-Lajoie

In 1907, Dessaulles-Béique and Marie Gérin-Lajoie expanded the Patronage Committee to the national level, founding the National Federation of Saint John the Baptist (FNSJB), for which Dessaulles-Béique served as president until 1913.[5] The FNSJB served as an umbrella organization, uniting twenty-two women's social activist organizations. Their interests included access to education for women, aid to the poor and unemployed, Civil Code reforms, temperance, worker housing and other issues.[8] Some of the projects that Dessaulles-Béique and the FNSJB were involved in were pressing for creation of the juvenile court system,[6] working with the Sainte-Justine Hospital, and the distribution of milk and maternal assistance programs like Drops of Milk.[8][5] From 1909 to 1910, Dessaulles-Béique simultaneously served on the executive board of the Montreal Local Council of Women.[5]

In 1913, she resigned as president of FNSJB to turn her attention to war work,[8] becoming involved in both the Canadian Red Cross and the Khaki League,[5] an assistance organization for returning veterans.[10] When World War I ended, she returned to women's programs, and was among the founders of the Provincial Committee for Women's Suffrage (French: Comité provincial pour le suffrage féminin, CPSF) in 1922.[5] The women who joined the CPSF were primarily members of two older feminist groups, the Montreal Suffrage Association and the FNSJB.[11] Besides Dessaulles-Béique and Gérin-Lajoie, among the founding members of CPSF were Thérèse Casgrain, Carrie Derick, Grace Ritchie-England, Idola Saint-Jean, and Isabella Scott.[5] For the women of the FNSJB, this was a significant change in stance, as the organization had been formed with approval by the pope to train women in their moral and civic responsibilities as wives, rather than as individual citizens.[12] The struggle for the right to vote in Quebec continued to 1940, when women won full suffrage.[13]

Death and legacy

Dessaulles-Béique died on 8 August 1946 in Montreal.[5] The Housewife's School which she founded became affiliated with the Université de Montréal in 1937 and in 1953 became the School of Household Science. In 1959, it merged with the University when the school decided to offer a degree in home economics.[9] In 1988, a street in the city was renamed in her honour.[6]

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References

Bibliography

Allaire, Suzanne; Johnson, Dominque, eds. (1993). Dictionnaire des parlementaires du Québec, 1792–1992 (in French). Sainte-Foy, Quebec, Canada: Presses Université Laval. ISBN 978-2-7637-7304-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Cohen, Yolande (2010). "Chapitre 4. Santé publique, care et professions féminines". Femmes philanthropes: Catholiques, protestantes et juives dans les organisations caritatives au Québec (1880-1945). Montreal, Canada: University of Montreal Press. pp. 107–149. doi:10.4000/books.pum.4463. ISBN 978-2-821-89766-3. Archived from the original on 18 March 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Cohen, Yolande; Villeneuve, Hubert (May 2013). "La Fédération nationale Saint-Jean Baptiste, le droit de vote et l'avancement du tatut civique et politique des femmes au Québec" [The National Federation of Saint-Jean Baptiste: The right to vote and the advancement of the civic and political status of women in Quebec]. Histoire sociale/Social History (in French). Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: University of Ottawa. XLVI (91): 121–144. ISSN 0018-2257. Retrieved 17 March 2018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Lamonde, Yvan (1994a). Louis-Antoine Dessaulles, 1818–1895: un seigneur libéral et anticérical (in French). Ville Saint Laurent, Canada: Les Editions Fides. ISBN 978-2-7621-1736-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Lamonde, Yvan (1994b). Louis-Antoine Dessaulles: Écrits (in French). Montréal, Quebec, Canada: Les Presses de l' Univ. de Montréal. ISBN 2-7606-1639-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Rutherdale, Robert Allen (2005). Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to Canada's Great War. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: UBC Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-1014-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
"À la Découverte d'une des Familles les Plus Illustres du Québec" [Discovering one of Quebec's Most Illustrious Families]. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales de Québec (in French). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Gouvernement du Québec. 12 April 2006. Archived from the original on 21 January 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
"Caroline Béïque (1852–1946) Activiste, féministe". Bilan du siècle (in French). Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada: Université de Sherbrooke. 2004. Archived from the original on 23 February 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
"École Ménagère Provinciale (1906–1959)" [Provincial Housewife's School]. Division de la gestion de documents et des archives (in French). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Université de Montréal. 2010. Archived from the original on 23 February 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
"Fiche d'un Personnage: Frédéric-Ligori Béique". Vieux-Montréal site Patrimonial (in French). Montreal, Quebec,Canada: Gouvernement du Québec. 31 May 2010. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
"Right of Québec women to vote and to stand for office". Elections Quebec. Québec City, Quebec, Canada: Quebec Electoral Commission. 2011. Archived from the original on 8 July 2017. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
"Rue Caroline-Béique". Commission de toponymie (in French). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Gouvernement du Québec. 2012. Archived from the original on 17 March 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2018.