Lady Ishbel Maria Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, was the spouse of Lord Aberdeen, Canada’s governor general from 1893–98. She was a strong and impressive woman with many interests, a staunch democrat with a social conscience. She created the Victorian Order of Nurses in Canada, and she believed that women had a significant role to play in society. She was also instrumental in creating the National Council of Women, an endeavour that was opposed fiercely by conservative commentators and newspapers. In her address to the founding meeting of the Local Council of Women in Victoria, Lady Aberdeen accepted the Victorian concept that the primary role of women was as wives, mothers, and guardians of the social order, but she deftly pushed the existing boundaries.
“A golden link uniting women in bonds of sisterhood” Continue reading Lady Aberdeen on the role of women, November 1894
