Denison, Flora MacDonald

Flora MacDonald Denison (née Merrill) was born in 1867 in a mining community near Bridgewater, Ontario, the sixth of eight children to George Merrill and his wife Elizabeth MacTavish Thompson. Denison's father, the former master of the Picton grammar school, had decided to seek his fortune in a mining venture, which later failed. Denison was educated in Belleville and Picton schools until the age of fifteen. She tried teaching in a rural school, but finding life in a small community stifling, she moved to Toronto. Here she took a business course and worked in an insurance company. In the late 1880's she moved to Detroit, where her life changed considerably. While working in an office she began her career as a journalist, writing for The Detroit Free Press. She married Howard Denison in 1892 and gave birth to her son Merrill, later a well-known Canadian writer, in 1893. The family moved back to Toronto shortly afterwards, and Mrs. Denison took up the occupation of dressmaker.

After a short period on her own, Denison worked for Simpson's department store, managing their custom dress department. While she was there, she began to write for the magazine Saturday Night, primarily writing about the exploitation of women working in the clothing industry. When in 1905 she went into business on her own as "Mrs. Denison-Costumer," her position as champion of women's rights became ambiguous. As she was herself employing seamstresses, she was caught between the need to support her family and any socialist convictions which she might have had. She avoided the problem by stressing the dignity of labour and adopting a Whitmanesque belief in equality. This interest later caused her to establish the Whitmanite Fellowship of Canada.

Denison had met activist and physician Emily Howard Stowe not long before Stowe's death in 1903. Stowe introduced her to the women's movements and befriended her in the rather elitist atmosphere of Toronto of the day. By 1906 Denison was secretary of the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association and was the official Canadian delegate to the Third World Conference of the International Suffrage Alliance. She became aware of the strength of the suffrage movement, and advocated for militancy among women demonstrators, something she had never done before. In 1906 she began to contribute articles to the Toronto Sunday World, a "people's newspaper” with a large circulation, in support of the cause. In 1909 she became a weekly contributor, writing on women's suffrage and other social issues. She was also instrumental in bringing the noted suffragettes Anna Howard Shaw and Emmeline Pankhurst to Toronto and contributed financially to the cause by paying her own way to conferences and providing or paying for suffrage office headquarters.

Denison's social status may have contributed to her eventual loss of leadership in the Canadian suffrage movement. Up until 1910 the leading suffrage workers in Toronto were women doctors, and Denison was accepted by them partly through her initial friendship with Dr. Emily Stowe and her daughter, Dr. Augusta Stowe-Gullen. However, Denison disagreed with the more conservative elements of the movement, causing friction in her social spheres. Most women's activism of the time was related to social reform rather than equal rights; temperance and aid to the poor through private and public charities were the usual goals. The Local Council of Women in Toronto did not espouse suffragism until 1910. Denison had criticized its conservatism in her journalism, further alienating her from the movement. Despite this, she remained president of the Canadian Suffrage Association for another 4 years until she was forced to resign in 1914, having become a member of the Women's Social and Political Union. As the latter's militancy was at its height, she was rejected by her Toronto supporters. Her finances appear to have foundered at about the same time. 1914 saw Denison working as a seamstress in Napanee to help support her son at university. In 1916 she moved to New York state and worked as a paid speaker and organizer for the New York State Women's Suffrage campaign.

After her return from N.Y. in 1916, Denison turned much of her energy to her northern property, "Bon Echo.” She turned it into a summer hotel and a spiritual community dedicated to the memory of Walt Whitman. Her interests in Whitman and Theosophy at this point began to predominate. She had avoided anything more than a cautious interest in socialism until this time but was influenced by Horace Traubel and other socialist Whitmanites. In 1918 she helped to organize the Social Reconstruction Group of the Toronto Theosophical Society, where she was honorary president and attended the 1918 Convention that launched the Ontario section of the Canadian Labour Party. In 1918 and 1919 the Canadian Labour Party advertised her as an official speaker.

Denison died in 1921 of pneumonia. Her career as a writer and speaker had greatly helped the cause of feminism; ironically, her force and enthusiasm had popularized the suffrage movement, so that it came to include the people who later rejected her.