File B1974-0040 - Wallace, Mary Elisabeth (oral history)

Mary Elisabeth Wallace was a distinguished political biographer and the first female faculty member in what was then known as the Department of Political Economy. She earned a Bachelor’s degree at the University of Toronto (1931) from the School of Social Work, then spent two years at Oxford, obtaining a Master’s degree in 1935. Years of work with the Protestant Children’s Homes, the Children’s Aid Society and The Infants Homes of Toronto, led to her appointment as Secretary of the Canadian Association of Social Workers in 1942. Two years later, she joined the University of Toronto as a lecturer in Social Work, moving to the Department of Political Economy in 1945. She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1950 and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1971.