Ritchie, Eliza

  • DCB profile notes:
    • Scholar, educator, author, aesthete, philanthropist, and feminist; b. 20 May 1856 in Halifax, youngest daughter of John William Ritchie and Amelia Rebecca Almon; d. there unmarried 5 Sept. 1933.
    • Having had a privileged upbringing and private education, Eliza Ritchie attended Dalhousie University in 1882–83, the year after women were first admitted as undergraduates. She studied for three more years in the “general” (no-degree) category preferred by mature women, along with one, and then two, of her older unmarried sisters, Ella Almon and Mary Walcot. In 1886 Eliza matriculated into the fourth year of the undergraduate course, and the following year she obtained a Bachelor of Letters with first-class honours in philosophy. Attending Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., on a fellowship, she completed a doctorate in 1889 with a major in German philosophy; her thesis was entitled “The problem of personality.” Ritchie was probably the first female graduate of a Canadian university to earn a phd. That year she taught briefly at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and in 1890 she moved to another women’s college, Wellesley in Wellesley, Mass. She remained in the philosophy department there, first as instructor and then as associate professor, for almost a decade.
    • Believing that the Maritimes should be to Canada what she considered New England was to the United States, “a centre for high thinking and for the fostering of art,” Ritchie volunteered her services to Halifax’s Victoria School of Art and Design (renamed the Nova Scotia College of Art in 1925), and in 1917 she joined Ella on its board of directors. In 1908 she was a charter member of the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts, a forerunner of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and she served as vice-president of its governing committee in the late 1920s. She further assisted by making frequent contributions towards the purchase of works for the institution’s collection. In 1906 she became head of the Provincial Exhibition’s art department; during her tenure, which lasted almost continuously until 1917, the displays featured the work of local artists and collections lent by patrons and artists in central Canada, the United States, and England. 
    • Interested in literature, Eliza encouraged contemporary writers and readers. She supported the work of authors such as Archibald McKellar MacMechan, William Bliss Carman, Lucy Maud Montgomery by editing the poetry anthology Songs of the Maritimes (Toronto, 1931); the collection included several of her own verses. Eager to disseminate literature, she urged the improvement of libraries for schoolchildren, working people, and college students. 
    • Ritchie firmly believed that ignorance bred indifference and that women’s ability to fulfil their potential as citizens depended upon the educational, political, and work opportunities available to them. A liberal humanist, she held that women’s participation in public life should be governed by “intellectual virtues,” especially truth, tolerance, prudence, and moderation.
    • Before and during World War I Ritchie was a leader of the campaign to achieve women’s suffrage. Claiming that suffrage “would make political life purer, would lessen graft and give women a better opportunity in individual life” and that “the spirit of the age is democracy,” she voted with the majority of delegates of the National Council of Women of Canada in favour of enfranchisement at the annual convention in 1910.
    • In 1927, after figuring prominently in various anniversary celebrations and fund-raising ventures, Ritchie was the first woman to receive an honorary lld from Dalhousie.
  • Great Granddaughter of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7013
  • Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/192467652/eliza-ritchie