Spencer, Emily (Kerby)

  • DCB profile notes:
    • Teacher, author, feminist, and social activist; b. 26 March 1860 in Toronto, fourth daughter of Sarah Lafferty and James Spencer, a Methodist minister; m. 11 Oct. 1888 George William Kerby (d. 1944) in Paris, Ont., and they had a daughter and a son; d. 3 Oct. 1938 in Calgary.
    • The Lafferty and Spencer families were both of loyalist stock. After several controversial terms as editor of the Christian Guardian in Toronto, James Spencer ministered in Brampton and Paris before his death in 1863. Raised in Paris by her mother, Emily Spencer graduated from the Toronto Normal School in the early 1880s and then taught public school in Paris. She likely met George Kerby when he went there in 1886 as a student supply preacher; they married two years later, following his ordination and assignment to Dundas Street Methodist Church in Woodstock. Emily served with him in subsequent pastorates, in Hamilton, St Catharines, Brantford, and Montreal.
    • After the Kerbys’ arrival in July 1903, it was soon recognized that Emily was not the stereotypical minister’s wife. Articulate and gifted, she was a class leader – an exceptional responsibility for a woman at this time – and later she took to openly castigating the church establishment. From 1914 to 1928 she published articles and letters criticizing the slow acceptance of women for ministry; she was particularly hopeful of female ordination in her new denomination, the United Church of Canada, formed by the union of Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians in 1925.
    • Emily was again drawn to the legal status of women in 1921 when she was vice-president of the National Council of Women of Canada. In June the Calgary local hosted its 28th congress, where a key issue was the ineligibility of women for appointment to the Senate, a problem that was resolved in 1929 in the persons case. Emily Kerby, who remained active in the Calgary council until her final years, was also a member of other service clubs, including the Women’s Canadian Club, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Woman’s Missionary Society, the Red Cross, the Women’s Civic Organization, and the Women’s Research Club. In addition to her articles on church matters, she continued to publish feminist and social commentaries, many in the form of short stories. She collaborated with her husband and others in founding the Calgary branch of the Canadian Authors Association in 1921. Age diminished neither her conviction nor her pointedness. In 1935 she explained what would happen if men continued to push women back into the kitchen: “Some fine morning you will … wonder what has occurred. It will only be our educated, efficient, twentieth century women showing their ability to shove. You may call it the woman’s revolution if you like. It will be bloodless, but it will hit your silver and gold hard.”
  • Great Granddaughter of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1809
  • Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135899678/emily-kerby