Emily Stowe: Doctor and Suffragist

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in
Toronto.

Emily Stowe’s struggle to earn a license to practice as an equal with
her male colleagues highlights the evolution of medical education in
Ontario. When her husband John received his license to practice
dentistry in 1875, Emily became one half of the first health-practicing
couple in Canada. Their daughter Augusta would become the first
Canadian-trained female physician.

Cloaked in the ambiguity of membership in the Toronto Women’s
Literary Club, Dr. Stowe began to extol through the delivery of various
papers the undeniable arguments supporting universal suffrage. In 1883
the literary club was renamed the Toronto Women’s Suffrage
Association, numbering among its initial membership five male executive
members. With complete awareness, now, of the club’s intent, Emily
embarked on a course of public debate that would earn for her an
international reputation.

Fryer notes, however, that as an author Emily “made scant progress
during her life towards the enfranchisement of women. . . . Her
successes as a doctor were more apparent.” Yet a commemorative stamp
issued by Canada in 1981 remembers Emily Stowe only as a suffragist.

Unlike previous volumes in the Canadian Medical Lives Series, this is a
biography of a pioneer who happened as well to be a physician. That
Emily Stowe was probably the first Canadian female physician helps us
understand the determination that spurred this woman to gain democratic
equality for her sex.