“Women will be hidden no more. We will not remain hidden figures. We have names.” — Janelle Monáe Robinson, musician, actress, producer
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Three years ago, I wrote a column called “Too many invisible women,” which encouraged readers to see St. John’s through the eyes of a girl.
There are few streets named for notable women here, and few statues except those meant to represent all women and girls.
Women are largely nameless when it comes to public recognition of their achievements.
One of the notable spaces dedicated to women in this city is the downtown Angels Corner memorial for female victims of violence. It is shameful that such a monument is needed, and yet needed it is, in order to acknowledge the depth and breadth and prevalence of the problem.
But now comes good news that two statues of women are in the works.
Women are largely nameless when it comes to public recognition of their achievements.
Thanks to feminist theatre company PerSIStence Theatre, which is planning commemorations for the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote in municipal elections in 1920, a statue of Armine Nutting Gosling will be unveiled in Bannerman Park in October 2021.
And, in the coming months, a bronze sculpture will grace the grounds of Government House to mark 100 years of NONIA, the renowned non-profit knitters’ group.
It’s about time. As PerSIStence Theatre’s producing artistic director, Jenn Deon, points out, the only statues in Newfoundland of named women that come to mind are Shawnadithit and Amelia Earhart, neither of which is in St. John’s.
So, who was Armine Nutting Gosling?
Please don’t answer: “The wife of St. John’s Mayor William Gilbert Gosling.”
Which, of course, she was. But she was her own person — one who made the world better in many ways.
Click on the link to Harriette Armine Nutting* in the section about her husband in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online and you will get a pop-up message saying, *“This biography will be published in the future.”
Well, let’s have a bit of it now, shall we?
Church of England Girls' School, St. John’s, 1882-1886. — Photo from the Armine Gosling Collection, MF-409
Armine Nutting Gosling (thank you, Memorial University’s digital archives) was born in Quebec in 1861, to a mother who believed in the importance of girls’ education.
In 1882, she was hired to be principal of the Church of England Girls’ School in St. John’s, “considered by some,” the archive notes “to be the colony’s leading school for girls.”
She threw herself headlong into community life, and there weren’t many areas for the greater good where she did not make her mark — the church, women’s rights — including accommodation for “elderly gentlewomen,” child welfare and the protection of animals. She also played a mean game of golf, well into her 60s, and was women’s captain at Bally Haly in St. John’s.
Armine Gosling was an author and book lover. Her donation of her late husband’s book collection sparked the creation of the first free public library in Newfoundland.
She was also astute and nobody’s fool. Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador notes she was a key fundraiser in the rebuilding of the Anglican Cathedral in St. John’s after the Great Fire of 1892, and she was well aware that women’s wings were clipped by the church hierarchy.
Women, she said, “loyally support an institution that encourages us to work and takes with eagerness all the money we can earn, but denies us any voice in its expenditure, and relegates us to outer darkness as far as having any share in formulating its policies is concerned...”
Back in 2017, I wrote, “Look around for signs of women’s contributions to society. … You’ll have to look pretty hard.”In a year or so, that search will be a little easier in St. John’s.
But we still have far to go before women’s contributions are as valued and as visible as men’s. Let’s do more.
Pam Frampton is The Telegram’s managing editor. Email [email protected] Twitter @Pam_Frampton
