Katherine (ROSS) QUEEN (1885-1934)
Born in Black Isle, Rosshire, Scotland on 14 February 1885, she came to Canada in 1907 ‘to be married’.
On 25 June 1908, she married politician, John Queen (1882-1946) and they had five children: Katherine Gloria Queen-Hughes (1909-1978), John Queen (1910-1960, husband of Caroline Irene McLeod), Jean Macbean Queen (1912-1979, wife of Richard Ambrose Wise), Flora Ross Queen (1915-1991, wife of John Hamilton), and David Queen.
Feminist and Socialist
During the First World War she fought for a minimum wage law for women. She opposed conscription in 1917 and, after the First World War, she organized the Labor Women of Greater Winnipeg, which lobbied for birth control clinics and equal opportunities for women. In 1931, she represented the Winnipeg West-End Independent Labor Party at a Calgary conference that called for “the socialization of economic life in the country”.
She died of injuries sustained in a fall down the stairs at her Winnipeg home, on 10 September 1934. Her coffin was, at her own insistence, draped in a red flag. She was buried in the Brookside Cemetery.
Sources:
- Birth, Marriage and Death Registrations, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
- USA Social Security Applications & Claims Index, Ancestry.
- Canada, Incoming Passenger Lists, SS Corinthian, 22 October 1907, Montreal.
- “Mrs. J. Queen, Active Labor Worker, Passes”, Winnipeg Tribune, 10 September 1934, page 1.
- Obituary [John Queen], Winnipeg Free Press, 15 July 1946, page 1.
- Obituary [Katherine Gloria Queen-Hughes], Winnipeg Free Press, 16 February 1978, page 47.
- Obituary [Jean Wise], Winnipeg Free Press, 11 August 1979, page 54.
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