The Alberta Teachers’ Association

When I was in Grade 2, my grandmother told me that her first cousin had become the president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. This news was somewhat remarkable, I suppose, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that this ATA cousin, Marian Gimby, was the first woman ever to hold the office.

Gimby was born in Cartwright, Manitoba, on June 7, 1903, and in about 1912 arrived in the Highlands community, in Edmonton, with her entrepreneurial father and the rest of her family during that city’s huge real estate boom. In Edmonton, she attended the Highlands School and Victoria High School. In 1920–21 she attended the Edmonton Normal School, a teacher training program at Highlands School, and received a teaching certificate after 13 weeks of study.

She later graduated from the University of Alberta with an honours degree in history and also earned a B.A. at Oxford.

Gimby returned to Edmonton and for many years taught social studies at Eastwood High School, where she also formed a drama club. In 1953 she joined the staff at the newly opened Eastglen High School and remained there until her retirement in 1967.

Gimby was an active member of the ATA. She served two terms as district representative for Edmonton District, and went on to become ATA vice-president and eventually ATA president for two terms, 1951–53. No other women were elected to the Provincial Executive Council at the time, and apparently many male educators objected to having a woman take on that role. However, according to John W. Chalmers (1968, 210), “Miss Gimby could not be silenced; her strength was as the strength of ten because her heart was pure …” Chalmers went onto to say (p 213) that Gimby “was one of the most colourful and controversial presidents ever to head the Alberta Teachers’ Association.”

In a memorial written for the ATA News after her death, David Flower and Winston Nettleton wrote, “Gimby's claim to fame came about as a result of hard work, her outspoken nature and unshakeable belief that women and men have an equal right to govern.” Gimby actively campaigned to have more women teachers involved in the association and serving as school principals.

My personal knowledge of this distant relative that I never met is that she was about six feet tall and she never married—her career was her life. I have met a few of her former students who reported that she was an excellent teacher but that they were rather afraid of her. No doubt that had something to do with the accepted pedagogical methods of the past. I know what they meant though. I corresponded with her after I wrote an article about the Gimby family for the Highlands Historical Foundation newsletter. She thanked me for doing so but rather firmly reprimanded me for spelling her name Marion instead of Marian.

Gimby retired in Bath, England, in 1968 and remained there until her death in July 2000, at the age of 97.

References

Chalmers, J. W. 1968. Teachers of the Foothills Province: The Story of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press.

Flower, D., and W. Nettleton. “In Memory.” ATA News 35, no. 1. Available online at http://tinyurl.com/b9nln6g.

Anita Jenkins taught in Alberta for 11 years, mainly high school English, at St. Joseph High and École J. H. Picard School, in Edmonton. She is related to Marian Gimby on her father’s side.