Margaret Townsend Jenkins (4 August 1843 – 4 June 1923) was a Welsh-born social reformer and educator in Chile and Canada.

Early life

Margaret Townsend was born in Neath, Wales, the daughter of Joseph Townsend, a church deacon.[1]

Career

Young Miss Townsend began working in the classroom at age 14, as a student teacher in Mumbles near Swansea. She left Great Britain in 1866 to marry her English fiancé, Mr. Fox, in a mining town at Coquimbo, Chile. She began an English-language school in Coquimbo to support herself and her four children after Fox died.[1]

As Mrs. Jenkins, she left South America for Canada in 1882. The combined Fox-Jenkins family settled in Victoria, British Columbia, where Margaret was a "prime mover"[2] in social reform and cultural organizations including the Cymrhoddorian Society, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Women's Canadian Club.[3][4] She was the appointed temperance and suffrage organizer for Vancouver Island. In 1900 she became president of the Victoria chapter of the WCTU.[5]

Margaret Jenkins was elected a trustee on the Victoria School Board in 1897 and 1898, and again for a term spanning 1902 to 1919.[1] Under her guidance Victoria schools added a special day class for learning disabled students, and built a domestic science program.[6] In 1914, a new elementary school was named for her, the first public building in Victoria named for a woman.[7]

Personal life

Margaret Townsend married twice, to Englishman Jonas Fox in 1866 and to Welsh shoemaker David Jenkins in 1879. She was widowed twice, in 1876 and 1904. She had four children in her first marriage, three in her second marriage, and raised nine Jenkins stepchildren as well.[1] Margaret Townsend Jenkins died in 1923, age 79.[8] Her gravesite is in Ross Bay Cemetery.

One of her residences in Victoria is a designated heritage building.[9] École Margaret Jenkins School in Victoria is now an English/French dual immersion school.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Melanie Buddle, "Margaret Townsend" Dictionary of Canadian Biography (University of Toronto 2005).
  2. ↑ Barry Gough, From Classroom to Battlefield: Victoria High School and the First World War (Heritage House 2014): 30. ISBN 9781772030068
  3. ↑ "Distinguished Assembly Sees Legislature Opened" Vancouver Daily World (18 October 1921): 6. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  4. ↑ "Leading Club Woman Resigns Presidency" Vancouver Daily World (6 October 1921): 6. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  5. ↑ Lyn Gough, As Wise as Serpents: Five Women and an Organization that Changed British Columbia (Swan Lake Publishing 1988.
  6. ↑ Mary Leah de Zwart, "White Sauce and Chinese Chews: Recipes as Postcolonial Metaphors" in Sarah Carter, ed., Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women's History (University of Calgary Press 2005): 134. ISBN 9781552381779
  7. ↑ Patrick A. Dunae, "Margaret Jenkins 1843-1923" Archived 2016-06-03 at the Wayback Machine The Homeroom: British Columbia's History of Education Website.
  8. ↑ "Victoria Social Worker is Dead" Vancouver Daily World (7 June 1923): 2. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  9. ↑ 929 Caledonia Avenue, North Park, Heritage Register, Victoria Heritage Foundation.
  10. ↑ Margaret Jenkins Elementary School website.
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