No Bleeding Heart: Charlotte Whitton, a Feminist on the Right

Although she is popularly remembered as Ottawa's pugnacious major, there are other important reasons for remembering Charlotte Whitton. One of this country's first generation of professional women, she championed the cause of child welfare across the country and worked hard for the status of women long before the word "feminism" had passed into everyday language. What the authors show, however, in this biography is that Whitton does not fit comfortably into contemporary notions of the liberated woman. In spite of her progressive attitudes, she was also capable of vindictiveness, intolerance, and contempt for the "undeserving."