Women's Glib

The kerfufle surrounding the re-naming of a public library here after our first woman mayor, the indomitable Charlotte Whitton, floors me. Proposed by our current mayor, it has been forcefully nixed by the influencial local jewish community because they claim Mayor Whitton was anti-semitic. She has been accused of rejecting jewish refugees during the second world war. While unacceptable and abhorrent, anti-jewish sentiment back then was fairly common. That's just an unpleasant fact. And it seems that even the jewish community accepted it in a warped way because B'Naith Brith named Whitton its Woman of the Year back in the '50s. Not only that, they named a prominent local jewish building after Mayor Whitton. Now she's to be trashed and all her other remarkable achievements trampled underfoot. Go figure?! How can Charlotte have been a heroine to the jewish community back then and a pariah now?

Here's another rhetorical question: Why is there is no problem accepting the foibles, salacious conduct and pecadillos of other mayors and public figures? Like the womanizing of one, the soliciting of prostitutes of another, the blatant criminal behaviour of yet another. I could go on, but you get it. Oh yeah, silly me. I forgot for a moment that these excesses and criminal acts were committed by men. And why is the sisterhood not defending Charlotte? Why indeed. Where is the movement when we need it? Where indeed.

Charlotte Whitton was a great mayor. She lived down the street from us when she was mayor and I was growing up. We always stopped what we were doing to gawk in awe when Her Worship drove by. And it was a real thrill to be chosen to canvass her apartment when we sold Girl Guide cookies. Barely five feet tall, she could hardly see over the steering wheel, but she was as tough as they came. She stood up to the big developers like Bob Campeau, remember him? Man, Bob makes the Greenbergs and Minto look like little tabby cats. Our current mayor is kowing and towing to the developers by reversing his decision to name the library after Her Worship. It's really too bad. Charlotte was the first woman I can remember who wasn't a "woman". She played with the big boys in the big leagues. She was the one who said, "To be thought half as good as a man, a woman has to be twice as smart. Luckily, this isn't difficult."

She was a corker.