Canadian-American Women's Committee records
Scope and Contents
The Canadian-American Women's Committee Records consist of 5 linear feet of the records of the American Section and the Connecticut Branch. They contain material on conferences, field study trips (itineraries, student notes, and records regarding class activities), affiliation with the National Council of Women, student exchanges, and administrative records. Types of materials include clippings; publications, such as newsletters and pamphlets for conferences; correspondence; reports; financial records; minutes; and speech texts. Also included is correspondence concerning programs to foster mutual appreciation, cooperation, and communication (such as an art exchange between school-children).
Dates of Materials
- Creation: 1908 - 1979
Creator
- Canadian American Women's Committee (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.
Conditions Governing Use
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to portions of the Canadian American Women's Committee Records. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Biographical / Historical
Vera Beggs and Cairine Wilson believed that the practical international cooperation between Canada and the U.S. developed during World War I could not be trusted to extend into the future solely through treaties and joint boards. In 1941, they founded the Canadian-American Women's Committee, an international organization with the aim of developing appreciation and cooperation between the two countries through increased knowledge. The Committee was composed of two sections. The Canadian division had headquarters in Ottawa, while the its American counterpart was based in New York. Each operated separately to suit their activities to the situation of their respective countries, and joint international conferences of Committee leaders were held to determine general policies. In both countries, the Committee worked a great deal with national women's organizations. In addition, it sponsored educational conferences, field study trips for college students and teachers, student exchanges, teacher exchanges, and lecture tours. Though the Canadian Section disbanded in 1966 and the American section disbanded in 1969, the group established permanent student exchanges.
Extent
7.687 linear feet (16 containers)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Canadian-American Women's Committee was founded as an international organization with the aim of developing appreciation and cooperation between the two countries through increased knowledge. Records of the American Section and the Connecticut Branch include material on conferences, field study trips, affiliation with the National Council of Women, student exchanges, and administrative records.
Arrangement
This collection is organized into four series:
- I. Subjects
- II. American Section
- III. Connecticut Branch
- IV. Student Exchanges
Arrangement
This collection has been added to over time in multiple "accessions." An accession is a group of materials received from the same source at approximately the same time.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Canadian American Women's Committee Records were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection by May Hall James and William H. James, 1969-2002
Processing Information
Processed by Burd Schlessinger. Finding aid revised in 2002 by Christine Jedziniak, intern.
Processing Information
Between September 2022 and February 2023, Smith College Special Collections renumbered many boxes to eliminate duplicate numbers within collections in order to improve researcher experience. The following changes were made in this collection: Accession 2002-S-0037, Boxes 1-3 renumbered as Boxes 14-16
Subject
- Canadian American Women's Committee (Organization)
- James, May Hall (Person)
- Canadian-American Women's Committee/Association (Organization)
- Beggs, Vera W. (Vera Wadsworth) (Person)
Source
- James, May Hall (Donor, Person)
Genre / Form
Geographic
Topical
- Title
- Canadian-American Women's Committee records
- Subtitle
- Finding Aid
- Author
- Burd Schlessinger
- Date
- 2003
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2005-09-23: mnsss84 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02-5c.xsl (sy2003-10-15).
- 2017-07-26T17:48:24-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
- 2021-07-14: Content description added from accession inventory
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
