Florence Bird Memorial Library opens at Status of Women Canada office. Florence Rhein was born in 1908 in Philadelphia and brought up in a privileged family that believed in gender equality. After marrying journalist John Bird, she moved with him to Montreal, then Winnipeg. While her husband worked for the Winnipeg Tribune, Bird wrote articles under the pen name Anne Francis and took up radio broadcasting. Shortly after World War II, when the couple moved to Ottawa, she became a women’s rights activist. By 1967, Bird was chair of the Canadian Royal Commission on the Status of Women, where she released a study that led to the creation of the Canadian government’s Status of Women, dedicated to the equality of women and men. In recognition of her work, Bird was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971, and a senator in 1978. She died in Ottawa in July 1998. On March 12, 1999, the Canadian Status of Women offices in Ottawa honoured her by opening the Florence Bird Memorial Library, which boasts more than 20,000 publications and documents concerning women’s and equality issues.
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