Just over ten years ago, in 2014, PEI celebrated the 150th anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference that paved the way to Confederation in 1868. In those year before the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, settler-colonial milestones were still being marked with less sobriety and much less critical reflection.
Cover of the anthology A BOLD VISION: Women Leaders Imagining Canada’s Future. Advisory Council staff played a big role in editing the anthology.
When in 2012, a newly incorporated “PEI 2014 Inc.” announced a community grant fund inviting groups to develop innovative projects to celebrate the sesquicentennial, a group of women’s organizations including the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women set out to complicate the celebrations and historic accomplishments of the Charlottetown Conference by acknowledging that in 1864 the voices and experiences of women, Indigenous peoples, racialized people, people with disabilities, and many more groups were excluded from the discussions. The groups in the Bold Vision steering committee, led by Women’s Network PEI with the PEIACSW, the PEI Coalition for Women in Government (now Coalition for Women’s Leadership), PEI Business Women’s Association, and Interministerial Women’s Secretariat, developed a “bold vision” that a diversity of voices would be included in ongoing discussions of “nation-building.”
Members of A Bold Vision Honorary Board, 2014: Hon. Gail Shea (Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans); Irene Dawson (Councillor for the Town of Cornwall); Chief Matilda Ramjattan (elected Chief of the Lennox Island First Nation); Hon. Catherine Callbeck (Senator, ret.); Jessie Inman (CEO of the Confederation Centre of the Arts); Hon. Valerie E. Docherty (PEI Minister Responsible for the Status of Women)
A major project was planned with 23 visionary women to sit in the seats of the 23 men who participated in the 1864 Charlottetown Conference. The 23 were selected from over 200 nominees from across the country. Each contributed an essay to the anthology A Bold Vision: Women Leaders Imagining Canada’s Future, took part in creating a collective vision statement, and participated in a women’s leadership conference in September 2014 in Brudenell, PEI. It was a challenging, ambitious, landmark project for equality-seeking organizations in PEI. It stretched our collective vision in transformative ways. 
Seated around the Confederation Table at Province House in PEI in a recreation of the famous Robert Harris painting of the Fathers of Confederation are 2014 Bold Visionaries. Clockwise from top right: Kluane Adamek, Crystal Fraser, Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay, Lana Payne, Kim Campbell, Shelagh Day, Becka Viau, Bonnie Brayton, Carolyn Bennett, Jessie Housty (standing), El Jones (standing), Maria Mourani, Eva Aariak, R Irene d’Entremont, Hazel McCallion, Pamela Palmater, Catherine Potvin, Natalie Panek, Eman Bare, Mina Mawani (standing), and Margaret-Ann Armour (standing). Missing from photo, Libby Burnham. Photo by Brian Simpson.
Hand-colourized graphic from the photo Going to Call on the Bride, by Millie Gamble, no date
In September 2014, the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women also held an Equality Garden Party. The event at the Dunes looked back at 40 years of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women’s work, in advance of our 40th anniversary. The invitation stated, “Hats encouraged!”
Hon. Catherine Callbeck and Hon. Marion Reid, 2014 ACSW Garden Party
At the 2014 Equality Garden Party, Julie Devon Dodd, Ann Sherman, Dianne Hicks Morrow, Gail Carter-Jay, and Kirstin Lund
At the 2014 Equality Garden Party, the staff of the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Michelle Jay, Becky Tramley, and Jane Ledwell
To throw back even further into Advisory Council history, at the time of the 125th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference, in 1989, the Council was involved in an effort to formally register the phrase “Mothers of Confederation” under the Partnership Act of PEI, to “highlight women’s hidden contribution to nation-building and history.” Doreen Smith designed a graphic with two women and a child in Victorian Dress. Groups or individuals who wanted to use the phrase “Mothers of Confederation” to promote products or activities were encouraged to contact the Advisory Council office.
From the Family Page of the Evening Patriot, May 2, 1989, “Advisory Council on the Status of Women Chairperson Dianne Porter and designer Doreen Smith pose in t-shirts sporting drawings of women dressed in 1864 costumes during a recent press conference announcing the registration of the phrase Mothers of Confederation.
Mothers of Confederation line drawing, graphic by Doreen Smith
