Under a cloudy February sky, Nellie waits for her guest at the front gate of a three-storey clapboard house. She hasn’t had much work since the new year began, but perhaps she should appreciate the lull. Not all pregnant women she assists have healthy medical outcomes or the means to raise a child. Besides working as a midwife, Nellie arranges adoptions.¹ There have been joyous births inside her house too, and she is grateful to have studied under Sister Frances Redmond at St. Luke’s House, a short distance away.²

Nellie gazes at the bare tree in the yard, its limbs trembling. She remembers when she and her husband moved to the Strathcona neighbourhood in 1917, the year women in BC were granted the vote. Suffragists were a noisy lot, and their cause did not embrace everyone. Still, she thinks, given a different turn