author
Addie Chisholm
1844–1919
A Canadian temperance reformer who turned organizing experience into practical writing, she is best remembered for a handbook that helped Women’s Christian Temperance Union chapters in Canada build and run their work. Her life also linked reform, public speaking, and politics in late 19th-century Canada.
1 Audiobook
Why and How : a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada
by Addie Chisholm
About the author
Born Adeline Davis in Hamilton, Upper Canada, on April 14, 1844, she later became known as Addie Chisholm and, after a second marriage, Lady Foster. She married Daniel Black Chisholm in 1864, and the name Addie Chisholm appeared on her best-known book, Why and How: A Hand-book for the Use of the W.C.T. Unions in Canada.
She was active in the Canadian temperance movement and became a prominent worker in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Her writing grew directly out of that work: Why and How was a practical guide meant to help local unions organize, campaign, and sustain their efforts. That makes her an especially interesting historical figure for readers who enjoy books shaped by real experience rather than abstract theory.
Later in life she married George Eulas Foster, a major Canadian political figure, and became known as Lady Foster. She died in Ottawa on September 17, 1919. Though not widely read today, her surviving work offers a direct window into reform-minded women’s organizing in Canada in the 1880s.