Lillian Mary Osborne graduated from the Toronto Normal School in 1889 at the age of 19. That year, Osborne was appointed the first woman educator in a small prairie town of 400 known as Edmonton. She was paid $600 for the year. The town’s only schoolhouse, built in 1881, had added a second classroom and Osborne was hired to be the second teacher.
In hindsight, a single woman travelling alone to a remote community without access to support or friends must have been seen as brave. In 1889, such a journey might have been considered a dangerous voyage into the unknown. In fact, the railroad was 13 years into the future, electricity would have to wait another three years and the newfangled telephone system was a novelty. Osborne would celebrate her 36th birthday before the province of Alberta was carved out of the old Northwest Territories.
As a teacher, Osborne contributed to the social advancement of her rapidly expanding community. By the time Edmonton was incorporated as a city in 1904, the population had surged to 8,350. The year 1905 brought provincial status to her prairie home.
Osborne taught through World War I and watched her male colleagues march to battle in Europe. From her classroom, Osborne read the news of Vimy Ridge (1917), lived through the Spanish Influenza epidemic (1918), learned of the Person’s Case (1929) and saw the stock market crash (1929). Through these tumultuous times, she maintained a powerful and reassuring presence in the lives of her students and their families. As Edmonton grew, Osborne served at a succession of what where then new, modern and sturdy brick schools, including McKay Avenue, Queen’s Avenue, Queen Alexandra, Delton and Glenora schools.
In 1920, Osborne voluntarily joined the Alberta Teachers’ Alliance and undertook to achieve, together with her fellow educators, professional status for teachers—a goal she would, sadly, not live to see enshrined in the Teaching Profession Act of 1935. Lillian Mary Osborne died on November 3, 1929, having taught for 40 of her 60 years.
In 1983, the City of Edmonton recognized Lillian Mary Osborne for her contributions to education, and in 2009 Edmonton Public Schools named Lillian Osborne High School in her honour.
Sources: A Century and Ten: The History of Edmonton Public Schools and articles and newspaper clippings acquired from the City of Edmonton Archives and Alberta Teachers’ Association Archives
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