Think the job of a female police officer patrolling the mean streets of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver is a tough task today?
Think of what it was like for the force’s first female officers back in 1912.
That’s the era playwright Sally Stubbs, Richmond’s 2015 Writer in Residence, transports her audience to during the production of And Bella Sang With Us which is part of this year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival.
Stubbs told the News that from her research, Const. Lurancy Harris, played by Richmond actor/playwright Leanna Brodie, and Const. Minnie Miller, played by Sarah Louise Turner, were thought to be Canada’s very first female officers, and her story is based on their exploits.
“I really had no idea they were the first female police officers, and I love history,” Stubbs said. “Plus, as an educator, it’s important for me to try and make things specific and interesting having watched what often happens in classes with young people and history. It’s something that excites me and I thought it would be a wonderful topic to explore because the very first (female) police officers in North America were, apparently, in Portland (Oregon) in 1908.”
Stubbs said she was actually researching information about another play when she came across the pair and she gleaned as much information as possible from the Vancouver Police Museum about them.
“I was told to take a lot of what was written about them with a grain of salt because there is so little on this subject,” Stubbs said, adding the duo was originally brought into the force to deal with female “morality issues.”
“There was a real push from the some of the Christian missions and women’s groups to make this happen and get them hired,” Stubbs said. “It’s a play about the time, 1912, and these issues that are still relevant today in the Downtown, Chinatown area where these women had their beat.
“So much has changed, but quite a lot remains the same. There was, back then, a lot of bias against women,” she said. “They didn’t make nearly as much money as the male police officers and it sounds like, from the little I had to go on, that there was inequitable treatment on the job. They wanted the women to work on the desks, filing and that kind of thing. That’s one of the aspects this play deals with, looking at two women who came in and really wanted to be cops and do what the men did.”
The title, And Bella Sang With Us, refers to a female officer with the Calgary Police who used her singing voice to quell the violent intentions of a woman she had to watch over in a police cell without the insurance of any weapons.
Vancouver’s Harris and Miller were not equipped with anything, either, and did not even have a uniform, leaving them to rely on guile and bravery to work through situations like the officer in Calgary, who spent two hours of her watch singing to the cell inmate.
“That seemed like a really unusual tactic for policing, which maybe came out of the terror of a small woman, that a man might not think of,” Stubbs said. “For me, that was a jumping off point for my story.”
Part of Stubbs’ story highlights how the pair adapted to their roles and logged various achievements along the way.
“They were running around in long skirts with no weapons or uniforms, wearing little hats and carrying purses and trying to deal with some pretty serious issues,” Stubbs said. “Vancouver was a rough town back then with the resource-based economy and the area the women were based had a lot of sex trade workers.”
Harris, who rose in the ranks, served for many years, while Miller left the force earlier, but then returned later on.
“Minnie was the first woman to arrest a man for obscene behaviour. I think he was flashing women on one of the beaches and she was used as a decoy; they made her up to a pretty little thing,” Stubbs said. “And Lurancy was the first police woman who was put in charge of escorting a female murder suspect down to the U.S. to stand trial. That was a big deal and made all the papers at the time.”
And Bella Sang With Us runs at the Vancouver Fringe Festival from Sept. 8 to 17 at the VanCity Culture Lab, Vancouver East Cultural Centre. For show times and tickets, visit online at VancouverFringe.com.
