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Myrna Mather

leading education forward

YWCA Toronto
women of distinction award 2004: education

Myrna Mather is a feminist, an educator and a pioneering force in the design and delivery of public education.

A graduate of the University of Western Ontario (1961), and the University of Toronto (OISE), 1970, the former classroom teacher, guidance counselor, school Principal and curriculum innovator has weathered many controversies in Ontario's educational system.

Beginning in the late 1960s, when school Principals were still predominantly men who sent female teachers on personal errands as part of their day's work, Myrna set out to take on the inequities of the status quo. Myrna Mather is the architect and acknowledged force-to-be-reckoned-with behind the collective efforts of female teachers and principals to develop policies and curricula to address discrimination within the educational system, the classroom, and the world beyond the classroom. By 1994, Ms. Mather had emerged from these struggles as the founding Principal of Ursula Franklin Academy, a jewel in the Toronto District School system of academic achievement, openness, experimentation and diversity. Never one either to work in isolation or to court glory, Myrna Mather has taken time along the way to develop the leadership and opportunities for other women and girls. She led the development of the first policies and guidelines on such things sexual harassment, employment equity, and personal errands, putting to rest the practice of the vast number of trained women teachers never hoping for advancement of their own and only ever playing the role of helper to male leaders.

A complex strategist who understands that the battle for equality must take place on many fronts with many friends, Myrna has led by example, through inclusion, mentoring, tireless committee work, feats of systemic change and through open debate. It is largely because of her efforts that qualified women educators have been encouraged to leave the so-called pink ghetto and apply for positions of responsibility throughout the school system.

Never forgetting that the educational system is in place for the students in the classroom, Myrna Mather has built confidence among generations of girls and young women to enter the non-traditional field of math and science. Through Myrna's efforts at establishing programs that encourage young women to take on studies in non-traditional areas, female students have been encouraged to reach for their potential in fields formerly the exclusive domain of boys and men.

It is perhaps the most poignant sign of Myrna Mather's success as a leader and an agent of change that the world of education she entered in 1968 is almost unimaginable today. From a system that formerly stifled women's leadership potential, education has become a realm that produces impressive women leaders; from a place where the only history taught was exclusively that of men, to a place where the contributions of both genders is significantly more accurate.

The field of education, as well as all of us, owe much to the distinctive career of Myrna Mather, and the lasting change she had the fortitude and forethought to lead.

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