A pop-up exhibit is set to traverse the city celebrating local women who fought inequality. Titled “Toronto the Just” and launching on International Women’s Day, the display explores their battles for equity on all fronts. Here are six of their stories.

Doris Anderson (1921-2007)

Journalist

“What I wanted more than anything was to be able to look after myself and make sure that every other woman in the world could do the same.”

Doris Anderson headed Chatelaine from 1957 to 1977, opening its pages to everyone from the “prairie housewife to the Toronto sophisticate,” said former colleague Michele Landsberg. Under her watch, the magazine expanded its readership to one in every three Canadian women. It led the conversation on issues from divorce to birth control to abortion. Yet as editor, she earned less than half what her male predecessor made.

Jean Lumb (1919-2002)

Restaurateur

“What do I have to do to be accepted? I’m always looking in from the outside.”

Born in B.C. to Cantonese immigrants, Jean Lumb left school at age 12 to support her family and moved to Toronto four years later to open a grocery store. A passionate social justice advocate for the Chinese community, Lumb lobbied successfully to reunite families — separated by an ocean — by opening the door to Chinese immigration in the 1960s. The tireless community worker also managed to run Kwong Chow Restaurant with her husband in Chinatown for 23 years.

Lillian McGregor (1924-2012)

Indigenous leader

“Often, we find it’s the beginnings that elude us.”

Born to a chief in the Ojibways of White Fish First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Lillian McGregor strove to sustain aboriginal traditions and spirituality in a Toronto where Protestant culture and bustling urbanism claimed pride of place. Her compassion and sense of humour buoyed her 40-year career in nursing. She “retired” to serve as the first elder-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s First Nations House in 1994, picking up an honorary doctorate of law at U of T two years later.

Fran Odette (b. 1962)

Human rights advocate

“You aren’t the expert of our lives; we are the experts of our lives.”

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Fran Odette’s experience as the only student with a visible disability in her class at Carleton University drove her to a life of advocacy for disabled women. Having consulted on provincial policy, Odette now serves as president of Nellie’s Women’s Shelter in Riverside and sits on the faculty of George Brown College. She also has a sense of play. Odette co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability in 2003.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)

Publisher

“It is better to wear out than to rust out.”

Mary Ann Shadd Cary was way ahead of Neil Young on that one. A teacher and anti-slavery crusader born to free parents in Delaware, Shadd Cary sought refuge north of the border in 1851. She founded Windsor’s Provincial Freeman newspaper two years later, promoting full integration. In 1863 — the year Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves — she returned to the U.S. to recruit black soldiers for the Union army. In 1883 she became the first black woman to earn a law degree from Howard University.

Ursula Franklin (b. 1921)

Physicist

“Peace is not the absence of war but the absence of fear.”

A Holocaust survivor born in Munich to a Jewish mother, Franklin’s experiences during the Second World War informed her many humanitarian campaigns, waged from Toronto from 1949 onward. Franklin, guided by “the maps of pacifism and feminism,” became the first woman appointed to the University of Toronto’s Department of Mining and Metallurgy. Her research into levels of radioactive isotopes detectable in children’s teeth contributed to bans on nuclear weapons testing in the 1990s.