It is always gratifying to see women helping women; this is acutely the case when the wife of our Queen's representative, the first lady of our country, brings together useful women of all nationalities, creeds and societies, and by uniting them in one council, enables them to work for the promotion and elevation, not only for womanhood, but for all humanity; by inspiring them all with a greater love of home, a greater love of country, a greater desire to be useful to others, born from the inspiration of the Fatherhood of God and the Golden Rule than this Council Takes for Motto.On November 8, 1894 Maria Grant enthusiastically introduced Lady Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks Aberdeen and her new Canadian National Council of Women to a large public meeting celebrating her visit and that of her husband, the Governor General of Canada, to Victoria, in British Columbia. On stage next to her were a number of government officials and religious supporters as well as a large crowd of men and women, many representing the various corporations, associations and unions that had worked together to organize this moment . Both the Colonist and the Standard ran the story on their front pages, citing Grant's call to "unite women of all nationalities, creeds and societies" as a perfect reflection of the Women's Council's beliefs. However, it is not this phrase that historians or even contemporaries have focused on to understand the Council. The rest of Grant's speech and Lady Aberdeen's response are traditionally exploited for phrases such as "womanhood", "unity", "women helping women", women helping society", morality" and "rule d'or" and despite the apparent openness to women of all kinds in their speeches, historians...... middle of article ......Early Feminists, 1845-1945", in Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History, 5th ed., ed. Mona Gleason and Adele Perry (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2006).Fiamengo, 159.Fiamengo, 147.Carol Cooper, “Native Women of the Northern Pacific Coast: An Historical Perspective, 1830-1900,” Journal of Canadian Studies 27 no. 4 (winter 1992): 44; Susan Neylan, The Heavens are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press), 2003. See also Myra Rutherdale, “'She Was a Ragged Little Thing': Missionaries, Embodiment, and Reshaping Indigenous Femininity in Northern Canada”, Contact Zones: Indigenous Women and Settlers in Canada’s Colonial Past, ed. Katie Pickles and Myra Rutherdale (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2005).Cooper, 45.Neylan, 106.Neylan, 265.