? Kid Gloves by Sally Stubbs. Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova St., Nov. 10 to Dec. 1. Tickets and Information: 604-6890926 or firehallartscentre.ca.
THE first female police officers in Canada wore long skirts, carried purses and no weapons. They were hired by the Vancouver Police Department in 1912.
But not much more is known about constables Lurancy Harris and Minnie Miller.
So award-winning playwright Sally Stubbs (Wreckage, Herr Beckmann's People) researched the women and has written about what they must have faced in Kid Gloves, which runs Nov. 10 to Dec. 1 at the Firehall Arts Centre.
"This play is really about these women finding their way in this world that is dominated by men, and in this seedy underbelly where decent women at the time weren't expected to be," says Stubbs.
The women in Kid Gloves take to the streets of Chinatown and try to establish themselves in a city and a police department unaccustomed to their presence.
Stubbs says Harris and Miller were hired more as social workers to deal with "female morality" or prostitution, and to bring wayward women back "into the bosom of their community and to the church."
"Minnie Miller... was the first woman in North America, I believe, to arrest a man for behaviour offensive to a woman," she says. "I'm assuming the man flashed her."
Stubbs discovered little information about these women exists when she visited the Vancouver Police Museum. She believes the women were in their late 30s or early 40s when they were hired.
Stubbs read a historical book written by former police museum curator Joe Swan to get a feel for the politics, corruption and how the police department was run, and she interviewed two female RCMP officers, one current and one former. A memoir called Ladies of the Night, which was written by one of the first policewomen from Calgary, Margaret Gilkes, also informs the story.
Stubbs learned Edmonton also claims it hired Canada's first woman police officer in 1912, Calgary in 1943, Toronto even later, and the RCMP not until the early 1970s.
"They were saying it may have been less traumatic for them in the RCMP because when they were brought in it was also the time when they did a big hire of people who had not traditionally been on the force, so people of colour and people from different cultural backgrounds," she says.
According to play director and artistic producer of the Firehall Arts Centre, Donna Spencer, Stubbs takes on feminism, prejudice, racism, corruption, sex and violence with humour and compassion in Kid Gloves. Colleen Wheeler and Dawn Petten play the fledgling cops.
The Keystone Cops black and white silent films premiered in 1912, and Stubbs says their style is shaping the design of Kid Gloves.
"Part of the show takes place in a club that's affiliated with a brothel, so there's song and dance of era, too, and we have a piano on the stage," Stubbs says. "There's a darker side, too, but there's a lot of humour in the play."
Stubbs hopes theatregoers will leave thinking as well as feeling entertained.
"I hope that the play resonates with some of the issues that are going on today," Stubbs says. "A lot of things have changed but a lot of things have stayed the same."
The police museum is running a "Women in Policing: 100 Years in the VPD" exhibit. Those who want to hear how things have changed can attend a lunchtime question and answer session with two currently serving female members of the department and take in a matinee performance of Kid Gloves on Nov. 14, 21 and 28.
