File f85 - Rowland, Mary Katherine

File consists of a recording of Mary Rowland. Topics of the conversation include limited job opportunity for subject as Queen's Commerce graduate, 1928;usual female procedure into teaching, office work; job scarcity for statisticians. Career development: Ottawa Tariff Board position, recommended by Dr. Mackintosh (subject let go without notice after Stock Market crash, change of government); brief employment by Montreal advertising agency; Queen's library work, prompting study at U. of T. Library School (subsequent disappointing salary raise of $2 per week). Approach from Queen's fellow-student Sandy Skelton (Rhodes Scholar; son of O.D.Skelton, Queen's graduate prominent in Dept. of External Affairs), Chief of Research Dept., Bank of Canada, to organise most important financial library in Canada previous to Bank opening (1936). Organisation of library from scratch, 'a young librarian's dream'; appointment as Assistant to the Secretary (Skelton),Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations; huge Commission programme, enlisting eminent economists from across Canada (notably Drs. Mackintosh, Corry, Deutsch - all Queen's Principals). Subject's original Queen's degree programme, dominant interest in organisations: involvement as Levana Society president, captain of champion intercollegiate women's hockey team. Photographs of Levana executive, hockey team (including H. Laird); interviewer's fascination with changing style of hockey uniforms, short haircuts, 'tube' skates; subject's recent contact with members, still energetic, great travellers. Travel experiences: boat trip to visit German exchange­student (1937); trips abroad after 1958; yearly trips since 1970. Photographic hobby. Shelving of Royal Commission report with advent of WWII; subject's Personnel Dept. position in charge of Bank of Canada female employees. Personnel expansion during WWII: hiring students, housewives, retired persons by the hundred to staff War Savings Certificates Dept., Foreign Exchange Control Board; contrast with previous tight job market; low salaries (not till the end of war did salaries match work). Article on subject, 'Name in the News', Toronto Saturday Night; photo portrait by Karsh. Position as Assistant to Chief of Personnel, in charge of both sexes; reflection on sexual basis, now unacceptable, of previous position in charge of female employees. Recruiting for Bank at Queen's. Cancellation of Foreign Exchange Board, release of married women by Bank after WWII; retention of 200-300 single/needy women; general sentiment that women should make way for men in the post-war job market. Return of married women to paid work in the 1960s, related to 1950s baby boom; fluctuations in teaching job market; new options for women resulting in fewer women training as teachers. Interviewer's comment that today's students cling to studies to avoid facing employment difficulties; subject's comment that students/workers are cushioned now against unemployment as her generation was not. Happy period of personal professional expansion in 1950s; interesting, informative recruiting forays; competition with Civil Service for graduate students. Queen's as a continuing factor in subject's work-1ife;examples of Queen's economic grads snapped up by Ottawa government employers. Subject's father as Kingston banker (her introduction to Commerce); cashiering as almost exclusively female occupation, too routine for male workers. Male secretaries. Earl Maclaughlin (Head of Royal Bank), John Deutsch (Bank of Canada), as Queen's grads who worked from bottom to top. Stenography as women's work.//Job satisfaction hiring people and seeing them improve, fitting people to the right job. Decision to quit, based on change in office atmosphere, employee-employer relationship based on remuneration rather than attachment, loyalty. Mushrooming number of assistants; job mechanization; loss of human contact, stimulus; loss of identity in huge bureaucracy. Queen's as a closeknit organisation despite growth; present-day organisation of students for orientation. Subject's observation that in her day, students had to be serious to put up with boarding­house life for the sake of studies. Recollection of woman student secretly married before graduation (c. 1926), then unheard-of. Student activities as a vital part of university experience. Financial struggle as partial explanation of single status of many of subject's contemporaries (no easy credit, no possibility of wife working); imposition of single status on career-minded women. Unlimited budget as Bank librarian; government papers as core of financial library (any material having reached book form being out of date). Former attitude to equal work for unequal pay: resignation to acknowledged injustice, satisfaction sought in work itself.