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Although McGill was not the first Canadian university to admit women students—that distinction belongs to Mount Allison University in 1862—the University opened the McGill Normal School in 1857, offering the first English-language professional training for women in Montreal. (The school would evolve into the Faculty of Education.) By the early 1870s, McGill was offering university-level lectures on the arts and sciences to members of the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association.

In 1884, thanks to a $120,000 endowment that Donald A. Smith (later Lord Strathcona) gave on the condition that McGill open its degree programs to female students, women were allowed to attend classes. Smith’s donation also funded the creation of the Royal Victoria College residential school for women. McGill’s tradition of strong women’s sports teams began shortly thereafter, with the founding of tennis and other clubs. (In fact, 33 years later, McGill’s women’s basketball team would beat Queen’s University in what was Canada’s first intercollegiate sporting event between women’s teams.)

The first female McGill cohort graduated in 1888: Eliza Cross,ÌýMartha Murphy,ÌýBlanche Evans, valedictorian Gracie Ritchie, Jane Palmer, Alice Murray,ÌýGeorgina Hunter and Donalda McFee. Other notable firsts include: 

• Maude Abbott (BA1890), who would go on to research and write the ground-breaking Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, an essential resource for cardiac surgeons.
• Carrie Derrick (BA1890) who, in 1912, was appointed to McGill’s Department of Botany as the first female full professor in Canada.
• Harriet Brooks (BSc1901), Canada’s first female nuclear physicist. 
• Annie Macleod, McGill’s first woman student to earn a PhD (1910).
• Annie MacDonald Langstaff (LLD1914), Quebec’s first female law graduate.

• Jessie Boyd Scriver (MDCM1922), Montreal’s first female paediatrician.
• Marie-Claire Kirkland Strover (BCL1950, LLD1997), the first woman elected to the Quebec National Assembly. She served from 1966 to 1973.
• Marianne Florence Scott (BA1949, BLS1952), served as the first female National Librarian of Canada, from 1984 to 1999.

Not herself a graduate of McGill, Idola Saint-Jean was teaching French studies at the University when she founded l’Alliance canadienne pour le vote des femmes du Québec (1927), which would play a key role in Quebec women getting the vote in 1944. Today, the Fédération des femmes du Québec recognizes her achievements with the Prix Idola St-Jean, awarded to a woman or women who have made a significant contribution to improving the lives of Quebec women.