Hollis, Annie (1871-1941)

Born in England in 1871, Annie Hollis (née Snaith) taught there for seventeen years. In 1909 she joined the suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union. In March 1914, she and two sisters accompanied their parents to Saskatchewan, where they homesteaded near Shaunavon. In 1915 she began teaching at Anglo School until her 1926 resignation to devote her time to the farmers’ movement. Hollis became a leader in the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association Women’s Section: in 1922 she was elected a member of its executive, in 1924 vice-president, and in 1926 president. In the meantime she had become convener of the new Education Committee and of the Legislation Committee which sought to improve married women’s property rights and called for joint farm ownership. Hollis also helped to ensure women’s voice in the United Farmers of Canada (UFC), an amalgamation of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association and the Farmers Union of Canada, and she became the UFC’s first woman president. She was involved in founding the Saskatchewan Farmers Political Association, and ran in the Maple Creek riding in the 1930 federal election. Hollis wrote a weekly column in the W estern Producer from 1924 to 1929; during the 1930s she also wrote a column in the Saskatchewan Farmer . She died on June 26, 1941, near Shaunavon.

Cathy Holtslander