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Mary F. Bishop fonds
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- Source of title proper: Title based on contents of fonds.
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Physical description
7.85 m of textual records
41 photographs
3 cassette tapes
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Biographical history
Mary F. Bishop (née Fraser) was born in Cobourg, Ontario on July 29, 1913, the only child of James Kenneth Fraser and Anna Beeman. In 1935 she received a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Literature from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She married Joseph (Joe) Bishop in 1937 and had three children: Charles Walter Fraser (Chuck) Bishop, Ann Josephine Louise Bishop, and James Kenneth Branson Bishop.
Over the following decades, the Bishop family relocated several times, corresponding to Joe’s duties within the Canadian Military. They lived in Washington, D.C. (1952–1962), where he served as Commander Canadian Army Staff and Canadian Military Attache, then in Vancouver (1956–1962) where he was Commander of the Canadian Army’s B.C. Area. Between 1962 and 1964, they lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Joe served as a consulting engineer. While in Sri Lanka, Mary began what would become a long-term dedication to voluntary service in family planning movements: she worked as a clinic volunteer, and served on the national executive committee for the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka.
After her return to Canada, Mary dedicated her efforts to groups concerned with reproductive rights, family planning, and population planning. She served on the board of the Planned Parenthood association of B.C. (PPABC) from the mid-1960s, and was its president between 1971–1973. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC), was involved in the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and served on the IPPF Panel on Population Laws and Policies (Western Hemisphere Region). Her other volunteer involvements include the Canadian Institute of International Affairs; the University Women’s Club of Vancouver’s human rights committee; the University of British Columbia (UBC) Alumni Association heritage committee; Girl Guides of Canada (where she served as National Director from 1939–1949); and the Norman MacKenzie Scholarship Award jury at UBC. In 1984, Mary’s longstanding volunteer service was recognized when she received the Lifestyle Award from Hon. Monique Begin, Minister of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa.
Mary completed a Masters degree at UBC in 1971, her thesis titled “From ‘Left’ to ‘Right’: A perspective on the role of family planning in the West and in South Asia.” She subsequently worked as a research associate with the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology in the Faculty of Medicine, where she was later appointed an honorary lecturer. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Mary pursued a project of writing a history of the birth control movement in Canada, which she aimed to publish as a book. While her book project never came to fruition, she did publish several articles, including “The Early Birth Controllers of B.C.” (BC Studies, 1984), “The Politics of Abortion: Trends in Canadian Fertility by Larry Collins—Revisited” (Atlantis, Fall 1983), and an entry on “Birth Control” in the first and second editions of the Canadian Encyclopedia. She also contributed a chapter to Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women’s Work in British Columbia on the life of B.C.-based birth control activist Vivian Dowding.
Mary died on November 1, 1997 in Vancouver at the age of 84.
Custodial history
At some point prior to their donation to Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of British Columbia, the records came into the custody of Mary Bishop’s daughter, Ann Bishop. In 1999 Ann contacted UBC RBSC with an offer of donation, and the records were transferred in 19 bankers boxes in January 2000. The materials remained relatively unaltered in storage at UBC RBSC until spring 2024, when an arrangement and description project was undertaken to produce a finding aid and increase the records’ accessibility to researchers.
Scope and content
The fonds reflects Mary Bishop’s interests in the social and political issues surrounding family planning, access to birth control, and population planning, primarily in Canada, as well as in south Asia and globally. She accumulated a large number of subject files to support her research in these areas on topics including human sexuality; abortion; fertility; welfare of children and families; and the influence of organized religion and Eugenics movements on birth control access. The fonds also reflects Bishop’s dedication to voluntary service with local, national, and international organizations focused on family and population planning. A small number of personal records are also included.
Bishop’s records are arranged into three series: population and family planning research; volunteer involvement; and personal files. The fonds consists primarily of newspaper clippings and research notes on topics of interest to Bishop; government and NGO reports and publications on population policy and family planning issues; pamphlets and flyers; and drafts of articles and speeches authored by Bishop. The fonds also includes recordings and transcripts of a series of interviews conducted by Bishop in the late 1970s with individuals relevant to the history of the birth control movement in Canada, including physicians, activists, religious leaders, couples, and individual women. Some organizational records for the various groups Bishop was part of (e.g., agendas, meeting minutes, annual reports, committee reports, correspondence, financial records) are also present in the fonds.
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Physical condition
The fonds contains a large amount of newspaper clippings from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, some of which are deteriorating and should be handled with care. Blank sheets of paper have been inserted in some areas to assist in buffering further acidification of the records. Rusting attachments are present in the textual records; efforts have been made to remove the most damaging of these.
Immediate source of acquisition
Transferred to UBC Special Collections & Archives Division from Ann Bishop on January 14, 2000.
Arrangement
Series have been assigned by the archivist with the assistance of an Index supplied by the creator (see file 30-09 in the records). The archivist assigned series based on her understanding of Mary Bishop’s activities and organizational affiliations which gave rise to the records contained therein. Within each series, the creator’s order of files within boxes (which mostly corresponds to the order of records in the creator’s supplied Index) has been maintained.
Some of the original containers bore file titles that were clearly handwritten by multiple hands; where this was the case, the archivist transcribed what she determined to be the principal title into the Title field, and additional notes have been transcribed as Alternate Titles, to preserve this distinction. During the process of arrangement, the archivist removed some damaging attachments (such as rusting paperclips), and in some places inserted blank sheets of paper to protect materials from acidity of adjacent records.
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Associated materials
• Library and Archives Canada. Canadian Institute of International Affairs fonds. R2849-0-1-E, MG28-I250.
• Library and Archives Canada. Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada fonds, R3031-0-2-E, MG28-I463.
• University of Waterloo Special Collections and Archives. Parents’ Information Bureau fonds, SCA88.
Accruals
No further accruals are expected.
General note
Content Warning: Mary Bishop collected information on a broad range of topics connecting to human sexuality, reproduction, birth control, and abortion. The records contain information about sensitive topics that researchers may find upsetting or triggering, including: forced sterilization; eugenics; images of fetuses in the context of pro-life campaigns; newspaper and magazine articles on the topics of child incest and pornography; and outdated and disparaging language referring to people with intellectual disabilities, racialized people, and queer people. Please be aware of these materials and consider creating a plan for self-care in advance of your research visit.
General note
Includes the following photographs: RBSC-ARC-1034-PH-01 to PH-61
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The fonds was arranged and described by Elizabeth Robertson in spring 2024.
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Sources
Information derived from the following sources:
Records from the fonds.
Mary Bishop obituary. (1997, November 8). The Vancouver Sun, A19.