A Tale of Two Women: Edith Lucas, Mary Ashworth, and the Changing Nature of Educational Policy in British Columbia, 1937-1977

Both Edith Lucas and Mary Ashworth were instrumental in the lives of minority learners in British Columbia between 1937 and 1988. Although their goals were similar, their professional experiences could not have been more different. Unbridled by the dictates of elected politicians from 1937 to 1963, Lucas provided teachers and students with the necessary resources and services to meet their educational needs directly. Conversely, from 1968 until the late 1970s, Ashworth spent as much of her time lobbying elected officials for adequate resources as she did working with English-as-a-second-language teachers. The professional lives of Edith Lucas and Mary Ashworth illustrate the profound shifts in educational governance and social thought — and their aftermath — that occurred in British Columbia, as elsewhere in North America, from the late 1960s onward.