GIRL OF MANY PARTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21542, 14 January 1932, Page 12

GIRL OF MANY PARTS

CANADIAN WOMEN’S LEADER r MANY IDEAS BUT NO POLITICS. Miss Winnifred Kydd. an Irish-Cana-dian, native of Montreal, who is yet in her twenties and was at school when the Armistice was signed, has been elected president of the National Council ot Women in Canada of 200,000 members. The selection is an acknowledgment of the tremendous influence wielded by youth in this generation (says the Vancouver correspondent of the New Zealand Herald). Graduating at M‘6ill in 1924 in economics and political science. Miss Kydd . ■was awarded a fellowship in social icience at Bryn Mawr, a leading American centre of learning. Here she won a bursary in political science, and spent two years at the British Museum studying migration, achieving distinction with a thesis, “ The History of Public Opinion on Emigration to Canada since Confederation.” Prior to her return she represented Canada at the annual meeting of the National Council of Women of Great Britain, and spent a month at tile League of Nations attending the Permanent Committee on Immigration. She speaks five languages. “I was appalled by the number of women who prefer to play bridge and Badminton to rendering some social service when there is so much to be done,” replied Miss Kydd to a question why she . took up public fife so early. She has no politics. Women in Quebetc do not vote. Her father, a successful Montreal business man, is her constant companion. “I have never heard him discuss politics,” she says. “ I regard the practice of well-to-do girls working for pin-money asi a public scandal,” Miss Kydd says. “It shocks me above all else because of the paucity of ideas behind such a move. Its root cause is a lack of They should be given some idea of service. Our leisure-class girls should be taught that it isn’t cricket to work for pin-money.” On the question of married women working it would, however, be unfair to deliver-snap judgments, she added. Individual cases need to be studied to get the proper pers,-. pective. . _ To give time to her public duties Miss Kydd. who lives alone with her father, y: has given up many of her clubs, but she l ' 'h has retained the Girl Guides, Junior -iLeague, Imperial Order of Daughters of M the Empire, Y.W.C.A., Canadian Club, Children’s Library Committee and Montreal Women’s Debating Club, of which, she is president. \ . Strikingly handsome, with Titian hair’ and a figure kept fit by ski-ing, swimming and tennis, Miss Kydd, in her new sphere, symbolises the latest slogan olf, America and Canada. "If you would get along in this generation yon must... walk with youth.”