Gone But Hopefully Always An Inspiration To All
A Few Brief Words from Doug Draper at Niagara At Large
Posted March 18th, 2025
On this March 8th day for celebrating the achievements of women around the world, I want to say a few words about two great women I was fortunate enough to meet who were true pioneers for women in Niagara.
The first is Eleanor Lancaster from St. Catharines who left us this past January at age 97 and who was one of the first women to shatter the glass ceiling in what was mostly a man’s world with her success in municipal politics, including serving with honour on Niagara Regional Council from 1982 to 1991.
The last time I saw Eleanor, who was also active in a number of groups dedicated to bettering the community around her, was sometime during the months leading up to the 2018 municipal elections, there she was at 90 and energetic as could be, participating in public meetings with others to encourage more
Eleanor Lancaster
younger women to run for municipal office. It was at a time when Niagara had quite a few bad actors sitting on Niagara’s Regional Council, and we desperately needed new blood.
Eleanor’s passing was a real loss to Niagara, but here is hoping that her inspiring service to our community will live on.
The second person I want to pay tribute to is Margherita Howe, who left us in 2006 at age 84, but whose legacy we are fortunate to live with still.
A Niagara-on-the-Lake resident who served oversees as an ambulance driver during the Second World War, Margherita became the leader of an environmental group called Operation Clean Niagara in 1979 and worked tirelessly and fearlessly for years to push governments on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border to reduce the flow of toxic chemicals to the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and beyond.
Margherita Howe
Along with a handful of other citizens groups on both sides of the border that she linked arms with, Margherita played a key role in eventually getting federal, provincial and state governments to sign an agreement to cut the flow of poisons from industrial pipes and toxic waste dump in half within ten years – a target that continuous testing of water and aquatic life in the river and Lake Ontario was actually achieved.
If Margherita was with us today, I am sure she would still be there, fighting night and day to hold the feet of government leaders to the fire to make sure that we kept moving forward and not backward in the effort to rid our Great Lakes waters of dangerous contaminants.
I could easily see Margherita playing a leading role in Niagara in pressing our governments to address the climate crisis too. For her, as she never stopped reminding us, being an advocate for our environment was always about making the world better for future generations, and it was something we all should be working every single day.
These are just two of the great women in Niagara, living and dead, that deserve to be celebrated on this International Women’s Day. Their lives and the lives of others who have done and continue to do so much to make Niagara and the rest of the world better should be an inspiration to us all.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
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