A voice and a vote: Armine Nutting Gosling 1st named woman statue in St. John's

There are only two statues of named women displayed across Newfoundland and Labrador: Shawnadithit in Boyd's Cove and Amelia Earhart in Harbour Grace. 

Now there's about to be one more added to the roster in the capital city. 

Armine Nutting Gosling led the movement to give women the right to vote in Newfoundland and Labrador. The first election women were eligible to vote in was in 1925. 

On Wednesday, Persistence Theatre announced the project to raise a commemorative life-size statue of Gosling. Newfoundland artist and welder Sheila Coultas will cast Gosling in bronze, and the installation will be a permanent fixture in Bannerman Park in 2023.

Dr. Margot Duley, historian and chair of the Armine Nutting Gosling statue committee, said Gosling is an important figure in Newfoundland history. 

"[Gosling] is someone who took her own hardships and saw that, in a sense, what had happened to her and her sister was a broader problem," Duley said.

The statue will depict Gosling handing out papers for the movement for women to vote in Newfoundland. 

A societal movement 

Gosling was born in Waterloo, Que., into a family with little financial support and an alcoholic father. It was her mother who held the family together, Duley explained.   

Gosling came to Newfoundland in 1882. 

"Armine herself had a 'click' moment when she was in St. John's," Duley said, raising money to rebuild the Anglican Cathedral. 

"She realized that … she and other women had raised a tremendous amount of money and now they had no voice in the say of how it was going to be expended." 

But she said Gosling's impact isn't just about voting rights for women. It's also about how women were viewed and treated in Newfoundland society more generally. 

Gosling galvanized 20,000 people to sign a petition for women's right to vote. It was the largest petition campaign in Newfoundland at the time, when women's work was not recognized. 

Duley said that this statue will be a reminder of that movement. "We want people to reflect on that. Social justice isn't won easily," she said. 

Coultas said being involved in a project like this, specifically hiring a female artist, is emotional. "For me, it's huge, actually. It means quite a bit," she said. 

At this point, Coultas has built a sculptural sketch, a mini-cast that shows what the life-size statue will look like. 

Now that the design has been unveiled, she said, she will talk to the committee about what changes need to be made and implement them as she can. 

'An extraordinarily ordinary woman': Duley

Coultas is thrilled to be a part of the process of commemorating a figure such as Gosling. 

"It's a very powerful and humbling experience.… Not being a part of it would have been exciting enough," she said.

"For someone like Armine Gosling's work to be recognized in such a way, in such a lasting way, I'm glad for it."

Duley said Gosling is a fitting figure for the first statue named after a woman to be raised in St. John's. 

"She's an extraordinarily ordinary woman," Duley said. "Ordinary people really can effect change." 

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