Barbara Hanley

Background Born in Magnetawan, Ontario to parents Henry John Smith and Catherine Mitchell, she was educated at the North Bay Normal School Early media coverage focused on the question of whether she would continue her housekeeping duties while serving as mayor, to which she responded that "Webbwood is hardly a big enough place for me to give up my housework just to be mayor."

Her key election priority had been the provision of poverty relief due to the Great Depression.

She was named one of that year's outstanding women by The New York Sun; she was the only Canadian named to the list, alongside figures such as Wallis Simpson, Florence Prag Kahn, Irène Joliot-Curie, Cécile Brunschvicg, Sally Salminen, Ruth Bryan Owen and Mary Ritter Beard. She disliked being included in the same list as Simpson, but otherwise took the honour in good spirits.

At the end of the year, as she announced that she would stand for reelection, she stated that "I won't say that I have done better than any man would, but I will say I have done equally well." Asked if she was convinced, after a year in office, that there was a place for women in public life, she responded that "the very fact I am in the work gives my answer to that." In her second year in office, she declared the entire council as a relief committee, and championed projects that would enhance and beautify the town, including the creation of public vegetable and flower gardens.

After stepping down as mayor in 1944, she served as town clerk from 1946 until 1950. and encouraged young women to pursue professional careers. He did indicate that he planned to write a letter to the provincial government requesting the installment of a historic plaque in front of the town's new municipal office.

In the early 2010s, Canada's federal government rejected a proposal to formally designate Hanley as a Person of National Historic Significance, on the grounds that simply being the first of something was not necessarily a sufficient condition by itself for being named to the registry. Her historic significance has sometimes been overlooked by media as well, with both Marjorie Hamilton in Barrie (elected 1950) and Charlotte Whitton in Ottawa (elected 1951) having been erroneously credited as Canada's or Ontario's first woman mayor.

Mike Commito, a history instructor at Laurentian University, was commissioned to write an article about Hanley for The Canadian Encyclopedia in 2015.