Florence Custance

Florence Ada Custance was a trade unionist and labour organizer who helped found a number of socialist organizations in Canada, including a local Plebs League, the Ontario Labour College, the Socialist Party of North America, and the Communist Party of Canada. She was heavily involved in cultivating chapters of the Women's Labour League across Canada and edited the federation's monthly periodical, The Woman Worker, which ran from 1926 through to her death in 1929.

Early life Florence Ada Ives was born 31 December 1881, in Dartford, Kent, England. Florence trained as a school teacher. She married George James Custance, a carpenter, in 1909. The couple emigrated to Canada shortly before World War I, most likely in 1910, settling in Toronto's East End. During this time she became a member of the Socialist Party of North America.

Labour organizing Florence was active in socialist circles in Toronto and Southern Ontario in the early decades of the twentieth century. Along with Bill Moriarty, Tim Bell and Maurice Spector, Custance helped found and operated a local Plebs' League, a precursor to the Communist Party of Canada. She also helped found the Ontario Labour College, where she taught courses on economics and economic geography. She was also under surveillance by the RCMP throughout the 1920s.

Custance was secretary and spokesperson for a relief fund which raised $100,000 for famine relief in Russia in 1921. She was the president of the Canadian Friends of Soviet Union.

Women's Labour League and The Woman Worker (1926–1929) Custance was active in organizing the Women's Guild of the Amalgamated Carpenters of Canada, and later worked to found and nurture chapters of the Women's Labor League across Canada as part of her work for the CPC. She was secretary of the Federation of Women's Labour Leagues starting in 1921 until her death in 1929 and also served as president of the Toronto Chapter. Through the publication and her work as secretary of the Federation, she wielded considerable influence over the chapters, some argue more than the CPC leadership was ever able to assert. As editor of The Woman Worker, and as a public figure in Toronto labour circles, she is described as one historian as "one of the strongest intellectuals in the Party." minimum wage abuse, wrongful dismissal, wage theft, She also raised relief funds for striking Nova Scotia miners.

Later life and death As Constance's power and influence grew through her work with Women's Labour League, The Woman Worker, and the Women's Guild of the Amalgamated Carpenters, concern and suspicion grew amongst the inner circle of the party. The Women's Labour League was excluded from the Toronto Labour Council in 1927 during an anti-communist campaign, prompting Constance to comment that "The council is becoming altogether too conservative [...] they may soon rue their action. Their leaders fear us because they have no control over us." In early 1929, Pro-Stalin CPC members targeted Custance, as her values were seen as more feminist than communist. While she was not expelled from the party, scholars have noted that Custance was pushed out of the inner circle, and was criticized internally by party members for harboring what was interpreted as reformist (rather than revolutionary) ideals. When she attempted to run for school trustee in 1926, she was disqualified (along with another candidate, Mrs. Adelaide Blumptree) as they both were not listed on assessment rolls in their districts. In 1926 she ran on a platform that would eliminate cadet training for working class youth in Toronto schools.