Mildred Fahrni

Mildred Fahrni (1900-1992) was a Canadian pacifist and socialist, who became friends with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. She was a leader of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Fahrni actively opposed World War II and the xenophobia that led to Japanese Canadian internment and the internment of Dukhobor children. She was an ardent feminist and social activist.

Biography Mildred Osterhout was born in rural Manitoba on 2 January 1900 to Reverend Abram and Hattie Osterhout. Her family relocated to British Columbia in 1914. Between 1919 and 1923 she attended the University of British Columbia (UBC), earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy. She went on to complete a Master's in Philosophy in 1923, also at UBC. After her schooling, Osterhout began working as a secretary for both the Vancouver branch of the YMCA and the Canadian Memorial Church (CMC), but winning a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College, in 1930 she returned to school. At school in Pennsylvania, she met Muriel Lester and was invited to work for six months at Kingsley Hall in London. Serendipitously, Osterhout's arrival in London corresponded with the Round Table Conferences on India's independence. Mahatma Gandhi, who was attending the conferences, was also in residence at Kingsley Hall, and her meeting with him, changed the direction of Osterhout's life. She ran for federal office in both the 1933 and 1938 elections on the CCF ticket, losing both times, deciding after the second loss to visit Gandhi in India. After her visit, she returned to Canada, Failing to dissuade involvement and opposed to the government's xenophobia, Fahrni volunteered to teach without pay in the school at New Denver with Japanese Canadian internment detainees.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Mildred traveled internationally for pacifist causes. She attended the 1945 founding conference of the United Nations and Earlier in 1947, she had been elected president of the Vancouver branch of the WILPF She was an active public speaker discussing topics of non-violence, poverty, and social change Between 1953 and 1959, the Canadian government interned Doukhobor children in the residential schools in New Denver and Fahrni once again offered her teaching services.

In 1955, Fahrni traveled as a representative of the Fellowship of Reconciliation to Montgomery, Alabama to participate in the Montgomery bus boycott.