Vivian Dowding
Vivian Mildred Dowding nee Gill (29 December 1892 – 26 June 1987) was born in New Westminster, B.C. into a Methodist family. She married John Albert Dowding in Kamloops in 1913 at the age of 20. She had three sons during the war years. Dowding was influenced by Margaret Sanger and other early pioneers of birth control in North America and became a noted activist in support of birth control for working women. By 1937 she represented the Parents’ Information Bureau (set up by A.R. Kaufman of the Kaufman Rubber Company in the 1930’s in Ontario). Based in Kamloops, she travelled throughout the Southern Interior, educating doctors about contraception and helping low-income women avoid unwanted pregnancies. She operated in defiance of Canadian laws that criminalized birth control until 1969. Dowding was also an active member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the N.D.P. She is buried in Kamloops with her husband. Their headstone reads, “Follow not where the path leads…Rather go where there is no path and leave a trail.”