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Although ³ÉÈË´óƬ was not the first Canadian university to admit women students—that distinction belongs to Mount Allison University in 1862—the University opened the ³ÉÈË´óƬ Normal School in 1857, offering the first English-language professional training for women in Montreal. (The school would evolve into the Faculty of Education.) By the early 1870s, ³ÉÈË´óƬ was offering university-level lectures on the arts and sciences to members of the Montreal Ladies’ Educational Association.

In 1884, thanks to a $120,000 endowment that Donald A. Smith (later Lord Strathcona) gave on the condition that ³ÉÈË´óƬ open its degree programs to female students, women were allowed to attend classes. Smith’s donation also funded the creation of the Royal Victoria College residential school for women. ³ÉÈË´óƬ’s tradition of strong women’s sports teams began shortly thereafter, with the founding of tennis and other clubs. (In fact, 33 years later, ³ÉÈË´óƬ’s women’s basketball team would beat Queen’s University in what was Canada’s first intercollegiate sporting event between women’s teams.)

The first female ³ÉÈË´óƬ cohort graduated in 1888: Eliza Cross,ÌýMartha Murphy,ÌýBlanche Evans, valedictorian Gracie Ritchie, Jane Palmer, Alice Murray,ÌýGeorgina Hunter and Donalda McFee. Other notable firsts include: 

• Maude Abbott (BA1890), who would go on to research and write the ground-breaking Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, an essential resource for cardiac surgeons.
• Carrie Derrick (BA1890) who, in 1912, was appointed to ³ÉÈË´óƬ’s Department of Botany as the first female full professor in Canada.
• Harriet Brooks (BSc1901), Canada’s first female nuclear physicist. 
• Annie Macleod, ³ÉÈË´óƬ’s first woman student to earn a PhD (1910).
• Annie MacDonald Langstaff (LLD1914), Quebec’s first female law graduate.

• Jessie Boyd Scriver (MDCM1922), Montreal’s first female paediatrician.
• Marie-Claire Kirkland Strover (BCL1950, LLD1997), the first woman elected to the Quebec National Assembly. She served from 1966 to 1973.
• Marianne Florence Scott (BA1949, BLS1952), served as the first female National Librarian of Canada, from 1984 to 1999.

Not herself a graduate of ³ÉÈË´óƬ, Idola Saint-Jean was teaching French studies at the University when she founded l’Alliance canadienne pour le vote des femmes du Québec (1927), which would play a key role in Quebec women getting the vote in 1944. Today, the Fédération des femmes du Québec recognizes her achievements with the Prix Idola St-Jean, awarded to a woman or women who have made a significant contribution to improving the lives of Quebec women.