Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Bellelle Guerin was a Canadian writer and the founder and first president of the Catholic Women's League of Canada. Bellelle Guerin was born as Mary Ellen Guerin on September 24, 1849 in Montreal. She was the eldest child of six and only daughter of civil engineer Thomas Guerin and Mary Maguire, both of Irish descent. Guerin spent several years of her education at the Mont Sainte-Marie Convent in Montreal. During this time, she became renowned as a writer and poet. It was then that she adopted the name Bellelle Guerin.
Guerin never married, but raised her brother’s two children, Thomas and Mary Carroll, after the death of their mother in 1888. Her brother, James John Edmund Guerin (July 4, 1856 – November 10, 1932), was a physician and politician. When he was elected mayor of Montreal in 1910, Bellelle served as mayoress. During the following two years, she accompanied him to civic functions and participated in such events as the International Eucharistic Congress, held in Montreal in 1910, and the visit of Earl Grey in Montreal.
In 1917, Guerin became president of the Catholic Women’s Club, formerly the Ladies of Loyola Club. In November 1917, the Montreal branch of the Catholic Women’s League (CWL) was founded, with herself as first president. Under Guerin’s initiative, the Catholic Women’s League of Canada was created in June 1920 to unify the various branches of the CWL, and once again, she was elected first president.
In 1922, Guerin was honored with the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice cross from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1923, she was made honorary president for life of the Catholic Women’s League of Canada. Meanwhile, the national membership of the CWL had grown to 50,000.
Bellelle Guerin died at age 79 on January 28, 1929, in Montreal.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Maintained by
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Created 2019-05-22
Revised 2019-09-24
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Molly Pulver Ungar and Vicky Bach. "Guerin, Bellelle." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/guerin_bellelle_15E.html
"General Information." Catholic Women’s League of Canada. https://cwl.ca/general-information/