Edith Emma Coe

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Edith Emma Coe was Lethbridge’s first teacher. Within a year of starting teaching in Lethbridge she did something that meant she had to quit teaching. What did she do? She got married!

Edith Coe was born in England and worked for a while as a governess in France. In the 1880s, she followed her parents out to the Lethbridge area. She started a one-room school in a miners’ cottage in 1885, teaching there for about a year. She then married a North-West Mounted Police officer, Falkland Warren, and moved with him to farm in the Iron Springs/Turin area.

Why did she have to quit teaching? In those days, married women were not supposed to work (if at all possible) as the focus of their lives was supposed to become their husband and, eventually, their husband and their children. As well, commuting each day was not really an option in the 1880s.

Anine VonkemanComment