Description taken, with permission, from the Vancouver Women’s Caucus – A Women’s Liberation History Project

The first Women’s Caucus newsletter was written in August 1969. It informed the membership that the Labour Temple office was available for groups and meetings every Thursday and that there would be a regular business meeting on the fourth Thursday of every month. It also noted that there was to be a meeting about daycare in early September. Contact people were listed for committees that had been formed on education, labour, a women’s artist co-op, and the campuses at SFU, UBC and VCC.

In addition, this newsletter advertised times for regular discussion groups and a western regional conference to be held on the Thanksgiving Day weekend in October. Women were invited from Alberta, Saskatchewan, California, Oregon, and Washington, and the theme was to be ‘Women – Reform or revolution’. A list of papers for discussion was included and reports from the Education committee and the Women’s Artists Co-op.

This was the first of eight newsletters that were mailed to members detailing the activities of the Caucus. It was the fore-runner of The Pedestal, which printed its first edition in the fall of 1969, and was meant to be the main organ for reaching out to others, and providing education and inspiration.

When Maggie Benston acted as secretary for the Nov. 14, 1969 issue, she included a two-page personal assessment of how the Women’s Caucus was doing, and how it could be more successful, even without a leadership structure in the organization, in attracting and involving more women

By November 1969, the Caucus had 250 women on its mailing list and twelve ‘action’ groups – abortion campaign; legal; education/teachers; book workshop; Pedestal; orientation; finance; women’s artist co-op; newsletter, VCC; SFU; and UBC.

In May 1970, the Caucus announced the demise of the newsletter, promising to use The Pedestal as the main means of communication with its own members. Except, it did publish another one in June 1970 with “extra news that didn’t fit in The Pedestal and again in February 1971 to make a special appeal for help with distributing The Pedestal, organizing the upcoming Indochinese Women’s Conference, and attending a film series in honour of International Women’s Day.

Note: Because of the poor quality of the original newsletters, Elizabeth Godley generously typed them into the attached digital versions.