law, from doing so. The elective office of public school trustee was open to Ontario widows and unmarried women who owned property from about 1884, although the first female trustees to be elected in Toronto were in 1892. Hamilton ran for Toronto city council for a one-year term in 1920, in the first year that women over 21 could vote. Hamilton fought the race over eight other male opponents, for one of three spots in Ward 3, "a long, narrow downtown ward, stretching from the waterfront north almost to St. Clair Ave., and taking in King, Front, Church, Yonge and Bay streets." Her platform was a mix of social and practical concerns, including a stronger police force and more library funding. When she won the race, she became the first woman in Ontario to hold elected office at either the federal, provincial, or municipal level. Her swearing in ceremony received little press. In office, she championed issues such as a raise in minimum wage, health initiatives, for more women judges, and urged reforms for hiring of domestic workers, also championing a maximum 10-hour workday. Second term and retirement She was re-elected for another one-year term in 1921. After two terms in office she resigned for reasons that "remain a mystery." According to the city of Toronto, she resigned so that she could continue to campaign for immigrant settlement and refugee issues, and for equal rights. After politics, much of her time went into finding employment for new refugees in Toronto, and she also served on the board of Woman's Century, a magazine. Personal life and legacy Hamilton married Canadian Pacific Railway land commissioner and civil engineer Lauchlan Alexander Hamilton (1852-1941), who was also Vancouver City Alderman and designed the Coat of arms of Vancouver. They did not have any children, but Lauchlan had a daughter (Isabella) from his marriage to Isabella Hamilton (1858?-1888). Her husband died in 1941 and she died in 1945. She and her husband lived in Toronto at 30 Saint Joseph Street, in a "sparsely furnished old house just north of Wellesley Street" with a "scruffy, homey and lived-in look." The Bach Society met in the drawing room, and friend later said that Hamilton "filled the rackety old house with a succession of lame dogs and tame cats; refugee cellists from Austria; Englishmen with a gift of the gab who were down on their luck; unemployed Italian