Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead National Historic Site of Canada

Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1995 for its concrete linkages with the contributions of Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, a champion of maternal feminism, who was instrumental in the founding of the Women’s Institute, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Council of Women, the Victorian Order of Nurses, and three faculties of Household Science, and because the rural situation and lack of amenities found in Hoodless’ childhood home speak eloquently to the hard labour and isolation experienced by many rural women in the mid 19th century, a situation Hoodless spent her entire life trying to alleviate.

The heritage value of Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead National Historic Site of Canada lies in its direct association with Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, particularly in its role in defining and describing the reason she became a figure of national importance. Its value is expressed by the relatively isolated setting and in its illustration of a typical farm house of mid-to-late nineteenth century Ontario. Adelaide Hunter was born in this house, and lived here until 1881 when she married successful Hamilton furniture manufacturer John Hoodless. Here, as the youngest child in a large farming family raised by a widowed mother, she experienced the hardship and isolation that attracted her to social activism. That experience, together with the loss of her youngest child 1889, inspired her determination and defined the nature of the causes she championed.

Adelaide Hunter Hoodless (1857-1910) herself was recognized by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada in 1959 as a person of national historic significance.