Warden and Witness: 118 years of the ‘Our Lady of the Snows’ banner at McGill

By Katelyn Jones, PhD Candidate, Art History, Max Stern Fellow, McGill Visual Arts Collection (2025-)

A magnificent, embroidered banner titled Our Lady of the Snows hangs inconspicuously in the discrete location of the Royal Victoria College Residence Hall nicknamed the “warden’s hallway.”[1] The large Edwardian-era textile is quietly integrated into the daily life of RVCRH, displayed intimately in a small portal across from another frame populated with historical photos of the aforementioned “wardens” of Royal Victoria College, the women who were tasked with the supervision and support of the college’s residents. The banner’s central figure, an imposing somewhat androgynous seraph, gazes out and finds herself amongst kin. I believe she is also a warden in this space.

She is surrounded by scroll-like wings outlined in carefully couched gold-plated thread. She is being crowned by two floating seraphim whose stylistic wings form well-designed swirls around their haloed profiles. She presents a pomegranate with skin rendered in even-more delicate gold couching and layers of ‘seeds’ made of opalescent sequins. Black lettering spells out the following passage from Matthew 13:38, “The good seed are the children of the Kingdom.” Taken from a parable where Christ envisions the whole world as God’s domain, it indicates global intentions for the banner’s audience. Beneath the seraphim are seven doves that carry scrolls and medallions representing seven gifts of the spirit: wisdom, reverence, strength, piety, understanding, comfort, and cunning. The gifts guide behavior by promising their attainment through devotion and virtuous acts.

Mary Seton Watts (1849-1938) designed the banner, and it was gifted on behalf of Queen Alexandra in 1907 to the RVC by the then Governor General of Canada, Albert Grey, the 4^th Earl Grey (1851-1917). During his tenure, Grey commissioned English craftswomen and lady philanthropists to create banners for Canadian Universities. McGill Visual Arts Collection cares for two of the nine identified banners in this scheme. Grey presented the other banner, St. George and the Dragon, during his 1911 visit to the new Macdonald Campus, where it still hangs on public view. Grey requested that the banners feature heroic themes so that they “will be able to impress [their] message upon the successive generations of students.”[2] Most of the banners depict the patron saint of England, St. George, slaying the mythical dragon, a symbol of the world’s evils. This thematic selection bound Canada and its emerging institutions to a distinctly English heritage. With good reason, this imperial legacy has largely dominated scholarship on the banners.

Uniquely though, Our Lady of the Snows is not a hyper-masculine vision of English heroism and dominance. Instead, Seton Watts’s pictorial response to Grey’s request was what the scholar Jennifer Salahub described as “subtle, spiritual, and feminine.”[3] Her aims were still evangelical and imperially motivated, but Seton Watts, an active feminist, implied the bond between England and Canada was maternal rather than paternal.

The banner’s title cites Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name. In it the poet imagines a dialogue between Canada (Our Lady of the Snows) and England, united in a filial bond of mutual respect and measured independence:

“Daughter am I in my mother’s house 
But mistress in my own. 
The gates are mine to open, 
As the gates are mine to close, 
And I abide by my Mother’s House,” 
Said our Lady of the Snows.[4]

Kipling described Canada’s autonomy while he simultaneously reiterated its fealty to, and dependence upon, England. He symbolically projected an age-based hierarchy onto their relationship. Canada, a “young” nation “born” from the colonizing efforts of the British Empire, was metaphorized as a maturing daughter that required steady guidance from a trusted authority (England) to attain an idealized adult stability.

Morally guiding the immature was considered a charitable act according to Victorian beliefs. Even Seton Watts participated with her philanthropy in London’s East End and her guild work in Compton. She was committed to improving conditions through access to arts and trade education. Seton Watts, Kipling, and Grey all imagined a filial imperial relationship where Canada acted as Britain’s child and the banners were maternal lessons sent to instill English genteel values in young Canadians.

The Royal Victoria College Wardens were an embodied form of this relation. Mature, educated, and often English-born women (in the early years), the wardens taught, supervised, and guided students during their academic journey. Their guidance was academic and individual. They sternly shielded students from behaviors considered morally or physically damaging. One faculty member reported that in the 1940s, the R.V.C was a “place dedicated with wonderful zeal to the preservation of virginity.”[5] It was a Victorian fortress with bright lighting to discourage “lingering goodnights” and a strict prohibition on male guests in the dormitories until at least the 1970s.[6]

As domineering as the title might sound to North American audiences, wardens were not always (if ever) oppressive guards. Talented teachers and pioneering scholars, they were ardent defenders on the frontlines of women’s hard-fought entrance to higher education. According to RVC alumnae recollections, wardens protected their student’s freedoms as much as they controlled them. For example, Susan Cameron Vaughan (3^rd Warden of RVC 1931-1937) passionately defended her students in a dispute with the McGill Daily. RVC students had requested to join the Student’s Council from which they were barred, and the paper responded “…there is no place for women in McGill college. Hence, they have no status as members of the university…”[7] Vaughan responded with a long letter and legal counsel that argued that RVC students were in fact legal students of McGill University and, therefore, due all the access that status entails.[8]

This role was a uniquely feminine form of heroism. Our Lady of the Snows occupies a symbolic role of “warden,” a moral guide and vigilant guard of British imperial heritage. Additionally, in her spot on the wall of RVC, Our Lady acts as a defender of women’s right to political participation and education. But she has also witnessed 118 years at McGill. Our Lady has, like the brave wardens of RVC, witnessed the shifting beliefs of the McGill students it was entrusted to superintend. She watched the effects of two world wars and the feminist actions of the 60s. She heard the clamor of anti-imperial protests in Quebec over several decades, saw students isolate during a global pandemic, and felt the rumble of demonstrations against the war in Gaza. Whether you choose to view Our Lady as imperial, progressive, puritanical, or feminist, the banner entered the university at a delicate moment when women were occupying more of this traditionally masculine space and should be considered an agent in intricately woven imperial, gendered, and institutional histories. Should you ever find yourself in the “warden’s hallway,” I ask that you linger a while – this warden may yet reveal more of her secrets.  

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[1] Elaine Cheasley Paterson, “Gifted Design: Imperial Benevolence in the Needlework of Mary Seton Watts,” In Design and Agency: Critical Perspectives on Identities, Histories, and Practice, ed. John Potvin and Marie-Ève Marchand (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020) 51.

[2] Letter from Governor General Grey to Queen Alexandra, 2 May 1907. Curatorial File 79-015, Visual Arts Collection, McGill University.

[3] Jennifer Salahub, “Governor General Grey’s ‘Little Scheme’: Majesty in Canada.” In Majesty in Canada: Essays on the Role of Royalty, ed. Colin Coates (Dundurn Press, 2006) 109.

[4] Rudyard Kipling, “Our Lady of the Snows,” In Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling (Doubleday, Page & company, 1918).

[5] Constance Beresford-Howe, “Stages in Education,” In A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women, Ed. Margaret Gillet and Kay Sibbald, (Eden Press, 1984), 36.

[6] Constance Beresford-Howe, “Stages in Education,” In A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women, Ed. Margaret Gillet and Kay Sibbald, (Eden Press, 1984), 37.

[7] Qtd in Margaret Gillet, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill, (Eden Press, 1981), 187.

[8] Ibid.