User:Artchivist1/drafts/Flora MacDonald Denison

Flora MacDonald Denison (20 February 1867- 23 May 1921) was a Canadian businesswoman, writer and suffragist.

Early life and education
Denison was born Flora MacDonald Merrill near Bridgewater (Actinolite), Upper Canada, the daughter of George A. Merrill and Elizabeth MacTavish Thompson and the sixth of eight children. She attended schools in Belleville and Picton in her early teens, taught school briefly, and subsequently attended a commercial school in Toronto. MacDonald moved to Detroit in the mid-1880s, where she met Howard Denison, with whom she had a son, Merrill, in 1893.

Career
Denison entered the dressmaking trade in Toronto, working first for the Robert Simpson Company, which she left in 1905 to start her own dressmaking business. She was financially independent throughout her life. Denison was active in the suffrage movement in Toronto from 1906 Denison served as President of the Canadian Suffrage Association, 1911-14. Her book Mary Melville, the psychic (1900) was based on the life of her sister, Mary Merrill. Denison created a retreat dedicated to Whitmanite ideals at Bon Echo, near Mazinaw Lake, Ontario.