[5] Alice was inspired by the Social Gospel ideology espoused at Queen's University and soon became committed to the women's suffrage movement.

[1] In 1899 Chown was secretary of the Kingston Charity Organization Society, which believed in scientific philanthropy, and spoke on this subject at the National Council of Women of Canada annual meeting.

In London they saw the funeral of King Edward VII, visited Dr Barnado's Homes, listened to the feminist Christabel Pankhurst and represented Canada in a suffragist demonstration.

[8] In 1911 Chown investigated the training of Methodist deaconesses,[a] and The Christian Guardian was persuaded to publish the resulting derisive report.

She surmised that the real object of the training was, "to furnish nice little satellites for Methodist ministers, women who will clasp their hands in admiration at the greater knowledge of the pastor...

It seemed to me that the course of study was aptly framed to fill Ruskin's ideal education of women, the ability to appreciate other people's learning, not to be competent oneself."

[13] The strikers asked Chown to use her position in society to persuade the Toronto papers to discuss the strike, which they were reluctant to do for fear of losing advertising revenue.

[14] Chown had some difficulty getting overt support for the strike from the Toronto Women's Suffrage Society, who did not want to be damaged by association with an unpopular cause.

At the Women's International Conference at The Hague in 1915, Chown "contributed to the merging of pacifist and suffragette ideas in a program denouncing militarism, autocracy, secret treaties, and imperialism while calling for a new international order based on compulsory arbitrarion, universal disarmament, freedom of the seas, and a league of democratic nations."

[7] She was hostile to the church, and as a pacifist was critical of the attitude of her cousin Samuel Dwight Chown, a Methodist minister and army chaplain during the war.

Contrasting her views to those of her mother, she wrote, "Her faith was in a Supreme Being who existed perfect, complete; mine in a life force, present in every man, which must grow and develop.

"[19] Chown published her journal The Stairway in 1921, based on her diaries between 1906 and 1920, which tells of her experiences in terms of a series of steps leading to ever greater freedom.

[6] The book gives her opinions on many subjects including the settlement and co-operative movements, trade unionism, female suffrage, dress reform and sexual freedom.