Author of several books for children, Alice Townley was well known as a community activist and suffrage advocate in Vancouver, BC.

Alice Ashworth was born in 1860 in Quebec City, QC, to hatter William Henry Ashworth (1820-1901), and Jane Murray Johnston (1836-1908), immigrants from England and Scotland, respectively. She spent her early adult years in Toronto before moving in 1903 to Vancouver, BC, where she soon married Charles Robert Townley (1860-1941), a Canadian Pacific Railway employee turned realtor. Before marriage, she reportedly published articles in Canadian and American magazines as well as writing the column for the (Toronto, 1895-1898), but no copies have been located. A journalist, author, and lecturer, her writings range from juvenile works to legal explications. (1897) and (1907)—both published under her maiden name—were “used as text books in United States schools.”

After possibly suffering a stillbirth or the loss of an infant in 1914 (a “Baby Townley” is buried in Alice’s plot at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver), Alice remained childless in her adult years. She directed her energies outside the home: becoming active in community issues in the early 1900s, she founded both the Vancouver chapter of the Canadian Women's Press Club (1910), and the Pauline Johnson Chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE). On 1 April 1913, less than a month after E. Pauline Johnson’s death, Alice was chosen to represent the IODE Vancouver Municipal Chapter in community meetings discussing a memorial for Johnson. She was not only a committee member, but also lectured in support of her chosen causes, including her 1915 presentation, “Our Flag and Empire,” held to raise money for Canadian soldiers abroad.

Alice also served in other literary and arts clubs, as well as in a number of charitable organizations such as the Child Welfare Association and the Local Council of Women. She was also active in suffrage efforts through membership in the British Columbia Political Equity League (PEL), serving as president of the Vancouver PEL in 1911. At this time, her sister Ethel and her husband and daughter were living with the Townleys, as was Charles’s widowed mother.

Due to political differences among members of the PEL, in 1912 Alice founded a splinter organization—the British Columbia Equal Franchise Association—of which she was president until 1917. In 1918, she was president of the League of Women Voters, a post she would again hold in 1932. In 1929, she was elected as the first female commissioner of the Vancouver Parks Board “with the largest civic vote ever polled by a woman in Vancouver ... the only woman in Canada holding such an office”; she held this post until 1935. She died in Vancouver, in 1941, and was buried at Mountain View Cemetery.

In 1991, the Vancouver Parks Board created the Alice Townley Park in the 1400 block of East 2nd Avenue in honour of Alice as the first female Park Board Commissioner in that city.