The Famous Five and the Persons Case

Author has tea with a pioneer of women's rights, Ottawa. Photo by Yasemin Tulpar

It is less than a hundred years since women were granted the status of persons under Canadian law. After years of lobbying by a dedicated group of women, it finally happened on October 18, 1929. Oddly enough, this decision was made only a few days before a major stock market crash launched the ten-year depression that Canadians call the Dirty Thirties.

Interestingly, the five pioneering women who pushed for the landmark legal decision that redefined women as persons were all from the province of Alberta. Their names were Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Nellie McClung.

In the mid-nineties, a group of Calgary women established the Famous Five Foundation, and began to lobby and fund-raise in an effort to have these five intrepid women commemorated on Parliament Hill. In 2000, a bronze monument to the five, the creation of Alberta sculptor Barbara Paterson, was unveiled in front of the Senate Block entrance.

The hard work of these pioneering women was essential for the future of Canadian democracy. At the time, Canada had no written constitution but the British North America Act, and that was an act of the British Parliament, not the Canadian one. Astonishingly, the terms of that act actually said that women were persons -- "in matters of pain and penalties" but "not persons in matters of rights and privileges."

Rebuffed first by the Supreme Court of Canada, the women approached Canada's highest appeal court, then the Privy Council in England. The Lord Chancellor gave a favourable reply; women were declared persons under the law and made eligible to become members of the Senate.

Ironically, these five historic women held views that human rights activists today would find questionable and in some cases, repugnant. Values that favoured prohibition, eugenics and racism were commonly accepted at the time. For those of us living a hundred years later, to suddenly find ourselves in the social milieu of a hundred years ago would be a shock to say the least.