The Famous Five

In August of 1927, five well-known Alberta activists met in the Edmonton home of Judge Emily Murphy, the first woman magistrate in the British Commonwealth. Her friends were author Nellie McLung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards. They used a clause in the BNA act that allows any five people acting as a unit to ask for an interpretation of any part of the Constitution. They asked a short and simple question:

Does the word 'persons' in section 24 of the BNA act include female persons?

They lost.

They then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council -- a higher authority, then, than the Supreme Court of Canada. The council, in rendering its decision, described the exclusion of women as "a relic of days more barbarous than ours, and overturned the Canadian decision. On October 18, 1929, Canadian women learned that years of work were over. They were indeed persons, and four months later, on February 15, 1930, Cairine Wilson was the first woman appointed to the Canadian Senate. Many women have followed her into the red chamber, a gentleman's club for so many years.

For more about the Famous Five, go to http://www.famous5.org

Note: As for British women, until special legislation was passed in the latter
part of the 20th Century, peeresses in their own right could not take part in
proceedings of the House of Lords, the British upper chamber, but had to be
content with watching and hissing from the Peeresses' Gallery.