The Famous Five -- Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Henrietta Muir Edwards -- were a group of women who effectively revolutionized the early women's rights movement in Canada. All of them were seasoned suffragists who worked tirelessly to achieve the vote for women, and most of them also held political office. Murphy was the first female judge in the Commonwealth; both McClung and Parlby were elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly in 1921, where the latter served as the province's first female Cabinet minister; McKinney was elected to the House of Commons, and Edwards founded the Victorian Order of Nurses.
Though they were influential in nearly all aspects of the women's rights movement, as well as humanitarian work, they are perhaps best-known for having brought about what amounted to a change in Canada's constitution with a petition launched in 1927. It asked whether women were "persons", under the law; and according to the British North America Act they are never defined as such, but a landmark decision from the Privy Council re-interpreted the law to include them alongside men. The decision still stands as an example of how the Constitution can (and should) evolve -- a precedent which is still of great importance today.
Dower Law and Women's Rights
The rights granted to women in the early twentieth century in western Canada were few, and the regulations that governed them were inconsistent. In the prairie provinces, specifically Alberta, this was especially pronounced. The fact that women were needed to help work newly-acquired farmland meant that they couldn't simply be treated as housewives. But neither were they given all the property rights that were accorded to men: a single woman, or a widow, could buy or sell or own property as a man could, but was not legally able to start or maintain a homestead. Married women, conversely, couldn't buy or sell any property at all without their husbands' permission -- and should a woman divorce her husband, she was not entitled to any share in his property, and likewise if she and her children were to be abandoned by him.
Naturally, this left a lot of women in difficult situations. And since many of them were well-educated, from middle-class backgrounds in eastern Canada where rights for women were not such a foreign notion, the situation couldn't remain stable for long.
Irene Parlby, then serving as the president of the United Farm Women of Alberta, and Henrietta Muir Edwards, who was well-versed in legal matters, drew up a resolution in 1915 that called for a dower law in Alberta that would effectively prevent a husband from leaving his wife with nothing by disposing of property without her consent. It would also provide widows with the safety-net of having a guaranteed homestead for life after the death of their husbands. The law was passed in 1917; for Alberta, and for all of Canada, this was an unprecedented step toward legal equality for women.
Parlby went on to serve as an elected representative in Alberta's Legislative Assembly, beginning in 1921. From here she was able to stir up the pot even further: in 1925 she proposed Bill 54, which sought to create communal property between a husband and wife. Under this proposed legislation, not only would any property acquired by a married couple be considered communal (though still managed by the husband), but any property that a woman possessed before entering into a marriage would remain in her name -- and should either die, the remaining property would be divided in two, with one half going to the estate and the other to the surviving spouse, regardless of whether it happened to be the husband or the wife.
Bill 54 was criticised for being too radical, and was never passed. But it was important nonetheless, in that it demonstrated that women's rights were an issue that wasn't going to disappear any time soon.
The Senate and the Persons Case
Emily Murphy, another prominent Alberta feminist, was appointed by the Crown to be a judge on 1 January 1916. She was the first female judge in the Commonwealth, and no-one was taking her appointment lightly: from the outset she was treated with disdain by lawyers appearing before her in court, who claimed that her appointment was inappropriate since the British North America Act didn't define women as "persons". In 1917 this question was brought before the courts; another judge, also female, ruled that women were indeed persons, and her ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court of Alberta. But it wouldn't prove the end of this particular question.
The efforts of Nellie McClung and Louise McKinney, among others, meant that women were allowed to vote in federal elections by 1918. Under the law they were considered citizens; but though women were certainly punished as men were, for crimes committed, they were still not granted all of the rights that men were. This became glaringly obvious when Emily Murphy professed a desire to become Canada's first female Senator and was turned down because of a technicality: only "qualified persons" were allowed to serve in the Senate, and the definition of "qualified persons" did not extend to women.
Murphy's battle to become a Senator began in 1917. Ten years later, despite all the popular support she had won for her cause, she had gotten no closer to the Senate. Petitioning the federal government had proven useless, so she decided to try a different tactic: according to the Supreme Court of Canada Act, any group of five citizens banded together can request that the Supreme Court clarify a point of the Canadian Constitution, through the federal Cabinet. In August 1927, Murphy selected four other women who had been influential in the women's suffrage movement to co-sign her petition: Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards, and Louise McKinney.
The petition that set events in motion was penned on 27 August, 1927. It contained two crucial questions, following thus:
I. Is power vested in the Governor-General in Council of Canada, or in the Parliament of Canada, or either of them, to appoint a female to the Senate of Canada?
II. Is it constitutionally possible for the Parliament of Canada under the provisions of the British North America Act, or otherwise, to make a provision for the appointment of a female to the Senate of Canada?
The Supreme Court (made up of five judges, all male) answered no, on both counts.
To support their answer, they said that it was important to be aware of the time period in which the Act was written; it was evident that those who wrote it were not referring to women when they said "persons" because at the time women were not at all involved with politics. Furthermore, whenever the Act referred to Senators, it used male pronouns and nouns -- proof that Senators were supposed to be men, even if the Act neglected to mention it outright.
The five women were outraged, understandably, though the decision likely wasn't wholly unexpected in light of the past ten years' worth of rejections. All hope was not lost, however; shortly thereafter, with the support of then-Prime Minister MacKenzie King, the question was passed along to the Privy Council, which was the highest court of appeal for Canada at the time. Two years and two months after the original petition was sent in, a definitive and final answer was handed down by the Privy Council's Judicial Committee. Their decision was unanimous, and the sentiments of all five justices were summarised neatly in the Lord Chancellor's speech:
"The exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word [persons] should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not?"
A year later, Cairine Wilson of Ottawa was appointed to the Senate, as Canada's first female senator. Ironically, none of the Famous Five were ever accorded that honour.
The Famous Five (Educational Resources). Famous Five Foundation.
http://www.famous5.org/ (7 May 2005).
The Famous Five. Library and Archives Canada.
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/famous5/053001_e.html (7 May 2005).
"The Valiant Five". Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valiant_Five (7 May 2005).