Agnes Campbell MacPhail was born in Proton Township, Ontario, Canada, to a family of farmers. At 14, she wanted to attend high school, but her parents wanted her help on the farm. After receiving permission to further her education, MacPhail went to study at the Owen Sound Collegiate School for a year before transferring to Stratford Normal School, graduating with a teaching certificate. While teaching at several schools in Ontario and Alberta, she became active in the Ontario agricultural co-operative movement, joining the political and social organization United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) and the United Farm Women of Ontario. She also began to publish a column in the Farmer’s Sun newspaper. Following the amendments to the Elections Act that passed two years earlier, Canadian women could vote in national elections for the first time in 1921. Macphail decided to represent the farmers in her region and ran as a member of the Progressive Party of Canada, representing the district of South-East Grey. When elected, she became the first woman Member of Parliament (MP) in Canada and served for 19 years. In 1924, Macphail felt that the Progressive Party did not protect and promote the interests of farmers and industrial workers, and she co-founded the Ginger Group. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the group allied with various agrarian, labor, and socialist groups to found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), with Macphail serving as its first president. The organization lobbied for the nationalization of key industries and called for the formation of a welfare state to provide universal health insurance, pensions, and unemployment insurance. Throughout her tenure as MP, Macphail promoted various social issues, advocating farmers’ rights and also women, immigrants, miners, prisoners, and other marginalized groups. In 1936, she contributed to the formation of the investigative Archambault Commission, which concluded with overall prison reform; in 1939, she founded the Elizabeth Fry Society of Canada, which assisted women and gender diverse people in the justice system. In 1940, at the age of 50, she lost her seat in the House of Commons, and for the next three years, she wrote for various newspapers, lectured throughout Canada and the US, and worked for the CCF. In 1943, she returned to politics and won the provincial election to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Alongside Rae Luckock, Macphail became one of the first two women members of the Ontario Legislature and was the first woman sworn in as an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP). She lost her seat in the 1945 elections but won it back three years later. In 1951, her final year in this role, she worked for the passage of the Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act, the first equal pay legislation in Ontario. Shortly after, she lost her seat. She continued to promote issues she believed in, mainly women’s status and social rights. In 1954, she was offered an appointment to the Senate by Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent, but she died before receiving the position. She was 63 years old. Read more...

Elizabeth Muriel Gregory “Elsie” MacGill was born in Vancouver, Canada. Her mother and maternal grandmother were active in the suffrage movement, and she grew up on feminist values. Before attending secondary school, she was home-schooled, receiving drawing lessons from artists Emily Carr and swimming lessons from Joe Fortes, the official lifeguard of Vancouver. In 1921, at 16, she started studying applied science at the University of British Columbia. Then, she continued studying at the University of Toronto School of Practical Science, becoming the first woman in Canada to earn a degree in electrical engineering. Upon graduating, she worked as a mechanical engineer at an automobile company in Pontiac, Michigan. At the time, the company started to produce airplanes, and she decided to study aeronautics. She enrolled at the University of Michigan, and in 1929, 24-years-old MacGill became the first woman in the world to earn an aeronautical engineering degree. After contracting polio that year, MacGill had to use a wheelchair temporarily and then a cane for the rest of her life. While recovering in Vancouver, she designed an aircraft and wrote articles on aviation to make a living. As soon as she got back on her feet, she continued to doctoral studies at MIT. In 1934, at 29, she returned to Canada and worked as an assistant aeronautical engineer at Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. Four years later, she became a member of the Engineering Institute of Canada, the first woman in the association. Later that year, she accepted a position as a chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car & Foundry (Can-Car), the first woman worldwide to hold a role on this scale. As part of her job, she engineered, designed, constructed, and tested the Maple Leaf II Trainer. Despite never being produced, the aircraft was recognized as the first to be designed and created by a woman. MacGill’s next project was to oversee the retooling of the Can-Car plant, preparing it for the mass production of the Hawker Hurricane, one of the main fighters of Canada and the Allies used in the Battle of Britain during WW2. Between 1938 and 1943, she oversaw the production of over 1,400 Hurricanes. It got her a lot of publicity, and various articles were published about the “women engineer,” gaining the nickname Queen of the Hurricanes. When the Hawker Hurricane contract ended, MacGill became in charge of the retooling of the plant to produce the American Curtiss-Wright Helldiver. Following a disagreement over the design of the aircraft, she and the plant’s manager, E.J. (William) Soulsby, left the company. They married and moved to Toronto, where she founded an aeronautical consulting company focusing on civilian aircraft. In 1946, at 41, she became the first woman to be appointed as Technical Advisor for International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and two years later, she was elected to chair the United Nations Stress Analysis Committee, the first woman to chair a UN committee. Over the coming decades, MacGill dedicated most of her time and efforts to the women’s rights movement, promoting equality in the engineering field and lobbying for women’s reproductive rights. She was involved with the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (CFBPWC), serving as its provincial president from 1956 to 1958 and as its national president from 1962 to 1964, and was a member of the Ontario Status of Women Committee and served on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada. She died at the age of 75. Read more...

Jean Augustine was born in Happy Hill, Grenada. When she was a year old, her father had died, and she and her mother moved in with an older woman in their village that encouraged Augustine to excel in school. After graduating high school, she worked as a teacher for several years. At 23, Augustine immigrated by herself to Canada on the Canada-Caribbean Domestic Program, which required her to work as a domestic servant on her arrival. The family she worked for recognized she was overqualified for the job and found her a clerical position at a billing firm. After taking evening classes at the Toronto Teacher’s College, she became an elementary school teacher at the Metropolitan Separate School Board in Toronto while furthering her education at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Education. When she got promoted to principal, she became one of the first black school principals in the country. Upon her arrival in Toronto, she became active in various educational and social organizations, such as the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the National Black Coalition of Canada, and served as a board member of many of them, including The Hospital for Sick Children, York University, the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Her community work led her into politics, and she became associated with the local branch of the Liberal Party. In 1985, at the age of 48, Augustine was appointed to the transition team for new Ontario premier David Peterson, which named her chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority in 1988. During the six years she held the position, she became more involved with the national Liberal Party leadership. In 1993, at 56, Augustine was the Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the House of Commons from the Etobicoke-Lakeshore section of Toronto. When she won the federal elections, she became the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada. During her 13 years in parliament, she chaired numerous committees, including the Human Rights Committee, the Foreign Affairs and International Trade committee, and the National Women’s Caucus. In 2002, she was appointed Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women in Canada, making history as the first Black woman appointed to the federal cabinet. Two years later, Augustine was appointed Assistant Deputy Chair of Committees of the Whole, the first Black person to occupy the Speaker’s Chair in the Canadian House of Commons. In 2007, 70 years old Augustine left the parliament to become the first Fairness Commissioner. In this position, she established new regulatory standards for ensuring access to employment for Canadians with foreign professional credentials. At the age of 78, she retired from her official role and continued working and advocating for many social causes, mainly through the Jean Augustine Centre for Young Women’s Empowerment she established in 2014. Read more...

Hide Hyodo Shimizu was born in Vancouver, Canada, the oldest of eight children of Japanese immigrants. Her family was among the few Japanese in her neighborhood, and she was the only non-white student in her class. After graduating high school at 16, she studied for a year at the University of British Columbia but left when the tuition fee increased. Instead, she joined a teaching training program at Vancouver Normal School, and in 1926 she became one of the first Nisei – a second-generation Japanese-Canadians, to receive a teacher’s certificate. Shimizu struggled to find a teaching position because schools did not hire a Canadian Japanese teacher. Eventually, she got accepted to Lord Byng School in Steveston, where a large community of Japanese Canadians resides, assuming she knew Japanese, although she did not. As a first-grade and kindergarten teacher, she became the first Nisei to teach in the British Columbia school system and stayed there for 16 years. At that time, Shimizu became involved in the community. She worked with the Powell Street United Church and the Japanese Canadian Citizens League (JCCL), which included university graduate Japanese Canadians, who fought for full citizenship, and their right to vote. In 1936, 28 years old Shimizu was the only woman in a delegation committee to the Elections and Franchise Acts Committee in the House of Commons in Ottawa, presenting arguments to support the enfranchisement of Asian immigrants. Though the committee did not end the franchise ban, the delegation’s efforts encouraged other non-White communities to fight for voting rights. During WW2, the tension against the Japanese Canadians in British Colombia rose. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian government seized all Japanese-Canadians’ property and relocated them into detention camps. Japanese Canadians from coastal British Columbia were relocated to Hastings Park in Vancouver. Initially, she taught at Steveston school during the day and drove to Hastings Park in the afternoon to supervise the education of the kids, returning home by the 9 PM curfew. Several months later, she decided to dedicate herself entirely to building the education system at the camps. Working with the British Columbia Security Commission and her colleague, Teruko Hidaka, she recruited nisei high-school graduates and trained them to be teachers. She created and supervised the curriculum for all ages and formed a school system that operated in all the seven internment camps in British Colombia, allowing approximately 3,000 Japanese Canadian children to earn an education. As supervisor of education, Shimizu faced many challenges. The British Columbia Security Commission strictly supervised her, and the British Columbia Department of Education initially refused to provide classroom equipment and textbooks. She continued to fight to improve the classrooms’ conditions and raise the teachers’ wages. When the war ended, Shimizu reunited with her family in Ontario, and in 1948 she moved to Toronto. In the same year, she married Kosaburo Shimizu, a widowed Reverend. Once again, she became involved in various organizations, such as the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the Nisei Church, and the Momiji Health Care Society. During the 1980s, she became a prominent figure in the redress movement, who demanded compensation from the Canadian government for the seized property and forced migration of Japanese Canadians during the war. Shimizu died at the age of 91. Read more...

Mary Helen McKean-Malcolmson was born in Belfast, Ireland. When she was five years old, the family moved to Ontario, Canada. After graduating from school and before marrying Captain A.H. Malcolmson, she worked for a few years as a kindergarten teacher in Hamilton. In 1892, they relocated to St. Catharines, Ontario, where Malcolmson became an active member of various community organizations, including the Victorian Order of Nurses, the local Horticultural Society, and the board of Education. One of her concerns was the welfare of the youth, especially of girls and young women, and in 1909, after attending a rally of 10,000 Boy Scouts in London, England, she made up her mind to start a new chapter of Girl Guides in her own country. In November 1909, the company had its first meeting in St. Catharines, and within only one year, it became the first Canadian Company of Girl Guides to be officially registered. By 1912, the company had local branches throughout the country. Today, Girl Guides of Canada–Guides du Canada (GGC) is the largest organization for girls in Canada, with 90,000 active members. From its first days, the Canadian Company of Girl guides’ mission was to prepare its members for life, empower them, and give them leadership skills. Though the implementation of those goals had changed throughout the years, from learning to bandage wounds during WW1 to eliminating bullying in the 2020s, the organization’s purpose remained to provide a better world for girls – by girls. In addition to her role at the Girl Guides of Canada, Malcolmson co-founded the local chapters of the I.O.D.E (Independent Order of the Daughters of the Empire), served as vice president of the Mother’s Pension Board, and in 1918, founded the St. Catharines Council of Women and served as its first president. She passed away in St. Catharines at 71 years old. Read more...

Born Beverly Sainte-Marie on the Piapot reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Canada. When she was an infant, her mother died in a car accident, and a couple of Mi’kmaq ancestry from Wakefield, Massachusetts, adopted her. At the age of 3, she taught herself to play the piano. At 16, she taught herself to play guitar and compose her own songs. After graduating high school, she studied Oriental philosophy and education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. At the time, she began performing in coffeehouses, and in 1962, after receiving her degree, she moved to NYC. She became part of the bohemian art scene of Greenwich Village and soon went on tours, playing mainly at folk festivals and Indigenous reservations in Canada and the US. In 1963, a praising review in The New York Times led to a contract with Vanguard Records, and in the following year, 29-year-old Sainte-Marie released her first album, It’s My Way!. In the album, she used Indigenous vocal techniques and expressed her views on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, as can be seen in the song Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, in which she addressed Indigenous land rights and intercultural relationships. In her sixth album, Illuminations, she used electronically synthesized and manipulated instrumental sounds, becoming the first quadraphonic electronic vocal album to be recorded. In 1976, she released her 12th album, Sweet America, which included the song Starwalker – the first Indigenous-pop song, or powwow rock as Sainte-Marie dubbed it. At 35, she took time off from recording to spend time with her son. She began to paint, score films, and participate in various radio and TV shows. She joined the cast of Sesame Street for several years to raise awareness of Native American cultures. In 1982, she composed the song Up Where We Belong for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she received an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe. During this period, Sainte-Marie also began experimenting with computer-based visual art, exhibiting her work in museums across North America. After 16 years, Sainte-Marie resumed her recording career with the release, via the Internet, of her 14th album Coincidence and Likely Stories. Four years later, she released the collection album Up Where We Belong. It awarded her the Juno Award for Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording. In 2017, at 76, she released her 17th album, titled Medicine Songs. For which was awarded the Juno Award for Indigenous music album of the year and the Indigenous Music Awards for Best Folk Album. Sainte-Marie used her music and voice to advocate for various political causes. She was a loud advocate against the Vietnam War and was part of the militant American Indian Movement. She claimed that her activism caused her to be blacklisted by the US administration and limited her radio airplay and performances. In 1969, she founded the Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education and built the curriculum for its Cradleboard Teaching Project – a partnership between Native and non-Native American communities that facilitates communication through computer networking. She often made public speeches to promote social issues of the Indigenous people and served as spokesperson for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Read more...

Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up in Ontario and Quebec. From an early age, she was an avid reader, writing plays and stories at the age of 6, and by 16 began to write professionally. After graduating high school, she went to Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where she published articles and poems in the college’s literary journal. In 1961, she received her Bachelor’s degree in English, with minors in philosophy and French. In that same year, at 22, Atwood published her first poetry collection, Double Persephone, for which she received the E.J. Pratt Medal. She continued to graduate studies at Radcliffe College of Harvard University and pursued doctoral studies but did not submit her dissertation. She continued to write while studying, publishing two more poetry collections, The Circle Game (1966) and The Animals in That Country (1968). In 1968, at the age of 29, Atwood married the writer Jim Polk, but they divorced a few years later. Soon after, she met her life-long partner, the novelist Graeme Gibson, with whom she has one daughter. In 1969, Atwood published her first novel, The Edible Woman, a metaphoric satire about the social status of women and consumerism in North America. Those themes of feminism and materialism return in many of her works. Over the next decade, she published four more novels, eight poetry collections, and the award-winning short stories collection, titled Dancing Girls. While writing and publishing her work, Atwood taught English in various colleges and universities. Including the University of British Columbia, York University in Toronto, and New York University. She also served as MFA Honorary Chair at the University of Alabama and as Writer-in-Residence in Macquarie University, Australia, and Trinity University, Texas. During the 1980s, she published two of her most recognized novels, Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale, which also performed as an Opera, and later was adapted into a movie and an acclaimed TV show. Her success and productivity persisted well into the next two decades, publishing the novel Alias Grace in 1996, the Odyssey-inspired novella The Penelopiad in 2005, the praised trilogy MaddAddam in 2013, and The Handmaid’s Tale sequel, The Testaments in 2019. By 2021, Atwood published 18 novels, 10 short fiction collections, 22 poetry collections, 7 children’s books, 11 non-fiction, as well as graphic novels, television scripts, and Opera libretti. Her work was published in more than 45 countries, and some of it was adapted for stage and screen. In her writings, Atwood explores global and personal politics, women’s role in society, power dynamics, and environmental degradation. Most of her heroines are modern-urban women, often artists or writers, who fight to survive in a men-dominated society. Read more...

Emily Murphy was born in Ontario, Canada. Her parents believed that their daughter should receive formal education and have the same responsibilities as their sons, and as a child, she joined her brothers in their adventures. She attended a private Anglican school for girls in Toronto, where she met Arthur Murphy, a theology student who was 11 years older than her. They married when she was 19 and had four daughters. In her early 30s, Murphy began to publish book reviews, articles, and travel sketches, under her pseudonym Janey Canuck. She also was an active member in more than 20 organizations, including the National Council of Women of Canada; the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, in which she served as its first national president; and the Canadian Women’s Press Club, in which she served as president for seven years. In 1903, after one of her daughters died, the family left Ontario, settling in Alberta in 1907. There, 40 years old Murphy organized gatherings for housewives and explored the city to raise awareness of its poor residences and their living conditions. In one of her tours, she met a woman whose husband sold their house and abandoned the family, leaving her and her children homeless, since in Canadian law, under the British Empire, women did not have property rights. This case encouraged Murphy to embark on a campaign to pressure the Alberta legislature to change the law. In 1917, the Dower Act was passed, protecting a wife’s right to own a one-third share of her husband’s property. In the previous year, Murphy, among other women, attended a trial of two women who got arrested for prostitution. They were ejected from the court because the testimony was “not fit for mixed company.” On that ground, Murphy argued that “if the evidence is not fit to be heard in a mixed company, then the government must establish a court that presides over women to try women.” Her demand got approved, and she was appointed as a police magistrate, the first woman to hold this position in the British Empire. On her first trial, the defendant’s lawyer claimed that her ruling was not valid because a woman is not considered a person according to the British North America Act of 1867. That has sent Murphy to a decade-long mission – to get women included in the definition of Persons and gain women the same political rights as men, including serving in Senate. In 1927, Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, and Nellie McClung drafted a petition concerning the interpretation of the word Person in the eyes of the law. After the Supreme Court denied the petition, the women, who became known as the ‘famous five,’ appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England. On 18 October 1929, the Privy Council ruled that the word Persons in the British North America Act includes women, and women can serve in the Senate. In the first years following the Privy Council decision, Murphy’s opportunity to become a senator was denied for political reasons, not living in the state where a seat was open or belonging to the rival party. She died at the age of 65 from diabetes without becoming a Senator, but after enabling all Canadian women to become one. Read more...