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...

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...