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On this day 94 years ago (August 27, 1927), Emily Murphy, the first woman to become a judge in Canada, invited four other women — Irene Parlby, Nellie McClung, Henrietta Edwards, and Louise McKinney — to her home in Edmonton, Alberta. The result was the framing of a petition to the Supreme Court of Canada aimed at securing a ruling that women were to be regarded as “persons” in Canadian law and therefore eligible for appointment to the Canadian Senate.
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Today, Liberal politicians present themselves as having always been tireless champions of women’s rights, but history tells a somewhat different story. In 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada, in response to the petition of the Alberta Five, ruled that women were not persons according to the British North America Act. Four of the five Supreme Court judges who so ruled were Liberal appointees, one by Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and four by Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Two of King’s appointees were former Liberal members of Parliament.
Fortunately, the case was appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England which wisely reversed the decision, and on October 18, 1929, women came to be officially recognized as “persons” in Canadian law.
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But who in reality were these five women who so valiantly and persistently championed women’s rights in Canada years ago, and how does that reality differ from how they are most often portrayed by the political and media champions of women’s rights today?
First, all were involved in one way or another with populist movements — the bottom-up temperance and farmers’ movements which played such a major role in Canadian politics in the first decades of the 20th century. For example, McKinney — the first woman to be elected to a legislature in the British Empire — was a teacher and temperance worker elected to the Alberta legislature in 1917 as a representative of the populist Non-Partisan League. Parlby — the second woman to become a cabinet minister in the British Empire — was a prominent activist in the farmers’ movement and elected in 1921 to the Alberta legislature as a member of the populist United Farmers of Alberta.
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Secondly, at least three of the Alberta Five, were women of faith who drew their inspiration and resolve from their religious convictions and experience. McClung was a crusading member of the missionary-oriented Methodist Church. On the gravestone of Edwards — co-founder of the National Council of Women in Canada and the Victorian Order of Nurses — are inscribed the words, “Her delight was in the law of the Lord.” And McKinney was one of the first commissioners of the newly formed United Church of Canada.
Thirdly, at least two of the Alberta Five, had a “conservative bent.” Murphy — who framed the Persons case submission to the Supreme Court — was not a liberal or a socialist but a prairie Conservative and, as a police court magistrate, a strong advocate of law and order. While independent and non-partisan, Edwards — the oldest of the Alberta Five — was the author of two law books and a staunch advocate (as was Murphy) of property rights, in particular matrimonial property rights for women.
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Finally, all five of these remarkable women were based in Alberta, drawn to a jurisdiction where bottom-up political movements, social innovation and faith-based political action were accepted and facilitated, rather than suppressed, with three of them becoming members of the Alberta legislature. For years they were known as the Alberta Five, and it is only recently that those who would rewrite Canadian history in the light of contemporary political prejudices dropped the Alberta adjective and began to refer to them as the Famous Five.
Were the Alberta Five perfect? Of course not. They had their weaknesses, including their own prejudices, even while fighting valiantly to remove legally entrenched prejudices against women. But is it not unfair and reprehensible to trash their memory and accomplishments by lifting their words and actions out of historical context and prejudicially judging them by the values and standards of another day and age?
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Many of today’s champions of women’s rights in Canada harbour their own prejudices against populism, religion, conservatism, and jurisdictions where these perspectives have shaped the political landscape. But would not August 27, 2021 — the anniversary of that historic meeting in Edmonton to secure recognition of the personhood of women in Canadian law — be a good day to set aside such prejudices and to simply acknowledge and celebrate the lives and works of the Alberta Five as they really were?
Preston Manning is a former leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons and author of Do Something! 365 Ways You Can Strengthen Canada.
Manning: Remembering Alberta’s Famous Five … As They Really Were - Calgary Herald
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