{"id":4793,"date":"2016-10-17T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T08:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4793"},"modified":"2016-10-16T15:39:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T15:39:34","slug":"happy-persons-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4793","title":{"rendered":"Happy Persons Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emily<\/a>

Emily Murphy\/Status of Women Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

And yes, there is no missing apostrophe; this is how Canada commemorates, on October 18th<\/sup> every year, the 1929 Court decision giving women the right to sit in the Senate.\u00a0 The case was known as \u2018Edwards v.Canada (Attorney General)’, and it was brought by five women, who sought to clarify the terminology used in the British North America (BNA) Act of 1867.<\/p>\n

The BNA Act set out the powers and responsibilities of the provinces and the federal government. It used the term \u2018persons\u2019 when referring to more than one person, and the word \u2018he\u2019 when referring to one person. This led to the Act being interpreted as saying that only a man could be a person, thereby preventing women from participating in politics or affairs of the state.<\/p>\n

\"Henrietta<\/a>

Henrietta Muir Edwards\/Status of Women Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

Emily Murphy was the first woman magistrate of the British Empire and Judge in a newly created Women\u2019s Court in Edmonton.\u00a0 On her first day in court a defendant\u2019s lawyer challenged her ruling on the grounds that she was not a \u2018person\u2019 and therefore not qualified to act as a magistrate. Alice Jamieson, a magistrate in Calgary, was similarly challenged.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s groups began pressurising the Government to appoint a woman to the Senate, but the \u2018person\u2019 argument was used to keep them out. If the word \u2018person\u2019 only applied to men, then, the argument went, no woman could be a qualified person to sit in the Senate.<\/p>\n

By this time women\u2019s suffrage was well established in Canada; provincial voting rights for women were secured in the individual states over the period 1916-1918, and women were given the right to vote federally from January 28 1916.\u00a0 The next steps were to become involved in the executive.<\/p>\n

\"Irene<\/a>

Irene Parlby\/Status of Women Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1927 Emily Murphy and four other prominent Canadian women – Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards – asked the Supreme Court to determine if the word \u2018person\u2019 in the BNA Act included women.\u00a0 After five weeks of deliberation, the Court decided it did not.\u00a0 Emily and her colleagues, who came to be known as \u2018The Famous Five\u2019, took the case to London, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Great Britain, which was at the time Canada\u2019s highest court of appeal.<\/p>\n

On October 19 1929 Lord Sankey, the Lord Chancellor, announced the decision of the five lords:<\/p>\n

\"Louise<\/a>

Louise McKinney\/Status of Women Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

“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 ‘person’ should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”<\/p>\n

Each one of the Famous Five was active in the fight to improve conditions for women across the board, all contributing to the legal system in one form or another.\u00a0 In 1979, on the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the Privy Council\u2019s decision, the Canadian Government instituted the Governor General\u2019s Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case, to recognise the promotion of equality for girls and women in Canada.<\/p>\n

\"Nellie<\/a>

Nellie McClung\/Status of Women Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

In my view, those women were dames of the highest order…a shining example of the power of female commitment and persistence. Happy Persons Day!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

..lawyer challenged her ruling on the grounds that she was not a \u2018person\u2019 and therefore not qualified to act as a magistrate..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4805,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions\/4805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}