First Person. Valerie Knowles
Mrs Wilson turned her attention to another cherished interest of hers: the political education of Canada’s young people. She had just led the way in establishing an organization that would inform women about the issues of the day and, it was hoped, pave the way for their smooth entry into political careers. Now she proposed to mastermind the setting up of an association that would attract young Canadians and introduce them to the world of politics.
The first steps along this road were taken at the inaugural assembly of the women’s federation when a committee was formed under Cairine Wilson’s leadership to establish a “League of Youth.”36 Two years later, in the winter of 1930, just before her appointment to the Senate, the Twentieth Century Liberal Association of Canada came into being. To mark its launching, seven hundred young people from across Canada assembled at the Chateau Laurier for a memorable banquet featuring an address by Mackenzie King and the presentation of a draft constitution for individual Twentieth Century Liberal clubs. Young people’s Liberal clubs were not, of course, a new phenomenon; they had been active across the country for years. What made this association so different was that it represented an attempt to coordinate the activities of the clubs already in existence, to establish new ones where none operated, and to bring all clubs together under one organizational roof. It also had an imaginative and evocative name, one clearly designed to appeal to its potential membership — Liberals born in the twentieth century.
In any event, the idea certainly fired the imagination of young people. Watching the spectacle of new Twentieth Century Liberal clubs blossom across the Canadian landscape, one enthusiastic witness rhapsodized:
One of the greatest innovations of the twentieth century, a century full of wonders and innovations is the organization of the Twentieth Century Liberal Clubs. In Ontario the Provincial Association covers a vast territory extending from Kenora to Ottawa, and along the border to Windsor. From a small beginning and in a very short time, the Twentieth Century Liberal clubs are springing up apparently overnight and are composed of the younger set, every member having been born in the twentieth century.37
The first club was established in Ottawa by Odette Lapointe Ouimet, daughter of Ernest Lapointe, a good friend of Cairine Wilson’s and at the time Mackenzie King’s minister of justice. George Higgerty, reporting to the association’s first national convention, in June 1933, observed, “To Miss Odette Lapointe we should all pay homage for having started the Twentieth Century movement.”38 In the sense that Odette Lapointe called together a group of young women in the winter of 1929 and launched the first club, then homage is due her. But both she and lawyer Sadie Lieff, another early member, have insisted that the idea for the movement originated with Cairine Wilson.
Mrs Wilson paid the rent for the association’s headquarters, a suite of two rooms on the seventh floor of Hope Chambers on Sparks Street. Here it shared space with the National Federation of Liberal Women of Canada, whose dedicated executive secretary, Helen Doherty, ran what has been described as “a national propaganda office.” Her assistant was Helen Campbell, who handled correspondence for the Twentieth Century Liberal Association and newsletters for the women’s federation. One of the most useful tools for this purpose was a Gestetner machine, which churned out thousands of newsletters for distribution across the country. “We became familiar with names in every hamlet across the country,” recalled Mrs Campbell. She also had vivid memories of Mrs Wilson’s organizing genius. “She was very persuasive. If she told you to stand on your head in the corner, you’d do it.”39 Another association member who could vouch for this was Ida Low. When Mrs Low was eight months pregnant, Cairine Wilson asked her to give a paper at the Chateau. The mother-to-be protested, whereupon Mrs Wilson replied, “Sure you can, just wear a cape.” Mrs Low wore a cape and gave the paper.
In Ottawa, members of the local Twentieth Century Liberal Club met four or five times a year wherever they could scrounge space, sometimes in a senator’s office. This meant that young men and women might find themselves sitting on the floor and leaning against a wall.40 Kathleen Ryan recalled that outside of national conventions, men and women in Toronto met separately. Unless there was an election, each group convened seven times a year to hear a speaker, discuss issues of the day and take care of business matters. During election campaigns the members addressed envelopes, answered phones and canvassed for candidates by phone. “Because of Cairine Wilson, the association had members with some standing in the community. In Toronto, for example, sixty percent of the women’s branch were Junior Leaguers,” reported Mrs Ryan. According to the one-time journalist, there was nobody to give young women leadership and direction before Cairine Wilson came to Toronto on Twentieth Century Liberal Association business. Mrs Wilson provided that inspiration. “We had such confidence in her. Here was a woman who didn’t need to do this, but she did. She took everything in her stride,” observed Mrs Ryan.41.
With the founding of the young Liberals’ association, Cairine Wilson could look back on a decade of outstanding achievement. Her eldest child, shy Olive, was now twenty and a leading light in that organization. The other children, with the exception of four-year-old Norma, were all enrolled in school, the girls at exclusive Elmwood School for girls, the boys at Ashbury College. Life had been, indeed, full. Little did she know, though, just how eventful it would become in the months ahead.
4
TO THE RED CHAMBER
Cairine Wilson’s entrance onto the centre stage of Canadian politics occurred on 15 February 1930 when her “dear chief” and friend, Mackenzie King, appointed her Canada’s first woman senator. In a sense, all the work that she had done in the political arena since 1921 had been preparation for this new and unsought appointment, an honour that followed some four months after the winning of the Persons case.
Today, it is difficult to imagine that learned counsels would be called upon to debate the meaning of the phrase “qualified Persons” as found in section 24 of the British North America Act. Yet this is what happened back in the 1920s when a band of determined Alberta feminists, led by Judge Emily Murphy of Edmonton, set out to prove that the Act’s reference to “qualified Persons” applied to both men and women and that, as a consequence, women could be summoned to the Senate, the upper house of Canada’s parliament. The disputed section reads:
The Governor General shall from Time to Time, in the Queen’s Name, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and, subject to the Provisions of this Act, every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator.
Since only the masculine pronoun is employed in section 23 to describe the qualifications of a senator, the question arose whether “qualified Persons,” as described in section 24, included both men and women.
The so-called Persons case came before the Supreme Court of Canada in 1928, but only after an indomitable struggle whose roots reached back to 1916. In June of that year the progressive Sifton government of Alberta decided to demonstrate its faith in women by appointing Emily Murphy magistrate of the newly established Women’s Court in Edmonton. Friends and feminists applauded the move, but not so some of the magistrate’s male colleagues. In fact, the new appointee soon discovered that the honour of becoming the British Empire’s first woman police magistrate was not without its drawbacks; on the first day that she presided over her court, an enraged counsel informed “Her Honour” that she was not a “person” under the BNA Act of 1867 and that therefore she had no right to be holding court.1
Similar objections were raised in the months that followed, but always the judge held her peace, thinking that the provincial government could prove, if necessary, that she was a “person.” The question finally came to a head after Mrs Alice Jamieson was appointed a Calgary police magistrate in December 1916 and one of her cases was appealed on the ground that a woman could not qualify for the position of magistrate. The case was taken to Alberta’s Supreme Court where Mr Justice Scott ruled: “...there is at common law no legal disqualification for holding public office in the Government of this country arising from any distinction of sex...” 2
And there the matter might have rested but for Emily Murphy. Not content with having the issue settled for Alberta,