First Person. Valerie Knowles
want to create hard feelings, or sort of rub the thing in. Some people, and especially some judges are terribly touchy.12
Whether there were many women who coveted a Senate seat is unimportant. The real significance of this decision lay in the fact that Canadian women had at last become persons in the eyes of the law and that a formidable psychological barrier to political equality had been removed.
Emily Murphy’s friends and supporters naturally expected the doughty crusader to be appointed Canada’s first woman senator. Instead, the Alberta judge, a Conservative, saw the first female appointment go to a dedicated Liberal, who had never been a militant feminist and who had never evinced the remotest interest in receiving a summons to the Red Chamber. However, although she was bitterly disappointed with and deeply hurt by this turn of events, Mrs Murphy refused to parade her feelings in public; she made no public statement whatsoever on Cairine Wilson’s appointment.
Emily Murphy could have been appointed the following year when the Conservatives were in office and the death of an Edmonton senator, the Hon. E.P. Lessard, created a suitable vacancy. But because the Bennett government wanted to replace him with another Roman Catholic and Mrs Murphy was an Anglican, it selected a Roman Catholic male senator instead. Two years later, in 1933, Judge Murphy died, her cherished dream unfulfilled.
Cairine Wilson’s appointment was made on 15 February 1930, some six months before Mackenzie King’s government was tossed out of office by R.B. Bennett’s Conservatives and eight years and a day from the date on which Mrs Wilson had founded the Ottawa Women’s Liberal Club. When she was catapulted onto the national stage, Cairine Wilson was forty-five, but still a remarkably young-looking, slender woman. Only one child was living away from home and that was eighteen-year-old Janet, the second oldest daughter, and she was studying in Paris. “Baby Norma,” the youngest member of the family, was only four. Although she had been very active in the Ottawa community for almost a decade and had given freely of her time and her money to the Liberal Party, Cairine Wilson professed to being surprised by Mackenzie King’s summons. Her name had been bandied about in connection with the existing Senate vacancies and even Janet in Paris had heard a rumour that her mother might be appointed to the Senate. Still, Cairine Wilson informed an interviewer that the summons was “something of a shock.” Later she would concede that she had told King, “You are going to make me the most hated woman in Canada.”
According to gossip of the day, Alex Smith, the Ontario Liberal Party organizer, suggested Cairine Wilson’s name for this trailblazing appointment on the grounds that Mrs Wilson was a successful spoke in the Party wheel.13 Whether or not he started the ball rolling, it appears that the power brokers settled on Cairine Wilson’s name on 11 February. As Mackenzie King noted in his diary for that date:
I went to the office at noon and discussed Senate appointments with Ontario colleagues & Haydon.14 None cared particularly about Percy Parker, & we got down finally to three names, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Oakes, & Sinclair. The latter wd. be my choice. We came to agreement on Mrs Norman Wilson as first woman Senator to be appointed. She has taken a leading part among the women — speaks English & French & is in a position to help the party & will. Was a close friend of Lady Laurier’s, is a lady & there will be less jealousy of her than of any other person.
King might have added that he felt comfortable with this choice for other reasons, one being his longstanding friendship with the Wilsons, who had entertained him in Ottawa and at their summer home in St. Andrews. Perhaps even more important, Cairine Wilson was a woman of wealth with high ideals and a social conscience — attributes that the pious prime minister always found attractive in the female sex. She was also, like King, a Presbyterian and a faithful member of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Ottawa.
As so often happens in such cases, the decision to name Cairine Wilson to the Senate was reported in the press before the appointment was made official, in fact, even before the Prime Minister had approached the recipient about it. “Mrs Norman Wilson likely for Senate” proclaimed the Ottawa Evening Journal in a subhead emblazoned across its front page on 14 February. Accompanying this bold announcement was a photograph showing an extremely youthful-looking profile of Mrs Wilson and an article which reported:
The appointment of Canada’s first woman Senator is likely to go to Ottawa. It was being forecast today in well-informed political circles that Mrs Norman Wilson, wife of Norman F. Wilson, ex-M.P. for Russell County, is to receive the vacancy in the Upper House created by the death of the late Hon.(Dr) J.D. Reid.
It is likely the matter will be decided by the Government at this afternoon’s meeting of Cabinet Council. It was stated this morning that until the appointment of Mrs Wilson is made there is an element of uncertainty as great pressure is being brought to bear on behalf of other candidates. However it is quite probable Mrs Wilson will be named. Mrs Wilson has all the qualifications for the post and if she accepts she will enjoy an honour held by her father, the late Senator Robert MacKay.(sic)
Just who leaked news of the government’s intentions is not known. Mackenzie King speculated in his diary that it was either his Secretary of State, Fernand Rinfret, or P. J. Veniot, a former premier of New Brunswick who served as Postmaster General. It could also have been Rinfret in collusion with James Malcolm, the Minister of Trade and Commerce. In any event, when the diffident bachelor went to the Wilson home that evening he was greeted by a highly embarrassed Cairine Wilson.15 According to letters written by the Wilsons and to jottings in King’s diary, the Prime Minister discovered a very reluctant recipient.
The famous diary reports:
Mrs Wilson seemed confused, said she was flattered to be asked but felt she could do more out, said others would be jealous, suggested Mrs Thorburn’s name16 etc. I told her we were agreed a woman should be appointed, also from Ont. rather than Quebec, of Ont. she was the unanimous choice & Cabinet today had all approved. I wd. put thro appointments tomorrow.17
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