In Canada, the Famous Five is a reference to five crusaders for women’s rights.
** Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931)
** Louise McKinney (1868-1931)
** Emily Murphy (1868-1933)
** Irene Parlby (1868-1965)
** Nellie McClung (1873-1951)
In 1927, these five women came together and launched a case which is known as the Persons Case.
At the time, women in Canada had the right to vote, but women did not have the right to become members of the Upper Chamber (the Senate), because women were not regarded as persons.
They lost the first round. The Supreme Court turned them down, but they appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and in 1929 they won.
From this moment in time, women in Canada were officially regarded as persons.
In recent years, the Famous Five have been subjected to some criticism, because some of them had a racist and elitist attitude.
They campaigned for women’s rights. But the women whose rights they championed were white and educated and came from the middle class or the upper class.
Two of the five (Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung) supported the eugenics movement which was quite strong and influential in the US and Canada in the beginning of the 20th century.
Specifically, Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung supported the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928 which allowed doctors to perform an involuntary sterilization of women who were regarded as “mentally deficient.”
This law was on the books for many years. It was finally repealed in 1972.
The Famous Five were a product of the times in which they lived. They managed to break away from the traditional norm in one significant respect – they demanded equality for women – but in most other respects they were conformist and accepted the contemporary norms of society.
REFERENCES
# 1. Books
** The Famous Five: Emily Murphy and the Case of the Missing Persons by Nancy Millar (1999)
** The Persons Case: The Origins and Legacy of the Fight for Legal Personhood by Robert J. Sharpe and Patricia McMahon (2007) (2008) (2017)
** The Famous Five: Canada’s Crusaders for Women’s Rights by Barbara Smith (2019)
# 2. Websites
Library and Archives of Canada
** Henrietta Edwards
** Nellie McClung
** Louise McKinney
** Emily Murphy
** Irene Parlby
** Established in 1996
# 3. Videos
** Did You Know? The Famous Five and the Persons Case (2014) (run time = 6 minutes) (available on YouTube)
** How 5 women changed Canada forever over a cup of tea (2016) (run time = 3 minutes) (available on Vimeo)
# 4. Articles available online
** Margaret E. Hallett, “Nellie McClung,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 1 April 2008 (updated 8 November 2021)
** Mohammed Adam, “Monuments and mythology – Let’s not sanitize the past of famous Canadians,” Ottawa Citizen, 27 October 2016
** Terry Jordan, “The Other Side of Emily Murphy,” City Museum of Edmonton, 21 October 2020
** Nicole Bergot, “Statue of women’s rights pioneer Emily Murphy defaced with red paint in Edmonton,” The Expositor, 14 July 2021
Neil Parmar, “Canada, not as nice as you thought,” OZY - A Modern Media Company (no date listed - probably 2017) (One section of this account about the dark side of Canada begins with the headline: The Suffragettes and the skeletons in their closets)
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The Famous Five Crusaders of
Women's Rights
in Canada
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