On October 18, 1929, a court in London ruled that women were "persons" under Canada's constitution and could be appointed to the Senate. Six years earlier, on July 1, 1923, Dominion Day, a new law all but shut Canada's door to Chinese immigrants; Chinese Canadians came to call July 1 Humiliation Day. Both events belong to the same period. Between 1914 and 1929, some Canadians won new rights while others were shut out on the basis of race, origin or status. This lesson looks at both sides of that story and at how people fought for inclusion.
Winning the vote
Suffragists (campaigners for women's right to vote) had organized for decades, often through groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which hoped women voters would support prohibition and social reform. In January 1914, writer Nellie McClung and her allies staged a "Women's Parliament" in Winnipeg that mocked the arguments against women voting by reversing them. The war strengthened their case: women were running homes and farms, working in factories and serving as nurses overseas. Manitoba became the first province to give women the provincial vote on January 28, 1916, followed by Saskatchewan and Alberta later that year and British Columbia and Ontario in 1917.
- 1917: the Military Voters Act let nursing sisters vote, and the Wartime Elections Act gave the federal vote to soldiers' wives, widows, mothers and sisters. In Alberta, Louise McKinney and Roberta MacAdams became the first women elected to a legislature in the British Empire.
- May 24, 1918: a federal law gave the vote to most women who were British subjects aged 21 and over, from January 1, 1919. In 1919 women also won the right to run for the House of Commons.
- December 6, 1921: Agnes Macphail, a Progressive from rural Ontario, became the first woman elected to the House of Commons. She went on to champion prison reform, pensions and equal pay.
- Provinces: Nova Scotia (1918), New Brunswick (1919) and Prince Edward Island (1922) followed; Newfoundland, still separate, in 1925. Quebec women won the provincial vote only in 1940, after long campaigns by Marie Lacoste Gérin-Lajoie, Thérèse Casgrain and others.
The Persons Case
In 1916, Emily Murphy became a police magistrate in Edmonton, the first woman police magistrate in the British Empire. Lawyers challenged her rulings on the grounds that a woman was not a "person" in law. The question that mattered most was whether women could sit in the Senate, which the British North America Act opened to "qualified persons". In 1927, Murphy and four other Alberta women, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards, later called the Famous Five, petitioned the federal government to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to decide. On April 24, 1928, it ruled that women were not "persons" for this purpose. The women appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, then Canada's highest court of appeal. On October 18, 1929, Lord Sankey ruled that women were persons, describing the constitution as "a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits". In February 1930, Cairine Wilson became Canada's first woman senator.
- Work: after the war, many women lost factory jobs, but more women worked as clerks, typists, telephone operators, sales staff and nurses, and many taught school. Most were young and single, paid less than men, and expected to leave paid work when they married.
- Social change: shorter hair and skirts, dance halls and cars symbolized new freedom for some young women (the "flapper"), alarming many older Canadians.
- Sport: the Edmonton Grads women's basketball team won almost every game they played, the Ladies Ontario Hockey Association was formed in 1922, and Canada's "Matchless Six" track team won medals at the 1928 Olympics.
- Black women's organizing: Black Cross Nurses, part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which opened its first Canadian division in Montreal in 1919, cared for the sick, taught health and hygiene, and supported Black veterans and families.
- Indigenous women: Inuit women's skill in preparing skins and sewing clothing was essential to Arctic whaling and the fur trade. Under the Indian Act, a First Nations woman lost her status if she married a man without status, and the wife and children of a First Nations man who was enfranchised (gave up his status, for example to gain the vote) lost their status with him.
Immigration policy: preferred and unwanted
Immigration to Canada peaked in 1913, when about 400,000 newcomers arrived, a yearly record that stood until 2021. The war cut immigration sharply. After the war, Ottawa ranked newcomers by origin. "Preferred" immigrants were British, American and northern and western European. Central, eastern and southern Europeans were "non-preferred" but admitted when farms, mines and railways needed labour. Asians and Black people were openly unwanted. The 1919 amendments to the Immigration Act let the cabinet bar any group for its "peculiar customs, habits, modes of life" or political views, and immigrants from former enemy countries were barred for several years.
| Policy | Group affected | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Order-in-council, 1919 | Doukhobors, Mennonites and Hutterites | Barred as "undesirable" partly because they refused military service; the ban was lifted for Mennonites and Hutterites in 1922, and about 21,000 Mennonites fleeing the Soviet Union arrived from 1923 to 1930 |
| Railway Agreement, 1925 | Central and eastern Europeans (Ukrainians, Poles, Germans and others) | Let the CPR and CNR recruit farm workers from "non-preferred" countries; tens of thousands settled on the Prairies before it ended in 1930 |
| Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 | Chinese | Ended the head tax but banned almost all Chinese immigration until 1947 |
| Agreement with Japan, 1908 (tightened 1928) | Japanese | Limited Japanese immigration to about 400 male labourers and servants a year, cut to 150 in 1928 |
| Continuous journey regulation, 1908 | South Asians | Required a non-stop voyage from the country of origin, which was impossible from India; used to turn away the Komagata Maru in 1914 |
| Order-in-council, 1911, and border practices | Black Americans | The Laurier cabinet approved a one-year ban on Black immigrants as "unsuitable" in August 1911; it was never enforced and was cancelled that October, but officials used medical checks and discouragement to keep Black settlers out |
The Chinese Immigration Act, which came into force on July 1, 1923, was the harshest. Chinese workers had helped build the CPR in the 1880s, but from 1885 Chinese immigrants had to pay a head tax (50 dollars at first, raised to 100 dollars in 1900 and 500 dollars in 1903). The 1923 Act replaced the tax with near-total exclusion: estimates suggest only about 15 to 50 Chinese immigrants were admitted between 1923 and 1947. Men already in Canada could not bring wives and children, so families were separated for decades and Chinese communities shrank. The Act was repealed in 1947, and the federal government apologized for the head tax and exclusion on June 22, 2006. The Komagata Maru, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, mostly Sikhs, all British subjects, was held in Vancouver harbour from May 23, 1914; only 24 were admitted, and the ship was forced to leave on July 23, 1914. Canada apologized in 2016.
- Racism and nativism: in the late 1920s the Ku Klux Klan gained thousands of members in Saskatchewan, spreading hostility toward eastern European immigrants, French Canadians and Catholics; the Orange Order also opposed French-language and separate schooling in several provinces.
- Anti-Black racism: Black Canadians faced segregated schools in parts of Nova Scotia and Ontario, were refused service in restaurants, theatres and hotels, and were limited to jobs such as railway sleeping car porter.
- Antisemitism: Jewish Canadians faced quotas, exclusion from jobs, clubs and neighbourhoods, and discriminatory property covenants (see the next unit's lesson on antisemitism in Canada).
- Mutual aid: communities supported newcomers and one another through organizations such as the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Ukrainian community halls, and Chinese benevolent associations. These communities built places of worship, schools, newspapers and cultural life that became part of Canada's heritage.