Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Agnes Macphail
1890 – 1954
The first woman elected to the Canadian Parliament
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Canada Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
She won Grey South East in 1921, the first federal election in which Canadian women could stand, and spent nineteen years as the only woman in the House — then went and reformed the prisons.
Agnes Campbell Macphail was a country schoolteacher from Grey County in Ontario who ran for the Progressive Party in December 1921, in the first federal election Canadian women were allowed to contest. She won, and became the first woman ever to sit in the House of Commons. For most of her nineteen years there she was the only one.
She was treated accordingly — commented on for her clothes, heckled about her marital status — and got on with the work. Her longest campaign was on the prisons, where she went in person to see conditions and forced the government, in 1936, to appoint the Archambault royal commission; its report reshaped the Canadian penitentiary system and she is generally credited as the reason it happened. She was also the first Canadian woman in the country's delegation to the League of Nations, and worked on old age pensions and farmers' co-operatives.
She lost her seat in 1940, and in 1943 became one of the first two women elected to the Ontario legislature. There she got Ontario's first equal pay legislation passed in 1951. She died in 1954, with almost no money.
She was treated accordingly — commented on for her clothes, heckled about her marital status — and got on with the work. Her longest campaign was on the prisons, where she went in person to see conditions and forced the government, in 1936, to appoint the Archambault royal commission; its report reshaped the Canadian penitentiary system and she is generally credited as the reason it happened. She was also the first Canadian woman in the country's delegation to the League of Nations, and worked on old age pensions and farmers' co-operatives.
She lost her seat in 1940, and in 1943 became one of the first two women elected to the Ontario legislature. There she got Ontario's first equal pay legislation passed in 1951. She died in 1954, with almost no money.
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