Cairine Wilson
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Cairine Reay Mackay Wilson (February 4, 1885 – March 3, 1962) was Canada's first female senator.
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[edit] Early life
Born Cairine Reay Mackay in Montréal she was the daughter of Jane Mackay and Robert Mackay, a Liberal Senator and personal friend of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. In 1909, she married Norman Wilson, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Russell and they moved to Rockland, Ontario to begin a family.
In 1918, the Wilsons moved to Ottawa, where Cairine performed extensive volunteer work. She helped found the Twentieth Century Liberal Association and the National Federation of Liberal Women of Canada, of which she was President from 1938 to 1948.
[edit] Senator
She was appointed the first female senator of the country at the age of 45 in February 1930 by the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, just four months after the Persons Case judgment was handed down by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Previously, women had not been allowed to serve in the Senate as lower courts had argued they were not full "persons" under the law.
As president of the League of Nations Society of Canada in 1938, Senator Wilson spoke out against the Munich Agreement's appeasement of Hitler. During the Second World War, the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King was resistant to permitting Jewish refugees from Germany to settle in Canada, but she was able to arrange the acceptance of 100 orphans.
[edit] Delegate to UN
In 1949, at the request of King's successor Louis St. Laurent, she became Canada's first female delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She was the chairman of the Canadian National Committee on Refugees and the first woman to chair a Senate Standing Committee (Immigration and Labour). She was given the Cross of the Knight of the Legion of Honour by France in 1950 for her work with child refugees.
[edit] Deputy Speaker, Federal Parliament
Wilson again made parliamentary history in 1955 when she became the first woman Deputy Speaker.
[edit] Family and later life
Her husband Norman, who had been in failing health for some time, died on July 14, 1956; they were the parents of eight children.
Cairine Wilson died suddenly on Saturday, March 3, 1962.
[edit] References
- Capital lives : 32 profiles of leading Ottawa personalities, Valerie Knowles (2005) ISBN 0-9739071-1-8
