Hint: it's not about the chair.
And yes, I know it's October 13 today, but it's not my turn to blog on October 18, so I'm giving you a head start.
Give up? October 18 is 'Persons Day' in Canada, commemorating the legal victory of the 'Famous Five,' a group of women progressives from Alberta in the 1929 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal for Canada, overturning the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which had ruled that because women were not eligible to vote or hold public office in 1867, that the term 'persons' in the eligibility criteria set out in the BNA act for the Senate should be construed to refer to men only.
You can read all about it in a great book by Robert Sharpe and Patricia MacMahon.
So what else is special about October 18? A new archival website is being launched by the Alberta Women's Memory Project on that date.
Coincidence, I think not.
I had hoped to have a picture from the Project to illustrate this post, but they are picky--you have to ask permission and I left it too late. So the picture above left is cribbed from heroines.ca. It's a photo of a bronze statue of Emily Murphy by Barbara Paterson, one of a group of statues of the FF receiving the good news, copyright M. Forster.
