Today is the 75th anniversary of an important milestone in the history of the Canadian women in federal politics. It was on this date in 1950 that Ellen Fairclough was sent to the Commons by Hamilton, Ontario and area voters in a by-election. This made her only the sixth woman elected to the House in Canadian history up until that point.
Seven-years after becoming a MP, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed her to cabinet, making her the first woman federal cabinet minister. She served with distinction throughout the Diefenbaker premiership.
Later in life, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney granted the her the deserved honorific "Right Honourable. Fittingly, it was Ellen Fairclough who officially nominated Kim Campbell, who would become Canada’s first female Prime Minister, at the 1993 PC leadership convention called to replace Mulroney.
Fairclough passed into history in 2004 at age 99.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.