Agnes Macphail, the first-ever woman to be elected a MP, was on her feet in the Commons on this date in 1925. She had been sent to the Commons by voters in the Ontario riding of Grey Southeast four-years before. Macphail’s June 4, 1925, where she called for economic freedom for Canadian women, is worth quoting from today.
Agnes Macphail: I believe it is the desire of everyone in this House that the home should be preserved. I believe the preservation of the home as an institution in the future lies almost entirely in the hands of the men. If they are willing to give to women economic freedom within that home; if they are willing to live by the standard that they wish the women to live by, the home will be preserved. If the preservation of the home means the enslavement of women, economically or morally, then we had better break it . . .
I would ask men to think of that and think of it seriously. I do believe that the economic freedom of women is one of the things that is causing increasing divorces, because women will not tolerate what they once had to tolerate. You can smile about it if you like, but I know a lot of men who talk very learnedly on a subject like this and who want women to be very pure and very chaste when they themselves are not fit to associate with a chaste and pure woman. So, when we have a single standard for men and women, both morally and economically, we shall have a home that is well worth preserving, and I think we can be quite sure it will be preserved.
All told, Macphail served a commanding 18 years in Parliament. She was also a MPP at Ontario’s Queen’s Park. She once famously said: "Most women think politics aren't lady-like. Well, I'm no lady. I'm a human being."[
Wise words from a Canadian pioneer.
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.