Cairine Wilson

Cairine Reay Mackay Wilson ( born February 4, 1885 in Montréal, † March 3, 1962 in Ottawa ) was a Canadian politician. She was the first woman who belonged to the Senate.

Biography

She was the daughter of Jane Mackay and Robert Mackay, a Liberal Senator and personal friend of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. In 1909 she married Frank Norman Wilson, a liberal deputies of the lower house, with whom she had eight children. 1918 the family moved to Ottawa, where Cairine Wilson was active in numerous organizations.

Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appointed Wilson on February 15, 1930, the first senator of the country, only four months after the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had spoken the last instance verdict in the case Edwards v. Canada ( Attorney General ). Previously, women could not be members of the Senate, because they were not full persons under the law.

Wilson sat for 32 years in succession, until her death, as the representative of the Province of Ontario in the Senate. As president of the Canadian League of Nations Society, she spoke out publicly against the 1938 Munich Agreement from. During the Second World War Kings government was extremely reluctant to recognition of Jewish refugees, but Wilson was able to record 100 orphans.

At the request of Kings successor Louis Saint -Laurent Wilson was Canada's first female delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1949. She was chairman of the National Refugee Committee and the first woman in the Senate, a standing committee headed ( Immigration and Labour). For her services to refugee children, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honour in 1950.