Cairine Wilson
Cairine Reay Mackay Wilson (February 4 1885 - March 3 1962) was Canada's first female senator.
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 M.P. for Russell, Ontario 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.
She was appointed the first female senator of the country at the age of 45 in February of 1930 by then-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, just four months after the Persons Case judgement 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.
In 1949, after being asked by 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.
Wilson again made parliamentary history in 1955 when she became the first woman Deputy Speaker. Her husband Norman, who had been in failing health for some time, died on July 14, 1956.
Cairine Wilson died suddenly on Saturday, March 3, 1962.
