nd children were passed during her time in public office. Some called Parlby the “Minister of Cooperation.”
The first United Farmers of Alberta legislative caucus in summer 1921. This was the meeting at which Herbert Greenfield was selected as Premier. On the right is Richard Reid, who would later serve as Premier himself. On the left, in the white hat, is Irene Parlby, Alberta's first female cabinet minister.
In August 1927, Emily Murphy, Canada’s first woman judge, invited Henrietta Edwards, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Nellie McClung to a meeting at her Edmonton home. Murphy had carefully drafted a petition to put before the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the interpretation of the word persons in the British North America Act (now called the Constitution Act, 1867). At the time, women were not included in the definition of persons under the Constitution.
Murphy and the others signed the petition. Edwards’s signature appeared first; thus, the case was titled Edwards v. Attorney General of Canada. The petition asked the Supreme Court whether the word persons in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867 included women. If it considered women to be persons, the Constitution would allow for a woman to be appointed to the Senate.
Handing down the judgment on 24 April 1928, the Supreme Court denied the petition. The women — first called the “Alberta Five” and later the “Famous Five” — took their request to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England (Canada’s highest court of appeal until 1949).
On 18 October 1929, after much deliberation, the Privy Council reversed the decision of the Supreme Court. It concluded that “the word ‘persons’ in sec. 24 does include women, and that women are eligible to be summoned to and become members of the Senate of Canada.” Lord Sankey, who delivered the judgement on behalf of the Privy Council in what became known as the Persons Case, also remarked that the “exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours […] and to those who ask why the word [persons] should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not.”
Like other members of the Famous Five, Irene Parlby has been criticized as being elitist and racist, and for supporting the eugenics movement. Eugenics was a pseudoscience that subscribed to the idea that the human population could be improved by controlling reproduction. Many influential Canadians, including J. S. Woodsworth, Dr. Clarence Hincks and Tommy Douglas, supported eugenic ideas in the early 1900s. (See also Tommy Douglas and Eugenics.) They promoted both “positive” eugenics (promoting the breeding of “fit” members of society) and “negative” eugenics (discouraging procreation by those considered “unfit”). Eugenicists argued that “mental defectives” and the “feeble-minded” were prone to alcoholism, promiscuity, mental illness, delinquency and criminal behaviour, and therefore posed a threat to the moral fabric of the community. These concerns led to increasing support for eugenic legislation, including the sterilization of “defectives.”
Parlby supported the passing of eugenics legislation, titled the Sexual Sterilization Act, while she was an Alberta cabinet minister. In a 1924 speech to members of the United Farm Women of Alberta, Parlby posed a question about the standard farming practice of culling the herd to breed only the best animals, “and yet when it comes to the human race we allow the mating of the most diseased and imperfect both mentally and physically?”
Parlby and others believed the sterilization procedures would prevent further problems and so passed the Sexual Sterilization Act. The legislation was enacted in 1928 and repealed in 1972. During that time, thousands of people deemed “psychotic” or “mentally deficient” underwent forced sterilization. A disproportionate number of them were Indigenous women. (See also Sterilization of Indigenous Women in Canada.)
League of Nations
In 1930, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett appointed Irene Parlby one of three Canadian delegates to the League of Nation