As a young child living in rural Ontario in the 1890s, Agnes Macphail was a bit of an outlier. She despised learning how to cook and sew, preferring by far to spend time in the family barn with her father. A bright, ambitious girl, Agnes never outgrew her refusal to comply with the status quo of the era: instead, she dedicated her entire life to challenging it.
The seeds of Agnes Macphail’s trailblazing political career were sown when she joined the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) to fight for the rights of struggling farmers like her parents. As a member of the Progressive Party, affiliated to the UFO at the time, she became the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1921. She was later one of the first two women elected to the Ontario Legislature.
In both federal and provincial politics, Macphail never lost sight of society’s most vulnerable. During her time as a Member of Parliament, she played an instrumental role in reforming the Canadian penal system after being shocked by the living conditions at the Kingston Penitentiary. A champion of workers’ rights and an unapologetic feminist, her progressive ideals and strong will led to the adoption of Ontario’s first equal pay legislation in 1951. Other milestones in her iconoclastic career include founding the Elizabeth Fry Society of Canada—an advocacy group that helps female convicts navigate the justice system—and becoming the first woman in the Canadian delegation to the League of Nations.
Agnes Macphail died in February 1954 at age 63, just before she was to be offered an appointment to the Canadian Senate. Decidedly ahead of her time, her ideal of an equal, prosperous society for all Canadians—not just the rich and well-connected—lives on as a defining principle of modern-day Canada.
