Don't you "Person" Me!

Saturday, October 18th is "Persons Day" in Canada

So if you're a person, its your holiday, eh!

Just kidding, you hosers! This is actually a holiday celebrating the Women's Franchise Act which in 1918, gave every woman in Canada, over the age of 21, the right to vote.

When this act was passed, Women's groups that sought to bring about social change requested the Prime Minister appoint a woman to the Senate, as on of the eligible "persons" specified under the British North America Act. Two successive Prime Ministers claimed that they could not do this unless the BNA Act was modified, since women had no independent legal identity in Britain when the BNA Act was passed in 1867.

Judge Emily Murphy, the preferred Senate Candidate of national women's groups, persuaded the government to direct the Supreme Court to rule on whether women were indeed "persons". The court ruled in the negative, but on October 18, 1929, eight years after the campaign began, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, then the appeals court for the Canadian Supreme Court, ruled in the women's favour.

It's also recorded in several historian's logs, that the two successive Prime Ministers who ruled against this Act were plagued with problematic marriages, often reporting they received massive amounts of back talk, burnt food, stolen blankets at night, and little to no sex, from their wives. One Minister was quoted "and so I told her to fetch me some tea and she was all 'I'm sorry - I'm not a person - you'll have to get up off your fat ass and fetch that tea yourself.' " Amazing.