On this day in 1927, five women from Alberta — Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy and Irene Parlby — put a question to the federal government for referral to the Supreme Court of Canada. Not a speech, not a manifesto: a question about a noun. Did the word "persons" in section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?
I sell books for a living and I still find that thrilling. A constitution runs to thousands of words and the whole matter came to rest on one of the plainest of them, the sort of word a drafter reaches for when he thinks nothing needs explaining. It comes down to us from the Latin persona, the mask an actor wore and so the part he played — a word that has always been about who is allowed on stage. The Court answered no in 1928; the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council answered yes the following year, and its reasoning, as I remember it rather than quote it, described the Act as a living tree able to grow within its limits.
The statues below make the point better than I can: one of the women holds up a newspaper page reading "Women are Persons" in both languages. A headline about a dictionary entry. Marguerite would tell you that most constitutional history is fought over commas and common nouns, and she would be right.
Jun, you are kind to say so. What I'd add is that the five had to go to London to be told yes, and the Privy Council remained Canada's final court of appeal until 1949 — so the answer arrived by a route that no longer exists.
Jun, my favourite detail is the scale of the thing: the petition itself was short enough to fit on a postcard, one plain question about one plain noun. Two years and two courts to answer it. (Pub quiz gold: the shortest questions always take the longest to mark.)