HISTORY THROUGH OUR EYES

Jan. 15, 1942: The province’s first female lawyers

On Jan. 15, 1942, Elizabeth Monk, left, and Suzanne Raymond-Filion, second from right, became the first two women admitted to the Quebec Bar.

This photo was taken a decade later, as female lawyers and law students gathered for a “tea” at the Cercle Universitaire to honour them along with two other pioneering female lawyers admitted to the bar that same year, Marcelle Hémond-Lacoste and Constance Short, right.

“The legal profession itself has been sorely divided on (admitting women to the bar), and at a meeting of the Montreal Council of the Bar in 1940, there was a majority of one only in favour. The General Council of the Bar was reticent in the matter, and left the decision to the Legislature,” we reported on Jan. 16, 1942 — under a page heading titled “News and Features for Women.” Other items on the page advised readers about how to crack eggs (yolks are less likely to break when cold, we said) and how to take care of babies. We also reported on Montreal nurses serving with the military overseas (it was the midst of the Second World War). Women had only received the vote provincially in Quebec in 1940.

Monk, who had graduated from McGill law school as gold medallist almost 20 years earlier, had been a member of the Nova Scotia bar since 1934 and was serving on Montreal city council at the time, one of the first three women to do so. She went on to have a long career practising corporate law in Montreal, and also collaborated with Thérèse Casgrain in advocating for women’s rights in the province.