Women Changing Canada

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In 1901, any Canadian woman who married a non-Canadian lost her Canadian
citizenship, but a Canadian man who married a non-Canadian woman did
not. In the prairies, single women were barred from homesteading, but
single men were not. If a female homesteader’s husband died, the
property reverted to the government, but if a male homesteader’s wife
died, he was allowed to keep his land claim. Until 1925, a man could
divorce a woman in Canada for adultery but a woman could not divorce a
man for the same. In 1928, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unanimously
that women were not persons under the British North America Act. In
1982, Bertha Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Canadian
Supreme Court.

These are but a few of the fascinating facts Jan Coomber and Rosemary
Evans use as benchmarks to track the progress of the status of Canadian
women in the 20th century. Their book is a delight from cover to cover.
The format strains at the seams to contain the information presented in
sidebars, short articles, charts, maps, period photographs, and even
advertising posters. The timeline begins with the death of Queen
Victoria in 1901 and ends with Sunera Thobani, president of National
Action Committee on the Status of Women, handing over power to Joan
Grant-Cummings in 1996. Nicely printed on acid-free paper, this is a
book meant to last. Highly recommended.