Human Rights A Day

British Columbia women granted the right to vote.Canadian women were never formally and legally denied the right to vote until the 1867 British North America Act spelled out the exclusion. It was now up to the provinces to overturn that, and they did, one by one, initially for white women. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta led the way in 1916. In British Columbia, the Political Equality League presented Conservative Premier Sir Richard McBride with a petition of 10,000 signatures in 1912. When he refused to grant their request, suffragists shifted their support to the Liberals. The 1916 general election ran a referendum question on the ballot asking men if they wanted to extend the vote to women. The “yeahs” outnumbered the “nays” more than two to one. On April 5, 1917, Liberal Premier Harlan Brewster delivered on his promise and the referendum results to give B.C. women the vote. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. A bright student, he skipped grades nine and 12 and entered college at age 15. He graduated with a bachelor of arts, a bachelor of divinity, and a Ph.D. in theology by 1955, not to mention many awards and recognition from fellow students. During his studies, at the age of only 19, King was ordained as a Baptist minister at the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1953, he married Coretta Scott and they raised four children while he became increasingly involved in promoting rights for black Americans. While not the only black activist at the time, King was often seen as the face and voice of liberation for blacks. He was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group responsible for the Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s. His involvement with the civil rights movement got him arrested 30 times, never deterring him from his writing, speeches an

A 25-year wait for apology ends for orphanage’s abuse victims.The Roman Catholic lay order of the Congregation of Christian Brothers began running an orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1892. The first formal complaints of sexual, physical and psychological abuse were levelled in 1970. Newfoundland police investigated the first serious allegations in 1975. After 12 years of stalls and cover-ups, former Catholic priest James Hickey went to jail for five years; others followed. When more victims came forward, the orphanage was forced to close in 1990. On April 3, 1992, the Congregation of the Christian Brothers formally apologized to the abused victims and announced that the orphanage would be torn down and the land sold to pay for programs for the former residents. Although legal battles continued for years, little compensation went to the victims. Eventually, victims’ lawyers tried a new tactic and searched for other Christian Brothers property. Finally, on the other side of the country, Vancouver Colleg

Sexual orientation is “read in” to Alberta’s human rights legislation.Delwin Vriend worked as a laboratory coordinator for King’s College in Edmonton, Alberta, until fired when the institution discovered he was gay. When Vriend filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, he was told that sexual orientation was not a protected ground in Alberta. Vriend and others took their case to court, where the judge agreed there should be protection for gay men and lesbians. The court “read in” sexual orientation as a protected ground (that is, included it in their human rights legislation), but found that move overturned by a majority in the Alberta Court of Appeal.On April 2, 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with the original trial judge and read in sexual orientation, saying that denying gays and lesbians protection from discrimination is contrary to the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court stated that although adding protections the legislature had not might be s

Yukon aboriginals sign massive land claim deal with Ottawa.Fourteen aboriginal bands, through the Council for Yukon Indians, negotiated with the federal government to settle land claims in the Yukon Territory for 17 years. Although the council had hoped to win the entire territory, it finally signed a deal on April 1, 1990. The bands would receive $232 million and 41,440 square kilometres of land, representing 8.6 per cent of all the Yukon Territory. The parties had reached an agreement in principle a year earlier, but took until their self-imposed deadline to work out the details. The council and the federal and territorial cabinets ratified the final agreement in 1993. Although at the time, the parties still had to work out individual settlement issues for each of the bands, as well as negotiations on self-government, the agreement represented one of the biggest steps in recent Canadian history to rectify land claims amongst the aboriginal population. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informatio