Human Rights A Day

Newfoundland court brings province in line with others on same-sex marriage. As Canadian politicians debated the merits of same-sex marriage, Canada’s judges were holding up existing laws to the equality provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sexual orientation was not one of the listed protected grounds, but in 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada “read in” sexual orientation as a protected ground. While most Canadians agreed that gay and lesbians should be protected from discrimination in jobs and housing for example, a certain number felt very strongly that “marriage” was going too far. However, in the sober climate of the court room, the arguments against gay marriage, such as it being an institution for raising children, did not stand up to a charter challenge since there were many examples of gay and lesbian couples having children and many examples of heterosexual couples not. In 2003, parliamentarians voted to keep the definition of marriage between a man and a woman, but on June 10, 2003, Onta

Canadian lawyer, politician and broadcaster Judy LaMarsh is born in Chatham, Ontario. Judy Verlyn LaMarsh was born on December 20, 1924 in Chatham, Ontario and was brought up in Niagara Falls. Between 1943 and 1946 she joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corp and travelled from Halifax to Vancouver, obtaining the rank of sergeant. After the war LaMarsh earned her law degree from Osgoode Hall and joined her father’s law firm in Niagara Falls conducting criminal law. She won a seat in the House of Commons as a Liberal during a by-election in 1960 and when Lester Pearson became prime minister in 1963, LaMarsh became the second woman and the first Liberal woman to hold a federal cabinet post. As minister of National Health and Welfare, she began drafting Canada’s cherished Medicare system and the Canada Pension Plan came into being. Between 1965 and 1968 she became secretary of state during Canada’s centennial celebrations, and she established the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In 1968, during the leadersh

Margaret Thatcher hands Hong Kong back to China, effective 1997. Fearing an end to their freedoms and capitalist way of life, the six million residents of Hong Kong were hoping the British would leave them some protections when their lease for controlling the region expired in 1997. However, with few options available to her, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the joint Sino-British declaration with China’s Zhao Ziyang during a ceremony on December 19, 1984. China agreed that for the next 50 years, it would give Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs.” The two governments established a principle of "one country, two systems" through which communist China would allow Hong Kong to continue its capitalist ways, also granting it a certain number of rights and freedoms. Already, Hong Kong residents had been flocking to other countries or securing foreign passports enabling them to leave if they later chose; that greatly increased after the declaration was signed. E

Quebec invokes the “notwithstanding clause” to protect French language on outdoor signs. In response to Quebecers’ concerns about the erosion of the French language in Quebec, the province introduced Bill 101, designed to enhance the use of French by requiring its use on all public signs and in commercial advertising. On December 15, 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that this infringed on the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as by the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. That only prompted Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa to introduce legislation three days later – on December 18 – allowing him to override the Canadian Charter of Rights through what is commonly referred to as the notwithstanding clause. His Bill 178 nullified the Supreme Court’s ruling, required the exclusive use of French on outdoor signs, and allowed for bilingual indoor signs only as long as French predominated. In 1993, the government replaced Bill 178 with another bill

Seventh Day Adventist Theresa O'Malley wins the right to take Saturdays off. Theresa O’Malley worked in ladies’ wear for the Simpsons-Sears department stores in Kingston, Ontario for a number of years. In October 1978, she joined the Seventh Day Adventist church, which requires strict observance of their Sabbath from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. In 1978, retailers made most of their money between Thursday and Saturday nights, so O’Malley was told she would lose her full-time status and most of her benefits if she insisted on not working Saturdays. She complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and after years of litigation, on December 17, 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada sided with her, stating that Simpsons-Sears had discriminated against her based on her creed (belief, faith). The retailer’s policy that employees work most Friday nights and Saturdays applied equally to everyone, but even so, its effect was discriminatory on O’Malley, the court ruled. The impact or effect is more importan

Colin Powell becomes first African American U.S. Secretary of State. Born in New York City, Colin Powell graduated from City College of New York in 1958 before receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He later received his MBA from George Washington University in 1971 and served in the military. He was the White House’s national security advisor from 1987 to 1989 before becoming the first black chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He held this top military job under Presidents Bush and Clinton before retiring in 1993. He chose not to run for president of the United States, but on December 16, 2000, President-elect George W. Bush named Powell to his cabinet’s top job of Secretary of State. That made Powell the first African American to hold the post. Considered a moderate who would exert a moderating force on Bush’s administration, he won unanimous consent in the Senate in early 2001. But Powell’s moderate approach was often rebuffed by the president and his cabinet, which likely influ

American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from mental disorders list. Only after a literature review and consultation process did the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) board of trustees pass a resolution that removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders on December 15, 1973. “Homosexuality by itself does not necessarily constitute a psychiatric disorder,” the APA explained. A number of psychoanalysts petitioned for a referendum to overturn the board’s decision, but 58 per cent supported the change. While the board’s decision was unanimous (two members abstained), board members rejected a task force’s recommendation to declare homosexuality "a normal variant of human sexuality." The board also passed a resolution that called for an end to "cruel" discrimination and a repeal of "irrational" laws that discriminated against homosexuals. The APA was not the first medical or psychological body to make such a change, but it was likely the most significant body to do so at the time. S

Former Yugoslavia leaders sign Dayton Peace Accord. After Yugoslavia’s communist dictator Marshal Tito died in 1980, ethnic differences generated chaos. Ethnic and religious factions pitted Albanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Muslims against each other, resulting in three and a half years of civil war marked by ethnic cleansing and 200,000 deaths. Eventually, the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia initiated a peace process named after talks that took place in Dayton, Ohio. On December 14, 1995 in Paris, the three leaders signed the Dayton Accord, which pledged thousands of United Nations Peacekeepers to the region to keep Bosnia together, yet with divided federations. The Croat federation held most of the country’s 51 per cent Muslims, while the Serb republic held the remainder of the population. The peace process was paved with conflict and mistrust and complicated by Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, attempting to control as much of the former Yugoslavia as possible;

Manitoba politician and feminist Gerrie Hammond is born. Born Geraldine Rose McLean, Gerrie Hammond began her public service career as a member of the Manitoba Police Commission. She later served as a school trustee in Winnipeg before being elected to the Manitoba legislature as the MLA for Kirkfield Park in 1981. Hammond served three terms in the legislature – seven years in Opposition and two in the government of the Progressive Conservative Party. Always a champion of women’s rights, Hammond put her passion to work in 1988 as chair of the Manitoba Women’s Initiative, a task force that traveled Manitoba to make recommendations to enhance the lives of women and children. Her highly praised report propelled her into cabinet, where she served as the minister of labour and the status of women. In 1990, Hammond was awarded the province’s Women of Distinction Award for outstanding service to women. She died on November 1, 1992 of cancer, but her legacy lives on. The Gerrie Hammond Bursary is awarded each year to

Lise Thibault becomes Quebec’s first woman lieutenant governor, and first ever in a wheelchair. In 1996, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was faced with a dilemma when his recently appointed Quebec lieutenant governor, Jean-Louis Roux, resigned amidst protest over the fact he’d worn a swastika during a student protest at the age of 19. Roux had been a strong federalist, and the prime minister was looking for a problem-free appointment. On December 12, 1996, Chretien announced the appointment of Lise Thibault as the first woman lieutenant governor for the province of Quebec. Thibault was also the first person to take the post while in a wheelchair. A toboggan accident at the age of 13 had left her with pain and mobility problems that had led to paralysis from the waist down following the birth of her second child (against doctors’ advice) in 1964. Although Thibault had been a former Liberal campaigner, her work as an advocate for the rights of the disabled influenced Chrétien to consider her a good fit. Her appoin

Russian troops invade Chechnya, sparking years of terrorism and unrest. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many states declared independence from Russia, including Chechnya. Only three years later, however, on December 11, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered troops to take control of the region. Tanks rolled into the streets of the capital, Grozny, with many Russian soldiers being killed. After a massive public outcry, Yeltsin withdrew the troops and signed a peace accord that gave Chechnya more autonomy than it had held under Soviet rule, but stopped short of granting it independence. Battles and guerrilla warfare went on for years in this Muslim-dominated, oil-rich region. When President Vladimir Putin took power in Russia, he tried to end the rebellion with force. The fighting continued until the Russian Federal forces were able to take control of Grozny and most of the regions by February 2000, installing a pro-Moscow government. Since that time, Russians have endured occasional acts of terr

UN adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights has been a vital part of the United Nations’ work from the moment its charter was signed in San Francisco in 1945. Knowing what took place under the Nazis in World War II, nation states decided to put into a document the need for human rights to be respected and upheld. The United Nations Secretary General Trygve Lie called upon Canadian lawyer John Humphrey to write this document. With the assistance of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacques Maritain, René Cassin, Charles Malik and P.C. Chang, and after numerous re-writes and resolutions, the document made its way to the General Assembly. On December 10, 1948, the UN’s General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – 30 articles that began with the statement, “The General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Some 48 countries voted in favour of the declaration with no country opposing. However,

Cincinnati Reds’ CEO apologizes for racist comments. Marg Schott was one of baseball’s most outspoken and outrageous owners when she bought the Cincinnati Reds and became president and CEO of the team in 1985. Doing so, she became the first woman to buy a baseball team as opposed to inheriting it. During legal proceedings over the firing of the team’s controller, Schott made positive comments about Adolf Hitler and many racist slurs that leaked to the public. Although she claimed some of the comments were made in jest, and none were meant to offend, she was pressured into apologizing on December 9, 1992 during meetings between major league owners in Louisville. She was also given a year’s suspension from day-to-day operations with the Reds, fined $25,000, and later slapped with a second suspension for yet another set of derogatory comments. In 1999, she sold her shares in the Reds to avoid another suspension. Schott died on March 2, 2004 in Cincinnati. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information

Japanese Canadians rights denied in declaration of war. Immediately following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Canada declared war against Japan, having earlier declared war on Hungary, Finland and Romania due to their alliance with Nazi Germany. Fearing that Canadians of Japanese descent would assist Japan’s war efforts, the federal government seized more than 1,200 Canadian fishing boats owned by Japanese Canadians. The Canadian Pacific Railway fired all its Japanese employees, and many other companies followed their lead. After the Japanese attacked Hong Kong and killed or captured more than 2,000 Canadian troops, the pressure on Japanese Canadians intensified. In January 1942, the government created a 100-mile zone on the west coast from which Japanese Canadians were forcibly removed. Thousands were sent to internment camps and their property sold off. Not until 1949 were they allowed to return to the coast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Indonesia invades East Timor. Portugal settled East Timor in the 1500s and eventually took control of the eastern end of the island in a treaty with the Dutch in 1859. During World War II, about 60,000 East Timorese died helping Australian troops fight thousands of Japanese soldiers. After Portugal became a democracy in 1974, the East Timorese assumed they would soon attain independence, but when internal disputes arose the Indonesian government stepped in. On December 7, 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor with unexpected brutality, declaring it their 27th province seven months later. The UN and the world (with the exception of Australia) condemned this illegal occupation, and refused to recognize Indonesia’s claim. Many years later, Indonesia finally relented and, with the UN’s help, handed East Timor its independence. The handover, sadly, sparked bloody internal struggles. In April 2002, the country held its first presidential elections and began to restore order, leading the UN to substantially reduce its

Fourteen women murdered at Montreal’s l’École Polytechnique in Montréal. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine burst into an engineering class at École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montreal. Wielding a gun, he forced all the men to leave the room. He then proceeded to kill 14 women: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznik, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault and Annie Turcotte. The brutality of the cold-blooded murders captured media attention worldwide, and focused attention on violence against women more generally. Some of the families of the murdered women became involved in lobbying the Canadian government to create much stronger gun controls. The end result was a gun registry program supported by police and the majority of the public, but plagued with political and financial problems. In 1991, the Parliament of

U.S. Senate majority leader makes racist comments, leading to resignation. At a time when Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, it seemed that Senate majority leader Trent Lott was as close to the top of his game as most people could get. However, on December 5, 2002, while celebrating the 100th birthday of his fellow-Senator Strom Thurmond, Lott made comments that would force him to resign. Thurmond had run for president in 1948 on a segregationist ticket – indicating his desire to keep blacks and whites separate and certainly not equal. At the birthday party, Lott boasted that his state, Mississippi, had voted for Lott back in ’48. “We’re proud of it, and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years,” he said, clearly referring to problems that arose from integration. While it was not the first time Lott had made racist comments, this time the outrage came fast and furiously – and it stuck. For two weeks, Lo

Britain’s national health plan to fund birth control pill. British Health Minister Enoch Powell announced in the House of Commons on December 4, 1961 that the birth control pill would be made widely available to women and be paid for by the country’s national health care program. That was nine years before the Canadian government legalized birth control and counselling on the topic. Why was Canada so slow to promote birth control? Perhaps because in the 1960s, the birth control pill had many negative side effects, and its long-term effects were unknown. Even so, more and more women were opting for this oral form of contraception. In Canada in the 1960s, it was illegal to counsel people about birth control, even though it was available and widely used. No one had been prosecuted for giving out birth control advice since 1937, yet information was still being offered discreetly. That changed in June of 1969 when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his Liberal government legalized all forms of contraception. The cr

UN declares International Day of Disabled Persons. More than a half billion people worldwide have some form of disability, and the greatest barriers they face are typically created unintentionally by those persons without disabilities. That’s what inspired the UN’s General Assembly to declare 1981 the International Year of Disabled Persons, later expanded into a decade: from 1983 to 1992. The purpose was to promote "equality and full participation" for persons with a disability – to explore ways to help persons with disabilities to function in all aspects of society, and to promote greater understanding of the challenges they face. At the end of the decade, the UN decided to keep the momentum going by declaring December 3rd the International Day for Disabled Persons, to be recognized annually henceforth. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Audrey McLaughlin becomes Canada’s first woman to lead a national political party. Audrey McLaughlin was born in Dutton, Ontario on November 7, 1936. The first in her family to earn a university degree, she took a varied career path from there. McLaughlin served as the executive director of the Metro Toronto Canadian Mental Health Association, taught in Ghana and, in 1979, opened up her own consulting firm in Whitehorse of the Yukon Territory. In 1987, a by-election put her into the House of Commons, making her the first New Democratic party (NDP) member to represent the Yukon. She was re-elected in 1988, and when party leader Ed Broadbent stepped down, she stepped up to the plate. On December 2, 1989, she became the leader of the federal NDP and the first woman in Canada to lead a national political party. She presided over a tumultuous time in Canadian politics, marked by the formation of the Free Trade Agreement and attempts by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to change the constitution. In 1993, when the cou