Human Rights A Day

Bertha Wilson becomes first woman appointed to Canada’s Supreme Court. Bertha Wilson was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland in 1923 and earned an MA and teaching diploma from the University of Aberdeen before emigrating to Canada with her husband in 1949. Her desire to attend Dalhousie Law School in Halifax in 1954 was not met with open arms from the dean, Horace E. Read, who told her, “Madam, we have no room here for dilettantes. Why don’t you just go home and take up crocheting?” She persevered, got in and graduated. In 1959, the young lawyer moved to Ontario, where she worked with the Toronto firm of Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt. Appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1975, she earned acclaim for decisions on sexual discrimination and human rights. On March 4, 1982 – the same year Canada’s constitution adopted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed Wilson to the Supreme Court of Canada. Men in the legal profession, including Chief Justice Bora Laskin, suggested to the pri