Timeline (Chronology of women's role in Canadian society)

1004 -- Snorri born to Gudrid, wife of Thorfinn Karlsefni, in Newfoundland near L'Anse Aux Meadows. The first child of European parents born in North America.

1617 -- Marie Rollet becomes the first married European women to remain permanently in New France.

1639 -- Marie de la Peltrie and Marie de l'Incarnation founded the first convent in Canada in Quebec City.

1648 -- On 24 November, the first child is born to French settlers in Quebec.

1665 -- During the summer the first filles du roi (King's girls) arrive in Quebec. Between 1665 and 1672 they are sent out as brides for unmarried settlers.

c 1713 -- Thanadelthur, a Chipewyan woman, leads a peace mission between Cree and Chipewyan people to end fighting over the establishment of trading posts in the area of northern Saskatchewan.

1813 -- On 21 June, Laura Secord, driving a cow, walks 32 km through dense bush to warn the outpost of Beaver Dams, Ontario of a planned American attack.

1829 -- Shawnandithit, the last surviving Beothuk, dies in St. John's, Newfoundland of tuberculosis.

1849 -- A law is passed excluding women from the vote in both Upper and Lower Canada.

Martha Hamm Lewis, the first woman to attend New Brunswick's normal school in Fredericton, is required to wear a veil while attending classes.

1851 -- The old system of primogeniture, in which the eldest son inherited a family's estate, is abolished.

1859 -- An Upper Canada law allows married women to own property.

1861 -- 10 March is the birthdate of Mohawk poet Tekahionwake (Emily Pauline Johnson), the first Canadian aboriginal person, woman, and author, to have a postage stamp issued in her honour.

1869 -- The Indian Act is changed to take away Indian status from aboriginal women married to non - status men.

1874 -- The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Owen Sound, Ontario by Letitia Youmans.

1875 -- Annie Lockhart graduates from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, becoming the first woman in the British Empire to graduate from a university.

1876 -- Women's suffrage movement begins in Toronto, led by the members of the Toronto Women's Literary Club.

1880 -- Emily Stowe becomes the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.

1882 -- The Toronto Labour Council supports the principle of equal pay for equal work.

1883 -- The Canadian Woman Suffrage Association is formed in Toronto.

First of three bills to extend the vote to women is introduced by Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald; all three are defeated.

1889 -- The Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association is created to campaign for votes for women.

1893 -- The National Council of Women of Canada is founded, working for the rights of women and children, but not votes for women until 1910.

1894 -- Margaret Marshall Saunders becomes the first person in Canada to sell one million copies of a book (Beautiful Joe).

Widows and spinsters are allowed to vote in Ontario municipal elections.

1897 -- Clara Brett Martin becomes the first woman to practice law in Canada (and the British Empire).

Adelaide Hunter Hoodless and Erland Lee form the Women's Institute in Stoney Creek, Ontario.

1898 -- Emma Casgrain graduates from the Quebec College of Dentists to become Canada's first female dentist.

1908 -- Lucy Maud Montgomery publishes Anne of Green Gables.

1912 -- Carrie Derick becomes Canada's first full professor, at McGill University.

1913 -- Alys McKey Bryant takes off from Vancouver (31 July) in the first solo airplane flight by a woman in Canada.

1914 -- Nellie McClung and the Manitoba Political Equity League organize a "Women's Parliament" in Winnipeg (28 January) to promote votes for women.

1916 -- Women get the vote in Manitoba (27 January), Saskatchewan (14 March), and Alberta (17 April).

1917 -- Women get the vote in British Columbia (4 April), and Ontario (12 April).

Louise McKinney is elected to the legislative assembly in Alberta, the first woman elected to a provincial legislature in Canada.

Helen MacGill is appointed to the bench of the juvenile court in Vancouver, becoming Canada's first woman judge.

Alberta becomes the first province to adopt a minimum wage law for women.

B.C. becomes the first province to give mothers the same rights over their children as fathers.

1918 -- All women become eligible to vote in federal elections (24 May).

Women in Nova Scotia get the vote.

1919 -- Women in New Brunswick get the vote (17 April).

1920 -- Women become eligible to sit in the House of Commons.

1921 -- Agnes McPhail becomes the first woman elected to Canada's House of Commons.

Mary Ellen Smith is appointed a cabinet minister in B.C., the first female provincial cabinet minister and the first in the British Empire.

1922 -- Women in Prince Edward Island get the vote (3 May).

1925 -- The federal divorce law in changed, allowing women for the first time to obtain a divorce on the same grounds as men.

Women get the vote in Newfoundland.

1927 -- l'Alliance Canadienne pour le Vote des Femmes du Quebec is formed under the leadership of Idola Saint - Jean.

1928 -- Eileen Vollick becomes the first Canadian woman to receive a pilot's license.

The Supreme Court of Canada rules that women are not "qualified persons" and therefore cannot sit in the Senate.

Ethel Catherwood wins a gold medal at the Amsterdam Olympics (still the only track and field gold Olympic gold ever won by a Canadian woman).

1929 -- Canadian women are legally declared "persons" (18 October), when the Imperial Privy Council overturns the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada.

1930 -- Cairine Wilson becomes the first woman in the Canadian Senate.

The Parents' Information Bureau begins providing birth control information to low - income women.

1934 -- The Dionne quintuplets are born (24 May), the first quintuplets to survive more than a few days.

1936 -- Dorothea Palmer, a nurse, is arrested in Eastview Ontario for distributing birth control information.

Lydia Guchy is the first woman to be ordained in the United Church.

1940 -- Women in Quebec get the vote (25 April).

1941 -- The Canadian Women's Army Corps is established to bring Canadian women into the armed forces in non - combat positions.

1945 -- The first Family Allowance payments are sent to Canadian families.

1949 -- Nancy Hodges is named Speaker of the British Columbia legislature, the first woman to hold this post in the Commonwealth.

1951 -- Charlotte Whitton is elected mayor of Ottawa, the first woman to be elected mayor of a major Canadian city.

1952 -- Ontario becomes the first province to put equal pay legislation into effect.

1954 -- Marilyn Bell becomes the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.

1955 -- SERENA (Service de regulation des naissances) is started in Quebec to teach "natural methods" of birth control.

1957 -- Prime Minister John Diefenbaker names Ellen Fairclough Secretary of State, the first woman cabinet minister in Canadian history.

1964 -- Bill 16 is passed in Quebec's National Assembly giving married women the same rights as their husbands.

1966 -- Establishment of the Federation des femmes du Quebec.

1967 -- The Toronto Women's Liberation group is formed.

1968 -- The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada is appointed.

1969 -- Rejane Laberge - Colas is appointed to the Quebec Superior Court, the first woman in Canada to be named to the bench of a Superior Court.

1970 -- The Abortion Caravan travels to Ottawa to protest against inadequate reforms in abortion legislation.

1971 -- Joyce Weiland has a retrospective at the National Gallery, the first retrospective of a living woman artist.

1972 -- Monique Begin becomes the first woman from Quebec to be elected to the House of Commons.

Establishment of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

Feminists are successful in lobbying to have the category of "sex" added to the Ontario Human Rights Code as a ground upon which discrimination is forbidden.

Muriel Ferguson is appointed as the first female Speaker of Canada's Senate.

1973 -- The federal Advisory Council on the Status of Women is established.

Pauline McGibbon, in Ontario, becomes the first woman to serve as lieutenant - governor.

1974 -- The first female RCMP recruits begin training at Regina.

Establishment of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

1976 -- The Anglican Church of Canada ordains its first women ministers.

1977 -- Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) is formed.

1978 -- Air Canada hires its first female pilot -- Judy Cameron.

1980 -- Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman who lived from 1656 to 1680, is canonized, the first North American aboriginal woman to become a saint.

Jeanne Sauve becomes the first woman to be Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Canadian Congress of Black Women is set up to provide a network of solidarity for black women in Canada.

1981 -- The tradition of men - only taverns in Quebec comes to an end.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee finds the Canadian government in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because of its continuing failure to reverse the part of the Indian Act that takes away a Native woman's status if she marries a non - status man.

1982 -- In British Columbia, the "Wimmin's Fire Brigade" firebombs three video outlets that specialize in pornographic films.

Bertha Wilson becomes the first woman appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

1983 -- Criminal Code changes replace rape with three categories of sexual assault, giving equal protection to men and women under the law, and allowing spouses to charge each other with sexual assault.

Roberta Bondar is chosen as one of the first Canadian astronauts.

An amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act makes discrimination because of pregnancy illegal.

1984 -- Jeanne Sauve becomes the first female Governor General of Canada.

1985 -- The Indian Act is amended giving aboriginal women the right to retain their Native status, and to pass that status on to their children, if they marry non - native men.

1986 -- Shirley Carr is elected president of the Canadian Labour Congress, the first woman to hold this position.

1987 -- The Supreme Court rules against Canadian National Railways forcing it to hire more women into non - traditional jobs.

The Canadian Armed Forces drops its ban on allowing women in combat roles.

1988 -- The Supreme Court invokes the Charter of Rights in striking down the federal abortion law.

Ethel Blondin becomes the first aboriginal woman elected to the House of Commons.

1989 -- Audrey McLaughlin is chosen national leader of the New Democratic Party, the first woman to lead a national political party.

Marc Lepine shoots and kills 14 women and wounds 13 others at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique (6 December), apparently out of anger toward feminists.

1991 -- Nellie Cournoyea is chosen government leader of the Northwest Territories; becoming the first woman, and aboriginal, to lead a government in Canada.

1993 -- Catherine Callbeck, in Prince Edward Island, becomes the first women elected (March 29) as a provincial premier by popular vote (Rita Johnston succeeded Bill Vander Zalm when he resigned in 1991 as premier of British Columbia but she lost the subsequent election in 1992).

Kim Campbell is chosen leader of the governing Progressive Conservative Party (13 June), and sworn in as Canada's first female Prime Minister (25 June).

Rev. Victoria Matthews is elected the first female Anglican bishop in Canada.

Figure not transcribed Consult original publication

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