One Case at a Time

Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Women’s Rights in Canada
Karin Wells
Second Story Press
March 4, 2025
CAD $24.95

The names Eliza Campbell, Stella Bliss, and Florence Murdoch might not be widely recognizable, but it’s because of them that Canadian women have some of our most fundamental rights today. Karin Wells’s newest book, Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Women’s Rights in Canada, delves into the history of, and the people behind, nine groundbreaking legal cases for Canadian women’s rights. Because of Campbell, Bliss, and Murdoch, women in Canada have the right to get a divorce, go on maternity leave, and own property. Many of the women in this book didn’t get to reap the benefits of their hard work, but the impact of their fight is still felt today.

Wells’s previous books, The Abortion Caravan: When Women Shut Down Government in the Battle for the Right to Choose, winner of the Ontario Historical Society’s Alison Prentice award in 2021, and More Than a Footnote: Canadian Women You Should Know, both examine the lesser-known — but deeply impactful — faces of Canadian women’s history.

Wells deftly balances the personal stories and legal concepts at the centre of these cases with her background as a University of Ottawa Law School graduate and former CBC Radio documentarian. The result is a historical account that reads like a novel,  with a cast of characters fitting various classic tropes —  the reluctant heroine, the abusive husband, and the adversarial judge —  with Wells as the reliable narrator. The descriptive language makes the reader feel as if they are in the room:

“…The Ferguson children were wriggling with anticipation, barely under control… The boys were in their velveteen suits, and Emily wore her silk dress. The green dining room curtains covering the deep windows were drawn, and the tasselled curtain cords hung down.”

In each case, Wells tells a story before revealing who it centres around, drawing you in and then dropping names like a who’s who of Canadian history. After the quote above, Prime Minister John A. McDonald walks into the dining room with Emily’s father, and it’s revealed that little Emily Ferguson would go on to become Emily Murphy of the Famous Five. Or later in the book, we hear the story of Kaarina Pakka and her friends picketing outside the father of her sons’ house because he hasn’t been paying child support, only to reveal that the father is disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard. By not initially naming these women or the men impacting them, Wells adds a layer of intrigue that makes what would otherwise be dry, complicated legal cases feel like dramas.

Each chapter of the book covers a different legal case, spanning the 1860s to present day. Each case builds on another, reflecting the slow progress that is characteristic of legal change, and how frustrating it is to wait for it to show up. Wells emphasizes the importance of the historical social context of each case throughout the book, and shows how this builds up to lasting change.

Though these stories are not her own, and each is filled with quotes, interviews, and other first-hand accounts, Wells’s voice seeps through the pages in witty remarks and casual asides, giving voice to a modern reader’s frustrations: “He opened his mouth wider to make room for the other foot and added, ‘I’m just wondering why we don’t have a section in here about babies and children. All you girls will be out working and we’re not going to have anybody to look after them.’”  Wells blends her voice with the tone of each era effortlessly, adapting her vocabulary for the year and location with words like “abstemious” or “effrontery” for Eliza Campbell’s case in 1873, and “hidebound” for Emily Murphy’s case in Alberta.

The cases in this book mostly feature white, Anglo-Saxon women, though this says more about society than it does about Wells. In 1929, Canadian women were granted inclusion in the legal definition of “person,” but this status only included white women. In addition to cases like the work of the Famous Five that gave women the right to vote — so long as they were white, able-bodied, and Anglo-Saxon — Wells expands her book to include the work of the Famous Six. This group of Indigenous women brought about multiple amendments to The Indian Act, including Bill C-31 in 1985, which reinstated status to Indigenous women who married non-Indigenous men, and their children.

The epilogue of this book is perhaps the most thought-provoking piece. If the nine cases studied in this book represent where we have come from, the epilogue presents the question “What’s next?”

Wells speaks about specific issues like Quebec’s ruling on wearing religious symbols and the implications on the legal system as the definition and societal view of gender become more flexible. Wells leaves readers to ponder what legal changes will come from the powerful women we’re seeing today, because, as she says in the book’s opening pages in a quote from Supreme Court Judge Bertha Wilson, “Change in the law comes slowly and incrementally… It responds to changes in society; it seldom initiates them.”

Wells’s book is deeply engaging, thought-provoking, and mostly accessible, assuming you know some legal vocabulary — and if you don’t, it’s nothing a quick Google search can’t fix. This book is for anyone who wants to understand women’s history. As women’s rights are increasingly being called into question across North America, this book is a moving reminder of the work it took to get here, and how it only takes one person to create change.