U.S. Senate gives women the vote. It was in 1848 that American suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott first proposed that women be able to vote. Little did they know it would take seven decades of lobbying, protests and arm-twisting to make the dream come true. Amending the American constitution (like amending any country’s constitution) is a difficult process; it requires agreement from two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then three-quarters of the states...
Jun 04, 2017•2 min
Chinese government deploys troops that massacre citizens in Tiananmen Square. In 1981, Hu Yaobang became China’s leader when he was appointed the Communist Party’s general secretary. Hu was deposed in 1987 when the party accused him of being soft on college students who had been demonstrating in favour of political reforms and against system-wide corruption. When Hu died in April of 1989, people gathered in Tiananmen Square, located in the centre of Beijing, to honour his legacy and voice dissat...
Jun 03, 2017•2 min
U.S. Congress grants Native Americans citizenship. Native Americans were deprived of most of the rights that non-native Americans took for granted. Worse, they were resettled on unproductive land. In 1887, the Dawes Act was created to protect Indian property rights before settlers could claim the land. But numerous fraudulent bureaucrats who were sent to protect natives profited from them instead. Even when the government repealed the Dawes Act, the land was not returned. On June 2, 1924, U.S. C...
Jun 02, 2017•2 min
Canada's Stephen Lewis appointed UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Stephen Lewis was born into a politically active family on November 11, 1937. His father, David Lewis, led the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) in the early 1970s; the younger Lewis followed in his footsteps at the provincial level. At 26 and still a student at the University of Toronto, Lewis was elected to the Ontario legislature, where he became its leader only seven years later. Under his leadership, the NDP became t...
Jun 01, 2017•2 min
Tobacco advertising and smoking in federal buildings slapped with severe restrictions. Canadians’ addiction to cigarettes has been well documented for generations. However, tobacco companies’ money, influence and smarts always enabled them to entice minors to smoke, and thwart government officials who supported non-smoking workplaces. As more and more people began calling the situation a human rights issue, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government made a move. With Health Minister Ja...
May 31, 2017•2 min
Transsexual American celebrity is born. George William Jorgensen was born to Danish American parents on May 30, 1926, in the Bronx, New York. After graduating from Christopher Columbus High School in 1945, he was drafted into the Army, where he served for two years. According to Jorgensen, he always felt like someone born in the wrong body. In 1950, at the age of 49, he addressed this by flying to Copenhagen, Denmark to undergo surgery that castrated him and removed his penis. (He did not, howev...
May 30, 2017•2 min
First United Nations peacekeeping operation leads to annual day of recognition. The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945. Its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified in 1948, is one of its most important documents. In order to protect human rights, the UN marked peacekeeping as an early priority. The first peacekeeping operation was established for the Middle East in 1948, along with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. On May 29, 1948, operatio...
May 29, 2017•2 min
Amnesty International begins with simple letter-writing campaign. British lawyer Peter Benenson was horrified when he read a story about two Portuguese students sentenced to seven years in jail for raising a toast to freedom. He contacted the British newspaper The Observer, asking it to bring attention to the “forgotten prisoners” of the world. On May 28, 1961, The Observer launched its year-long campaign, “Appeal for Amnesty 1961.” Response was overwhelming. In less than a month, more than 1,00...
May 28, 2017•2 min
Burma’s military dictatorship refuses to recognize landslide election results. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945 to Ma Khin Kyi and General Aung San, a commander in the Burmese Independence Army. After his assassination and Burma’s independence from England, his wife took ambassadorial posts abroad. Suu Kyi only returned to Burma in 1988 to look after her mother. It was a time of political strife marked by massive demonstrations and violent retaliation from the military regime. In Augus...
May 27, 2017•2 min
Denmark becomes first country to legalize gay and lesbian relationships. Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals have been breaking down barriers for decades, especially in Western nations. Many countries have passed laws to protect people from losing their jobs, housing and basic rights on the basis of sexual orientation. But those protections seldom extend to gay men and lesbians wanting to be treated as a couple. On May 26, 1989, Denmark became the first country to grant gay and lesbian couples right...
May 26, 2017•2 min
Gay couple denied spousal benefits, but sexual orientation added to charter protections. James Egan and John Nesbit were a gay couple that had lived together since 1948. In 1986, when Egan reached 65, he became eligible for Old Age Security and a guaranteed income supplement. When Nesbit reached age 60, he applied for the spousal allowance available to the spouse of a pensioner between the ages of 60 and 65 in cases where the couple’s combined income falls below a certain level. The government d...
May 25, 2017•2 min
Chief Peguis honoured with monument erected in Winnipeg’s Kildonan Park. Chief Peguis was born in 1774 near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. At age 16, the young leader resettled his Saulteaux tribe where the Red River flows into Lake Winnipeg. (Today, it’s called Netley Creek, Manitoba.) When a man named Lord Selkirk and his group of Scottish settlers showed up there in 1812, Peguis helped them settle and offered them protection. He also sided with the Hudson’s Bay Company against its rival, the Nort...
May 24, 2017•2 min
University swim coach wrongfully loses his job for sexual harassment.On May 23, 1997, Simon Fraser University (SFU) fired swim coach Liam Donnelly for “severe sexual harassment” against student Rachel Marsden. Right from the start, the case was a disaster, thanks to university officials not following proper procedures, and the university trying to back peddle numerous times. As a result, Donnelly ended up being rehired and Marsden awarded $12,000 for counselling and other expenses. Meantime, SFU...
May 23, 2017•2 min
Rick Hansen completes his Man in Motion world tour.Rick Hansen was 15 years old the summer of 1973 when an automobile accident left him a paraplegic. Despite the setback, Hansen went on to become a top wheelchair athlete, winning numerous international wheelchair marathons and three world championships. He even competed for Canada in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Hansen’s greatest achievements, of course, were yet to come. On March 21, 1985, Hansen and a crew left the Oakridge Mall in V...
May 22, 2017•2 min
Marshall law imposed in Alabama after “freedom riders” attacks.When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White man in 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transit was unconstitutional. When the same court stated that segregation within interstate travel was also illegal in 1960, the “freedom riders” took over. On May 4, 1961, 13 young activists boarded two buses from Washington, D.C., on their way to Virginia. They quickly encountered resistance and violence, but ...
May 21, 2017•2 min
Amelia Earhart begins solo flight across the Atlantic.Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, later moving to California. Six months after her first flying lesson she bought her first plane. Just seven years later, on June 17, 1928, Earhart, Bill Stultz and Slim Gordon became the first to fly across the Atlantic, leaving Newfoundland and arriving in Wales 21 hours later. Earhart married one of the flight’s supporters, publisher George Putnam. Together, the couple secretly p...
May 20, 2017•3 min
Supreme Court of Canada says mentally challenged deserve same services.In 1979, Janice Berg was accepted into the master’s program in the School of Family and Nutritional Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Despite a history of controllable, recurrent depression, she studied hard enough to keep her grades above average. But one day in 1981, she wrote “I am dead” on a school’s washroom mirror, then attempted to jump through a plate-glass window when RCMP officers appeared in the hallw...
May 19, 2017•2 min
No women pastors for us, say U.S. Southern Baptists.The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was founded in Augusta, Georgia in 1845. One hundred and fifty years later, with 16 million members in more than 40,000 churches, the SBC represented the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Although known for its conservative values, women had been allowed as pastors in small numbers. That changed when more conservative elements in the church decided to spell out a clear policy on women’s ...
May 18, 2017•2 min
Supreme Court upholds Christian university’s right to train teachers with an anti-homosexual bias.Trinity Western University is a private institution in Langley, B.C. associated with the Evangelical Free Church of Canada and promoting Christian views. It’s also an accredited member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. In the mid-1990s, Trinity offered an education degree, but the institution’s limited resources had led administrators to make an arrangement with nearby Simon...
May 17, 2017•2 min
Restaurants not required to allow guide dogs in, case rules. Douglas Parisian, accompanied by his guide dog Iggy, attempted to have lunch in Winnipeg’s Hermes restaurant on June 19, 1985. Located near the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), Hermes attracted a number of customers who were blind, and even provided its menu in Braille. Parisian was scheduled to meet a CNIB employee. But to Parisian’s surprise, owner Christ Voulgaris confronted him at the front door, saying the dog was...
May 16, 2017•2 min
Winnipeg general strike begins 40 days of social unrest.Canadian soldiers returned from World War I to find war factories shutting down and bankruptcies triggering massive unemployment and rapid inflation. Knowing that many had profiteered from the war industry, the veterans resented their futile search for decent jobs, pay and working conditions. On May 1, 1919, the Building and Metal Workers Union of Winnipeg went on strike for better wages, prompting the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council to ...
May 15, 2017•2 min
Fahima Osman becomes first Somali doctor trained in Canada.Fahima Osman was born in 1978, one of nine children born to Somalians Adam and Zahra Osman. She was 11 when her family, like thousands of other Somalis who fled their country at the time, claimed refugee status in Canada. Even before she’d arrived, Osman had decided she wanted to become a doctor. She shrugged off the fact that there were no Somali doctors in Toronto, and that the city offered no support to, and had very low expectations ...
May 14, 2017•2 min
“Coloured” Albertan is refused hotel room.On May 13, 1959, a young man trying to reach a friend phoned Barclay’s Motel in Calgary, only to be told, “We don’t allow coloured people here.” What the hotel didn’t know was that this Mr. King was president and chairman of the grievance committee of the Alberta Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in Calgary. When King and a friend dropped into the motel an hour later, he was refused a room for the same reason. Later, the hotel owner woul...
May 13, 2017•2 min
Florence Nightingale, nurse and mathematician, is born in Florence, Italy.Her British parents were touring Europe when Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820. Early on, the girl showed her father’s bent for mathematics, to the dismay of her mother, who considered it unladylike. Fortunately, Mrs. Nightingale relented enough to allow her daughter a math tutor. As a young woman, Nightingale also took an interest in social issues and believed she had a calling from God. Aga...
May 12, 2017•3 min
Canada’s first woman federal cabinet minister completes her first portfolio.Ellen Fairclough was born in Hamilton, Ontario on January 28, 1905. As an adult she ran her own accountancy business for 22 years, held prominent positions on charitable boards and sat as a city councillor. In 1950, she ventured into federal politics by winning a by-election for the federal seat of Hamilton West. As a Progressive Conservative, she sat on the Opposition benches until John Diefenbaker became prime minister...
May 11, 2017•3 min
Ontario Court allows gay couple to adopt non-biological child.André Cyr and his same-sex partner Todd Armstrong wanted to be legal parents of children, but Ontario’s Child and Family Services Act (like its equivalents in most provinces) prevented them from doing so. As single individuals, gay men and lesbians could adopt, but not as a couple. The result was that some gay and lesbian parents were being denied legal protections for co-raising the biological child of a partner. This meant they coul...
May 10, 2017•2 min
Toronto cinemas ordered to become wheelchair accessible.When Toronto’s major cinema chain, Famous Players, decided not to make all its facilities wheelchair accessible, it excluded Barbara Turnbull and four other individuals, who decided to complain. In response, on September 10, 2001, the Ontario Human Rights Board of Inquiry ordered Famous Players to make three of their cinemas accessible within two years, pay the complainants tens of thousands of dollars in damages, and review its training pr...
May 09, 2017•2 min
Victory in Europe Day (VE-Day) commemorates World War II’s end in Europe.Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and with his band of Nazi thugs and murderers, gradually turned the country into a dictatorship of hatred and bloodshed. After his invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United Kingdom and other countries declared war on Germany to stop Hitler’s quest for world domination. While the war raged in Europe, Hitler and his collaborators carried out acts of murder,...
May 08, 2017•2 min
Todd Ducharme becomes Canada’s first Métis judge.Todd Ducharme was a lawyer with an impressive record when he was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario. Educationally, he held a BA from McGill University, an MA and master of laws from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. As a practicing lawyer, he gained notoriety for his work in criminal and aboriginal law. He was popular with his peers, elected as a bencher with the Law Society of Upper Canada (Ontar...
May 07, 2017•2 min
Quebec government introduces bill that would ease up on French-language-only stance.The use of English in Quebec has been a contentious issue for decades. Governments of all stripes have worked to preserve the French language, to make French Quebec a sustainable island in a North American sea of English. To this end, they’d legislated French as the province’s official language, and restricted the use of English on everything from packages to outdoor business signs. They’d also restricted access ...
May 06, 2017•2 min
