Lucille Johnstone, known as "Tugboat Annie," dies. Lucille Johnstone was born in 1924 in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she lived her whole life. She became a certified general accountant at a time when few women attained professional education, and launched into a 45-year career with RivTow, a male-dominated group of companies that towed barges and boats on the waterways of British Columbia. As she rose through the ranks to president, she gained the nickname “Tugboat Annie.” Her business ca...
Dec 31, 2017•2 min
Israel and the Vatican establish diplomatic relations Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 30, 2017•3 min
Sandra Lovelace Nicholas takes First Nations women’s injustice to the United Nations. Sandra Lovelace Nicholas was born on April 15, 1948, a Maliseet from the Tobique Nation in New Brunswick. When she married a white man, she lost her Indian status in the eyes of Canadian law, as per the Indian Act. That meant she and her children were denied housing, education and other benefits from her own band. Worse, even after she was divorced, she was not able to regain her Indian status. Two other women,...
Dec 29, 2017•2 min
Muriel Siebert breaks the gender barrier at the New York Stock Exchange. When Muriel Siebert opened her firm Muriel Siebert & Co. on December 28, 1967, she became the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange – and the only woman among 1,365 men. Siebert began her career in the finance world as an analyst in 1954. A few years later, while looking to work with another firm, she was told she would have to wear white gloves and a hat in the elevator, just like the secretaries did...
Dec 28, 2017•2 min
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Prime Minster Lester B. Pearson dies. When Lester B. Pearson died on December 27, 1972, he left his mark on Canada and the world. Born in Ontario in 1897 and schooled throughout the province, Pearson graduated from the University of Toronto in 1919, after enlisting for combat during World War II. He went to Oxford University on a scholarship and upon his return, joined the Department of External Affairs. Through hard work and a pleasant demeanor, Pearson worke...
Dec 27, 2017•2 min
Nancy Cruzan dies after a long legal battle for the right to die. On January 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan, aged 25, was thrown from her car in a collision. When paramedics found her, she had stopped breathing for 15 minutes, yet they were able to revive her breathing but not her consciousness. After five years of watching over their unconscious daughter, Joyce and Lester Cruzan wanted Nancy’s feeding tube removed so that she could die a natural death. That meant wading into the legal and moral issue o...
Dec 26, 2017•2 min
Soviet Union’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigns. Mikhail Gorbachev rose through the ranks of the communist Soviet Union to become its leader in March of 1985, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. At 54, he was the youngest person to become the general secretary of the Communist Party, which also made him the head of the superpower. However, faced with a crumbling infrastructure and corrupt state, he wanted to bring radical change to the dictatorial regime. He worked at bringing democra...
Dec 25, 2017•2 min
Canada’s last father of Confederation, “Joey” Smallwood, is born. Joseph Roberts “Joey” Smallwood was born on December 24, 1900 just outside Gambo, Newfoundland. Because his family was poor, he left school at the age of 15 to work in the newspaper business. After a number of years writing for Newfoundland newspapers and doing one stint with a socialist paper in New York City, he gained prominence through a column in Saint John’s Daily News. This, combined with his radio show on the Voice of Newf...
Dec 24, 2017•2 min
Jeanne Sauvé is appointed Canada’s first woman governor general. Jeanne Mathilde Benoît was born in Prud'homme, Saskatchewan in 1922, and educated in part in an Ottawa convent. She attained a degree from the University of Ottawa, then traveled throughout North America, becoming involved with many youth movements. After marrying Maurice Sauvé, she traveled with him to Europe before settling back in Canada in 1952. Sauvé worked for years as a journalist before entering politics as one of the first...
Dec 23, 2017•2 min
Top Saskatchewan and Canadian bureaucrat Thomas Shoyama dies. Thomas Shoyama was born in Kamloops, British Columbia on September 24, 1916. Shoyama graduated from the University of B.C. with economics and accounting degrees. However, the racist climate prevented him from working in his profession. For example, the 1935 decree of the B.C. legislature read, “Be it resolved that this house go on record as being utterly opposed to further influx of Orientals into this province.” Instead, he worked fo...
Dec 22, 2017•3 min
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 ...
Dec 21, 2017•3 min
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 Co...
Dec 20, 2017•3 min
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 th...
Dec 19, 2017•2 min
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 th...
Dec 18, 2017•2 min
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...
Dec 17, 2017•2 min
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 Pres...
Dec 16, 2017•2 min
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, b...
Dec 15, 2017•2 min
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 i...
Dec 14, 2017•2 min
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 ...
Dec 13, 2017•3 min
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...
Dec 12, 2017•2 min
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...
Dec 11, 2017•2 min
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 Mar...
Dec 10, 2017•3 min
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 com...
Dec 09, 2017•2 min
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...
Dec 08, 2017•2 min
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...
Dec 07, 2017•2 min
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 L...
Dec 06, 2017•2 min
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 ...
Dec 05, 2017•2 min
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 neg...
Dec 04, 2017•2 min
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...
Dec 03, 2017•2 min
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 Com...
Dec 02, 2017•2 min
