Mandatory retirement reasonable, says Supreme Court of Canada.As a professor at the University of Alberta, Dr. Olive Patricia Dickason had signed a contract agreeing to the university’s employment terms. One of those terms dictated mandatory retirement at the age of 65. When she was showed the door at 65, however, Dickason didn’t want to go, so she took her case to the province’s human rights body. She won both there and on the case’s first appeal, but the Alberta Court of Appeal sided with the ...
May 05, 2017•2 min
Supreme Court of Canada declares sexual harassment a form of sex discrimination.When Dianna Janzen and Tracy Govereau worked at Pharos restaurant in Winnipeg the fall of 1982, they endured outrageous physical and verbal sexual harassment from the cook, Tommy Grammas. Each of the women spoke at different times to the owner operator, Phillip Anastasiadis, about Tommy’s behaviour, but to no avail. Janzen left the restaurant after only two months; Govereau was fired. When both women complained to th...
May 04, 2017•2 min
Supreme Court of Canada allows battered-woman syndrome as a murder defence.In the early hours of August 31, 1986, Winnipeg citizen Angelique Lyn Lavallee shot and killed her common-law partner, Kevin Rust, in the back of the head. Lavallee, age 22, had been in an abusive relationship with Rust for years. During fights that lasted for days, he would beat her severely, necessitating numerous visits to the hospital for treatment. A jury acquitted her of murder, but the Manitoba Court of Appeal requ...
May 03, 2017•2 min
Former Winnipeg Mayor Stephen Juba dies.Stephen Juba was born in Winnipeg on July 1, 1914 to immigrants from the Ukraine. When his father’s business fell on hard times in 1929, Juba was forced to quit school at age 15. He started a number of business ventures, growing wealthy around 1945. Always a great self-promoter, Juba decided to try his hand in politics. Early attempts at getting into office were unsuccessful, but gained him some name recognition. Finally, in 1953, he was elected to Manitob...
May 02, 2017•2 min
Supreme Court of Canada weighs case to support employees with mental disabilities.Betty-Lu Clara Gibbs was working for Battlefords and District Co-operative Ltd in Saskatchewan in 1987, when she became disabled due to a mental disorder. After her three months of sick leave ran out, a long-term disability plan kicked in. Two years later, however, the benefits portion of that coverage was cut off, thanks to an insurance policy clause that dictated it had to end then if she had no physical disabili...
May 01, 2017•2 min
Future Canadian human rights champion John Humphrey is born.John Humphrey was born in Hampton, New Brunswick on April 30, 1905. He became a lawyer and taught law at McGill University before being tapped for the United Nations’ first human rights division directorship. After meeting with the president’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt (who served as chair of the Human Rights Commission) in 1947, Humphrey and two colleagues took on the task of writing the first draft of a bill of rights. It would eventual...
Apr 30, 2017•2 min
Acquittal of L.A. police in Rodney King beating case prompts murderous riots.When Los Angeles police tried to stop Rodney King for speeding on March 3, 1991, he kept driving. When they finally caught up with him, enraged police officers Laurence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno beat, kicked and clubbed him for 81 seconds as other officers stood by, all unaware they were being taped. International broadcasts of the live footage was followed by a sensational two-month televis...
Apr 29, 2017•2 min
Vienna apologizes for World War II deaths of disabled children.Between 1940 and 1945, children with mental and physical disabilities were sent to the Am Spiegelgrund children's clinic in Vienna, Austria. There, the Nazi program known as "Lebensunwertes Leben," or life unworthy of life, experimented on them before killing them with overdoses of barbiturates. More horrifying, the clinic kept the brains of at least 789 of the children to continue research on them until 1998. The director of the cli...
Apr 28, 2017•3 min
Sex Slaves denied compensation by Japan’s Supreme Court.During World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army held approximately 200,000 women as sex slaves to service Japanese soldiers. Most of the women, aged 12 to 21, were Chinese and Korean, although many women came from Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan. The military set up “comfort stations” throughout Japanese war territories and researchers estimate there were 160 in Shanghai alone. These girls and women were forced into sex with up...
Apr 27, 2017•3 min
Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes.The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located 80 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine, was the site of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster. On April 26, 1986 at 1:21 a.m., workers at the power plant were conducting a routine test of reactor No. 4 when suddenly a chain reaction caused explosions and a huge fireball blew the steel and concrete lid right off. The radioactive particles released were equivalent to 30 or 40 times the radioactivity of the atomic b...
Apr 26, 2017•3 min
Manitoba top court rules that English-only laws are unconstitutional.In 1976, Georges Forest was issued a parking ticket in Winnipeg, Manitoba and fined $5. Instead of paying this, he challenged the ticket with documentation in French, and thus began one of Canada’s most contentious debates on the rights of French language outside of Quebec. On April 25, 1979, the Manitoba Court of Appeal agreed with Forest that Manitoba’s English-only aspect of the 1890 Official Languages Act was unconstitution...
Apr 25, 2017•3 min
Genocide strikes Armenian people.During World War I, the Ottoman Empire (most of that area is now Turkey) worried about a Russian invasion. Ottoman Turks felt threatened by Russia’s support for Ottoman Armenians’ desire for an independent state. They decided to round up, then execute or deport, all of the estimated two million Armenians within their borders. The slaughter began on April 24, 1915. Many Armenians died during forced marches into the deserts of what are now Iraq and Syria. Most of t...
Apr 24, 2017•3 min
U.S. President Gerald Ford declares Vietnam War over.The Vietnamese War, a war that defined a generation, was coming to an end in the early 1970s. As casualties mounted, so did pressure on Nixon’s Republican administration. Following Nixon’s resignation, President Gerald Ford and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered deals with North Vietnamese Foreign Secretary Le Duc Tho in 1972 and 1973, for the return of American prisoners and to allow the South Vietnamese government to stay in so...
Apr 23, 2017•2 min
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson starts first Earth Day.Troubled by the state of the environment, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin convinced U.S. President Kennedy to initiate a five-day, 11-state conservation tour in September 1963. The tour didn’t put the environment on the national agenda, but Nelson didn’t give up. Years later he was so impressed with the impact of teach-ins during the Vietnam War that he decided to copy the idea for the environment. While at a conference in Seattle in Se...
Apr 22, 2017•3 min
David Lam, Canada’s first Chinese Canadian lieutenant governor, retires.David See-Chai Lam was born in Hong Kong in 1923 where, as the grandson of a Baptist minister, he was brought up Christian. Lam received an economics degree from Lingnan University in China and an MBA from Temple University in Philadelphia. While working in banking in Hong Kong, he married his wife Dorothy, with whom they had three daughters. The family immigrated to Canada in 1967 and became Canadian citizens shortly therea...
Apr 21, 2017•3 min
Future research scientist Margaret Newton is born.Margaret Newton was born on April 20, 1887 in Montreal, Quebec. Four of the five Newton children, including Margaret, earned a Ph.D in agriculture. Margaret, after attaining her education degree, also took an interest in agriculture and was admitted to Macdonald College, the agricultural faculty for McGill University. There, she successfully petitioned the dean of the college to allow women to use the laboratories at night, even though women stud...
Apr 20, 2017•3 min
Tom Longboat wins Boston Marathon and breaks record by five minutes.In 1999 MacLean’s magazine named Tom Longboat the top Canadian sports figure of the 20th century. Born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario on June 4, 1887, Thomas “Tom” Longboat was spotted at a young age for his running abilities. In 1906 Longboat broke the Canadian record by two and a half minutes for a ten-mile race in Toronto. He would end up breaking every Canadian record for distances of a mile or longer. On...
Apr 19, 2017•3 min
Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes first woman to win Nobel Peace prize.Baroness Bertha Felicie Sophie von Suttner was born into aristocracy and a military family as the Countess Kinsky on June 9, 1843 in Prague. In adulthood, the Baroness moved to Paris to work as Alfred Nobel’s secretary, then to Vienna to marry Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. To escape her disapproving in-laws, the couple moved again and lived a meagre life, teaching language and music, and writing. Bertha, who became a ...
Apr 18, 2017•3 min
Canada’s new constitution puts Charter of Rights and Freedoms into effect.For decades, Canadian politicians who wanted to cut constitutional ties with England made unsuccessful attempts to amend the country’s constitution. After nine short months on the opposition benches of parliament, Pierre Trudeau and his Liberals came back into power in 1980. From that point forward, Trudeau put much of his energy into patriating the constitution once and for all. After much debate and wrangling, the federa...
Apr 17, 2017•2 min
David Milgaard, wrongfully convicted for murder, released after 22 years in prison.When 20-year-old Gail Miller was raped and stabbed to death in January 1969 in Saskatoon, a 16-year-old who’d been passing through town at the time, David Milgaard, became a suspect despite his protests of innocence. A year later, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Neither the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal nor the Supreme Court of Canada were willing to reverse the decision, but Joyce Milga...
Apr 16, 2017•2 min
Former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot dies.Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1925 in Cambodia. Though he did not graduate from high school, he studied in Paris, where he developed a strong interest in the teachings of Marx and Lenin and linked up with other Cambodians pursuing communism.After returning to Cambodia in 1953, he took a leadership role in the country’s communist parties and by 1963, headed up the Workers’ Party of Kampuchea, later known as the Khmer Rouge. At first, the American go...
Apr 15, 2017•3 min
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln shot.Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a one-room log cabin on Nolin Creek, Kentucky. Between supporting his family and himself, he found little time for study. But after venturing into business with limited success, he finally found a way to study and then practice law.He delivered his first speech at the age of 21, then poured himself into politics, eventually joining the newly formed Republican Party. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln became the first ...
Apr 14, 2017•3 min
Sidney Poitier becomes first black male actor to win an Oscar.When Sidney Poitier became the first black man to win an Academy Award for best actor, it was not without controversy. Just for pecking him on the cheek as she presented him with the Oscar on April 13, 1964, actress Ann Bancroft was called scandalous in the U.S. Poitier won the award for his role in the movie Lilies of the Field. In the film, he played construction worker Homer Smith, a man who built a church for a group of nuns. Afte...
Apr 13, 2017•3 min
Terry Fox begins his cross-Canada run for cancer research.Terry Fox was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on July 28, 1958, and raised in Port Coquitlam, B.C. His last year of high school, he shared the Athlete of the Year award with a friend. While studying physical education at Simon Fraser University, he was diagnosed with bone cancer and suffered his right leg being amputated six inches above the knee. Suddenly keenly aware of cancer research’s lack of funds, he made it his mission to raise $1 for ...
Apr 12, 2017•2 min
Quebec Premier Godbout grants women the vote.The man who granted Quebec women the right to vote was a former agronomist: Joseph Adélard Godbout, born in Saint-Éloi, Quebec in 1892 and elected to the legislative assembly of Quebec in 1929. After various cabinet portfolios, he became leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec and premier in 1936. A progressive leader, he established Hydro Quebec and brought in free, compulsory education for children aged six to 14. Despite clergy opposition, he fought ...
Apr 11, 2017•2 min
Nancy Hodges, B.C. MLA, becomes British Empire’s first legislative woman Speaker.Nancy Hodges was born in London, England in 1888, the ninth of 10 children. After university and work as a journalist, she and her husband Harry Hodges moved to Kamloops, B.C. in 1912, where they edited the Inland Sentinel. A few years later they moved to Victoria to work for the Victoria Times. Here, Nancy Hodge’s writing championed women’s causes and she actively involved herself with the Liberal Party. In 1941 sh...
Apr 10, 2017•3 min
Canadian troops begin battle to reclaim Vimy Ridge in France.On a ridge 12 kilometres northeast of Arras, France, in September 1914, the German Army constructed and fortified a site with bunkers, caves and artillery-proof trenches. Vimy Ridge’s height gave them such good observation powers that attacking forces failed to penetrate it for years. While the Germans destroyed Arras with heavy artillery, French attempts to seize control of the ridge cost them some 150,000 casualties. In early April 1...
Apr 09, 2017•3 min
Kenya’s future president, Jomo Kenyatta, sentenced to seven years’ hard labour.White Europeans controlled Kenya, like much of Africa, from the early 1900’s onward. (Kenya officially became a British colony in 1920) Tribal resentment of this grew until the country’s Kikuyu tribe launched a secret society and the Mau Mau movement in 1947. Eager to rid their country of the thousands of white settlers who had seized African land after World War II, the Mau Maus utilized such violent tactics that by ...
Apr 08, 2017•2 min
Canada’s first black doctor, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, is born.Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen Toyer lived in Alabama before moving to Toronto, Ontario, where they acquired property and Wilson became active in politics. On April 7, 1837, their son Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born. After excelling at school, the young Abbott graduated from the Toronto School of Medicine in 1857 and continued with studies at the University of Toronto. After studying under a foreign-born black doctor, Alexander Thomas ...
Apr 07, 2017•3 min
Oscar Wilde arrested for sodomy and gross indecency.Renowned poet Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. An avid and award-winning scholar, he excelled especially in classics and poetry. After graduating from Oxford, Wilde moved to London, where he published his first collection of poetry. Throughout 1882, he toured the United States, delivering lectures on aesthetics and meeting with such famous writers as Longfellow, Holmes and Whitman. After tour...
Apr 06, 2017•3 min
