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People and Places: Irene Parlby and the ?Persons Case?

Irene Marriott was raised to be the proper young English lady. But as historian Merrily Aubrey explains, she gladly left behind the stuffy tearooms of Victorian England when she married an Alberta rancher by the name of Walter Parlby:

By the time of her arrival in Canada in 1896, she was twenty-eight years old and was the daughter of an upper middle-class English family, the older spinster daughter, again with few prospects in the Old Country. In her younger years, she had spent her time between England and India. She received an education typical of Victorian young ladies. From governesses and private tutors, she was trained to become the dutiful wife, mother and head of household.

Now known as Irene Parlby, she found the less structured life of the west much more to her liking. She took to ranch life with gusto, and she soon found her place as a community leader.

Irene Parlby became involved in the United Farm Women of Alberta by organizing one of its first locals in 1913, and served as its provincial president from 1916 to 1920. During her time as president, she, along with other influential women in Alberta, pushed for and saw enacted the Dower Act of 1917. This piece of legislation made sure that wives were entitled to one third portion of their husband?s estate. Before that, wives had no guarantee that they?d be looked after, after their husband?s death.

With the fire of her political ambitions ignited, Irene Parlby was elected in 1921 to the Alberta Legislature. As a representative for the United Farmers of Alberta, she became the first female cabinet minister in Alberta and the second in the British Empire.

Her name was on the docket taken to the Privy Council in England in the famous Persons Case?. She, along with Henrietta Edwards, Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy and Louise McKinney, all were part of this. In 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled that women were not persons and therefore could not hold public office. The Privy Council overturned this decision a year later.

In 1930, Irene Parlby served as the Canadian delegate to the League of Nations. At sixty-six years old, she finally retired from the Alberta Legislature. And from 1935 until her death thirty years later, she continued to be a lively influence in the community, as well as to work in her garden.

On the Heritage Trail, I?m Cheryl Croucher.

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