Bertha Wilson and Claire L’Heureux-Dubé were the first women judges on the Supreme Court of Canada. Their 1980s judicial appointments delighted feminists and shocked the legal establishment. Polar opposites in background and temperament, the two faced many identical challenges.
Constance Backhouse’s compelling narrative explores the sexist roadblocks both women faced in education, law practice, and in the courts. She profiles their different ways of coping, their landmark decisions for women’s rights, and their less stellar records on race. To explore the lives and careers of these two path-breaking women is to venture into a world of legal sexism from a past era. The question becomes, how much of that sexism has been relegated to the bins of history, and how much continues?
Introduction
1. Childhood and early schooling: Scotland and Quebec
2. Bertha Wilson, the minister's wife
3. The decision to study law
4. Claire L'Heureux and Laval University Law School
5 .Bertha Wilson and Dalhousie Law School
6. L'Heureux-Dube's practice in Quebec City and marriage
7. Bertha Wilson's practice in Toronto
8. Practising as a woman
9. First judicial appointments: "No woman can do my job!"
10. Claire L'Heureux-Dube and the Quebec Superior Court
11. Claire L'Heureux-Dube: Family tragedy and the Quebec Court of Appeal
12. Bertha Wilson and the Ontario Court of Appeal
13. Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada, 1982 and 1987
14. Contrasting family lives
15. Chilly reception in the Supreme Court of Canada
16. Bertha Wilson's Supreme Court decisions
17. Claire L'Heureux-Dube's Supreme Court decisions
18. The conundrum of feminism and the complexities of race
19. Retirement and after
20. Conclusion
Endnotes
Index