Helen Gregory MacGill

Helen Emma Gregory MacGill (January 7, 1864 – February 27, 1947) was one of Canada's first woman judges - and for many years the country's only woman judge - journalist, and a noted women's rights advocate in Canada, where she fought for female suffrage. Daughter of Emma and Silas Ebenezer Gregory, her maternal grandfather was Upper Canada barrister and judge Miles O'Reilly, noted for his successful defense of the group accused of participating in the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario,[1] she received a B.A. and an M.A. degree in 1889 from Trinity College (now part of the University of Toronto), the only woman in her class and the first female graduate, and the first woman in the British Empire to receive a degree in music.[2] She then went into newspaper work, working as a journalist for Cosmopolitan.

First married in 1890, her first husband, F.C. "Lee" Flesher, died in 1901 from the consequences of an earlier knife attack from one of the patients at the Mayo Clinic, leaving behind two young boys, Eric (1891) and Freddy (1894). She married the lawyer James Henry "Jim" MacGill, a friend from her college days, in 1902. With MacGill, she gave birth to two daughters, "Young Helen" (Dr. Helen MacGill Hughes (1903), and Elsie MacGill (1905), a pioneering female aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer.

Always active in women's rights, she became a member of the British Columbia Minimum Wage Board, periodically chairing meetings, and referring debates on sector-based minimum wages. She was a co-founder of the Vancouver Business and Professional Women's Club in 1923. In 1930, she was instrumental in creating the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women Clubs. While her husband had strong ties to the Laurier Liberals, Helen MacGill was a committed Conservative.[3]

She died on February 27, 1947,[4] aged 83, after having served as a judge of the Juvenile Court of Vancouver, British Columbia for 23 years.

References

1. Black, Naomi (4 March 2015). "Helen Gregory MacGill". The Canadian Encyclopedia (online ed.). Historica Canada.
2. Bourgeois-Doyle, Richard I. Her Daughter the Engineer: The Life of Elsie Gregory MacGill. Ottawa: NRC Research Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-660-19813-2.
3. Richard I. Bourgeois-Doyle p. 38
4. "Helen G. MacGill, Canadian Jurist", Obituary published in the New York Times, Feb. 28 1947, p. 23. Accessed through ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Further reading

• MacGill, E.M.G. My mother, the judge: a biography of Judge Helen Gregory MacGill. (1955). Toronto: Ryerson Press; reprinted in 1981 by Toronto: PMA Books, ISBN 0-88778-210-8.