Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Lizzie Cyr" in English language version.
In 1929, the British Privy Council ruled that Canadian women were persons under the law. What sparked this victory for women's rights was the trial of a forgotten Calgary prostitute twelve years earlier.
The Famous Five secure the rights of women as persons throughout the Commonwealth (1929).
The irony in this challenge is the fact that an Indigenous woman was enough of a person to be arrested, charged and convicted by the same state that did not see women, in general, as persons. And, even more to the point, it was Lizzie Cyr's story that ignited the fight for white women's right to vote in Canada.
The Alberta Supreme Court upheld Jamieson's right to occupy her position as magistrate and her conviction of Lizzie Cyr stood. This in turn provided the platform from which Emily Murphy and her colleagues, collectively known as the Famous Five, to challenge the British North America Act, which stated that women were not persons.
