When Claire Kirkland-Casgrain left Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government in 1973, her departure did not cause any particular emotion in the media sphere. Yet she was the very first woman elected to the Quebec Parliament. As a minister and also deputy premier, she navigated alone in a world of men for 11 years, during which time she led two ministries and supported the creation of the Conseil du statut de la femme. When she died in 2016, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain was the first Quebecer to receive recognition for a national funeral.
Claire Kirkland was born on September 8, 1924 in Palmer, Massachusetts. Coming from the French-Canadian lower middle class, she was the only daughter of Charles-Aimé Kirkland, a doctor who became a member of parliament, and Rose Demers. Her school career took place in the city’s posh colleges, including the Villa-Maria convent, where teaching focused on Parisian French. The young woman also won a medal of excellence in French literature awarded by the French government.
She then studied law at McGill, an English university. She continued her legal training in Geneva before being called to the Bar. What did she do as a lawyer? What she was allowed to do… In truth, she was reduced to supporting the work of her male colleagues. She was not even paid, taking advantage at most of an office that was made available to her. The young lawyer offered private consultations from her home. And she accompanied her father on tours to his West Island voters. This father, an elected member of Adélard Godbout’s government, would give speeches in favor of women’s right to vote in the early 1940s.
An heiress
When MP Charles-Aimé Kirkland died, all eyes turned to his daughter. Why couldn’t she replace him? When the 37-year-old woman entered Parliament, following a by-election that she easily won on December 14, 1961, everyone expected her to wear a hat. When a woman entered Parliament, one would imagine that she was entering a church. She didn’t wear one. Dressed all in black, she went bareheaded. Like her male colleagues. Well, not quite: “To save time and not have to get my hair done, I wore a half-wig,” she explained.
The Legislative Assembly was taken by surprise. A “ladies'” toilet had to be added to the ground floor of the west wing of the Parliament Building to accommodate the member. Claire Kirkland-Casgrain would soon share it with the parliamentary correspondents who, during the 1960s, arrived in Quebec City in dribs and drabs.
Her main political feat? Undoubtedly her firm and resolute will to modify the Civil Code in order to end the principle of legal incapacity of married women. In 1964, thanks to her, women were no longer considered second-class beings, as prescribed by law.
Before Bill 16 was passed, wives were unable to sell property, sign legal documents and have autonomy from financial institutions. The law was “fundamental” in modernizing Quebec society, explained historian emeritus Micheline Dumont of the Université de Sherbrooke when the MNA died in 2016. Her bill was inspired by the ideas of Thaïs Lacoste-Frémont, a women’s rights activist who died the previous year.
While the importance of Bill 16 for women is often emphasized, it is common to overlook the fact that Claire Kirkland-Casgrain also changed the matrimonial regime for women. Thanks to her work with the Liberal government of Jean Lesage, Quebec adopted the concept of “society of acquests,” which allowed for the sharing of property between spouses, with a view to greater equality.
It was also she who, following the recommendation of a report, pushed for the adoption of a law to create the Council on the Status of Women in 1971. The formal creation of the Council on the Status of Women would occur two years later.
It is worth noting that Claire Kirkland-Casgrain’s links with pioneers of women’s political emancipation touch on the very register of her own family life. Married to Philippe Casgrain, son of feminist activist Thérèse Casgrain, it is impossible for her not to conceive that women have their place in politics.
An activist and Liberal supporter, Claire Kirkland has been one since a young age, alongside her father. Even before being elected, she is already well known in Liberal political circles. She is an advisor to the Liberal youth. She is also heard within the Mariana B. Jodoin Club, the first francophone to be appointed to the Senate, as well as the Fédération des femmes libérales du Québec.
She also campaigned in a league for the recognition of women’s legal rights within the Quebec bar. “Her colleagues at the time did not always see why women should receive a salary,” Micheline Dumont explained. She would be the founder of the Association of Women Lawyers of the Province of Quebec.
One of the activists from the Kirkland-Casgrain group will publish, in the pages of Dutywith the lawyer Jacques Perrault, a major figure in these matters, a text in favor of the recognition of women’s legal rights. This text will be distributed in the form of a brochure. But it will be necessary to wait a while after the death of Duplessis, in 1959, for these ideas of legal equality to take root in the country.
Transports
In November 1964, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain was entrusted by Prime Minister Jean Lesage with the reins of Transport, a “manly” ministry that was particularly active during the Quiet Revolution with its elevated highway and viaduct projects. “It was hard for her, because men couldn’t accept that she was Minister of Transport,” recalls former parliamentary correspondent Gisèle Gallichan. “She would make a decision and there would be an immediate protest.”
The surprise victory of Daniel Johnson Sr.’s Union Nationale in 1966 relegated the minister to the official opposition benches. With the re-election of Robert Bourassa’s Liberals in 1970, she found herself in the spotlight again. In 1972, she presented a brief on the establishment of ecological reserves as Minister of Tourism, Hunting and Fishing.
Attached to the values of her milieu and her social class, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain does not view favorably the fact that popular language is penetrating the field of culture. For her, for example, there is no question of financially supporting Michel Tremblay’s theatre. In 1972, as Minister of Culture, she looked down on popular language and its inclusion in art, to the point of making a political snub to Tremblay’s work.
Until 1973, she was the only woman in the Quebec Parliament. Her actions were those of a reformer, attached to the values of order and government specific to her bourgeois social milieu. This could sometimes create distortions in relation to the idea of a progressive activist that had been projected onto her.
During a briefing held in June 1965 as Minister of Transport, she recalled, for example, that women had a role to play in preventing road accidents. How? By being responsible for children. “Some women do not understand that the road is subject to many more unforeseen events than the home,” she said, adding that they must avoid creating tensions, as their husbands could lose patience “because of the children’s shouting and agitation.”
Wary of any social idea that seems too left-leaning, she goes so far as to consider that the Quebec people do not “unfortunately have the maturity necessary to get through the Quiet Revolution.” She also considers that “with the help of foreign activist elements, there has been a massive infiltration of communist and Maoist forces” within social institutions, particularly within the education system, which has the consequence of endangering the established order that she defends.
It is no surprise that the Liberal elected official found herself heckled by the most progressive portion of the youth of the late 1960s. In the summer of 1970, as Minister of Tourism, Hunting and Fishing, she went to Percé, to the Maison du pêcheur, founded by Paul Rose. She was jeered by the young people who frequented the place. During the October Crisis, her residence in Ville Saint-Pierre was placed under heavy police surveillance.
Like many political activists who also had the status of lawyer, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain would eventually be appointed judge, before retiring in 1991.