UBC Law: History

Chapter 9: Opening the Portals

Women Lawyers in British Columbia, part 1

Women too have often found the doorkeepers of law to be unwelcoming. Oscar Bass, who vigorously advocated progressive policies in legal education as an articling student and then, from 1905 to 1913, as law society secretary (chief executive officer), revealed himself to be an utter misogynist when the matter of women’s entry to the legal profession in British Columbia first arose. Alfred Watts quotes in full a letter Bass wrote to E. M. Pawley on March 17, 1908, in response to the latter’s enquiry about the status of women in the legal profession in the province.

Bass happily reported that because "the fair sex have not yet threatened to invade the legal profession" the Benchers had not yet formulated any policy to deal with "the application of a modern Blackstone in petticoats to enter the profession". A particularly offensive passage appeared at the end of the brief letter. "You will perceive," Bass wrote, "that we have been ungallant enough to ignore the very existence of the beautiful sex except inferentially as being possibly classifiable among the British subjects of full age." Possibly? With a thoroughly sexist flourish he concluded that "[t]he admission of the age limit might lead to a mental evasion, equivocation or secret reservation mentioned . . .; but if the candidate had made up her mind to practice law for a livelihood a little thing like that should cause no conscious qualms or scruples".

Oscar C. Bass, friend of structured legal education for men, committed misogynist, wielder of a wicked pen, and secretary of the Law Society of British Columbia, 1905–1913.

From the perspective of the late twentieth century it is all too easy to dismiss Bass as simply a woman-hating, unenlightened, bombastic, eccentric individual. He was not eccentric. Nor, as secretary of the law society, was he unimportant. While Bass may have been particularly sharp in expressing his opinion, it is clear that he was not atypical of his generation. When the Ontario Law Society had been confronted with the question of admitting women lawyers in the late nineteenth century, the response on the part of many lawyers was incredulity. In a ground-breaking article on Clara Brett Martin, Canada’s first woman lawyer, Professor Constance Backhouse quoted a passage from the Legal Scrap Book of April 16, 1892:

[I]t was . . . no doubt felt that a woman can find a more suitable place in life to fill than that of counsel. A woman does not, as a rule, arrive at a conclusion by logical reasoning, but rather by a species of instinct, which, no matter how unerring, cannot assist others to arrive at the same conclusion. Her arguments would be after the fashion of the old nursery rhyme which used to run something like this:
"The reason why I cannot tell; I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, But this alone I know full well, I do not love thee, Dr. Fell."
Her mind is not apparently formed so as to give logical reasons to support the conclusions she arrived at.

"The author did not seem to realize," Backhouse wryly notes, "the absurdity of appealing to nursery rhymes in order to prove that women were by nature illogical."

Gladys Kitchen as portrayed in the 1919–1920 Vancouver Law Students’ Annual. The original caption reported: "Miss Kitchen is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, only coming to British Columbia in 1914. She was articled to Mr. Arthur M. Whiteside, and since March, 1918, when she was called to the Bar, she has been associated with Mr. A. H. MacNeill in his practice."

Evelyn Seton as portrayed in the 1919–1920 Vancouver Law Students’ Annual. The original caption reported: "Miss Seton is a member of the Editorial Committee. She is under articles to Mr. L. G. McPhillips."

After the end of the First World War the Vancouver Law Students’ Annual carried an article, "The New Order", which addressed the question of women’s exclusion from the legal profession. The nub of the issue for the author was simply that "the legal profession must change with the changing times; that the State is entitled to avail itself of all disciplined intelligence, regardless of sex". While the author conceded that her "feminine understanding indeed fails to follow the windings of masculine logic", she took the trouble to set out the "many and ingenious" arguments that men then relied upon to demonstrate women’s "alleged unfitness for the high calling of an interpreter of the law". In ancient Rome, we are told, "women were prohibited from pleading in other people’s cases ‘in violence to the modesty which becomes them’." Many modern lawyers, through "slavish adherence to precedent" thought no further. A handful of other "natural facts" were assumed by many male lawyers who thought there was no room in their profession for women:

We have been told that the defects in the temperament and mind will lower the standard of professional conduct; that they are unable to appreciate the fineness of man’s code of honour; that their presence at the Bar will interfere with the course of justice owing to sex influence. We are overwhelmed with the almost complete unanimity of this verdict.
One fervent adherent of the old order of things pleads in the alternative that in any event women should not be admitted to the practice of law, because they can never be successful.

The author proceeds to counter arguments such as these with a mixture of logic and ridicule and by example: the article is accompanied by photographs and short biographical sketches of three early Vancouver women lawyers (Leonie (Lalonde) Anderson, Edith Paterson, and Gladys Kitchen). The three women are described by reference to their academic credentials, professional qualifications, and current practising status—just as any man might be. Elsewhere the issue of the Vancouver Law Students’ Annual carries photographs of two women who served as officers of the association. Miss Winifred McKay, "pursuing her studies under Mr. Arthur M. Whiteside" was vice-president and Miss Evelyn Seton ("under articles to Mr. L. G. McPhillips") was on the editorial committee.

Chapter 9 continued