Month: June 2011

Standing alone beside an empty chair, Emily Murphy invites anyone to accompany her while she stares at a newspaper. The headline reads “Women are Persons.” This indicates the enormous contribution that she, along with four other women, had on the court decision that women are considered to be persons under the law.

The bronzed, larger-than-life version of Louise Crummy McKinney has an earnest, grandmotherly sort of expression on her unnervingly still face. Immortalized in statue form with the rest of the Famous Five on the east side of Parliament Hill, McKinney’s thin, round glasses and pearls make her look more matronly than her trail-blazing career would suggest.

Behind the Parliament Buildings, atop a stone pedestal – cast in bronze and wearing one of those peculiar beards without mustaches that were popular in the 19th century – stands a statue of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of Canada’s most controversial fathers of Confederation.