The first woman to earn a law degree in New Brunswick, Mabel Priscilla Penery French applied for admittance to the bar in 1905. She was told under existing Canadian law that a woman was not a person, and only a person could practice. She went to court. Six judges agreed that, indeed, whatever she was, she wasn’t a person. The chief justice huffed that if women could become lawyers, why, they might next become soldiers, police or even judges! Society, he said, didn’t need women competing with men in all branches of life. “Better let them attend to their own legitimate business.”
She responded by refusing to pay her bills. Her defence was that since she wasn’t a person, she couldn’t be sued for debt. The court had a dilemma. Money trumped exclusivity. It ruled she could be sued, but that reversed the earlier decision. So, in 1907, she became the first woman lawyer in New Brunswick.