Annie MacDonald Langstaff (6 June 1887 – 29 June 1975) was a Canadian law student, legal activist, supporter of women's suffrage and an early woman aviator. Born in Ontario in 1887, she graduated from Prescott High School and then married in 1904. Her husband quickly abandoned her, leaving her a single mother. Moving to Montreal in 1906, she began working as a stenographer in the law office of Samuel William Jacobs, who encouraged her to study law. Finding no barriers to her admission, Langstaff enrolled at McGill University in 1911, graduating three years later as a Bachelor of Civil Law. On applying to the Bar of Montreal to practice, she was refused the right to take the examination.
When Langstaff petitioned the Superior Court for a Writ Of Mandamus to compel the bar to admit her as she met all statutory requirements, the court upheld the bar's decision based upon the fact that she neither had her husband's permission to attend law school, nor to become a lawyer. As her husband had abandoned her and her child and she did not know where he was, she was unable to obtain his permission. The refusal led to feminists in support of women's suffrage embracing Langstaff and her cause. She became active in the fight for enfranchisement of women in Quebec, while continuing her fight to become a barrister. In 1915 she filed an appeal with the Court of King's Bench, which also ruled against her, claiming that her recourse was to petition the legislature, since they had enacted the statute defining who could become a lawyer.
Langstaff was supported in her quest by her employer, with whom she would work for 60 years. Preparing an amendment to the Bar Act, Jacobs argued for the admission of women to the bar before the National Assembly of Quebec in 1915. Numerous attempts were made to change the law, without success. She wrote Canada's first French-English/English-French law dictionary in 1937. In 1940, when women in Quebec won the right to vote, the decision was used as leverage to change the law excluding women from practicing law. The next year, joined by Leona Bell and Elizabeth C. Monk, Langstaff pleaded with the Quebec Bar Association to support their right to practice. The bar agreed to allow women to enter the profession, if the legislature approved, which they did on 29 April 1941. Because of a prerequisite for lawyers admitted to the bar to have obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree, Langstaff was not admitted to the bar in her lifetime. She was posthumously admitted to the Montreal Bar in 2006.
Early life
Annie MacDonald was born on 6 June 1887 in Alexandria, Glengarry Township, Ontario, to Clara Angela ( McPhaul) and Archibald B. MacDonald. Her father was a teacher, later an insurance agent, and both of her parents were Catholic. Annie was the oldest sibling in a family of five other children: John, Alice Phyllis Muriel "Phyllis", Mary Jane, Pearl and Eileen. By 1891, the family was living in Prescott, where MacDonald attended Catholic grammar schools and graduated from Prescott High School. On 21 November 1904 in Prescott, MacDonald married Gilbert Samuel Langstaff, a carpenter, with whom she had a daughter, Mary Andrea Langstaff, on 28 April 1906. Soon after their marriage, Langstaff and her husband separated, as he left her. Her husband migrated to New York City in 1905 with another woman whom he claimed to have married in 1904.
Career
Law school and bar case (1906–1915)
In 1906, Langstaff moved to Montreal, Quebec, to work for the law firm of Jacobs, Hall and Garneau, as a stenographer for the head partner Samuel William Jacobs, . Her family also moved to Quebec, where her father worked as a customs collector in Saint-Hyacinthe. Langstaff had an affinity for the law and within a few years was performing much of the company incorporation work for Jacobs. With his encouragement, she wrote to McGill University's faculty of law, in 1911, inquiring if she could be admitted. Frederick P. Walton, dean of the faculty, responded that no woman had ever asked for admission before, and while he was unsure of whether his colleagues would approve, she ought to begin attending lectures. Langstaff graduated in 1914 with a Bachelor of Civil Law, first in her class in criminal and company law, and fourth overall with first-class honours. That year, she became the first woman to serve as a court stenographer in the June Special Session of the Montreal Criminal Court.