Book Review: Mary Jane Mossman’s Quiet Rebels: A History of Ontario Women Lawyers

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Quiet Rebels: A History of Ontario Women Lawyers. By Mary Jane Mossman. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2024. xi, 528 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9781771125925 (hardcover) $95.00; ISBN 9781771125932 (ePUB); ISBN 9781771125949 (PDF).

Reviewed by Melanie R. Bueckert
Legal Research Counsel
Manitoba Court of Appeal

As stated in its subtitle, Quiet Rebels is a history of Ontario women lawyers. But it is so much more! Mary Jane Mossman has crafted a masterpiece, weaving individual biographies into a tapestry coloured by contemporaneous political, social, and economic events spanning from the late 1800s to the present. I learned about the amazing achievements of many women lawyers over the years, and while I started out reading the stories of other women, it slowly became my story, too. I am genuinely glad that I had the opportunity to read this book and cannot recommend it highly enough.

The primary focus of the book is the period when law school and articling occurred simultaneously in Ontario, from 1897 until 1957. It chronicles the lives and contributions of the 187 women admitted to the Ontario bar during those six decades. It is written as a “group biography,” revealing “details of gendered patterns in the legal profession, and how its professional culture created barriers, both direct and more subtle, for women lawyers” (p. 23). Expertly placing the individual stories of these women into the context of their times, Mossman critically examines whether “the historical context in which women lawyers worked, and the gendered patterns that shaped their opportunities, provide connections to challenges faced by some contemporary women lawyers” (p. 391–92). The book concludes that “many women lawyers remain on the margins of power and privilege” and that “changes in opportunities for some women lawyers, even in the twenty-first century, may often reflect continuity rather than transformation in status relative to men” (p. 418, 423).

In addition to a preface, prologue, and epilogue, the book comprises four parts: (1) the first women lawyers; (2) the interwar years; (3) the Second World War and post-war reforms; and (4) post-1957. In addition to imparting what is known about each of the 187 women lawyers admitted until 1957, each of the first three parts also begins with a discussion of “legal education and developments in legal practice within differing political, economic, and social contexts” (p. 23). The book also includes an appendix of Canadian statutes that regulated the admission of women as lawyers, a lengthy bibliography organized by source type, an index of the names of the women lawyers, and a topical index. It makes excellent use of quotations from oral histories to give the reader a sense of these women’s personalities. Today’s law students will be shocked to learn that female students were required to sit in the first row of the lecture hall and were excluded from participating in moots. There were also no women’s robing rooms in the courts.

Beyond the individual biographies, this book addresses topics such as the challenges of lawyering as a married woman and mother, pay equity, racial barriers, and the types of jobs open to women lawyers. It describes historical limitations on married women’s property, suffrage, and jury service. While it is focused on Ontario, it touches briefly upon international events and refers to relevant developments in other Canadian provinces.

My only two quibbles with the book are, first, that there were several instances of unclear citation where, instead of a footnote immediately following a quotation, there was one combined footnote for multiple sources given at the end of a paragraph. Second, there were a few occasions where topics or individuals were introduced that were already mentioned earlier in the text, but this was likely unavoidable given the structure of the text.

If you are a woman involved in the study or practice of law, you should read this book. It will undoubtedly be of interest to lawyers in Ontario, as many big firms are referenced. Indeed, this book made me wish that there was one like it for every jurisdiction in Canada. While there are biographies of individual woman lawyers and judges, this magnum opus is in a class of its own. The only similar title of which I am aware (besides Professor Mossman’s earlier works) is LexisNexis’s Leading the Way: Canadian Women in the Law, a compilation of biographies of 50 Canadian women in the legal profession published in 2015.