Marguerite Ritchie, seen in 2003, made her career out of smashing glass ceilings and dashing convention. She founded the Human Rights Institute of Canada, which would play a key role in the fight against sexual harrassment in the workplace.DAVE CHAN/The Globe and Mail
When Lynn Kongkham was young, her aunt, Marguerite Ritchie, tried over and again to convince her to become a doctor, not a nurse.
"We mustn't waste our brain cells," she was wont to say. "We can't let anything stop us."
It was vintage "Aunt Betty," as Ms. Kongkham and her brother called her, for nothing stopped her in a lifetime that spanned nearly 97 years. A plainspoken feminist before the concept became part of common parlance, a champion for the underdog and an uncompromising stickler for the legally correct way to do everything, she made a career out of smashing glass ceilings and dashing convention. As a lawyer, she developed an expertise in human rights, constitutional and international law and the United Nations because her male colleagues in the federal justice ministry showed no interest in doing so; later, she would found the Human Rights Institute of Canada, which would play a key role in the fight against sexual harassment in the workplace. And, always true to her world view, she was an adamant opponent of official bilingualism – political correctness and the opinions of others be damned.
The younger Ritchies saw their aunt, who died at the Ottawa General Hospital on April 24 at the age of 96, as a near-mythic figure who lived a glamorous, busy life in the country's capital. Whenever she had spare time, she would swoop into wherever her younger brother's air-force family was living at the time for a holiday that featured life lessons, exciting tales of travel and gifts that were meant to instruct and inspire. Ms. Kongkham, for example, recalled getting portraits that had been autographed by their subjects, famous Canadian women such as Judy LaMarsh, the lawyer turned Liberal politician who was only the second woman to serve in Canada's federal cabinet, and Thérèse Casgrain, the feminist, reformer and politician.
"She wouldn't give up," Ms. Kongkham recalled. "When I decided to become a nurse, though, she was my greatest supporter."
Dr. Ritchie, who was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1975 from her alma mater, the University of Alberta, and was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2000, also believed in setting an example for generations to come.
To that end, she donated the complete works of her institute to her alma mater and provided funding to pay for an archivist. "It was her wish that this remarkable collection live here, where it can inspire generations of researchers and students to continue her life's work," said Paul D. Paton, the dean of the university's law school.
Jennifer Van Noort of the Ottawa Hospital Foundation recalled Dr. Ritchie telling her that "you're never too old to make a difference."
"She inspired my daughter, who was 11 at the time, to make a difference as well," said Ms. Van Noort, who got to know Ms. Ritchie when the older woman made two donations totalling $650,000 to equip a minimally invasive surgical suite at the hospital's Shirley E. Greenberg Women's Health Centre and a special mammogram room at its Breast Health Centre.
"She and five of her friends rallied to raise support for our 'healthy women, healthy community' initiative in honour of the women in their lives who were facing a terrifying diagnosis," Ms. Van Noort continued.
Marguerite Elizabeth Winifred Ritchie was born in Edmonton on May 20, 1919, the second of Allan and Marguerite Blanche Ritchie's three children. Her father was a travelling grocery salesman who was often absent while her mother cooked, cleaned and, according to family lore, built their house on her own.
"Literally, she built it," Ms. Kongkham said. "I imagine there were friends, though, to help prop up boards and such."
Young Betty, as she was known, learned about gender discrimination the first time she heard the line in O Canada that goes "True patriot love in all thy sons' command." Where were the "daughters"? And what did that make her?
Upon graduation from high school in Edmonton, she finished first, not just in her class, but in all of the province. Encouraged by her mother, she studied both history and law at the University of Alberta, graduating in 1943 with a BA in history and a law degree. Soon after being admitted to the Alberta bar a year later, she moved to Ottawa, dropping "Betty" for the more formal "Marguerite" because she was told that people wouldn't take her seriously otherwise. At first, she worked for the Combines Investigation Commission; soon, she was transferred to the justice department, where she impressed her superiors to the point that they sent her to Montreal to become an expert in international air law. In the end, she would complete a master's degree in law at McGill University in 1958 and develop the expertise that would inform the rest of her life.
It wasn't easy. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Dr. Ritchie recalled being told by her justice department boss in the 1950s that her job depended on her providing him with sexual favours. Still, she persisted, never losing sight of what was important to her. She contributed to legislation that guaranteed women equal pay for work of equal value, made it easier for them to get a divorce and gave them the right to sit on juries.
Perhaps thinking of her own arrival in Ottawa, when women were ostensibly only allowed to work as clerks, she helped change discriminatory federal hiring practices. And she was instrumental in the drafting of a law that abolished discrimination against native women who married non-native men.
In 1963, she became the first woman in Canada to receive the esteemed Queen's Counsel designation from the federal government
That year, in an interview with the Montreal Gazette, a reporter noted that a casual observer might mistake the "charming, raven-haired Miss Ritchie" for one of the many attractive secretaries on Parliament Hill because she had lost none of her femininity while "dabbling in the eternal battle of the sexes." But then, she opened her mouth, issuing forth sharp commentary about such subjects as the possibility the West would lose the war against communism because of gender discrimination.
"In Canada, we have geniuses wasting their time over the kitchen sink while Russian women are accepted as the equals of men in all professions and in government," she said.
Or this, on the subject of marriage: "To me, marriage offered absolutely nothing but I feel many married women underestimate themselves. Madame Curie would have been just another housewife if she hadn't been forced by circumstances to continue a profession she started before marriage. Women shouldn't be forced to choose between marriage and a career but should insist on their right to do both, if they wish."
In 1974, she started the Human Rights Institute of Canada, a non-profit organization with a mandate to provide legal research to the public on key political and human-rights issues. Included among its many cases was that of Bonnie Robichaud, who in 1980 filed a sexual-harassment complaint against her employer, the Department of National Defence, and her supervisor. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1987 that a discriminatory practice by an employee is to be considered a discriminatory practice by the employer as well, even if it is not authorized or intended.
She worked at the institute until it shut its doors in 2013, its lustre somewhat tarnished by Dr. Ritchie's unapologetic stance on bilingualism. Perfectly bilingual herself, she made no secret of her belief that Quebec's language laws were discriminatory and the city of Ottawa's requirement for its senior managers to be fluent in both French and English violated the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And when it came to the Liberal Red Book and its recognition of the country's two founding nations, she was apoplectic, calling it nothing less than a "prescription for national suicide."
In an interview with the Ottawa Sun last year, she was asked if the price she'd paid for those convictions was worth it.
"I have no regrets," she replied.
Dr. Ritchie's older brother, Norman Ritchie, who was known as Bud, died in in England in 1941 while a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, while her younger brother, Robert Ritchie, who joined the air force on the day he learned of his brother's death, predeceased Dr. Ritchie in 2012. She leaves her niece, Ms. Kongkham; her nephew, Lance Ritchie; and their families.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this obituary stated incorrectly that Marguerite Ritchie was the first woman in Canada to receive the esteemed designation Queen's Counsel. In fact, while she was the first to receive the federally designated honour, other women were given provincially appointed QCs before her. This obituary has been corrected to reflect this fact.