Ellen Fairclough

Ellen Louks Fairclough was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and trained as an accountant, running her own public accounting firm and serving on Hamilton City Council. In 1950, she was elected to Parliament as a Progressive Conservative in a hard-fought by-election, passionately advocating equal pay for equal work.

In 1957, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker made history by appointing Fairclough Secretary of State, making her the first female cabinet minister in Canadian history. As Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, she drafted the landmark 1962 regulations that dismantled Canada's racially discriminatory White Canada immigration policy, opening immigration to all qualified applicants regardless of race.