June 26, 1893 - Clara Brett Martin - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Clara Brett Martin becomes “student-at-law” with Toronto law firm. Clara Brett Martin was born in Toronto in 1874, the youngest of 12 children. Along with her siblings, Martin was schooled at home before graduating with high honours from Trinity College with a major in mathematics at the age of 16. After a year of teaching, Martin petitioned the Law Society of Upper Canada to become a law student, only to be rejected. But after her issue went to the Ontario legislature and then back to the Law Society, Martin became a student-at-law on June 26, 1893. She began her articles with the Toronto law firm of Mulock, Miller, Crowther and Montgomery and then switched to Blake, Lash, Cassels. She experienced all the difficulties one could imagine, including hissing, verbal threats and having to sit separately from other students. However, amidst a drop-out rate of close to 70 per cent, Martin not only completed her studies, but came in first place. She met further legal hurdles in her quest to become a barrister until former Premier Oliver Mowat and others intervened. When Martin was called to the bar as a barrister on February 2, 1897, she became the first woman lawyer in the British Empire. Years later she opened her own firm, hiring women law students along the way. Knowing the importance of educating women, she also served on the Toronto Board of Education for 10 years,. In 1989, a new office of the attorney general of Ontario was named the Clara Brett Martin Building. However, research revealed a letter from 1915 in which Martin made an anti-Semitic reference, and shortly thereafter, her name was removed from the building. Martin died in 1923 at the age of 49.

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