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Bertha Wilson

First woman judge on Supreme Court of Canada

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 11, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Bertha Wernham Wilson was a Canadian jurist and the first female puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Before her ascension to Canada's highest court, she was the first female associate and partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt and the first woman appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario. During her time at Osler, she created the first in-firm research department in the Canadian legal industry.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bertha Wilson” as first woman judge on Supreme Court of Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 68-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Bertha, Wilson and First can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as first woman judge on Supreme Court of Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bertha Wilson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bertha Wilson primary sources, Bertha Wilson archive and Bertha research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bertha Wilson”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bertha Wilson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.