On Being a Second: Grace Wambolt, Legal Professionalism and 'Inter-Wave' Feminism in Nova Scotia

Grace Wambolt was the fifth female graduate of Dalhousie Law School and the second woman to practise law in Nova Scotia. She was one of the relatively few female lawyers in Canada (up to the influx of the nineteen-seventies) who practiced law following the push by the first female lawyers for the elimination of formal barriers to practice. This paper examines the similarities and differences between the "firsts" and those who followed them, primarily by looking at the life of Wambolt and her letters and speeches preserved in the Wambolt fonds located in the Nova Scotia Archives and donated by Wambolt herself. The paper concludes with a comparison between Wambolts efforts to obtain equality and justice for all women and those of the "firsts" who tended, for various reasons, to be less connected to the women's movement.