The year 1921 put southern Grey County on the map. South East Grey became the first federal riding in all Canada to send a woman representative to Ottawa. Agnes Campbell Macphail of Artemesia Township, running as a candidate for the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO), became Canada's first female member of Parliament (MP) just two years after Canadian women had been granted both the right to vote and the right to be elected to the House of Commons. She ran and won in each subsequent federal election up to her defeat in 1940, remaining the one and only female MP for the majority of those years. When she ran provincially three years later, at the age of 53, Macphail again faced the prospect of joining an all-male club: the Ontario Legislature. Upon winning the 1948 election, however, Agnes shared the distinction of breaking that gender barrier with a second female MPP (member of provincial parliament), newly elected Rae Luckock. Now part of the CCF party (the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation - forerunner of the New Democratic Party) - Agnes Macphail served two terms provincially, 1943- 1945 and 1948-1951, as representative for East York, Ontario. Agnes Macphail died February 13 1954. She is buried in the McNeil Cemetery in Priceville.

Biographers of Agnes Macphail include Terry Crowley, Doris Pennington, Margaret Stewart and Doris French, Rachel Wyatt, and most recently Donna Mann of Grey County, whose book on Agnes's childhood, Aggie's Storms, is directed to children. Macphail's life, career and times make for fascinating reading. Agnes was fearless, stubborn, eloquent, honest, tireless, witty, democratic, inclusive, and the champion of those who others overlooked.