When I first came to the House of Commons and walked out into the lobby, men sprang to their feet. I asked them to sit down since I'd come to walk around. I didn't want them doing me favours.

With the death of United Reform MP for Saskatoon City Walter George Brown a few days after the election Macphail was recruited by the United Reform Movement to run in the by-election to fill the seat. She was allowed to use the party's name even after it stopped being a political organization in 1934. In 2005 in a contest run by former Ontario MPP Marilyn Churley Agnes Macphail was voted as the Greatest Ontario Woman.

Active throughout her life in progressive Canadian politics Macphail worked for two separate parties and promoted her ideas through column-writing activist organizing and legislation. Agnes Campbell Macphail (March 24 1890 – February 13 1954) was the first woman to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons and one of the first two women elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.