Manitoba women became first to get the vote in Canada 100 years ago, then it was ‘mer

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Manitoba women became first to get the vote in Canada 100 years ago, then it was ‘merely a matter of time’



Like the abolition of slavery, responsible government and gay marriage, women’s suffrage is one of those rare political causes that succeeded so thoroughly that it becomes progressively difficult to remember what all the fuss was about. But go back 100 years, to the time of Nellie McClung (above), and these arguments would have been echoing through saloons, church socials and editorial pages.

The Case Against

They’ll get hurt: Until the late 1800s, Canada did not decide elections by secret ballot. Voters would have to go a polling station, call out their vote publicly and then dodge a rain of blows from thugs representing the other party. It was an unsafe place for anyone, really, but it was particularly inadvisable to show up in a corset and hoop skirt.

It’s taunting God: The idea of being “born to one’s station” was still quite popular in the early 20th century. If God had wanted to give women the vote, he would have made them men. This was the opinion of Queen Victoria herself, who called women’s rights a “mad, wicked folly … on which my poor feeble sex is bent.”


They’ll take our booze: Temperance was a driving force behind women’s suffrage, and spawned the movement’s most influential leaders. The idea was that male-dominated government would never ditch the tipple without female voters to keep an eye on things. Of course, after only a few years of Prohibition, newly enfranchised women in both the U.S. and Canada would turn out to be instrumental in having the measure repealed.

It’s pointless: Women would just vote the same way as their husbands and sons. Women from Liberal households would cancel out the votes by women from Conservative households, so why force Canada’s women to go to all the trouble of performing yet another errand during elections?

Everyone will turn into men: Quebec politician Henri Bourassa wrote in 1918 that allowing women to vote would turn them into “veritable women-men.” One sex fought wars and yelled at people in legislatures, while the other sex nurtured children, calmed down their menfolk and kept everything from devolving into a Mad Max dystopia. Voting, Bourassa claimed, was a government plot to “sabotage” women.



The Case in Favour

Nobody’s getting killed over it: Playing to the Canadian suffragists’ advantage was the fact that they were not violent. In the U.K., Votes for Women activists bombed railway stations, slashed paintings in the national gallery and tried to kill the prime minister — providing an easy argument for why females couldn’t be trusted with the wheels of government.

Better now than later: Decades before women could vote, John A. Macdonald penned a largely forgotten letter supporting the “justice” and “equality” of women’s suffrage. But, more importantly, Macdonald was a shrewd politician and could see the writing on the wall. “It is merely a matter of time,” he wrote.

It’s not all that radical: In the United States, many in the ruling classes were freaked out by the suffragists’ promise that once women had the vote, a wave of social reforms would sweep the nation. Canada’s suffragists, meanwhile, were comparatively conservative, and simply advanced the argument that it was sort of weird that Canada didn’t already let its women vote. Tellingly, the 1916 bill that gave Manitoba women the franchise merely told legislators that they should pass it because there was “no grounds” not to pass it.

There’s a bloody war on: It’s no accident that almost all of Canada’s women’s suffrage laws passed during the First World War. Fifteen hundred Canadians were dying in European trenches every month, women were suiting up in coveralls to make munitions and, suddenly, nobody worried anymore about whether a few ladies at the polling place would destroy society.

Who was Nellie McClung?

She was a pioneering politician, a best-selling novelist, a relentless activist and had a gift for wit and humour rarely seen in Canadian political crusaders. “Politics unsettle men and unsettled men means unsettled bills, broken furniture, broken vows and divorce,” she famously said at a 1914 play satirically imagining a world in which women, and not men, had the vote.

Reportedly, McClung’s character was a spot-on impression of the Manitoba premier, Rodmond Roblin. After securing Manitoba women the vote, McClung proceeded to Forrest Gump her way through Canadian history.

She was on CBC’s first Board of Governors. She was one of the Famous Five who got women declared as legal persons. She was a delegate to the League of Nations. And she cranked out books and novels with the profligacy of someone who wasn’t constantly hopping trains and conducting speaking tours.

But, as is the case with pretty much every other non-Terry Fox Canadian, there’s just enough unseemly about McClung to make her a controversial figure to this day.

As an MLA, McClung supported a 1928 act ordering the forced sterilization of thousands of disabled Albertans before it was repealed in 1971. McClung can also make modern feminists cringe with her firm advocacy of the “mothering ideal”; the idea that raising children was a woman’s highest achievement. She had five children of her own.

Timeline

1809 Quebec women with property are able to vote in local and municipal elections. But in 1849 the word “male” is added to the Quebec Franchise Act. Women in the province would be denied the vote for about 100 more years.

1850 Women in Ontario who own property can vote for school trustees.

1870 In Manitoba, members from the Icelandic community propose suffrage. Led by Margaret Benedictsson, they launch the Icelandic Women’s Suffrage Society in Winnipeg.

1876 Dr. Emily Howard Stowe creates Toronto women’s literary club, and use it as a front for suffrage activities.

1890s The Christian Women’s Temperance movement rallies support for suffrage.

1910 The National Council of Women calls for suffrage.

1912 In Manitoba, the Political Equality League is born. In 1914 they stage a mock parliament at the Walker Theatre in Winnipeg, where women play the roles of various leaders. Nellie McClung plays the premier, where she debates whether men should get the vote.

1916 On Jan. 28, Manitoba women gain the right to vote as well as the right to hold provincial office. March 14, Saskatchewan follows suit. April 19, Alberta does the same.

1917 On April 5, B.C. gives women the right to vote. One week later, Ontario follows suit.

1917 The Wartime Elections Act gives women in the military, as well as relatives of military men, the right to vote. This move is very much political and arguably less about women’s rights. On Dec. 17, over 500,000 women vote for the first time in a Canadian federal election. After the war, the measure is revoked.

1918 On May 24, all female citizens over 21 are able to vote in federal elections. They must be “not alien born” and meet property requirements in provinces where they live. April 26: Women in Nova Scotia get voting rights.

1919 April 17, women in New Brunswick gain suffrage.

1919 Women given the right to stand for the House of Commons.

1922 May 3, P.E.I. passes the law to allow women to vote.

1925 April 13, Newfoundland extends franchise to women.

1929 Women win the right to be appointed to the Senate after appealing to the Privy Council in England which reverses a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that women were not “persons” under the British North America Act.

1940 Despite resistance from the church and provincial leaders, women gain right to vote in Quebec elections thanks to leadership of Thérèse Casgrain.

1960 Aboriginal women win the right to vote when John Diefenbaker extends the franchises to all Aboriginal people.

Manitoba women became first to get the vote in Canada 100 years ago, then it was ‘merely a matter of time’ | National Post