Extending the Vote and the Suffragists:

1917 Canada’s federal electoral law did not allow voting for idiots, madmen, criminals, and judges.

Times were changing…40,000 Canadian women were working in factories, banks, and offices, replacing men overseas. Women made economy work & manufactured weapons for the war effort. Therefore they wanted a CHANGE!…They wanted their voices to be heard and recognized so they could exercise their right to vote.

Suffragists in Quebec

Suffragists in Nfld.

Hanging Posters

Suffragists = women who sought the vote. Earned vote in Manitoba in 1916, then Sask. & Alb. 1917 BC then Ont. 1918 N.S. then N.B. 1919 Yukon. 1922 P.E.I. 1925 Nfld.

Author Stephen Leacock feared more for the sanctity of his social club. "I was sitting the other day ... with another thing like myself, a man. At the next table were a group of Superior Beings in silk, talking. ... When women have the vote, said one, there will be no more war. The women will forbid it ... there will be no more poverty, no disease, no germs, no cigarette smoking, and nothing to drink but water. It seemed a gloomy world."

P.M. Borden not keen on women’s right to vote, but was desperate to win upcoming 1917 election fought solely on issue of mandatory service legislated earlier by Borden. Sept. 20 1917 Parliament passed Wartime Elections Act removing right to vote from Canadians born in enemy countries. Also granted vote to wives, mothers, and sisters of serving soldiers, & women in armed forces!!!

Seen as offensive to some Suffragists – discriminatory half measure to serve wartime cause rather than aiding cause for women.

December 1917 500,000 Canadian women voted for fist time in federal elections. Borden’s victory was the largest percent share of the popular vote for a single party in Canadian history (56%).

Spring of 1918 right to vote extended to all Canadian women 21 yrs Spring of 1918 right to vote extended to all Canadian women 21 yrs. of age and older. Borden: “Women would exert a good influence on public life.”

Borden was right, next election with women’s voting rights (minus native and Asian women) Agnes Macphail of Grey County, Ont. Ran for the Progressive (farmer based party) Dec. 6 1921 she became the first woman to sit in the House of Commons.

Agnes Macphail was the only woman in Parliament until 1929, when Cairine Wilson became first woman senator. Macphail served until 1940.

The Valiant Five: five Canadian women who in 1927 asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question: “Are women persons?” 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously decided women were not "persons" who could hold public office as Canadian senators.

Specifically the question was whether Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, included the possibility of women becoming senators: "The Governor General shall... summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and ... every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator."

1929 the British Privy Council reversed the decision and called the exclusion of women from public office "a relic of days more barbarous than ours." The case came to be known as the Persons Case. Four months later, Cairine Wilson became the first woman to sit in the Senate.

Who were these women? Also known as Alberta’s “Famous 5”, petitioners in the groundbreaking Persons case:

Emily Murphy Social reformer, author, first female magistrate in the British Empire (Commonwealth) and the leader of the Famous Five.

Louise McKinney First woman in the British Empire (Commonwealth) to be elected by both men and women to a provincial legislature, Alberta.

Henrietta Muir Edwards Social activist, author, Convenor of Laws for the National Council of Women.

Irene Parlby First female Cabinet Minister in Alberta, second in the British Empire (Commonwealth), first president of the Alberta Farm Women's Association.

Nellie McClung prominent suffragist, author, orator, and first female member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Famous Five

The Senate was very important to the women because, until the 1970s, it approved divorces, among other things. They believed that if women were to sit in the Senate, decisions concerning family matters would be more equitable.

Along with Cairine Wilson, the Five have been commemorated on the Canadian fifty dollar bill, October 13, 2004.

Documents: Original Petition: Decision of the Lords: