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. 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: