Ladies in the Senate better than old women

Friday, 16 October 2009 05:00

October 16, 1883. Ladies would do just a good a job in the Senate as the old women who fill the place, says the Toronto Telegram.

The Telegram was commenting on a delegation from the Women's Suffrage Association that had invaded the office of Ontario's attorney general the day before, politely asking the right to vote.

"Living as they did under the rule of our great and glorious Queen, it seemed to be an anomaly that women should be barred from all legislation rights," Association President Mrs. McEwan reportedly told Premier Oliver Mowatt and several members of his cabinet.

The women had their supporters. Toronto Mayor Boswell presented a city council memorial supporting women suffrage, and added that he personally was strongly in favour of it. Other politicians at the session expressed varying views, pro and con.

Premier Mowatt sat on the fence, as comfortable as only a politician can be in that position. There were, said the premier, intellectual and earnest women who had taken a deep interest in the subject, but only one in 10 or one in 20 had expressed their support. "He had no doubt that the time was coming when the women would have the vote," the Telegram reported, "but whether the time was near or far he could not tell. He would always remember the present interview with pleasure."

If ladies were allowed to vote, they could not logically be barred from political office, the Telegram said in its editorial comment the next day.

"It would look somewhat odd to see ladies sitting and voting on the School Board, in the City Council, in the Ontario Legislature and in House of Commons at Ottawa. But the present is an age of innovation, and this would be no more remarkable that some others that have taken place. People will concede with very little hesitation that the duties discharged by the Senate, for instance, could be KEY quite as efficiently discharged by ladies as by old women."