Quebec's long wait for female suffrage
Friday, 11 December 2009 05:00
December 11, 1901. As armies of feminists across North America, Britain and Europe fought a long struggle for the right of women to vote, there seemed scant support for their cause in Quebec, as indicated by a mini-survey in Le Coin du Feu, (By the Fireside), a Quebec women's magazine.
As summarized in the Montreal Star, of 16 men and women surveyed by Le Coin du Feu, only one supported women's suffrage, while the support of a second was inferred.
The editor of Montreal's Le Monde newspaper claimed that no true liberal could oppose female suffrage. It was also thought desirable since men were deteriorating "physically and intellectually."
Lady Aberdeen—Ishbel Maria Couts Marjoribanks Gordon—absented because it was too politically controversial for the wife of the Governor General to comment on. But in England, it was made clear, Lady Aberdeen, a social reformer and feminist, had been an ardent crusader for women's suffrage.
"A Young Lady," identified only as Yoone, saw female suffrages as "the necessary consequence of true democracy," but thought it would be dangerous to allow before women's education had been "considerably modified." A woman author opposed it, but felt that if it came "women could not make a worse use of it than men."
The wife of Montreal's mayor expressed a common attitude of opponents:
"I freely leave to my husband the task of exercising political rights for both of us, feeling happy if for my part, by the exercise of my rights of mistress of the house, I can make life agreeable for him and give to my children the necessary education and well being."
"Why should we go and throw ourselves into the political furnace, from which we would come out scarred perhaps, and surely blackened?" one women asked. A man predicted, "Women, by mixing up in politics, would fatally descend to the moral level of deliberative assemblies." "No, no, no female suffrage," said Premier Taillon. "I have too much admiration for women and too much aversion for politics."
Female suffrage advocates faced a long road, and nowhere longer than in Quebec. Manitoba, in 1916, was the first province to grant the vote to women in provincial elections, followed by Alberta later that year. During the First World War, servicewomen were granted the vote in federal elections in 1917, as were the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of servicemen. All women won the vote in federal elections in 1919 and by 1922 all provinces except Quebec granted the vote to women. Women were not allowed to vote in Quebec provincial elections until 1940.