CANADA | Honoring Its Women Leaders

JOHN AND ALICE TEPPER MARLIN PAY THEIR RESPECTS TO Canada's "Famous Five" 
Who Fought For canadian Women's right To Be Recognized As Persons

Not until 1960 were all Canadian women allowed to vote. The right to vote started with the first Province, Manitoba, in 1916. Here is the sequence:

1916 – Women earned the vote in Manitoba. Alberta and Saskatchewan followed the same year. Eventually, the other seven Canadian provinces extended the vote to women as well.

1917 – Canada's federal electoral law stipulated that "idiots, madmen, criminals and judges" were not allowed to vote. It didn't mention women, and they were not allowed to vote in national elections. Robert Borden was Prime Minister in 1917. He wasn't enthusiastic about women voting, but an election was coming in the fall of 1917 and Borden needed extra votes. So women were allowed to vote on behalf of their menfolk at war, or if they were actively working on behalf of the war effort. So on September 20, 1917, Parliament passed the Wartime Elections Act. It allowed women who were British subjects and who were wives, mothers and sisters of soldiers serving in the First World War to vote on behalf of their male relatives. Women (mainly nurses) serving in the military could also vote. On December 17, 1917 some 500,000 women voted for the first time in a federal election, which was won by Borden's coalition government.

Agnes Macphail,
first elected woman

1918 – The federal government extended the right to vote to most Canadian women 21 years of age and older. Borden saying they would exert a good influence on public life. However, most women of color, including Chinese women, "Hindu" or East Indian or Japanese women, weren't allowed to vote at the provincial and federal level until the late 1940s.

1921 – Almost all women were acknowledged as having the right to vote in Canada, but an exception was made for aboriginal and Asian women. In the 1921 election, Agnes Macphail of Grey County, Ontario ran for the Progressives, a farmer-based party. She was elected and on December 6, 1921, at 31, Macphail officially became the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. MacPhail would be the only woman in Parliament until 1929, when Cairine Wilson became the first woman senator. MacPhail eventually lost her seat in 1940.

The "Famous Five" on Parliament Hill.

1929 – Women were formally recognized as persons under Canadian law.

1951 – Aboriginal women covered by the Indian Act could vote for band councils.

1960 – Aboriginal women could vote in federal elections. All Canadian women finally had the right to vote.

Read more about the fight by Canadian women to win the vote on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website for Canada: A People's History. Just click here. Or check out this site section15.ca here.