Why no marking for women getting the vote?
It happened 100 years ago, but the event was far from a pure affair; it was tainted with flaws, racism and realpolitik
This year (the exact day was May 24) is the centenary of women’s suffrage in Canada at a federal level.
I confess, I didn’t have the date marked on my calendar.
And I’m a long-standing feminist, since 1425 when I polished Joan of Arc’s armour in a past life.
Justin Trudeau has even less excuse than I do. He’s the PM, an avowed feminist, and for him, letting the moment slip by is tantamount to coming home from the grocery forgetting the eggplant, when you’ve been sent out for the makings of eggplant Parmesan.
Justin has hardly said boo. There’s been virtually no effort to have the historic 1918 legislation celebrated, advertised on drink coasters or icon-icized on Royal Doulton flatware, with Nellie McClung hoisting her hockey stick in the air, as the goalie of patriarchy lay prostrate in defeat.
Why the amnesia? It’s a weak plea, but the history of Canadian women’s suffrage is wildly complicated. And when it’s put clearly before you in summary, as it was for me by McMaster University political science professor and department chair Karen Bird, certain difficulties present themselves.
The suffrage act was not the unmitigated triumph of equality and progressivism you might think on the face of things. Into the mix were thrown the realpolitik of compromise and porkbarrel-style expediency, as well as anti-immigrant sentiment, outright racism, pro-temperance lobbying and much else.
(Lawyer John Loukidelis sent me an email recently describing an excellent talk on the topic by Karen before the Hamilton Law Association. She sent me the text of her article/speech and we talked.)
The legislation that enfranchised so many women in 1918 represents the largest single expansion of voting lists in Canadian history, says Karen, but it nonetheless excluded many, based on ethnic origin, including, disgracefully, First Nations.
To give background, the suffrage legislation was tee-ed up by the earlier Wartime Elections Act, 1917, a creature of the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden, bastardized into being out of need to prop up conscription for the First World War.
The WEA, Karen notes, afforded the vote to wives, mothers and sisters of soldiers. But it also stripped the franchise from immigrants from “enemy” countries.
Meanwhile, in western provinces, Karen writes, suffrage was proceeding apace.
While much about it was highminded, the movement also fell prey to fears of the “rising foreign element.”
She quotes one reformer saying: “What an outrage to deny to the highest-minded native born lady what is cheerfully granted to the lowest-browed, most imbruted foreign hobo.”
For some, Karen notes, suffrage was means to another end, alcohol prohibition.
And, she adds, there was opposition to women’s suffrage from women themselves, even from Hamilton’s Adelaide Hoodless, who did much to advance the interests of women (she founded the Women’s Institute, for instance) but didn’t think voting was good for them.
If it all sounds terribly messy, it was, but what isn’t, in the realm of political movements and the factional competition for expanded rights? Today more than ever.
Some contemporary feminists, says Karen, raise a critique that suffrage agitation here wasn’t so much an antidote to patriarchy as another branch of white, colonial privilege.
When you consider the glaring omission in the legislation — for instance, Asians and Indigenous people (who never got the vote until 1960) — you begin to understand the muted acknowledgment.
Karen writes: “Feminist historian Veronica Strong-Boag suggests that one reason for Canada’s ‘curiously cautious commemoration of women suffragists’ is that the politics of remembrance has become a contemporary minefield.
“As she points out, we are only beginning to reckon with some of our more flawed historical figures. Renaming bridges and buildings may indeed be appropriate ... We are right to feel uneasy celebrating mainstream suffragists ...”
Still, Karen argues forcefully, movements do not stay locked in the times and conditions of their origins, and, however bourgeois and rooted in the power structure, struggles like Canadian suffrage can evolve into more radical shapes.
“The flawed beliefs of some ... should not blind us to the courage required to win the vote for most women, or the necessity to contest barriers to equality that persist in Canada today.”
Do they ever persist, everywhere, so vividly evident over the last while.
Karen would like the centenary marked, not by quaint heritage moments but with practical action, like “baby leave,” allowing elected legislators with newborns to vote by proxy.