GAINS ‘NEVER SET IN STONE’
Alberta set an example for the rest of the British Empire when it elected two women to the legislature in 1917, but progress was anything but smooth, writes Clare Clancy.
A far-flung Canadian province became the envy of suffragettes across the British Empire when two women were elected to the Alberta legislature on June 7, 1917. Louise McKinney and Roberta MacAdams won a long-sought-after victory while their counterparts from England to New Zealand celebrated the triumph, certain they were next.
Local news coverage was understated: “Alberta will have its first woman representative ... Mrs. McKinney is president of the provincial (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) and is an able speaker,” read the Edmonton Bulletin on June 8.
“Imagine how hard and lonely it was for that first generation, the pressures they were under were enormous,” says Catherine Cavanaugh, a retired women’s studies professor and expert in Prairie women’s history. “They were sort of token women in the halls of power dominated for centuries by men.”
McKinney and MacAdams were elected one year after white women in the province won the right to vote. It would be decades before all Canadians could vote — Chinese-Canadians were granted the right in 1947 while aboriginal peoples didn’t win unconditional suffrage until 1960.
Despite political careers fraught with challenges — both women served one term — the trailblazers proved themselves viable political candidates with different campaign strategies.
McKinney, elected in the riding of Claresholm as a member of the Non-Partisan League, had fought for Prohibition as a leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, believing that liquor ruined families.
MacAdams, who ran as an independent at-large member, had served overseas during the First World War as a nursing sister. With soldiers and nurses holding two votes each, her slogan “give one vote to the man of your choice and the other to the sister” set the tone for a legislative career that emphasized soldiers’ interests.
“They were chastised by women and men … there were women around them telling them not to rock the boat,” says Shauna Frederick, chair of the Famous 5 Foundation, a Calgary-based organization that promotes the legacy of Canada’s early suffragettes. “What they did paved the path for women that followed them to have more opportunity and privilege.”
‘TIMING WAS EVERYTHING’
With suffragettes pushing for political participation across the British Empire — in New Zealand women had won the right to vote in 1893 but the first woman wouldn’t be elected to a legislature until 1933 — Alberta seemed an unlikely place to boast the first successful campaigns.
It’s partly the pioneering spirit in the Prairies, explained Cavanaugh.
“Timing was everything,” she says, adding that women such as McKinney and MacAdams, both originally from Ontario, saw Alberta as a land of second chances. “It was a brand new settlement society.”
Women’s labour was critical to the province’s success while men went overseas to fight, she said. “There was a sense of opportunity.”
Nanci Langford, a historical sociology scholar at Athabasca University and founding member of the Alberta Women’s Archives Association, says both women were lauded for their reputations.
“There was a very strong undercurrent going on at this time recognizing women’s contributions … to building a new society,” she says. Women may also have been seen as an antidote to the toxic political climate. “Politics was seen as very corrupt and needed fixing.”
The United Farmers of Alberta, which would form the government in 1921, supported women’s suffrage in Alberta, hoping to rally support in rural communities, Langford says.
“They were looking at their own political position, thinking of fielding their own candidates for election,” she says. “They felt strongly that if they had women voting they would double their vote.”
In January 1919, McKinney gave a speech titled “the farmers’ opportunity” at the United Farmers of Alberta convention in Edmonton, where she touted the power of harnessing the rural woman’s vote.
“Not every woman is going to vote independent until we educate them,” she said.
McKinney would eventually run for the party, but lose her seat in the 1921 election.
‘IT WAS A REALITY CHECK FOR THEM’
For both McKinney and MacAdams, political involvement was disappointing. They weren’t able to effect change in the way they’d envisioned, Langford says. After all, winning a seat wasn’t the end goal.
“When they entered party politics, they learned how difficult it was to create social change .... It was a reality check for them.”
For McKinney, that disappointment culminated with the eventual repeal of prohibition in 1924.
MacAdams earned recognition as the first woman to introduce a bill in the British Empire, the “Act to Incorporate the Great War Nextof-Kin Association,” which recognized an organization created by soldiers’ wives.
And along with her soldier-support agenda, she also advocated for women’s representation in all areas of government. In one heated debate, she protested the makeup of a board tasked with recommending a minimum wage for women. A newspaper clipping from April 1921 explained the attorney general’s justification when no women were picked to sit on the board.
“Naturally the employers were not especially desirous of having a woman representative and for his own part he would like to see a woman member on the board … the next best thing was that the secretary of the commission was a woman, being one of the factory act inspectors,” the article said.
But for all their hard work, the Great Depression of the 1930s would reverse much of their progress.
“It’s astounding how quickly that was unravelled,” Cavanaugh says, explaining that the economic downturn pushed women out of the political realm.
Correspondence between suffragettes suggested they saw their numbers dwindle in positions of power.
Still, the presence of women in the legislature in 1917 can’t be understated, Cavanaugh says.
While McKinney and MacAdams debated Alberta legislation, Quebec legislators continued to oppose women’s voting rights. Quebec was the last province in Canada to give women the vote, finally relenting in 1940.
One member of Parliament from Quebec, C.A. Fournier, called women’s suffrage “the instrument of their torture and downfall,” arguing it would decrease the birthrate, according to an April 12, 1918, Edmonton Journal article. Women instead should stay in the home, their proper sphere, he said.
“We’re being tested today in many of the same ways,” Cavanaugh says. “Gains are never set in stone. You can never sit back and rest on your laurels.”