May 2022:
A hundred years ago, Edmonton's first woman city councillor was hard at work in city hall. Her name was Izena Ross.
Izena was 47 years old at the time. The Canadian Census of 1921 tells us she had been born in Ontario, was of Scottish descent and attended the Methodist church. She and her husband, 50-year-old Will J. Ross, an insurance salesman, were parents of 14-year-old Elizabeth.
Although women had had the right to run for seats on Edmonton city council since 1912, Ross was the first to put her name in the running. She was president of the local Council of Women and had served for eight years on the city's Hospital Board.
She was elected in her first try. She was actually lucky to win - two candidates got just 200 votes less than her and were not elected. It could easily have been the other way around.
She is usually regarded as a high-society lady, the sort to spend her idle afternoons at tea parties where the latest servant problems were discussed.
But this might be a wrong impression. In her election campaign she promised, if elected, to work for "the welfare and advancement of the women and children of the city."
As councillor, she was pivotal in Edmonton adopting a fairer voting system. At that time, city councillors were elected in a city-wide district, where each voter could cast five or more votes. This meant many more votes to count than necessary. Also it allowed businessmen and the like to take all the seats.
Labour groups, long held out of rightful representation, pushed the city to bring in Proportional Representation. "PR" was already being used in Calgary city elections.
In 1922, city council were deadlocked on the proposed change. Ross had the deciding vote and cast it in favour of holding a referendum on the change. The referendum saw a majority of voters vote for change.
In the 1922 election, Ross received more votes than she had in 1921. but despite her increased popularity, this time she did not take the seat.
Edmonton adopted the system of Proportional Representation known as Single Transferable Voting (STV). Ross if she were alive today might be impressed to see that local governments in her ancestral home are using STV. Scotland's 32 local authorities held their latest election just on May 5. More than 1200 members of the various councils were elected through STV, with seats on each council being fairly balanced among the two to four largest parties.
Edmonton only used STV for five elections. Its fairness rankled those who benefited - or thought they would benefit - from a return to the old Block Voting system. Labour fought hard in STV's defence. Ironically, in the first election without STV, Labour took a majority of seats, a result they had not achieved under PR. Businessmen had no representation at all. But then a few years later they got the lucky breaks and took all the seats. Since that time, Labour has never had the privilege of having its fair share of seats. The same generally holds true for women. Since Izena Ross’s election, women have almost always been under-represented on Edmonton’s city council. Only a total of 31 women were elected prior to 2020. Eight women were elected in the 2021 election. And now it is men who are under-represented. But the women councillors' hold on city hall is weak. The two who represent Millwoods - Keren Tang and Jo-Anne Wright - plus most of the others were elected with less than 40 percent of the vote in their districts. Anyone with 41 percent of the vote could take the seat away from them next time. A shift of just 5000 votes across the city could mean almost all of the women councillors would lose their seats on council. But a fair system would ensure that women would have about half the seats on council. The eight women who sit on council today could be thought of as following in Izena's footsteps. I hope they have Izena's courage to stand up for fairer elections in our future, like Izena did in her own time.
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(originally published in Millwoods Mosaic May 2022)
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