Famous British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst
visited Edmonton 1916, and again in 1919 and 1921.
She died in 1928 at age 70.
Her 1916 visit was reported in the June 14 Edmonton Bulletin.
A later article recounted the event:
Pankhurst said if women in Britain could have achieved suffrage by the same methods as were used in Alberta, they would have had suffrage 60 years before. The sacrifice that had to made to push the point was demonstrated by one of the crowd welcoming her to Edmonton, who was wearing a prison brooch. Mrs. Christopher Lucas was wearing this testament given to those who trod the path of sacrifice in other days. It bore a picture of Miss Christabel Pankhurst [Emmeline's daughter and co-leader of suffragette movement] with her own signature.
The Edmonton newspaper made the point that happily, no one was known to have suffered during Alberta women's struggle for the vote. (EB, May 9, 1936 clipping found in the "Equal Franchise League" clipping file, City of Edmonton Achives)
The Edmonton Bulletin recounted in 1915, just before women got the vote, the experiences of Mrs. J.A. Pattullo, WCTU and suffrage activist.
There was time when no man would sit on the speakers' platform with her, and when the WCTU itself passed a resolution protesting her stand in favour of women's suffrage and times when she had to walk miles because she did not have the money for a streetcar fares. (She was honoured for her work at event at Blue Moon Tea Room. She gave talk on history of WCTU and on the life of Miss Francis Willard. Mr. Bergen gave talk in Swedish on Christian Socialism. (EB, Feb. 22, 1915)
1915 Feb. 17 delegation led by the Equal Franchise League addressed Premier Sifton to ask for votes for women.
Nellie McClung of the Equal Franchise League
R. Jamieson of Calgary to speak for Local Council of Women,
Louise McKinney (Claresholm) to represent Women's Christian Temperance Union [McKinney was later one of Alberta's "Famous Five".]
Rice Sheppard to represent farmers [My book Protest and Progress has much on this person. He served on the city council for many years as a Labour city councillor. A founder of the UFA, he drifted from it to back Social Credit as a route of financial reform.]
Miss Reid, president of the Women's Auxiliary of the UFA, came up from Alix to represent rural women.
That the day will be a notable one in the history of the struggle for equal franchise in Alberta is the intention of the League." (EB, Feb. 23, 1915, p. 3)
He did not grant votes for women on this occasion, but by the following year Alberta women had the vote. Two women were elected in the 1917 provincial election. They were first women elected in the British Empire.
A strong local campaign in a rural district elected Louise McKinney.
A nursing sister serving in the WWI Canadian army was elected as part of two-vote system used by Alberta soldiers. Many soldiers, out of respect for the women on the home front awaiting their return and for the women who were sacrificing themselves as nurses and in other roles assisting the soldiers, cast one of their vote for the man of their choosing and gave their other vote to the one woman who was running in the army election. Roberta MacAdams thus took a seat in the Legislature.
In these cases, pro-rep was not needed to achieve "minority representation," but the two women, revolutionary as their presence in the legislature was, was not fair representation for the half the population that were female.
There is a short mention in a book that an Edmonton suffragette laid her head on the streetcar track to stop traffic and make a political point, but I have not seen any mention of this act of direct action elsewhere.
Peel's PP search for these keywords were unfruitful:
streetcar and votes
streetcar women
streetcar protest
Thanks for reading.
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