It is a great pleasure to welcome Matthew Shoemaker, mayor of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, as a guest columnist. Mayor Shoemaker, who is also a lawyer with the Wishart Law Firm, reached out to Art's History so we might honour the proud role a past citizen of his community played in the long journey to achieving voting rights for women in Canada's largest province. Over to you Your Worship.
So it was on this day in 1917 that the Election Law Amendment Act, 1917 was given royal ascent in Ontario, recognizing women's right to vote in municipal and provincial elections.
The first record of suffragettes organizing in Ontario dates back to 1876. A mere five years later, suffragettes held their first audience with the Provincial government, then led by Sir Oliver Mowat. Mowat opposed recognizing women's right to vote, and thus, during his 24 year term as the Premier (which remains the record for length of service for an Ontario Premier) no legislative progress was made in the effort to enfranchise women. Similarly the governments of Premiers Arthur Sturgis Hardy, Sir George William Ross, and Sir James P. Whitney did not make any substantive effort to support the suffrage movement.
It was not until the ascension of Sir William H. Hearst, the MPP for Sault Ste. Marie, to the office of Premier of Ontario in 1914 that the suffrage movement took root. Upon ascending to the Premiership, Hearst, a Conservative, approached the issue cautiously, but without the ideological opposition of his predecessors. Over the course of his term, the lobbying of women's suffrage groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement League found that their cause was gaining both public and political support. Indeed, by 1917, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia (in that order) had recognized women's right to vote.
Also in 1917, the opposition Ontario Liberals adopted the enfranchisement of women as their official political position. A back-bench MPP introduced the Election Law Amendment Act during the 1917 session. When the bill came to the Ontario Legislature for debate, suffragettes filled the gallery and handed every MPP a yellow daffodil, which was the symbol of their cause. The Premier rose to speak to the bill, but was not wearing his yellow daffodil when he rose! The suffragettes were concerned they may not receive the support they had been expecting. That concern, however, quickly faded, when Premier Hearst spoke. Hearst stated:
The splendid part the women of this country … have played in this war [World War I] has changed the attitude of the public on this question. The attitude they have taken, the splendid sacrifices they have made, have broken down the prejudice that existed in the minds of men and many women as well.
Hearst concluded:
The Government endorses the principle of the bill now before the House and … I call upon my supporters to vote in its favour.
After his speech, Premier Hearst inserted the daffodil in his lapel, and the rest is history. The bill passed the Ontario Legislature and, on April 12, 1917, received royal ascent and since that time, women's right to vote both municipally and provincially has been the law of the land in Ontario.[caption id="attachment_3344990" align="alignnone" width="351"] Premier William Hearst[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney's best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen's Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.