SASKATCHEWAN — The First World War was in full swing in 1916 and Canada’s young men were fighting for God, King and country, but back home, Prairie women were fighting for the right to vote.
On Jan. 28, 1916, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to enfranchise women and let them hold political office provincially. Two months later, on March 14, 1916, Saskatchewan women won the right to vote and hold provincial office.
Alberta followed suit on April 19, 1916, granting women the right to vote and hold provincial office.
The leader of Saskatchewan’s suffrage movement was Violet Clara McNaughton (1879 to 1968), a British homesteader and social activist, . From her position as organizer and first president of the Women Grain Growers in Saskatchewan, McNaughton encouraged women’s organizations to work together for women’s suffrage.
McNaughton brought together women from the Grain Growers, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and other groups to establish the Provincial Equal Franchise Board to work “together on common ground for the common good … .”
Even though suffrage movements were occurring across Canada, this movement had the most and earliest success on the Prairies. Ontario and British Columbia followed in 1917, while women were granted the vote in national elections in 1918. Some provinces followed much later, with Quebec women not enfranchised until 1940.
Campaign for suffrage
McNaughton wrote a letter decades after Saskatchewan women received the vote, explaining how the suffrage campaign originated.
Early in 1913, the Saskatchewan Grain Growers invited delegates to its annual convention and encouraged them to bring their wives. About 50 women attended a special program at the University of Saskatchewan, and while the entertainment was “pleasant,” most women shared a common desire: to obtain the franchise, McNaughton wrote.
So, they formed the Women Grain Growers and sent a message to the convention asking to be allowed in as a women’s section of the association. They received no reply but made plans to attend the next convention.
At the 1914 convention, the women formed a delegation and asked to speak to the men. They were allowed onto the platform immediately, where they presented their request and asked for $500 to complete their organization. Their request received much applause and was granted.
“The three of us went back to our women’s gathering walking on air. Not only because of the $500 grant but also because of the welcome we had received,” McNaughton said.
The women were now part of the powerful Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association. However, they still had to convince others — and the provincial government — that women were persons.
Changing hearts and minds
“The task was difficult in those pre-radio, and for so many of us, pre-telephone … (and) pre-car days,” she recalled. “We canvassed the country on foot, on horseback, stone boat, and by horse and buggy. We spoke from the back of wagons at prairie picnics, held, as Nellie McClung said, ‘In the shade of a barbed-wire fence.’”
In May 1915, around 100 people presented a “huge suffrage petition” to Premier Walter Scott in the Saskatchewan Legislature. He was sympathetic but said the government wanted more signatures; the group secured more — 10,000 in total.
In March 1916, Scott sent McNaughton a letter promising an equal franchise bill would be brought at the next session of the house.
“It was. It had been a good campaign … difficult, exciting (and) successful,” she added.
In his letter to McNaughton, Scott wrote, “I was very pleased indeed to be in a position to give favourable reply to the delegation who presented the petition.
“The women of Saskatchewan have helped and are helping to build up this province of which we are so justly proud,” he added, “and I am very glad indeed that it is my good fortune to occupy the position of premier in a legislature which is extending to our women, through the franchise, further and fuller powers of assistance and service in the development of Saskatchewan.”
An article in the Regina Morning Leader summarized the mood afterward, “It was the end of one phase of the struggle of women to be recognized as the equal of man in the matter of the franchise. It marked the opening of bigger responsibilities, greater tasks — the struggle for the victory of the highest ideals in the home and in the state.”
