Badass women headed our way

Planning is underway in Sault Ste. Marie to celebrate women's suffrage as we approach the 100th anniversary of the right to vote in Canada.

The first province to allow women to vote was Manitoba, which passed its Act to amend The Manitoba Election Act on January 28, 1916.

In the 1917 federal election, a limited number of women were allowed to vote under temporary wartime legislation, but it wasn't until the spring of 1918 that most Canadian women 21 years of age and older were granted full voting rights by the federal government.

Kathy Fisher, curator of the Ermatinger/Clergue National Historic Site, tells SooToday that her next Lilac and Lavender Festival (in June 1916) will have a suffragette theme.

"It'll be a three-day festival with exhibits and entertainment and theatrical stories," Fisher said.

"The Zonta Club has just stepped up to the plate to say they'd like to be involved. If anyone else is interested we'd love to have as much participation as possible."

City Council recently created a committee to recognize the father of women's suffrage in Ontario, Sir William Hearst, a Sault Ste. Marie lawyer who served as premier of Ontario from 1914 to 1918.

Hearst's Progressive Conservative government granted Ontario women the right to vote in 1917.

It wasn't until 1960 that all Canadian women were allowed to vote.

Quebec fought women's suffrage until 1940.

Women of colour (including Japanese, Chinese and South Asian) weren't allowed to vote until the late 1940s and aboriginal women covered by the Indian Act were not allowed to vote in federal elections until 1960.

The following are the dates of provincial, territorial and federal laws upholding the right of women to vote:

Manitoba - January 28, 1916
Saskatchewan - March 14, 1916
Alberta - April 19, 1916
British Columbia - April 5, 1917
Ontario - April 12, 1917
Nova Scotia - April 26, 1918
Canada - May 24, 1918
New Brunswick - April 17, 1919
Yukon - May 20, 1919
Prince Edward Island - May 3, 1922
Newfoundland & Labrador - April 3, 1925
Quebec - April 25, 1940
Northwest Territories - June 12, 1951

(PHOTO: British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested outside Buckingham Palace in May 1914, after she tried to present a petition to King George V.)