[URBAN NOTE] "Should Men Have the Vote?"

[rfmcdonald]

Last weekend, Torontoist's David Wencer described the beginning of the suffragette movement in late 19th century Ontario, noting its culmination in an 1896 mock parliament. Read the whole thing.

At the start of 1896, Ontario’s women’s suffrage movement found itself lacking momentum. Seeking to reignite public interest, the local branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, with the assistance of the Women’s Enfranchisement Association, staged an unusual production at the Pavilion of the Horticultural Gardens. On the evening of February 18, 1896, seats and desks were arranged on the floor of the Pavilion so as to resemble the Ontario Legislature. The central feature of the evening’s entertainment was the staging of a satirical mock parliament, in which an all-female parliament debated whether men should be granted the right to vote.

The organized women’s suffrage movement in Ontario is generally considered to have begun in November of 1877, with the founding of the Toronto Women’s Literary Club. The official purpose of the club, as stated in the preamble to their constitution and by-laws, was to provide women with an atmosphere of “intellectual culture, where [women] can secure a free interchange of thought and feeling upon every subject that pertains to women’s higher education, including her moral and physical welfare.” Dr. Emily Stowe, best known to history as the first practising female doctor in Canada, served as the Club’s first president, and organized regular meetings in members’ homes. The group also began advocating for a variety of causes, including the improvement of local labour conditions, and is credited with persuading the University of Toronto to accept female students.


Emily Stowe. The Canadian Magazine, Vol 5, No. 4 (August 1895).

Many historians believe that the Toronto Women’s Literary Club was specifically formed for the purposes of advocating for women’s suffrage, but that Stowe and her fellow organizers were reluctant to be so overt about their aims until they could be assured of public support. In her 1950 book The Woman Suffrage Movement in Canada, Catherine Lyle Cleverdon claims that “the time was not considered opportune for the bold use of the word ‘suffrage,’ the mere mention of that term producing violent reactions in many quarters; hence the camouflage of a ‘literary club.'”

By March of 1883, Stowe and the other members of Literary Club decided they could be more open about their activities, and they re-formed the group as the Toronto Women’s Suffrage Association. The new organization, which admitted men as well as women, achieved some early success in 1884 when Ontario widows and spinsters were granted the right to vote in municipal elections. Further gains proved elusive, however, and the Association soon ceased regular meetings. Cleverdon writes that “though no reason for the inactivity appears on the surface, one may imagine that many women were satisfied with the gains made and lost the momentum of their first enthusiasm. More than one veteran leader has told the author that these ‘breathing spells’ were a natural reaction to a heavy expenditure of energy, and lasted until some new set of incidents or leaders appeared to rekindle the crusading spirit.”