Except for the Fight for Women's Voting Rights

This episode, released close to International Women’s Day (March 8), recalls an important political reform cause in Saint John’s past that was part of a national and international movement: the fight for women’s voting rights. Starting in the late 1800s, the Saint John Women’s Enfranchisement Organization, which was a spinoff from a national organization, worked tirelessly for the provincial franchise for New Brunswick women as a citizenship right.

The Saint John suffragists, who had male allies, were the most active group in the Maritime provinces working on the issue. The stories of its key members, such as Emma Fiske, Mabel Peters and Ella Hatheway, deserve to be better known. Many were involved in other causes, such as public playgrounds for the urban poor, temperance and worker’s rights and became involved in reform activism because of strong religious convictions. They held meetings, wrote letters to newspapers, organized petitions, lobbied politicians and even drafted legislation. Although mainly middle class in background, their challenging of the status quo was met by inertia, ridicule, hostility and misogyny. 

Saint John’s suffragists hosted the prominent American abolitionist, social reformer and women’s rights champion Julia Ward Howe in the 1890s and in
1912, famous British suffragette Sylva Pankhurst, who was on a North American speaking tour. Although the Saint John Women’s Enfranchisement Organization avoided the militant tactics of their high profile British ‘sisters,’ they were inspired by their struggles and shared their goals.

The long and determined campaign of Saint John’s suffragists finally succeeded in 1919, when all women, regardless of their marital status or personal property holdings, were extended the right to vote in provincial elections. The exception were First Nations women who lived on reserves (who would have to wait more than 4 decades). 

This episode ends with an interview with the leading expert on the history of women’s voting rights in Atlantic Canada, Dr. Heidi MacDonald, Dean of Arts at the University of New Brunswick Saint John. Dr. MacDonald is the author of We Shall Persist: Women and the Vote in the Atlantic Provinces (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023): https://www.ubcpress.ca/we-shall-persist

Show Notes: https://www.nothinghappenedhere.ca/post/except-for-the-fight-for-women-s-voting-rights