Ours by Every Law of Right and Justice: Women and the Vote in the Prairie Provinces

by Sarah Carter

Many of Canada’s most famous suffragists—from Nellie McClung and Cora Hind to Emily Murphy and Henrietta Muir Edwards—lived and campaigned in the Prairie provinces, the region that led the way in granting women the right to vote and hold office. In Ours by Every Right and Justice , Sarah Carter challenges the surprisingly resilient myth that grateful male legislators simply handed western women the vote in recognition that they were equal partners in the pioneering process. Rather, she shows, suffragists worked long and hard to overcome obstacles, persuade doubters, and build allies. Yet their work also had a dark side. Even as settler suffragists pressured legislatures to grant their sisters the vote, they often approved of that same right being denied to “foreigners” and Indigenous men and women. By situating the suffragists’ struggle in the colonial history of Prairie Canada, this powerful and passionate book shows that the right to vote meant different things to different people—political rights and emancipation for some, domination and democracy denied for others.
 

Genres: Canada

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 2020

Reviews

[Alberta Views Magazine]

On June 7, 1917, for the first time ever, (some) Albertan women headed to the polls for a provincial election. Their counterparts in Saskatchewan followed 19 days later, and before the end of the year, many women across the country helped select representatives to the federal parliament.
It was an historic moment for women. And Canada. But as renowned historian Sarah Carter demonstrates in Ours By Every Law of Right and Justice, established narratives about women’s suffrage often ignore “a complex and unsettling story.”

The traditional focus is prairie exceptionalism: that male politicians respected the contributions of their hard-working wives in the homesteading process such that they willingly caved to genteel requests for greater participation in politics. Similarly there is an assumption—implicit, if not explicit—that activists fought on behalf of and succeeded on behalf of all women. That, by 1917, all Canadians—at least on the prairies—could vote in elections and choose their own representatives.

Review by Roberta Lexier
Full review at https://albertaviews.ca/every-law-rig...

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Examining the history of women's suffrage in the Prairie provinces, Carter disrupts the notion that suffrage within this space was naturally occurring - rather, it was the hard work of women who spent numerous years campaigning for homesteading and dower rights. Throughout this text, Carter argues that it was the specificity of the region and its connection with settler colonialism that shaped women's suffrage, as women articulated their ideas of citizenship and enfranchisement as equal to that of British male subjects - and that not of Indigenous, non-white, and non-British men (who were also denied or limited in voting rights as well). Carter also takes on the myth of the "West" as the "great equalizer" and space that free as free from the conventions and limitation of the Old World, arguing that as the West was perceived as a white masculine (heterosexual) space and it framed the role of women as in subordination to that view. In examining suffrage in the Prairies, Carter also highlights the ways each province approached the vote, as their relationship to other provinces (Ontario), temperance, unions, and agriculture shaped how women organized.

[George Hodgson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good account of the struggle for women’s voting rights on the prairies as well as other struggles. A good read.

[Betty Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot, but it was dry in a few places.