Calgary & Southern Alberta

"The Door Steadily Opens" from the Grain Growers' Guide, 21 September 1910

The period between 1900 and 1921 marked a state of rapid change in Calgary and southern Alberta. The rural to urban balance in the province shifted from a 30 percent urban population in 1906 to a 40 percent urban population by 1926. There also existed a marked imbalance between the number of males and females. Provincially, there were 167 males for every 100 females in 1911. In Calgary, men outnumbered women three to two.

Chart: Calgary's Gender Imbalance

Changes in society and the gender imbalance gave birth to a number of perceived social problems – largely alchohol abuse and prostitution. Urban and rural women founded, participated in, and supported organisations dedicated to "cleaning up" society. Meetings provided women with the opportunity to engage in social contacts outside the home as well as intellectual stimulation. The rapid growth of women's organisations in the early twentieth century reflected women's desire to become involved in politics. Despite women's growing involvement in organisations, most members and leaders of the organisations accepted women's traditional role as homemakers and caregivers. They justified their activities by arguing that women's higher morality could reform society and politics. Women's organised efforts resulted in the passing of female suffrage by the Alberta legislature in 1916.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) spearheaded the prohibition movement in southern Alberta and Calgary. Louise Crummy McKinney introduced the WCTU to women in Alberta in 1904. The organisation's programme called for the legal prohibition of the sale and use of alcohol, female enfranchisement to counter men's resistance to prohibition, general social reform, and temperance programmes in schools. The WCTU consisted largely of Protestant, middle-class, urban and small town women.

Rural women became actively involved in the Alberta Women’s Institutes. Founded in Ontario by Adelaide Hunter Hoodless in 1897, the provincial organisation consisted of 1,400 women by 1915. By 1920 that number had increased to 13,150. Non-sectarian and non-partisan, the Institutes provided women with a reprieve from the isolation and loneliness of farm life. At their meetings, the Department of Agriculture provided courses on domestic science and papers were read on how to improve farm life. After 1916 the organisation expanded to include discussions of politics. Rural women also joined the United Farm Women of Alberta (UFWA), an auxiliary of the UFA, beginning in 1913. With Irene Parlby as its president, the UFWA expanded in its first year to include twenty-three locals and 700 members. At their 1916 convention the UFA granted women full and equal status within their organisation.

Nellie McClung, Alice Jamieson, and Emily Murphy: Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada

Alberta’s suffrage campaign was neither long nor arduous; it began in 1902 and ended on 19 April 1916 when Alberta became the third province to grant women the vote (Manitoba assented to equal suffrage in January and Saskatchewan followed in March). In 1902 the Calgary Branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union committed itself to suffrage. In 1907, the related cause of dower rights became the basis for a petition drafted by Henrietta Muir Edwards and circulated in Calgary. Emily Murphy in Edmonton spearheaded similar work. The Calgary Herald, however, reported that the time was not yet ripe for female suffrage. By 1908, Calgarians Mrs. G. W. Kergy and Mrs. P. S. Woodhall, first president of the WCTU, had joined the reformers. Along with Murphy and the Local Council of Women in Edmonton, Kergy and Woodhall pushed for equal rights for married women with little success. The Calgary Local Council of women joined the struggle in 1912. Alice Jamieson, widow of Mayor R. R. Jamieson, became president of the organisation and Calgary’s spokeswoman for women’s rights. Some of the first political pressure for women’s suffrage, however, came from the United Farmers of Alberta when it supported equal political rights for women at its 1912 convention. On 10 October 1914 women and men carried their cause to the legislature. They demanded that the word "male" be changed to "person" in the Alberta Election Act and they presented a petition signed by 12,000 persons. Premier A. L. Sifton argued against the measure because of double election costs and the uncertainty concerning whether rural women wanted the vote. Women planned another delegation to the legislature on 27 February 1915. Jamieson claimed Calgary women wanted the right to vote and Muir Edwards spoke for suffrage on behalf of the International Councils of Women. Their demands came at the same time that a plebiscite was being held on prohibition. When the public endorsed prohibition in 1916, female suffrage took on an air of inevitability and was passed on 19 April 1916. The true nature of women’s reform and the passing of women’s suffrage in the West before the East, however, remain a historical controversy.