90 years of voting

It’s election day. If you haven’t already, get yourself to a polling station and ‘x’ that ballot.

The Toronto Star had a great article this weekend on the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

That’s right sisters, it’s been 90 years of Canadian women having the right to vote nationally.

Some Canadian women had the vote earlier. During World War I women relatives of soldiers were given the right to vote and by 1918 women in Ontario and the western provinces could vote in provincial elections.

The far-sighted Prime Minister Robert Borden introduced the bill to extend the vote to all women, but it was a right won not given. Bad-assed women throughout Canada fought damn hard to finally be “given” the vote.      

If we’ve just passed the 90th anniversary of women’s voting rights, that means in 10 years we’ll be coming up to the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Canada.

We need a big national campaign and events across the country to celebrate that important milestone when it comes.

Let’s start lobbying the government and national women’s groups now to see if we can’t all work together to mark the 100th anniversary in a way that would make our fore-mothers proud.