Pink Tea

A Historical and Contemporary Discussion on Politics and Women to Celebrate the 95th Anniversary of the Persons' Case

What is a pink tea?

When the Famous Five were campaigning for women to have the right to vote and the right to run for elected office, their suffrage meetings were disrupted by their opponents. Women traditionally held teas for special occasions and since men didn’t attend these teas, suffragists started calling their political meetings Pink Teas and very few opponents attended.

Shocking Statistics!

  • 1844 – Women were first recorded as voting in Canada in an election in Canada West
  • 1876 – Canada’s first suffrage  organization, Toronto Women’s Literary Club, was founded by Dr. Emily Stowe.
  • 1895 – 47 male MPs voted in  favour of women’s suffrage. The motion was defeated 104-47
  • 1916 – Women in Manitoba who are of British descent or citizenship, 21 or older, and not otherwise disqualified are given the right to vote provincially and to hold provincial office – becoming the first group of women in the country to do so.
  • 1917 – British Columbian women (except Asian and Indigenous women) won the rights to vote and to hold provincial office.
  • 1917 – Parliament passed the Wartime Elections Act. The right to vote federally was extended to women in the armed forces and female relatives of military men. However, Citizens considered of “enemy alien” birth and some pacifist communities are disenfranchised.
  • 1918 – Mary Ellen Smith became the first woman elected to the BC legislature in the first election in which women could vote in BC.
  • 1918 – Some women were Granted Right to Vote in Federal Elections except those disenfranchised
  • 1940 – Québec women became the last in Canada to earn the right to vote and run for office in  provincial elections.
  • 1947 – Chinese and South Asian Canadians (but not Japanese) gained the right to vote federally and provincially
  • 1948 – The federal Elections Act was changed so that race was no longer grounds for exclusion from voting in federal elections. Japanese Canadians became enfranchised the following year in 1949
  • 1949 – Status Indians in British Columbia were granted the right to vote in provincial elections.
  • 1960 – Status Indians receive the right to vote in federal elections, no longer losing their status or treaty rights in the process
  • 1969 – Status Indians receive the right to vote in Municipal elections in Quebec
  • 1972 – The first Black woman was elected to a provincial legislature, Rosemary Brown in BC
  • 1988 – The first Indigenous female MP was elected, Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew, member of the Dene Nation
  • 1989 – Audrey McLaughlin of the Yukon became the first woman to head a federal political party in North America.
  • 1991 – Rita Johnston became the first woman in Canada to serve as Premier
  • 1993 – Kim Campbell became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Canada
  • 1996 – Ida Chong and Jenny Kwan were the first Chinese-Canadians elected to the Legislative Assembly
  • 1997 – Nancy Karetak-Lindell became the first elected Inuit Female Member of Parliament for the new riding of Nunavut
  • 2007 – The Premier of Québec appointed Canada’s first gender-balanced Cabinet
  • 2015 – First Gender-Balanced Federal Cabinet. “Because it’s 2015.” – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

What IS THE 'PERSONS' CASE?

In 1929, five women in Alberta won the judiciary battle to be recognized as person, therefore making them eligible for Senate appointments.

The "exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours...and to those who ask why, the word [persons] should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not"
Lorde Sankey on the delivery of the decision of the 'Persons Case'

Who were the famous five?

The Famous Five were five female activists living in Alberta who came together to sign a petition asking the Supreme Court of
Canada to recognize that the word ‘persons’ legally included women.

Nellie McClung

"Never retract, never explain, never apologize, get the thing done and let them howl!"

Louise McKinney

"The purpose of a woman's life is just the same as the puropose of a man's life; that she may make the best possible contribution to the generation in which she is living"

Irene Parlby

"If politics mean...the effort to secure through legislative action better conditions of life for the people, greater opportunities for our children and other people's children...then it most assuredly is a woman's job as much as it is a man's job."

Henrietta Muir Edwards

"If women had the vote there would be no need to come twice asking for better legislation for women and children."

Emily Murphy

"Whenever I don't know where to fight or not, I fight."

Controversies

While thinking about what the Famous Five accomplished in their lifetimes, it is important to remember that in the modern day we do not always agree with all of their choices.

All of the Famous Five have been criticized as racist and elitist, specifically for their beliefs in sterilization and eugenics. They were supporters of Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act, in which the involuntary sterilization of thousands of women considered “psychotic” and “mentally deficient” took place from 1928-1972. A disproportionate number of them were Indigenous women.

Louise McKinney has been criticized for her views on stricter immigration laws to keep out unwanted, often racialized, individuals. She also lobbied for the creation of institutions for “mental defectives” – seen as a means to prevent   istitutionalized persons from reproducing.

While she was a judge, Emily Murphy believed immigrants, particularly people who were Asian or Black, were responsible for the illicit drug trade and the harms it caused.

DISCUSSION

  • How far have women’s rights progressed in the past 100+ years?
  • Do you think women’s suffrage is being remembered in Canada?
  • What is something you learned that struck you the most?
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