PhilPaine.com

It’s a bit of a sur­prise that the Office of the Chief Elec­toral Offi­cer would pro­duce a charm­ing­ly writ­ten and graph­i­cal­ly pleas­ing book — aren’t those folks sup­posed to be soul­less, humour­less bureau­crats? And it presents the his­to­ry of the fran­chise in Cana­da with sys­tem­at­ic schol­ar­ship. It begins by men­tion­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions of Native Cana­di­ans, and gives a brief dis­cus­sion of the elect­ed assem­bly that exist­ed in New France, the Con­seil de Québec, between 1657 and 1674, only to be sup­pressed by the infa­mous French Sec­re­tary of State, Jean-Bap­tiste Col­bert, who firm­ly rep­ri­mand­ed Fron­tenac for his “inno­va­tion”. Most inter­est­ing to me were the detailed his­to­ries of the fran­chise in all the British North Amer­i­can colonies before Cana­di­an Confederation.

I did know before­hand that Nova Sco­tia acquired uni­ver­sal male suf­frage in 1854, only to rein­tro­duce prop­er­ty qual­i­fi­ca­tions in 1863. Amaz­ing­ly, I did­n’t know that women vot­ed in Low­er Cana­da as ear­ly as 1792! Appar­ent­ly, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Act estab­lish­ing leg­is­la­tures in Low­er and Upper Cana­da, in 1791, did not specif­i­cal­ly for­bid women to vote, defin­ing only cit­i­zen­ship and prop­er­ty qual­i­fi­ca­tions. In Upper Cana­da, sub­ject to Eng­lish Com­mon Law and tra­di­tion, it was assumed that women could not vote. But French Cana­di­an women assumed that they could, and, under the code civile, noth­ing could pre­vent them. Women reg­u­lar­ly vot­ed, unchal­lenged until the leg­is­la­ture attempt­ed (and failed) to pre­vent them in 1834. Even when the two colonies were com­bined in the Act of Union of 1840, women in Low­er Cana­da (even­tu­al­ly to become the Province of Que­bec) con­tin­ued to exer­cise the fran­chise until Con­fed­er­a­tion. This amaz­ing piece of infor­ma­tion some­how did­n’t make it into the his­to­ries of Cana­da that I’ve read — unless I some­how man­aged to miss it.