Divided by the Ballot Box: The Montreal Council of Women and the 1917 Election

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Divided by the Ballot Box: The Montreal Council of Women and the 1917 Election
Abstract
The Wartime Election Act of 1917 granted temporary voting rights to women who had close relatives serving in the military. Their votes were positioned by Prime Minister Robert Borden to support his controversial military conscription plans. Suffragists were divided by the Act’s limited enfranchisement and its connection to conscription. In Montreal, the centre of nationalistic and ethnic strife caused by the war, rifts broke out within the city’s largest Anglophone women’s organization, the Montreal Council of Women, over the Act. One result of this tension was the impeachment trial of the Council’s long-time president, Dr. Octavia Grace Ritchie-England (1868-1948) for her criticism of the Wartime Election Act and conscription during the 1917 federal election.
Publication
The Canadian Historical Review
Volume
Vol. 89
Issue
no. 4
Pages
473-501
Date
December 2008
Language
en
Citation
Brookfield, Tarah. “Divided by the Ballot Box: The Montreal Council of Women and the 1917 Election.” The Canadian Historical Review Vol. 89, no. 4 (December 2008): 473–501.
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