Tom Wilson, 1913 MLA for Rocky Mountain House,
personal interview, 1967.
[In 1913] The Edmonton Political Equality League
organized a meeting with [Premier] Sifton. They came down to
the Legislature and there must have been 150 or 200 women.
They gave a spiel, both Nellie [McClung] and Janey [Emily
Murphy] spoke because they were both good speakers, but
Sifton wouldn't let them go up the front steps to the
Legislature. He stood on the second step and kept them
standing around the well in the approach and he said to
them, "did you ladies wash up your luncheon dishes before
you came down here to ask me for votes?" He said, "if you
haven't you'd better go home because you're not going to get
any votes from me." He was most ungentlemanly. So the next
session of the legislature was in February [1914], a regular
session, and I suggested to Mrs. Ferris that a better way
would be to infiltrate the government so to speak and get
possession of the building. So when two or three women
appeared I took them in to see the interior of the building,
and then two or three others came along casually and the
first thing we knew we had the legislative hall filled with
women. And they were sitting in the members' seats. Sifton
couldn't call the police but he certainly gave them a piece
of his mind. Anyway, they had won a point on him.
"One Voice was Raised Against the Bill: Boudreau
Courageous" Calgary Morning Albertan (2 Mar. 1916).
During the debate which followed the speech in which
[Alberta] Premier Sifton introduced the second reading of
the government measure [enacting political rights for women]
Lucien Boudreau stepped into a niche of fame alongside his
leader. He was the only member of the fifty-six to vote
against granting women equality. Mr. Boudreau, fearless
champion of a lost cause, sturdily voiced the sentiments
which perhaps many of the present legislators felt but
lacked the courage to make public. . . . After the session a
number of members took the honorable member for St. Albert
away in a corner and jointly and severally congratulated him
on his courage, whispering that he had expressed their
sentiments exactly and they wished they might dare display
his courage.
Reprinted by permission of
Women's Press. |