The same qualifications and restrictions generally exist
in the provinces, though there are minor variations in the
franchise regulations. In Saskatchewan, Ontario, New
Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island
eighteen-year-olds are allowed to vote in municipal and
provincial elections. In Alberta, British Columbia, Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland nineteen-year-olds have the same
right.

The wide franchise enjoyed today was not won overnight
or without a struggle. The great Reform Bills passed in
1832, 1867 and 1884 in Great Britain mark major and
dramatic episodes in the popular struggle to obtain the
vote. In Canada, the process was much less dramatic; there
were no threats of revolution as there were in England in
1832; there was no powerful aristocracy to protect its
privileged position as the ruling class, for pioneer life did
not encourage the development of an aristocracy. When
Upper and Lower Canada were given representative insti-
tutions by the Constitutional Act of 1791, the right to vote
was restricted to men who owned a small piece of property,
who paid twenty dollars rent a year or who earned over
three hundred dollars a year. Under these qualifications,
most adult males could vote. In 1888 Manitoba and Ontario
adopted a manhood suffrage which entitled all men to vote
when they reached the age of twenty-one, whether they
owned property or not, and the federal government followed
suit in 1920. The province of Quebec did not adopt man-
hood suffrage in provincial elections until 1936, however.

In their battle for the right to vote, the women of Can-
ada did not interrupt debates in Parliament, tie themselves
to lamp-posts, throw acid in mail boxes or jump under
racehorses, as did English women. But if their methods
were less spectacular, Canadian women were no less deter-
mined. One of the most determined was Mrs. Nellie Mc-
Clung, one of the leaders of the Votes for Women Move-
ment in Manitoba. In 1914, twenty years after women first
asked for the vote, Mrs. McClung presented a petition to
Premier Roblin, who gently reprimanded her and refused
to let her speak to the Cabinet:

Even if they listened to you, which I doubt, you would
upset them and I don't want that to happen. They are

-9-