Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/771

 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN BRITISH COLONIES 755 of the Legislature, which was defeated by 21 to 14 votes. The next year the Liberal Party pledged itself to give the complete franchise if it won the election. It did so and the women rolled up a big petition as a backing. Premier Norris and the Cabinet supported the bill. The Executive Board of the Political Equality League were invited to seats on the floor of the House the day of the third reading and the bill giving women equal suffrage and eligibility was passed amid great enthusiasm by unanimous vote. The suffragists of Alberta began extensive work in 1910 to have the Municipal franchise possessed by widows and spinsters extended to married women and the agitation was continued to include the full suffrage. Following the example of Manitoba Premier A. L. Sifton announced on Feb. 24, 916, before the Legislature opened, that the Government would introduce a woman suffrage bill of the widest scope. The bill passed in Alberta in March with the full approval of press and people and the suffragists met at once in the home of Mrs. Nellie McClung at Edmonton to arrange for taking up their new duties. Mrs. O. C. Edwards had been a ceaseless worker here and in Saskatchewan. In 1914 the first woman Judge in Canada, Mrs. Jamieson, presi- dent of the Local Council of Women of Calgary, was appointed by the Attorney General as Commissioner of the Juvenile Court. In February, 1918, two women, Mrs. L. M. McKinney and Miss Roberta McAdams, a Lieutenant on the staff of the Canadian military hospital in Orpington, Kent, were elected to the Legisla- ture, the first women legislators in the British Empire. In 1910 the women of Saskatchewan sent in petitions, some of them endorsed by city councils, asking Municipal suffrage for married women, but the Government refused it. In opening the Legislature on Mar. 14, 1916, Lieutenant Governor Lake said: "In future years the one outstanding feature of your program will be the full enfranchisement of women." The suffragists of the Province had been organized about five years and the president of the Franchise Board, Mrs. F. A. Lawton, had presented to lier Scott a petition signed by 10,000 names to show that public sentiment was in favor of this action. lie answered that he could give them a definite answer and, as he had already uncc (}, their request would he granted. I le said that although