Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/781

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN BRITISH COLONIES 765 newspapers were favorable. Before the committee had time to put in a bill one was drafted by Supreme Court Justice Russell and introduced by R. H. Graham. The women filled the galleries at its second reading and it passed without opposition and was referred to the Law Amendments Committee, of which the Attorney General was chairman. It gave a public hearing and the women crowded the Assembly Chamber upstairs and downstairs and nine short speeches were made by women. The Premier and Attorney General said it was the best organized hearing and best presented case that had come before a House Committee in twenty-five years. The Bill was left with the committee with the assurance that it would be well cared for and then it was post- poned indefinitely! The excuse was that there had been no de- mand from the country districts ! By another year, however, it was too late for such tactics and when Lieutenant Governor McCallum Grant opened the Legislature with the speech from the throne on Feb. 21, 1918, he announced that the electoral franchise would be given to women. The amended Franchise Act went through the Lower House without opposition; had its senond reading in the Senate April 29 and the third May 3, and received the royal assent May 23. This added the State suffrage to the Federal, which had. been conferred the preceding month. Widows and spinsters in the Province of Quebec had Municipal and School suffrage from 1892. In 1903 in the city council of Montreal an amendment to the charter was moved to take it away. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union held several large public meetings to oppose such action addressed by promi- nent men. The press published articles and letters of protest and it was voted down. In 1910 the first suffrage society was formed in Montreal with Mrs. Bullock president. In 1914 a deputation of Montreal women presented a petition to the Premier, Sir Lorner ( luoin, asking that women might sit on school boards and that the Municipal franchise be extended to married women. No action was taken. After the Federal Suffrage was granted in 1918 by the Dominion Parliament, which included the women of Quebec, a bill was introduced in its Legislature to grant them the Provin- cial franchise, which was voted down. Similar bills were defeated in 1918 and 1920 and Ogp^ rpm^jng thp only Province in