brought the question to a climax. Even then, however, it was not allowed to be settled by the Legislature, as it had been in those Provinces, but on April 14, 1916, Premier Bowser stated that the Elections Act, which provided for allowing a vote to soldiers over 18, would include women and would be submitted to a referendum of the electors. This was done by the Legislature, which met May 31, and the election took place September 15. The amendment was carried by an immense majority in every district, about two to one, and later this was increased by the large favorable majority of the absent soldiers, who were entitled to vote. It went into effect March 1, 1917.. The area of Canadian territory in which women were now enfranchised extended from Ontario to the Pacific Ocean. In 1919 Mrs. Ralph Smith, widow of the Minister of Finance, was elected to the Legislature and in 1921 she was made Speaker, the first instance on record.
The struggle for woman suffrage in Canada was now centered in the Province of Ontario, where it began in 1883, and it was largely carried on during much of the time by the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association, which had been incorporated in 1889. Dr. Augusta Stowe Gullen became its president in 1903, after the death of her mother, Dr. Emily Howard Stowe, and held it until 1911. While its principal object was the Dominion or National franchise for all women it was for years at the head of the effort for the Provincial suffrage in Ontario. In 1905, in connection with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, it organized a very representative deputation to wait upon the Premier to ask that the Municipal vote possessed by widows and spinsters be extended to married women. He said that 'neither he nor any other statesman had placed woman where she was; that the Infinite was at work and woman being a part of the Divine plan her place was assigned by a greater power.' In 1906 a deputation from the association, headed by Dr. Stowe Gullen, with Dr. Margaret Gordon and Mrs. Flora McDonald Denison as speakers, called on the Mayor and Council of Toronto and asked them to pass a resolution for the extension of this Municipal franchise. They did so and sent it by this deputation to the Legislature. As a result a bill for it was introduced and after a day's fun and sarcasm in the House it was defeated by 69 to 2.
