When did Manitoba women win the provincial vote?

Manitoba women won the provincial vote on January 28, 1916 when the Liberal government of Premier Tobias Norris passed Bill 26, granting women the right to vote and stand for election in Manitoba. Manitoba was the first Canadian province to enfranchise women, followed shortly by Saskatchewan (March 14, 1916), Alberta (April 19, 1916), British Columbia (April 5, 1917), and Ontario (April 12, 1917). The provincial votes preceded the federal vote, which was extended in stages between 1917 and 1918.

The Manitoba campaign was led by the Manitoba Political Equality League founded in 1912, the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and other reform organisations. The leading figures included Nellie McClung (1873 to 1951), the most prominent prairie feminist and a leading author and orator; Lillian Beynon Thomas (1874 to 1961), editor of the Manitoba Free Press's women's pages; Francis Marion Beynon (Lillian's sister, 1884 to 1951), a writer and pacifist; E. Cora Hind (1861 to 1942), an agricultural journalist; and Dr. Mary Crawford (1860 to 1942), a Winnipeg physician.

The campaign was given decisive momentum by Nellie McClung's 1914 'Mock Parliament' at Walker Theatre in Winnipeg on January 28, 1914. The Mock Parliament was a satirical reversal in which a woman 'Premier' (McClung) explained why men should not be allowed to vote, mimicking and ridiculing Conservative Premier Sir Rodmond Roblin's actual arguments against women's suffrage. The performance drew about 1,500 attendees and received extensive press coverage. Roblin's Conservative government fell over an unrelated scandal in May 1915. The incoming Liberal government of Tobias Norris had promised women's suffrage in its election platform and delivered on January 28, 1916 (notably exactly two years after the Mock Parliament).

The Manitoba Act of 1916 enfranchised women on the same legal basis as men: any British subject (by birth or naturalisation) over 21 years old who had resided in Manitoba for at least one year. Indigenous women on reserves were excluded from this initial enfranchisement (most provinces did not extend the provincial vote to status Indians until the 1950s and 1960s). The first female Manitoba MLA was Edith Rogers (Liberal, North Winnipeg), elected on June 29, 1920. Nellie McClung was elected as a Liberal MLA in Alberta in 1921. The Manitoba women's enfranchisement victory inspired campaigns in other provinces and at the federal level. The Manitoba Suffragists' Centennial in 2016 marked 100 years of women's suffrage in Manitoba.