Who became Canada's first woman Member of Parliament, and when?

When Confederation happened, only adult white men who owned property were allowed to vote. Most democracies of that day worked the same way. Women organised to change this, and their campaign is called the women's suffrage movement. In Canada it was founded by Dr. Emily Stowe. She had already made history in medicine: no Canadian woman before her had practised it in this country. Change then came province by province. In 1916 Manitoba became the earliest province to let women vote.

Dr. Stowe and other suffragettes led the campaign, and in 1917 Sir Robert Borden's federal government opened the vote to women. It arrived step by step. Nurses serving at the battle front came first. Next were women whose male relatives were on active wartime service. By 1918 most female citizens of Canada aged 21 and older could vote in federal elections. Agnes Macphail, who worked as a farmer and a teacher, became Canada's first woman MP in 1921. Quebec moved later: women there won the vote in 1940, after work by Thérèse Casgrain and others.