Canada and the British immigrantWeaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
History
Canada and the British immigrant
Weaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
Canada -- Description and travel; Canada -- Economic conditions
With regard to the acquirement of land, opportunities in Canada are by
no means as favourable for women as for men. In a general way women can
only obtain land by purchase, and are shut out from the advantage of
homesteading; but, as already mentioned, they are permitted in British
Columbia to take up pre-emptions on practically the same terms as men.
The laws, by the way, concerning the civil rights of women vary in
different provinces; but from the women’s point of view Canada lags
behind some of the States of the Union, in the fact that not one of the
nine provinces of the Dominion has, as yet, accorded parliamentary
representation to women. Even the people most strongly averse from the
change are, however, beginning to prophesy dolefully that “it has got to
come.”
In educational facilities, the women of Canada are treated liberally. In
the public and high schools co-education is general, and usually the
universities admit women on the same terms as men. The medical
profession is open to women; and in some provinces that of the law also.
There are many women journalists and writers who are banded together
into an organization for the Dominion—“The Canadian Women’s Press
Club.”
A very active and comprehensive organization in Canada is the “National
Council of Women,” with which many other women’s associations are
affiliated. Among these may be named the Women’s Institutes (which, in
Ontario alone, have over twenty thousand members), the Women’s Art
Association, the Girls’ Friendly Society, the Victorian Order of Nurses,
the Canadian Suffrage Association, the National Historical Society, the
Peace and Arbitrations Society, etc., etc. There are many other
extremely important women’s organizations, such as the Missionary
Societies (called by different names) of the several churches, which,
besides supporting foreign missions, make an especial effort to aid
religious work in the newer sections of the Dominion. There is also the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which has for long been engaged in
effective work against the liquor traffic.
It may be asked what has all this to do with “the woman Canada needs,”
and with opportunities for women? My answer is that such a list (which
might be much lengthened) shows what the women of Canada are thinking
about and working for; that what has been done, may be done again; what
is being done now, may be multiplied enormously with the advent of more
workers. That these organizations are flourishing suggests the need and
the opportunity there is for the work of public-spirited, true-hearted
women in Canada—in helping to refine the rough, to smooth down the
rugged, to hold up the higher ideals of life in this new land; to fill
its towns with pleasant, beautiful homes, and to make its solitary
places blossom like the rose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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