It is very significant that, while these wholesale conversions were taking place in this country, thus preparing the way for a sweeping victory for women's suffrage in the House of Commons, a similar change, brought about by similar causes, had already, in 1916, taken place in Canada. In that year a great suffrage movement swept over Canada, like a mighty wind, from the West to the East. One after another, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia enfranchised their women. In British Columbia, a referendum (only men voting) showed a majority of more than two to one for women's franchise, and the soldiers' vote, which came in later, only swelled the large majority. Ontario followed. The late Sir Wilfred Laurier, once Liberal Premier, announced his conversion. He had for years been an important opponent. The Nova Scotia legislature passed a Women's Suffrage Bill without opposition; and in May, 1917, Sir Robert Borden announced his intention to introduce a women's suffrage measure for the whole of Canada, thus giving women the federal vote. This intention was faithfully carried into effect in time for women to vote at the General Election, which was held in 1917. The Province of Alberta, in the meantime, had bettered its own record by returning a lady, Miss Roberta Catherine MacAdams, to its Legislative Assembly. An interesting feature of her election was that she was chosen entirely by men who were performing military service in Europe. There were twenty men candidates and one woman, and Miss MacAdams was elected. Thus the whole Empire seemed by one impulse to be moving in the direction of women's enfranchisement. About this time a professional man of wide outlook and long experience wrote: "One of the greatest benefits which I look for from the war is that women will come by their own. The tribute to the efficiency of women's work now being paid by managers of railways and munition works—many of them unwilling witnesses—are most hopeful signs. After this it seems impossible that women should be denied their fair share in the national councils. This opens a wide vista of other resulting reforms, which almost makes one wish to be young again, so that one might see what will happen in the next fifty years." Women did come by their own, not quite directly, but through "the verdurous gloom and winding mossy ways" of the parliamentary wrangle over the Special Register Bill and the Speaker's conference to be described in the next chapter. CHAPTER IX THE LAST PHASE "It consists of an influx—whence or why none can tell—of a wave of vitality. It is as if from the central heart of life a ray broke suddenly upon the world, inspiring men to feel deeply, to live greatly, to do nobly. It makes men. It is not made by men."