Dear Sir,

I have read the scathing denunciation of the woman suffrage movement by the Rev. R. L. Ballantyne and must say that the scathing effects would be felt more keenly if Mr. Ballantyne showed a deeper knowledge of the subject.

Mr. Ballantyne thinks that for a woman to give up the home and influence to obtain votes and political position would be to drop the substance for the shadow. I cannot for the life of me see why voting once in three or four years and taking enough interest in the country to read the papers after the day's work is done or even going to a political meeting occasionally with her husband when her children are in bed and asleep, should be supposed to cause a woman to abandon her home.

Mr. Ballantyne says that in Canada the suffragette movement is in its infancy, and calls on every pulpit in the land, every law-abiding society, every government, to pronounce against it. Let me assure Mr. Ballantyne that there is no suffragette movement in Canada, nor ever will be. There is a movement for the enfranchisement of women, and many of the pulpits of the land and right here in Montreal, are strongly in favor of it.  It is not the law-abiding societies that oppose women's suffrage but the law-breaking elements: the liquor traffic is dead against it.  Governments are slow to move, but the Saskatchewan Government has already intimated that it will give the matter the serious consideration it deserves.

Mr. Ballantyne "calls upon our women to keep in the old tried paths of those who helped by simply being women to make Canada what she is today." How delightfully easy: by simply being women. And how absurd to think that our mothers and grandmothers helped to build up Canada by any such positive course. They did their part with downright hard work! Machinery and the factories have taken a lot of this work away from women: Some of them have had  to follow the work away from home, others have more leisure and with an awakened civic conscience are endeavoring to do what they may for the betterment of civic conditions, without  at all ceasing to 'be women.' Rather they think they would lack the womanly qualities of sympathy, helpfulness and response to the call of duty, did they not concern themselves with this.

Would you like to read newspaper articles from the era from Montreal? I've made it easy for you.

For articles on "SUFFRAGE" from 1908-1913

WSPU British Suffragette article from VOTES FOR WOMEN 1910