Beatrice Brigden's narration is transcribed in full.
[START 00:00]
Beatrice Brigden: I feel rather strange just sitting here in this MB legislature. It was in this chamber that laws were passed that discriminated against women. Women couldn’t even vote. You’d have to go back a long way to know how women had been
down - what we'd call, down greater today over the centuries. But this is the mythology of the period. Women were supposed to obey, women were housewives, women were not in public life, women were not in business. Women could do some office work, but
paid with less than half the wages of the men even if they were doing the same thing. Women were just not capable. I don’t think they said that they were a lower breed, they couldn't do that very well, they were just incapable.
Visual Description: The camera pans from the large, round skylight in the Manitoba legislature, down the walls, eventually settling on Beatrice Brigden, sitting in a black chair, wearing glasses and a blue blouse.
[TIME: 00:57]
B.B.: They went one day to see Sir Rodman Roblin, who was the Premier of Manitoba at that time, to ask him to enfranchise women in this province. And of course, he was very much opposed to it; he thought it was ridiculous and told them how
absurd and foolish they were. He used some very uncomplimentary words according to the papers of that day and there’s no doubt that it was true, that he just couldn’t conceive of women going out and voting. What would they vote for? And of course, men
continued for quite some time believing that their wives ought to vote as they told them to. Probably they did, I don’t know how else it could be, since they haven't agreed, or else we would have had other changes before this time. And there's no objection
particularly to that.
Visual Description: Various views of the legislature chamber are shown. Archival footage of women doing various types of work (in the kitchen, sewing in a factory, harvesting on a farm).
[TIME: 01:53]
B.B.: Well, he made such a fuss over it, it was so repugnant to him, that it got into the papers. Of course, the opposition papers were very glad to have this story. And Nellie McClung decided she would put on a mock parliament down in the Walker
Theatre. Nellie McClung was a very colourful sort of speaker, an unusual thing - having a woman that could go about and address an audience anywhere. It just happened that my mother and I were visiting in Winnipeg at that time, and so I was able to be
at the mock parliament that night. And my recollection of it was, Nellie McClung was moving about as Premier and the women siting on the platform as the members of the house. And they were deciding whether they should allow men to vote or not. Were men
really capable, wouldn’t they go out and make fools of themselves, they’d just vote against what women wanted probably and it would be disastrous to business and everything else. It was uproariously funny; I remember the laughter of the audience more
than I remember what was being said. Because, she had really made a caricature of Sir Rodman Roblin that would be pretty difficult to repeat.
Visual Description: Beatrice Brigden is shown speaking again. Archival footage shows well dressed women walking, and Nellie McClung in a fur shawl addressing a large crowd from an outdoor stage.
[TIME: 03:29]
B.B.: And it had such an effect that it was said afterwards that it had more to do with the defeat of the Roblin government when they went to the province the next year; that was in 1914; 1915 the government was defeated. Mr. [Tobias] C Norris,
a friend of my father’s, one of the first bills they put through in 1916 was the enfranchisement of women in Manitoba. And Saskatchewan of course, which had become a province in 1905, they followed with their legislation the next year. So Manitoba women,
Saskatchewan next, were the first women in Canada to be enfranchised, and the first for most of the continent.
Visual Description: Women are shown at an organized march. Various costumes and signs are visible, but not legible. Policemen walk alongside. Archival footage of women activists around Winnipeg are shown.
[TIME: 04:24]
B.B.: This is something which astonishes me in the old way these myths cling to us. When I go into my bank now, I think, “Oh, girls at all the counters!” I grew up with the idea that banking was only done by men, and it still sticks with me that
there’s something queer about this. And men no longer want to take those jobs, I presume that they are paid less than the men would be if they had them. These are some of the great changes which have taken place. Now a girl in the bank would have been
unthinkable at the counter, even 20 years ago I believe. So we’ve had a revolution in our thinking in regard to the capabilities of women and their rights. This is what the women’s organizations are now working for, is that that they have a right to
do everything that a man can do, if they can.
Visual Description: Archival footage of male tellers at a bank helping customers. Beatrice Brigden returns to screen.
[END 05:31]
