History Corner - Yorkton’s Travellers’ Aid Society

Over 200 women belonged to the Yorkton’s Travellers’ Aid Society, which was under the umbrella of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. This group lobbied for prohibition of bars and liquor stores as well as women’s right to vote. We do not have a photo of Alice Lawton of Yorkton, but she was head of the Provincial Equal Suffrage Board, and we see her name in a booklet of the Yorkton’s Travellers’ Aid Society as per this image. On February 15, 1916 Alice Lawton was with a delegation of women suffragists from around the province at the Legislative Assembly Hall in Regina when they heard Liberal Premier Walter Scott and Thomas Henry Garry, Liberal MLA for Yorkton make the official announcement that Saskatchewan women had won the right to vote! Both men were very open minded about the topic. Mrs. Lawton told the audience that thousands of women were now working in ammunitions factories and shops to replace men who were in the armed forces. Another speaker reminded the gathering that women had husbands and sons who had lost their lives in the battlefields overseas. Canada was at war to uphold the ideals of democracy, so surely voting was one of these! So, this year, it is time now to reflect that it had not always been easy for suffragists to struggle for rights even in a democracy! It follows that whether some of us have frequented the voting booths for years, or whether we are first time voters, remember we can show ourselves at the voting  booths, and be proud to do so because of the work done 100 years ago, by women like Alice Lawton and others of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.