Who was the first Canadian woman to practise medicine in Canada?
- Agnes Macphail
- Dr. Emily Stowe
- Laura Secord
- Mary Ann (Shadd) Carey
Answer: Dr. Emily Stowe
Dr. Emily Stowe was the first Canadian woman to practise medicine in Canada. She also founded the women’s suffrage movement in Canada. Thanks partly to her leadership, the federal vote was given first to some women in 1917 and to most women aged 21 and over in 1918.
Learn more: Women get the vote
- The effort by women to win the vote is called the women’s suffrage movement.
- Its founder in Canada was Dr. Emily Stowe, the first Canadian woman to practise medicine in Canada.
- In 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the vote.
- In 1917 Sir Robert Borden’s federal government gave the vote first to nurses at the front, then to women related to men in active wartime service.
- In 1918 most Canadian women aged 21 and over won the right to vote in federal elections.
- In 1921 Agnes Macphail, a farmer and teacher, became the first woman Member of Parliament.
- Thanks to Thérèse Casgrain and others, Quebec gave women the vote in 1940.