Modernity and Progress: The Transnational Politics of Suffrage in British Columbia (1910-1916)

Canadian historians have underplayed the extent to which theproject of suffrage and first wave feminism was transnational in scope. The suffrage movement in British Columbia provides a good example of the global interconnections of the movement. While BC suffragists were relatively uninterested in pan-Canadian campaigns they explicitly situated provincial suffrage within three transnational relationships: the ‘frontier’ myth of the Western United States, radical direct action by suffragettes in the United Kingdom, and the rise of modern China. By the second decade of the 20thcentury, increasingly confident women’s suffrage societies hosted international visits and contributed to global print culture, both of which consolidated a sense of being part of a modern, international and unstoppable

D uring the first two decades of the twentieth cen tury, suffrage victory in British Columbia seemed to be within sight as New Zealand, Australia, Norway, and several neighbouring American states granted female enfranchisement.Feminist historians have documented the promise and limitations of mod ern global suffrage organizing and traced the compli cated connections of imperialism and colonialism with national suffrage movements (Baillargeon 2019;Brookfield 2018;Forestell and Moynagh 2018;Sang ster 2018).Historian Nancy Forestell argues that as much as local suffragists were immersed in local and provincial contexts, it is important to understand how the movement was situated within a transnational framework (2005).Since most suffragists in British Columbia could not afford international travel, they learned about the global movement at lectures given by touring suffragists or by reading mainstream or spe cialist print culture.
Suffragists in British Columbia had advocated for the vote in reform, women's, and political organizations beginning in the 1880s (Gough 1988;Kealey 1998;Newton 1995;StrongBoag 2015;Whelan 1980).But after 1910, newly independent suffrage leagues attrac ted thousands of women across the province to meet ings, debates, plays, and lectures.e BC Political Equality League (PEL) was formed in the provincial capital of Victoria in December 1910, and by 1912 numerous affiliates had formed across the Lower Mainland and interior.By 1913, Vancouver suffragists had formed an autonomous Pioneer Political Equality League (PPEL) and Vancouver labour organizer Helena Gutteridge established the BC Women's Suffrage League, Canada's only suffrage group specific ally for workingclass women.As leagues flourished, the public could attend events on provincial family law, labour rights, the women's movement in China, and British suffragette militancy (Campbell 2020;Cramer 1980;Hale 1977;Howard 1992;Ihmels 2008;StrongBoag 2018;Weppler 1971).
Print culture was critical to building the movement.Mainstream newspapers and religious, labour, socialist, and suffrage periodicals reprinted stories of local and global suffrage battles, and covered debates in the Le gislative Assembly and the British House of Com mons.Suffrage columns were penned by labour sym pathizer Susie Lane Clark in the Vancouver Daily World (VDW), Helena Gutteridge in the BC Federationist (BCF), and social gospeller Florence Hall in the West ern Methodist Recorder.e province's only suffrage periodical, e Champion (19121914;CH), was pub lished in Victoria by the BC PEL, and coedited by Methodist reformer Maria Grant and Britishborn Dorothy Davis.Print sources were shaped by the per spectives of the most active and literate settler women in the movement, and framed by the limitations of maledominated media outlets.But by reading media coverage and participating in local suffrage cultures, suffragists understood local activism within a larger global context even if they never left their province.
Suffragists demanded political equality through differ ing languages of maternalism, socialism, and liberal humanism, but most shared an underlying value sys tem rooted in progressive modernity.Suffragists identi fied as members of a global movement which understood the universe as a living organism gradually advancing towards equality and justice.Enfranchise ment was imagined as a contest with nations around the world engaged in a competitive race towards achieving full modernity (Dalziel 2000;NWSPC 1917).is emphasis on progress and modernity inter sected with settlercolonialism and antiimmigrant xenophobia in the North American "frontier" west, and complex sentiments of British superiority in the context of global empire and international suffrage successes (Bonakdarian 2000;Devereux 2005;Fores tell and Moynagh 2018;Grimshaw 2000;Henderson 2003;Lake 2019;Mawani 2009;Perry 2001;Valverde 1992).is article takes two transnational sets of ideas -the frontier myth of an egalitarian, modern, and transcontinental North American West and the fram ing of the Chinese women's movement as symbolic of modernity and progress-and examines how autonomous suffrage organizations developed a con sciousness of being part of a modern and global move ment.Exploring these "transnational linkages" defies simplistic frameworks of sisterhood but helps histori ans parse how suffragists in British Columbia came to see their local movement through a global lens, and part of an unstoppable movement of modern progress (Daley and Nolan 1994;Fletcher, Levine and Mayhall 2000, xiii;Forestell and Moynagh 2011).

Suffrage Modernity
Drawing on arguments circulating in history, science, and political theory, suffragists in British Columbia embraced the idea that the "evolution" of humanity was one of inevitable progress toward a modern and civilized world characterized by justice and equality.e movement or the "cause" was understood as the march of enlightened reason away from "barbarism" or the "dark ages," where women were subordinated to men (VDW, 2 July 1913, 7).To suffragists, advanced nation states embraced women's political participation, while those that refused to grant suffrage were back ward and oldfashioned-deeply out of step with the modern world.is rhetoric borrowed from multiple philosophical traditions, including utopian socialist Charles Fourier's assertion that the status of a nation as "civilized" should be judged by the extent of women's emancipation.is idea was taken up by multiple strains of feminist thought.But the idea of progress and civilization could not have existed without inter pretations of Darwin's theories of natural selection and evolutionary adaptation, which included the notion that societies evolved from simple and primitive to complex and civilized.is perspective also influenced socialists, who understood history as propelled "for ward" by economic modes of production from primit ive social orders, through to capitalism, and ultimately, to socialism (Angus 2009;Beecher 1990;Campbell 2000;Jones 2009;Rendall, 1994;Taylor 1993;Taylor 2003;Towns 2009).
Most suffragists mapped the idea of progressive evolu tion on to both race and culture, arguing that British civilization was the most advanced and that all "inferi or" nonBritish and nonChristian cultures needed improvement.Within North American settler coloni alism, the belief in progress and British superiority was instrumental in the attempt to frame British Columbia as a "white man's province" (Edmonds 2010;Harris 2003;Mawani 2009;Perry 2001;Roy 1989).e modern political body of British Columbia was built on policies that restricted Asian immigration, dispos sessed Indigenous men and women, and excluded Asi an and First Nations people from formal political citizenship until the late 1940s.e federal Indian Act marginalized Indigenous governance structures, where many women had held political power, and prohib ited First Nations women from voting in band elec tions until 1951 (Barker 2006;Green 2017;Simpson 2013).e result was a suffrage movement that chal lenged gendered British cultural values preventing women from being treated the "same" as settler men, but otherwise left racial restrictions on the vote in place.Settler colonialism allowed suffragists to assert that Canada was a "young" country that was largely free from old prejudices-a "blank sheet" upon which progressive peoples could write a new history of equality and justice (Grant 1913;VDW, 22 June 1909, 11;12 July 1909, 1;22 May 1909, 5).
But suffragists did not have a completely linear idea of progress.e belief that British civilization was the most advanced in the world was complicated by his torical evidence that women in previous generations had held power and influence (Colonist, 28 May 1895, 4, 7;CH, August 1912, 19).Suffragists struggled to explain why family law in "advanced" British societies subordinated women and children to the patriarchal authority of husbands and fathers.One of the PEL's first publications was an educational pamphlet by novelist Alice Ashworth Townley which outlined the legal power held by men over the bodies, property, and lives of women and children.ese in equalities-especially laws that restricted mothers' guardianship rights-were difficult to accept for those who believed that British law was the highest achieve ment of civilization.Townley resolved this contradic tion by arguing that while British law was generally the "best and fairest" in the world, provincial family law had not properly evolved in a modern "age of progress" (Townley 1911).Antisuffragists had hindered British Columbia's progress, and suffragists like Townley urged the government to reject "stone age" assumptions of the past and build a legal and political framework that would usher in a modern na tion.Suffragists imagined the modernization of a fun damentally British system, and it was Indigenous women themelves, not settler women, who critiqued the racebased laws that regulated the families, intim ate lives, and bodies of racialized and Indigenous men, women, and children (Robertson 2012).
e growth of an international suffrage movement, Atlantis Journal Issue 41.1 / 2020 93 however, somewhat complicated the easy rhetoric of the British Empire as the pinnacle of modern civiliza tion.International news revealed that women outside of the British Empire desired political equality, and that "uncivilized" nations had given political rights to women.Sometimes the response to this information was used to racially shame antisuffragists, who were seen as standing in the way of a modernizing society.
Addressing the Men's Society at St. James' Anglican Church in Vancouver, for example, suffragist Rev. Henry Edwards argued that women in British Columbia "have not half the power held by the negro women of darkest Africa," while socialist lawyer R.B. Kerr informed a Kelowna audience that "even in China" women enjoyed political representation at the provincial assembly (CH, October 1912, 11;VDW, 29 September 1913, 11).is information surprised some suffragists, but they were forced to address it.e Champion published a "Women of Other Lands" column which treated nonWestern women as exotic others, but also incorporated awareness of women's global progress, arguing that British Columbia was falling behind the Middle East, China, and some parts of the United States.Writers drew on Orientalist tropes of victimized Middle Eastern women in "harems" awakening to their oppression.But they also highlighted how Egyptian men and women used the Qur'an to argue that gender equality was an Islamic value, and how reformers in China understood the centrality of women's equality to political transforma tion (August 1912, 19).Columnists followed news in Mexico, South America, Japan, and Eastern Europe, informing readers about countries unfamiliar to most women in the province.Some suffragists developed a theory of patriarchy: the belief that women had a shared experience of male domination that "meant the serfdom of woman, no matter what class she belonged to" (Bonakdarian 2000, 163;VDW, 18 August 1913, 8).
Beliefs about the progressive nature of modernity were articulated with spiritual language that understood the universe to be a living being with an inherent-and perhaps divine-force that propelled it toward greater justice and liberty.As British suffragette Barbara Wylie told a Vancouver audience, suffrage was a "fight of spiritual against physical force and spiritual always wins… e victory is bound to be on our side" (VDW, 21 January 1913, 13).is belief in the power of the universe drew together a range of suffragists: social gospel Christians, eosophists, and socialists shared a profound belief in the "perfectibility" of both the hu man individual and the collective social and economic order (Allen 1971;Marks 2017;Taylor 2016;Taylor and Knott 2005).While Christian suffragists like Florence Hall understood the universe as propelled by God, others embraced nontraditional belief systems that drew on the idea of a universal movement toward justice and equality (CH, September 1913, 1415).Lynne Marks notes that eosophy was a wellknown alternative faith that viewed the universe as alive and divine, and emphasized global "interconnectedness" and human equality (2017,198200).It had few offi cial adherents but eosophists were popular lecturers, and the Vancouver PEL even held its founding meet ing in the eosophical Hall (Province, 14 January 1911, 1).
e faith attracted a number of leading suffragists in cluding Gutteridge, who was involved prior to leaving England, and socialist Bertha Merrill Burns, who was agnostic but influenced by eosophical thought (WC, 26 June 1903, 3;Ibid., 24 July 1903, 3).In her later years, Maria Grant left Methodism for the Unity/New ought Church, which embraced "positive thinking" as a way to improve the self and perfect the world.Grant's philosophy influenced the tenor of the Cham pion, defining women's enfranchisement as "the out come of an internal process of unfoldment and development in harmony with the law of Life.is growth experiences itself in the demand for liberty and equality."Grant believed that equality was a transform ative awakening in which women realized their poten tial through the "annihilation of all that hinders the upward and onward winging of their way" (CH, December 1912, 20).ose who were "asleep" were not attuned to the divine mechanisms of the universe and were unable to develop, while those who were "awake" were moving forward towards greater justice and equality.
ese beliefs mark the earliest use of the feminist "wave" metaphor, evoking the power of oceanic waves and the gravitational pull of the planets.Suffrage was a

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Issue 41.1 / 2020 94 "tide" that "could not be stayed"; it was a universal and powerful "great revolutionary wave" that would drown every person and institution in its way as it "swept" all nations into a better future (Colonist, 27 and 28 March, 1875, 4;Ibid., 15 December 1910, 21;VDW, 6 May 1911, 5;BCF, 12 December 1913, 7;CH, November 1913, 34).is confidence gave suffragists a rhetorical power and sense of moral certainty that in flected their speeches and writing.(Cramer, 1980, 83).ese failures led to the formation of independent suffrage leagues in 1910, and to increasingly vocal condemnations of provincial politicians.
e Progressive West?
e modernity imagined as animating the world took on a particular framework in British Columbia, where suffragists employed a discourse of North American Western "progressivism" to argue for settler women's equality.Settlers in the Canadian and American west were separated by a national border but shared a powerful belief that white women and families were key to "taming," "civilizing," and modernizing the frontier.e promotion of an egalitarian and econom ically vibrant western region resonated politically in British Columbia.e celebratory frontier partnership between hard working white settler men and women harnessed wo men's political citizenship to the demographic and geographical expansion of the nation.e American West was deeply shaped by this value system and early legislative changes to white women's voting and homestead rights in the states of Wyoming and Idaho reflected the belief that white women's bodies would "settle" the West through migration, marriage, and re production (Lewis 2013;Lewis 2011;Mead 2004).Adele Perry argues that similar concerns existed about attracting permanent white settlement to the colony (and later province) of British Columbia (Perry 2015; Perry 2001; Perry 1995).ese concerns were en meshed with gender and racial demographics: when British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871, for example, the majority of the population was Indigen ous and white women were a small minority (Barman 2007, 429).Efforts to increase permanent white settle ment through racially restrictive immigration legisla tion and ongoing colonization led to a demographic shift.In the decade after 1901, the population of Brit ish Columbia grew by 119 percent and by 1911, al most 68 percent of the population was British in origin (Barman 2007, 429;McDonald forthcoming;Census of Canada 1911).e discourse of a land sit ting "unformed" until "hardworking" men and wo men transformed it explained rapid British settlement as affirmation of settler partnership and hard work, and allowed reformers and suffragists to proclaim that men and women with the "broadest vision" of gender equality settled and lived in the West (Western Call, 24 March 1911, 8).
As in the American West, suffragists in British Columbia argued that that "frontier" spirit created a special kind of woman, whose work ethic set her apart from women of other regions and proved she deserved enfranchisement (Carter 2016;Carter 2006;Kulba and Lamont 2006).Vancouver suffragist Blanche Mur ison linked the "ambitious" modern Vancouver wo man with the "tireless efforts of these indomitable women workers of the west, with their broadgauged judgement."Such women were part of the "progress that made the story of their Last Great West such won derful reading" (1911,18890), valued for their inde pendence, hard work, and pragmatism.e Prince Rupert Journal characterized the settler woman of the "Pacific Slope" as uniquely progressive in comparison to her "slower, eastern sisters," describing her as a fem inine and wise housewife who was simultaneously "strong, sweet and lovable" and full of the "western spirit" (2 May 1911, 2).

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Issue 41.1 / 2020 95 e argument that settler women had built the mod ern west was reflected by the increasingly xenophobic suffrage language as the federal government brought eastern, central, and southern European immigrants to farm prairie land and work in the expanding industrial and resource sectors (Avery 1995;Avery 1979).Anti Asian racism was deeply encoded in provincial law and Japanese, Chinese, and South Asian men were disen franchised at all three levels of government by 1906.While nonBritish and nonEnglish speaking European men were "nonpreferred" immigrants, they were enfranchised after meeting residency require ments (Dua 2007;Gouto 2007;McDonald 1996;Price 20078;Roy 2003;Stanley 2011).Western new women made political citizenship claims by emphasiz ing the unfairness of withholding enfranchisement from educated, literate, and respectable women while allowing "foreignborn" men-oppositionally posi tioned as uneducated, illiterate, and intemperate-to vote (Avery 1995;Valverde 2008;Valverde 2000).Alice Ashworth Townley argued that it was unjust to deny the vote to settler women of British background who had "stood by" their men to build homes in "a new land" while enfranchising those she described as "freshcoming, ignorant foreigners" (Townley 1911).Although British Columbia did not rely as heavily on European immigration as did the prairies, European men's increasing visibility sparked fears that the province was undermining its cultural superiority by allowing them permanent settlement and voting rights.
ese resentments were central to Dorothy Davis's 1912 tour of the BC interior, where European immig ration was more visible.e Britishborn Davis, who promoted unmarried women's immigration from Great Britain through the Colonial Intelligence League, claimed it was unjust to delay women's en franchisement while giving it to "any European im migrant…however far removed his traditions and ideals of life, social and political, from Canadian standards, who has happened to be born a male" (KR, 26 September 1912, 2).As capable and hardworking settlers, such women deserved the benefits of full political citizenship: "We are not content to see these foreigners being welcomed in at the front door of the house which the women of this island have borne their share of building," Davis wrote to the Colonist in 1912."We are told to wait outside while we ask pret tily through the windows for their permission to state our views" (18 September 1912).Her position was shared by Ontarioborn Janet Kemp, who was elected British Columbia's PEL president in 1913.Kemp and Davis shaped the language of the 1913 suffrage peti tion, which promised that women's enfranchisement would increase the "Britishborn Electorate" and counter the "rapid influx" of European male immig rants.When Kemp met the premier, she informed him that "AngloSaxon" women with the vote would "safe guard the best interests of this province and its people," and would temper the votes of male "aliens" (Kemp, 1913).e argument that settler women of British descent were unfairly denied rights given to foreign men persisted until suffrage campaigns ended in 1916.
e "Pacific Slope" woman who deserved enfranchise ment was not dissimilar to the new women forged in white settler societies in North America and the British Empire (Dalziel, 2000;Grimshaw, 2000;Lake, 2019;Lake, 1994).But suffragists in British Columbia kept a particularly close eye on suffrage campaigns in nearby American states.After a series of referendums de livered suffrage wins in Washington (1910), California (1911), and Oregon (1912), Susie Lane Clark re marked that most of the Pacific Coast had achieved "political equality" and wondered if "the men of Brit ish Columbia [were] going to be less just[?]…we wo men…think not, and look forward to very soon getting the vote" (VDW, 16 June 1913, 5).e border between British Columbia and Washington state was fluid, with suffragists, politicians, and labour organ izers often travelling across it to deliver public talks or attend rallies.When the Political Equality League was formed in Victoria in 1910, for example, it was sup ported by a financial donation from a group of an onymous American suffragists, likely from Washington state (Colonist, 15 December 1910, 21).
If new women were forged on the Pacific coast, then so too were new men.Suffragists flattered male support ers in British Columbia and the United States as vis ionary westerners who were "broadminded enough to grant women political equality" (Colonist, 6 March

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Issue 41. 1 / 2020 96 1914, 11).Seattle publisher and lawyer Adela Parker travelled regularly to Victoria and Vancouver, accom panied delegations to the legislature, and encouraged suffragists to believe that local men would follow the lead of "pioneer men" in the American West (CH, September 1913, 9;VDW, 24 June 1913, 13).Parker gave a series of talks in the Lower Mainland, telling audiences that women's voting rights in Washington had emerged from western men's unique respect for settler women: "e men of the West have a particular regard for women and their work.is not only in cludes the man who has been born here, but the man who has been here long enough to become imbued with the great spirit of the West" (VDW, 2 July 1913, 7).Leagues showcased allies like Seattle city councillor Max Wardell, described as "a splendid type of the 'new man' who today is espousing woman's case by securing for her equal justice" (CH, December 1912, 11).e PEL's first convention featured Vancouver Mayor L.D. Taylor, under whose direction Vancouver City Council had recently given propertyowning married women the municipal vote, and Seattle Democratic Senator George F. Cotterill, who had sponsored Washington state suffrage legislation in 1910 (VDW, 6 May 1911, 5).
Instead of understanding the language of frontier equality as descriptive of actual practices relating to settler women's political rights, it is best understood as a rhetorical device that served suffrage purposes and shaped claims to political citizenship.Sarah Carter (2016) shows that land and political power in the west remained in the hands of western settler men, and al though women's suffrage arrived first in the prairies, the majority of provinces had followed by 1919.But discourses of western modernity gave suffragists a powerful rhetorical frame to make demands of the state.Praising equalityminded "new men," for ex ample, was designed to both flatter and shame politi cians.When the PEL pressed Vancouver Mayor Truman Smith Baxter to state his position on suffrage, his refusal led them to wonder if "the suffragists' trust ing faith in the generosity of 'our big Western men' is somewhat misplaced and that perhaps the vote will not come by crying for it" (VDW, 2 July 1913, 7).After multiple private members' bills failed to pass in the legislature, the PEL presented the government with a 10,000 name suffrage petition and urged McBride to live up to the masculine "Western spirit of progression," and prove he was the "strongest man" of all the Canadian premiers (Davis, 1913).After their appeals failed, Vancouver's United Suffrage Soci eties (USS) sent a delegation to warn McBride that the province was falling behind other world regions.
After McBride insisted that women's political equality was not "in the public interest," the deputation chal lenged him in the language of modernity, calling him fossilized and out of place with the "progressive west" and other politicians in the "advancing" world" (BCF, 12 Dec 1913, 1;CH, March 1913, 56).Suffragists never abandoned attempts at legislative reform, but they were tired of asking for democracy and increas ingly willing to demand it.

Transpacific Connections: British Colum bia, China, and Suffrage
While British Columbia suffragists drew on transcon tinental and imperial connections to inspire local act ivism, after 1910 they also turned their attention to the women's movement in China.British Columbia's demographic and economic ties to Asia created in terest in Chinese political movements, and suffragists paid close attention to the Chinese women's move ment, which fought for political citizenship and ac cess to the professions and higher education.While most suffragists supported racial restrictions on im migration and voting, they simultaneously admired Chinese women's political leadership and by the second decade of the twentieth century, celebrated China as emblematic of political modernity.
With ongoing political upheaval in China, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries travelled to North America to win support from the diaspora and the larger public.With a significant Chinese diasporic community in British Columbia, the province was an important destination on this travel circuit (Barman 2007;Liu 2002;Stanley 2011;Stanley 20078).One of the earliest North American diasporic associations was established in Victoria in 1899 by Guangdong re former Kang Youwei.e Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) (Baohuanghui) was transnation al, growing to over 160 branches on multiple contin

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Issue 41.1 / 2020 97 ents (Chen, 2014;Leung Larson 2014;Leung Larson, 2012).Kang Youwei made numerous trips to North America and his speeches to "large public" groups in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster received extensive local press coverage (Owen and Wolf, 2008).CERA advocated for modern liberal reform in China, and its call for North American governments to re move immigration and head tax restrictions and create work mobility for Chinese labourers resonated with the merchant elites who provided local leadership.
Kang Youwei and his fellow reformers imagined wo men's political citizenship as central to the develop ment of a modern Chinese nation, and advocated for women's financial independence, education, and en franchisement.His feminist principles were reflected in the commitments of his second daughter, Kang Tongbi (18811960), and her elder sister Kang Tong wei (who published the women's newspaper Nü Xue Bao), both of whom were active in the Chinese wo men's movement.Tongbi began as her father's inter preter and launched her own tour in 1903 with a twoweek stay in Victoria and a series of public lec tures about women in Chinese reform (Colonist, 23 May 1903, 5).To parallel the maleled CERA organ ized by her father, Tongbi founded the Chinese Em pire Ladies Reform Association (CELRA), which had chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, and numerous American cities (Chen 2014;Lee 2003;Woon 20078).Members of CELRA were the wives and daughters of merchants in Vancouver and Victor ia, and they made up the small numbers of first gener ation female Asian settlers.
ere are two remaining CELRA posters in Canada, commemorating the Vancouver and Victoria branches (CELRA/BHH, 1903).ey are visual and textual po etic celebrations of the important role women were ex pected to play in the political life of China and North America, and were designed to link local women to the larger Chinese women's movement and to global and modern political reform (Campbell, 2020).A photograph of the reformist Guangxu emperor is fea tured at the top of the poster; below him are photo graphs of reformers Kang Youwei and Liang Qi Chao.Positioned below the two men are images of Kang Tongbi and local CELRA members.e images are bordered by textual evocations of women's political re sponsibilities in an evolving nation.Images of ChineseCanadian women were placed alongside de scriptions of "great women heroes" who had sacrificed their lives to challenge authoritarianism and achieve equality.e text celebrated the martyr Joan of Arc, who had courageously "sacrificed" her life for her country and had, by the twentieth century, been adop ted by many suffragists as a powerful heroine symbol izing courage and righteousness (Mayhall, 2003) (Nicol, 2016;Roy, 2007;Stanley, 20078).Although there is no record of whether CELRA members discussed suffrage at meetings or with their husbands, Vancouver CERA members were interested in the question and debated women's suffrage "with considerable animation" in a 1905 meeting.ey ultimately decided that ChineseCana dian women were not "ready" for suffrage because they had not developed "sufficient knowledge of the public questions," a position that reflected arguments made by antisuffrage men across the province and country (Colonist, 5 December 1905, 5).Mail, in 1908(Colonist, 7 November 1902, 5, 10 June 1903, 5;5 November 1908, 8).Press reports often ignored women's long standing activity in Chinese reform movements and assumed that every Chinese woman was speaking for the "first time" in public.e Colonist, for example, described Kang Tongbi's lectures in typically Oriental ist terms, declaring it the "first occasion on which any Chinese woman has been known to speak in public," an assessment which ignored her extensive record of global public speaking (23 May, 1903, 5).But Chinese "new women" were also intriguing to audiences be cause they spoke in the language of progress and mod ernity familiar to North American suffragists.ey shared the belief that women should play a central role in modern nation building projects, and the right to economic independence and higher education (Chap man, 2016;Chapman, 2014).Chinese women re formers drew on discourses of modernization to justify women's political citizenship, and to further the polit ical reforms they believed were necessary for a strong nation state, including democratic and responsible government.e text of one of the CELRA posters echoed the global suffrage value that women were central to modern political progress: "In the rise of the country or its fall, men and women share equal re sponsibility."

Newspapers in British
As with politicians and labour leaders, members of the mainstream provincial suffrage movement constructed Chinese immigration as a threat to the wages of white male breadwinners and to racialized boundaries within the province.But by the second decade of the twenti eth century, suffragists were coming to understand Chinese women as an example of national modernity and global progress.is shift retained what historian Mansour Bonakdarian calls the "cultural arrogance" of British suffrage leadership, which was sustained even as the movement developed more complex under standings of women's global activism (2000, 157;Mukherjee, 2018).Suffragists in British Columbia, for example, spoke paternalistically of how "even China" was granting political rights to women.But this atti tude was accompanied by increasing respect and ac knowledgement that Chinese feminists did not need Western women's help to lobby for gender equality.By focusing their admiration on the activism of women in China rather than Chinese women who lived in Brit ish Columbia, however, suffragists were able to admire the Chinese women's movement-and China itself as a modern nation-while simultaneously maintaining ra cial boundaries between settlers and racial restrictions on political citizenship (Mawani 2009;Perry 2009).
Suffragists were attuned to women's political progress in China where, as in Canada, enfranchisement took place on the national and provincial level.Suffragists were particularly interested in Guangdong during 19111912, where the government removed gender, property, or education restrictions from the vote, and created a quota for women's representation in the pro vincial assembly.ough these rights were removed by the National Parliament during the revolution, this initial success inspired both admiration and envy as well a sense that China was in the forefront of the competitive race towards modernity (Edwards, 2008;Edwards, 2002;Edwards, 2000;Yung, 1995)."Even China is ahead of us," wrote the Champion, because it has "openly recognized the equity and advisability of calling upon her women as well as her men to take their share in the direction of national affairs, and China will therefore rise, not sink, in the scale of na tions" (CH, September 1913, 9).is celebration of "advanced" nations was an important rhetorical device that took visual form in images, maps, and the icono graphy of public events.In 1913, the Victoria PEL entered a float rich with visual symbols of modernity, progress, victory, and justice into the Citizen's Carni val.e float was pulled by a team of horses, on which sat women dressed in militant British suffragette col ours of purple, white, and green.Beside the float marched male supporters, evoking the "new men" who supported women's rights.And on top of the float stood a tableau representing the most "advanced" na tions in the world.Six young women, each dressed in robes of suffrage white and victory crowns of laurel, posed in front of the door of her national "home," which was labelled with the names of the world's lead

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Issue 41.1 / 2020 99 ing nations where women could vote: Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canton (Guangdong), China (CH, September 1913, 4).All the models were white settler women, however, and it is unlikely that organizers reached out to the Chinese Canadian women living in Victoria.e practices of the mainstream suffrage movement remained racially segregated throughout the first decades of the twenti eth century.
While most suffrage organizations across the country imagined themselves as part of a global movement, transnational politics took a unique shape in Canada's westernmost province.British Columbia suffragists connected with suffragists in the Western United States to argue for political equality on the supposedly progressive and egalitarian Western "frontier," and in terpreted the Chinese women's movement as an ex ample of modern and progressive national reform.Suffragists understood the development of women's rights within the global implications of modernity and were confident that white settler population growth and economic development would help Brit ish Columbia progress into a modern, egalitarian, and prosperous future.e suffrage movement in British Columbia was steeped in the cultural and ideological values of race, modern nation state formation, and settler colonialism even as it challenged others related to settler women's capacity and right to political cit izenship.
Columbia covered modern China and the travels of female reformers and journalists on the Pacific coast lecture circuit.e Colonist, for example, covered San Francisco lectures by "new woman" Sieh King, and the visits to Victoria by Kang Tongbi and Mai Zhouyi (editor of the Ling nan Women's Journal) in 1903, and of Li Sum Sing, editor of the Chinese