On this day in 1917:

Women won provincial voting rights in B.C.

Source: Herstory, The Canadian Women’s Calendar which I’m happy to say I’ve been receiving as a gift for years and which, while it’s a desk calendar, and I use it as such, the first thing I do every year is read it like a book.

Each page features a historic photograph, work of art, or brief account of past and contemporary lives lived and contributions made—by people like Lois Vallely-Fischer who founded one of the first university faculty unions in Canada.

It also covers aspects of history not usually mentioned in the usual history books, such as, for example, that of women’s rowing—not until the 1970’s were all-women crews allowed in competition (boxing was practiced by women for almost a century before the first women’s boxing club opened in 1996). 

It’s a favourite read every year and never fails to leave me stunned and grateful for the work that’s been done, and continues to be done, in this country, by women—many of whom I suspect no one ever hears much about. And how, amazingly, there’s never a shortage of women to fill its pages.