She Won the Vote for Women

Some seek the spotlight; others generate their own light. Prairie suffragist Lillian Beynon Thomas was among the latter. This book by Robert E. Hawkins argues that Beynon Thomas — less known today than some of her early 20th-century counterparts — was a pivotal force behind Canadian women’s suffrage. 

Bright, pragmatic and bold but not particularly flashy, she focused her attention on rallying isolated rural women around an issue deeply important to them: dower rights. Through her work as a “women’s section” newspaper editor in Winnipeg, she heard from farm wives left destitute because they lacked the right to property acquired during a marriage. Husbands were known to sell their homesteads and disappear overnight, leaving their families with nothing.