A History of the Vote in Canada

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Few Canadian voters today are probably aware that in Quebec, women could
not vote in provincial elections prior to 1940.

This history of the right to vote in Canada begins with the country’s
first election in Nova Scotia in 1758 and illustrates the gradual
broadening of the franchise to today’s “universal suffrage.” The
largest voter turnout in a federal election occurred in 1958 (79.4
percent), the lowest in 1896 (62.9 percent).

Photographs, posters, and cartoons are interspersed throughout this
excellent history, which has much to offer both the voting public and
the scholar.