Congratulations Women (in Canada!)

Today, May 24th, marks the 82nd anniversary of Women as Persons in Canada. While there are lent of inequalities in this country, and definitely beyond, there has been great strides in the last 80+ years made: women can vote, own property, have a career, have a choice in whether they get married or have kids. 6000 years of tradition changed in less than a century.

But do today's ladies know what those gals went through 80+ years ago? First, obviously there was picketing:



Then you had to decide where to picket, and for what cause. In this case, let's say in 1917 in America, the cause was Suffrage and the place was Woodrow Wilson's White House. Any guess on the prize these young women won with such an action?

Incarceration, of course.

November 15th, 1917 has gone down as "The Night of Terror" in some annals. This is the first night that the women who picketed in front of the White House were jailed in a Virginia lockup. The warden unleashed the guards upon them. The women were beaten and terrorized. Lucy Burns, the following lady, was handcuffed above her head and hung from the bars of her cell overnight.



The next lady, Alice Paul, was a leader of the group. To protest their treatment that had gone on for days, Alice went on a hunger strike. She was chained to a chair while a tube was forced down her throat to force feed her.



Eventually the press found out about this ill treatment, and it subsided.

We all give our thanks to these courageous ladies.