Catherine Harrison is excited about the arrival of an exhibit at the Humboldt and District Museum that shines a light on the effort to gain women the vote more than 100 years ago.

“It’s very clever, it’s very easy to read and the story is really well told, and it’s our own Saskatchewan homegrown women who have done these amazing things,” said Harrison, a cultural programmer at the museum.

“And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know any of these names when I went to school. I think it’s a piece that’s missing from my own personal education that I’m really excited to understand a bit more about, and it makes me appreciate where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come, but still how far we have to go as far as gaining equal footing in the world.”

Sisters United: Women’s Suffrage in Saskatchewan, a traveling exhibit produced by the Diefenbaker Canada Centre, focuses on four women central to the suffrage movement.

Violet McNaughton was the first woman to sit on the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association board of directors and established the Women Grain Growers Association, which produced The Grain Grower’s Guide, a publication that reached isolated women on farms around the province and gave them a voice.

Annie Hollis continued to teach after getting married, which was unusual for the time. She was one of the women who presented the suffrage petition to Premier Walter Scott.

Zoa Haight was the Women Grain Growers Association vice president and was one of the first women to run for political office in Saskatchewan, as a member of the Non-Partisan League on the district of Thunder Creek, in 1917. She was unsuccessful.

Erma Stocking was the secretary-treasurer for the women's association and wrote columns which included submissions from women on topics such as parenting, domestic practices and relief work and suffrage. She’s also part of the reason why Saskatchewan has rural libraries today, Harrison said.

The Saskatchewan Equal Franchise Board presented a suffrage petition with 10,000 signatures to Premier Walter Scott on February 14, 1916. Women officially got the vote on March 14, 1916.

Women gained the right to vote in federal elections on May 24, 1918. But the right wasn’t universal - only women who owned property could vote, and Indigenous women and women from racial minorities were excluded.

It would take decades for those peoples to be able to vote, Harrison said. Suffrage was “an amazing first step” - but it didn’t include everyone.

History is complicated and it’s still happening, she said. She hopes the exhibit makes men and women realize we shouldn’t take our rights for granted, and that we must always question injustice.

“It really makes you think. Personally, it makes me appreciate what I am able to do now as a woman in society.”

Sisters United runs to June 23.