CIVIC DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Learning to be a good neighbour is an active enjoyment which lasts us all
our lives. Our civic duties and responsibilities may be summed up by saying
that they are the duties and opportunities of a good neighbour. We should
study our civic duties and responsibilities carefully so that we may know
how to vote rightly and wisely when we are given an opportunity to vote on
public questions.
The privilege of voting as a citizen is of the highest importance. But
it is not by any means the only duty or opportunity of a good neighbour.
Women have exercised the right to vote only of recent years, and still in
a number of countries women do not yet vote. They can and do give service
in many other ways. Every man and woman who has the franchise should
record an honest and intelligent vote. But those who vote should give
other service as well. Those who are too young to vote have other
opportunities to work for the community and for the nation.
The right to vote in Canadian elections for the Dominion House of Commons
was given to a limited number of women for the first time in 1917. By an
Act of Parliament which became law in 1918 all women in Canada have the
right to vote in Dominion elections under the same conditions as men.
Women of twenty-one and over have the right to vote in the Provincial
elections of Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba,
and Nova Scotia.
What is the meaning of learning to be a good neighbour?
Let us take the cases of three Canadian girls. One lives in a country
neighbourhood, one belongs to a village, and the third is a city girl.
Each of them lives in a house on a road or street. Other houses in which
neighbours live are not far away. The city girl's next door neighbour is
close by; there is more space in the village; and where the country girl
lives everyone owns a farm so that there is abundance of room between one
neighbour and another.
The community in which she lives gives each of these girls certain good
things. It gives her the school where she is educated. The roads that lead
to different places where she needs to go are provided by the community.
When a great many people live close together, the community has to provide
other necessary things. The girl in the country neighbourhood, unlike the
city girl, needs no special playground because she has many beautiful,
safe places where she can play; also her father can provide his house with
pure water with comparative ease, whereas in a city or town, the council,
which is the government of the local community, provides water and
playgrounds. The city girl is used to having these things provided for her
by the community, and the girl in the country often does not stop to think
of the space, light, air and water which are hers so freely and abundantly.
What we call the community is all the people who live in one district,
which has boundaries to mark it off from other communities. Certain
utilities, such as roads, schools, courts, water, lighting, parks,
playgrounds, and many other things, are kept up by taxes, which are paid
by the people of the community.
Sometimes taxes are objected to as burdens. But it is honourable to pay
taxes for the upkeep of a good community. Money raised by taxes should be
spent wisely, honestly, and not extravagantly. It is the people's money,
and proper value should be received for what the community spends. We
should all see as far as possible that the money from taxes is spent
properly.
Every girl, boy, man and woman, is a citizen of some community and nation,
and has a duty to see that the community and nation are well managed and
well governed.
There is a beautiful word, common, which is sometimes misused in one of
its meanings. One of the meanings of the word "common" is "belonging to
all." Common property means property belonging to a certain number of
people. A "common" is a piece of public property. A common duty is a duty
which belongs to all. There is no common or public property in your
neighbourhood, and there is no common duty in your neighbourhood, which
is not yours.
To be a good neighbour has both a public and a private meaning. You are a
good neighbour to the people who live near you if you help to take care of
them when they are sick, do everything you can to keep them healthy when
they are well, and are kind when they are in trouble. A good neighbour
is a quiet, peaceful, law-abiding citizen, pleasant and useful in the
neighbourhood. What you do as a good neighbour for the people who live
next door, you do as far as you are able for the community in which you
live. The best rule ever given to the world for being a good neighbour
is contained in the story of the Good Samaritan. The more we study that
story, the better we will understand our duties to our neighbours and
the community.
Women and girls should be specially interested in such questions as
education and the training of children, in public health and safety and
public justice, in markets and everything having to do with the food
supply, and in the proper treatment of immigrants. The nation cannot do
its best unless girls and women help by being good neighbours and citizens
in all these and other matters.
Perhaps the most valuable possession that any girl has is her character.
The honest, kind, likeable girl, who keeps her word and is a good friend,
is valued by everyone who knows her. The character of a nation is not
unlike the character of the individual. We love our country. We would give
her the best service. The best we can do for her is to make her national
character honest, kind, strong, helpful and lovable. Every individual in a
nation has a civic duty and responsibility to make that nation a good
neighbour.
A Canadian woman of seventy years said once to a younger woman who was a
professional worker, "My dear, tell me about the hospital where you are
working. I have heard that conditions are not all they should be. I want
to know, because if I know I may be able to help in making what is wrong
right." She was a quiet, gentle woman, charming in manner, and somewhat
shy and reserved. She never talked about disagreeable things. On this
occasion she believed it was her duty to make sure whether there was a
wrong, and if there was to try to put it right. No one ever heard anything
said about this matter in public, but after some time the management of
one public institution was greatly improved. Age, experience and wisdom
can help in these wonderful ways. Girls may learn from such women.
We learn best to be good citizens in our own homes. Study public affairs
and community questions with your father and mother, brothers and sisters.
Those who read Queen Victoria's Letters, which have been published, notice
that in her girlhood she was a simple, gentle, innocent girl, not specially
clever, but eager to learn, resolved that everything in the government of
her country should be explained to her so that she might understand it.
It was her duty to know the details of that great government, and she was
determined, no matter what it cost her in work and study, to know and
understand her duty. In her later letters she appears as an old, very wise
woman, one of the first statesmen of her age. Queen Victoria had great
responsibilities. Ours are smaller. But no girl, whether she works at home
or in paid employment, can reach her highest development in the twentieth
century without living up to her civic and national responsibilities.