Other girls find companionship, recreation and improvement in reading circles, study clubs, and clubs for walking, snowshoeing, skating and other outdoor enjoyment. Clubs formed to promote play and exercise are among the best of these organizations. Some circles are for dancing; others are dramatic clubs. Practically every group of this kind undertakes some benevolent work, and should do so in order to share happiness and good times with others. Such clubs entertain the inmates of hospitals, children's and old people's homes, give Christmas trees to children, send gifts to the needy, or work for benevolent organizations.
The club for outdoor play is one of the most important of group organizations. It has a wonderful effect on the health of its members. Tennis, basket ball, cricket, hockey and croquet are played by groups of girls who often challenge boys' clubs and are able to enter such contests with skill and ability. The gardening club is one of the many ways in which a club of girls can raise money to help in benevolent and other objects.
To form a group of this kind successfully the girl members require to have kindly impulses and enthusiasm, a willingness to work and play together, and the wish to be useful and to do something worth doing. Other requisites are a few simple rules, loyally lived up to, and one or two girls who have organizing ability. Leaders should train others to lead also, and each girl should take her turn in leading and in following.
The ideal group is not made up of girls exclusively, but should take its pattern as much as possible from family life. The girls of the group play together and work together. But the fathers and mothers of some of the girls will be glad to be honorary members and should share at times both in work and in play. A boys' club may be a friendly rival in games and may co-operate in benevolent work and entertainment.
CHAPTER XXIX
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.