Chapter 30

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.