A local announcement -- Canvassing for your vote

I've just heard from Kyle Marsh, Internal VP of the Nipissing University Student Union, that in connection with the federal election, there will be an all-candidates forum hosted by NUSU in the Nipissing University Theatre on Monday, January 16 at 6:30 PM.

The picture, Canvassing for a Vote, is an American classic from 1852 by George Caleb Bingham, who did a series of paintings on electoral themes in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Some of them are here. One characteristic really stands out: no (or at least very few) women. OK, maybe they didn't troop to the polls, but am I expected to believe that women didn't go to see and hear stump speeches?

My guess (and I do mean guess): women's role in government was already so controversial that Bingham just left them out.

What a bum. Great painter, though.

You can get a better view of the painting by clicking on it.