Sarah Katherine Ramsland, (née McEwen; July 19, 1882 – April 4, 1964) was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

politician, the first woman ever elected to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. She was born in Boon Lake, Minnesota, the daughter of local politician Bowman C. McEwen and the granddaughter of Minnesota Representative Charles D. McEwen.Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, ''History of Renville County Minnesota, Vol. 1''. H. C. Cooper Jr, & Co., Chicago (1916). Trained as a schoolteacher, she married Max Ramsland, the son of Minnesota politician Ole Ramsland, in Buffalo Lake, Minnesota in 1906 and moved to Saskatchewan, settling first in Canora and later in Buchanan and Kamsack. Max Ramsland was elected to the Legislative Assembly in the 1917 provincial election as the Liberal MLA for Pelly, but died in 1918 in the Spanish flu epidemic, and Sarah Ramsland was elected to succeed him in the resulting byelection. Early in her term she was invited by Premier William Melville Martin to second the formal motion to accept a Speech from the Throne, but declined the honour.''Saskatchewan Politicians: Lives Past and Present''
University of Regina Press, 2004. . Ramsland was reelected in the 1921 election, and served until 1925. A backbench MLA, she rarely spoke in the legislature and was not prominent in the government until her final day in the legislature, when she introduced a resolution calling for an amendment to federal

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laws that would permit women to apply for divorce on the grounds of a spouse's adultery, a privilege which was then only available to men. She was defeated in the 1925 provincial election by Progressive candidate Charles Tran. She subsequently worked for the provincial library and for a number of women's organizations. In 1942, she re-married, to Regina businessman William George Franklin Scythes. She died in Prince Albert in 1964, at the age of 81.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramsland, Sarah 1882 births 1964 deaths Saskatchewan Liberal Party MLAs Women MLAs in Saskatchewan People from Renville County, Minnesota People from Buchanan, Saskatchewan People from Kamsack, Saskatchewan American emigrants to Canada American people of Norwegian descent Canadian people of Norwegian descent 20th-century Canadian women politicians 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan