OTTAWA—Most everyone knows who their premier is, but it wasn’t until this week, when they were all lined up together at the Council of the Federation in Saskatoon, that it really sunk in.

They’re all men.

You may have seen the photographs that put this in stark relief: the lot of them, an exclusive boys club for the first time since 2008, smiling like the alumni of a hockey team that no one cares to remember.

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As many have pointed out, the vision of this band of men represents a very different class of premiers from just a few years ago. Here is the story of that change — you might say regression — told in a series of all-premiers’ photographs.

2013

2013: Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak, left to right, Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod, Alberta Premier Alison Redford, Prince Edward Island Premier Robert Ghiz, Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, New Brunswick Premier David Alward, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale, and Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski gather for their official portrait as the Council of the Federation summer meeting takes place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. on July 25, 2013.

If the number of women at the first ministers’ table is a sign of approaching gender equality, then 2013 was a high water mark. Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne became the sixth female premier in the federation, after clinching the Liberal leadership and first minister’s chair after Dalton McGuinty resigned amidst a series of controversies. Capturing the flavour of the time, Wynne’s chief rival for the job, Sandra Pupatello, quipped about the contest: “We had the guys on the run.”

Remarking on the historic female presence at the head of governments across the country, the Star’s editorial board wrote that “it’s a remarkable and long overdue makeover in national politics.”

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2014

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne (right) meets with B.C. Premier Christy Clark at the Queen's Park Legislature in Toronto on Monday, Dec. 8 2014. By April of 2014, Kathleen Wynne and Christy Clark were the only women at the first ministers’ table.

It wouldn’t last. By April of 2014, Alberta’s Alison Redford and Newfoundland’s Kathy Dunderdale had resigned, and Quebec’s separatist Parti Québécois premier Pauline Marois had fallen in an election. That left Wynne and B.C. premier Christy Clark as the lone women at the first ministers’ table.

“I worry it’s going to fuel the perception that women can’t hack it,” Janet Ecker, a cabinet minister in premier Mike Harris’s Ontario government, told the Star’s Linda Diebel at the time. “There’s no question we need more women in politics.”

2016: Canada's premiers pose for a photo alongside the Yukon River during a meeting of premiers in Whitehorse, Yukon on July, 21, 2016.

The next two years saw the Liberal victory at the federal level, with the arrival of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “because it’s 2015” cabinet that, for the first time ever, included the same number of men and women in key government portfolios. It also saw the NDP’s Rachel Notley win power in Alberta. But the same period say Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency despite multiple accusations of sexual assault and audio of him bragging about groping women.

So while there were now three women in the premiers’ club — Notley, Wynne and Clark — the Star’s editorial board argued the prospects of gender equality seemed hampered by a slew of vitriol and outright harassment and threats thrown at female politicians on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

“Instead of women making gains in politics, it turned out to be a year of setbacks in which sexism and misogyny ruled in new and brutal ways,” the Star wrote in a year-end editorial. “Sadly, heartbreakingly, plus ça change.”

2017

2017: Canadian premiers from back left, Bob McLeod, Northwest Territories, Philippe Couillard, Quebec, Brian Gallant, New Brunswick, Brian Pallister, Manitoba, Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia, Dwight Ball, Newfoundland and Labrador, Sandy Silver, Yukon, Wade MacLauchlan, Prince Edward Island, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, Brad Wall, Saskatchewan, Rachel Notley, Alberta and Peter Taptuna, Nunavut, pose for a group photo during the Council of Federation meetings in Edmonton Alta, on July 18, 2017.

Some noted a trend. Female premiers were assuming leadership at the tail end of government dynasties, and facing headwinds that seemed to hurt their popularity more than that of their male counterparts. B.C.’s Clark lost her second election as Liberal leader to the NDP’s John Horgan, ending her party’s hold on provincial power that it had maintained since 2001.

Writing in the Star that July, political scientist Sylvia Bashevkin pointed out that “an array of women have come forward to lead under imperilled circumstances,” dating back to the first female premier in Canadian history, Rita Johnston, who assumed power in 1991 in the dying days of B.C.’s Social Credit government. This means that, not only do women win power less frequently than men in this country, they have also held it for shorter periods of time.

“They also have to deal with impatience in the governing party, among media commentators, and in the general public that in some cases pushes them quickly and unceremoniously off the public stage,” she wrote.

2018

2018: Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod, New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball, Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq, Yukon Premier Sandy Silver, British Columbia Premier John Horgan, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Prince Edward Island Premier Wade MacLauchlan, left to right, pose for an official photo on the lawn of the Algonquin Resort as the Canadian premiers meet in St. Andrews, N.B., on July 18, 2018.

By 2018, the Star’s Bob Hepburn was asking: “Is there a misogyny issue in our politics?” Presaging Wynne’s defeat in June of that year, Hepburn noted that the Ontario leader’s already-low popularity was even lower among men, and that no female premier had ever led her party to power in subsequent elections.

His conclusion: “Women political leaders are held to a higher standard than their male counterparts, and … they pay a higher price for making mistakes.”

Notley was the lone female leader at the Council of the Federation that year.

2019

2019: Canada's premiers, left to right, Dennis King of P.E.I., Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, Doug Ford of Ontario, Jason Kenney of Alberta, Bob McLeod of Northwest Territories, Stephen McNeil of Nova Scotia, Scott Moe of New Brunswick, Brian Pallister of Manitoba, Joe Savikataaq of Nunavut, Dwight Ball of Newfoundland and Labrador, Francois Legault of Quebec, Sandy Silver of Yukon and John Horgan of British Columbia pose for a group photo during a meeting of Canada's Premiers in Saskatoon, Sask. on July 11, 2019.

Notley fell in April to her United Conservative challenger, Jason Kenney, and the sight of an all-male premiers’ cohort — an all-too familiar configuration that has existed for the overwhelming majority of Canadian history — had returned.

Writing in the Star, Tiffany Gooch, a Liberal strategist based in Toronto, sought lessons for the future.

“We can each take an active role in encouraging and supporting women in political leadership and building up new generations of young women leaders, who hopefully won’t be limited in the same ways,” she wrote.

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow him on Twitter:

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