Nellie McClung

Nellie Letitia McClung born Letitia Ellen Mooney; 20 October 1873 – 1 September 1951 was a Canadian author, social activist, suffragette, and politician. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s. Her great causes were women’s suffrage and temperance. It was because of her hard work and advocacy, that in 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the right to vote and to run for public office. Nellie McClung was at the forefront of the Suffragist movement in Canada. Through her social justice activism, the issues of temperance, anti-war (enfranchisement of Japanese Canadians and opening the Canadian Border to Jewish Refugees), Labor and Dower rights were among her most important contributions.

In 1927, McClung and four other women: Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby who together came to be known as The Famous Five (also called “The Valiant Five”) launched “the Persons Case,” contending that women could be “qualified persons,” therefore eligible to sit in the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the current law did not recognize women as such. However, the case was won upon appeal to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council—the court of last resort for Canada at that time.

Early life

Nellie McClung Mooney was born at Chatsworth, Ontario in 1873, the youngest daughter of John Mooney, an Irish immigrant farmer and a Methodist, and his Scottish-born wife, Letitia McCurdy. Her father’s farm failed and the family moved to Manitoba in 1880. She received six years of formal education and did not learn to read until she was nine. She later moved with her family to a homestead in the Souris Valley of Manitoba.

Career

In both the 1914 and 1915 Manitoba provincial elections, she campaigned for the Liberal party on the issue of the vote for women. She helped organize the Women’s Political Equality League, a group devoted to women’s suffrage. A public speaker known for her sense of humour, she played a leading role in the successful Liberal campaign in 1914. She also played the role of the Conservative Premier of Manitoba, Rodmond Roblin, in a mock Women’s Parliament staged in Winnipeg in 1914 under the auspices of the Canadian Women’s Press Club. The theatrical effort was designed to expose the absurdity of the arguments of those opposed to women’s suffrage by pretending to debate whether the franchise should be granted to men. Nellie and her colleagues celebrated the defeat of the Roblin government in August 1915 but by the time Manitoba became the first province in Canada to grant women the vote on 28 January 1916, under the new Liberal government, she had already moved to Edmonton, Alberta.

In Edmonton, McClung continued her career as an orator, author, and reformer. In 1921, she was elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly as a Liberal. She then moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1923, and dedicated herself to writing. She had already written her first novel, Sowing Seeds in Danny, published in 1908. A national bestseller, the book was succeeded by short stories and articles, McClung wrote in several Canadian and American magazines.

After moving to Edmonton, she continued the campaign for suffrage. She understood that the First World War had played an important role in broadening the appeal of women’s suffrage. The manpower shortages during this time required widespread female employment, making the image of the sheltered female not applicable to Canadian circumstances. She championed dental and medical care for school children, property rights for married women, mothers’ allowances, factory safety legislation and many other reforms. While arguing for equitable divorce laws, of which she was a longtime supporter, McClung once asked, “Why are pencils equipped with erasers if not to correct mistakes?”

McClung was active in many organizations. She founded the Winnipeg Political Equality League  in addressing educational and social issues, including the factory working conditions, and the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada—”the largest adult education movement in Canada”—and the Women’s Institute of Edmonton, of which she was the first president. She was active in the Canadian Authors’ Association, the Canadian Women’s Press Club, the Methodist Church of Canada, the Calgary Women’s Literary Club, among others.

She sat as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, and then Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1921 to 1926, in opposition to the government of the United Farmers of Alberta. Her opportunity to press for women’s rights was limited because women were not taken seriously.

She was one of The Famous Five (also called The Valiant Five), with Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy and Louise McKinney. The five put forward a petition, in 1927, to clarify the term “Persons” in Section 24 of the British North America Act 1867. This section had served to exclude women from political office. The petition was successful, clearing the way for women to enter politics in Canada.