Nellie McClung

Nellie McClung
Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
In office 18 July 1921 (1921-07-18) – 28 June 1926 (1926-06-28)
Succeeded by	John Lymburn, Charles Weaver, Charles Gibbs, Warren Prevey and David Duggan
Constituency	Edmonton
Personal details
Born	Helen Letitia Mooney (1873-10-20)20 October 1873 Chatsworth, Ontario
Died	Victoria, British Columbia
Political party	Liberal
Spouse(s)	Robert Wesley McClung
Occupation	Social activist
Known for	Women's rights activist

Nellie Letitia McClung, (née Helen Letitia Mooney; 20 October 1873 – 1 September 1951), was a Canadian feminist, politician, author, and social activist. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s. 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" eligible to sit in the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that current law did not recognize them 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.

Biography

File:Nellie McClung marker.jpg

Historical plaque honouring McClung, located just south of Chatsworth, Ontario

Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King unveiled plaque to the Valiant Five in the Person's Case

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 there failed and the family moved out to Manitoba in 1880. She only received six years of formal education and didn't learn to read until she was ten. She later moved with her family to a homestead in the Souris Valley of Manitoba. Between 1904 and 1915, Nellie McClung, her husband Wesley (a pharmacist) and their five children resided in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Winnipeg, from 1911–15, Nellie McClung fought for women's suffrage. In 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. An effective speaker with a sense of humour, she played a leading role in the successful Liberal campaign in 1914. Nellie McClung played the Manitoban Premier, Sir Rodmond Roblin, in a mock Women's Parliament in Winnipeg organized by the Canadian Women's Press Club in 1914. Her performance showed the absurdity of the arguments of those opposed to giving the vote to women. Nellie and her colleagues celebrated the defeat of the Roblin government in August 1915 but she moved to Edmonton, Alberta just before Manitoba became the first province in Canada to grant voting privileges to women on 28 January 1916. In Edmonton, she continued her career as an orator, author, and reformer. In 1921, McClung was elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly as a Liberal. She then moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1923 where she dedicated herself to her prolific writing career. McClung was the grandmother of outspoken Alberta judge John McClung.

The McClung house in Calgary, Alberta, where she resided from 1923 to the mid-1930s, still stands and is recognized as a heritage site. Two other houses in which McClung lived have been re-located to the Archibald Museum near La Rivière, Manitoba in the Rural Municipality of Pembina where they have been restored. The houses are open to the public. The family residence in Winnipeg is also a historic site. McClung once said "Why are pencils equipped with erasers if not to correct mistakes?" when arguing for the support of equitable divorce laws, of which she was a longtime supporter.

Her great causes were women's suffrage and temperance. She understood that the First World War had played an important role in broadening the appeal of women's suffrage because the manpower shortages required widespread female employment, making the image of the sheltered female more obviously inapplicable to Canadian circumstances. It was largely through her efforts that in 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the right to vote and to run for public office. After moving to Edmonton, she continued the campaign for suffrage. She championed dental and medical care for school children, property rights for married women, mothers' allowances, factory safety legislation and many other reforms. McClung was a supporter of the then popular social philosophy of eugenics and campaigned for the sterilization of those considered "simple-minded". Her promotion of the benefits of sterilization contributed to the passage of eugenics legislation in Alberta.

McClung was active in many organizations. She founded the Winnipeg Political Equality League 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 published her first novel Sowing Seeds in Danny in 1908. A national bestseller, it was succeeded by short stories and articles in several Canadian and American magazines. She served as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1921 to 1926. As an opposition member, 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.

Legacy

In 1954, Nellie McClung was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the government of Canada. A plaque commemorating that honour is located on the west side of Hwy 6, 1 km south of Hwy 40, Chatsworth, Ontario. In addition, the "Persons Case" was recognized as a Historic Event in 1997.

Among other honours, in October 2009, the Senate voted to name Nellie McClung and the rest of the Five Canada's first "honorary senators."

Bibliography

File:Famous Five-Headline.jpg

In Famous Five statue, Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Fiction

• -

Non-fiction

• - The Next of Kin at Google Books

See also

• History of feminism
• Feminism in Canada
• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• List of women's rights activists
• Suffragette
• Timeline of women's suffrage
• Women's Social and Political Union
• Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

External links

• Histori.ca Re-enactment of Nellie McClung!
• Works by Nellie McClung at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Nellie McClung at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Nellie McClung Girls' Junior High Program
• McClung's, a Ryerson University-based feminist publication
• Archibald Historical Museum, honouring the work and life of Nellie McClung