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	(1873-10-20)20 October 1873 Chatsworth, Ontario
Died	1 September 1951(1951-09-01) (aged 77) Victoria, British Columbia
Political party	Liberal
Spouse(s)	Robert Wesley McClung
Occupation	social activist

Nellie McClung, born Nellie Letitia Mooney (20 October 1873 – 1 September 1951), was a Canadian feminist, politician, 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")^{[citation needed]}, 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

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

Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King unveiled plaque to the Valiant 5 in the Person's Case

Born in Chatsworth, Ontario in 1873 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 1911, Nellie McClung, her husband Wesley (a pharmacist) and their five children resided in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The women’s rights movement in Winnipeg embraced her. An effective speaker with a sense of humour, she played a leading role in the successful Liberal campaign in 1914. She lived in the West for the rest of her life in Manitoba, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Victoria. McClung was the grandmother of outspoken Alberta judge John McClung. Two of the 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 the 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. The Government of Canada followed suit that same year. 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.

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.

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

Literature

Library resources
About Nellie McClung
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By Nellie McClung
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In Famous Five statue, Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Fiction

• Sowing Seeds in Danny (1908)
• The Second Chance (1910)
• The Black Creek Stopping House and Other Stories (1912)
• Purple Springs (1921)
• When Christmas Crossed 'The Peace' (1923)
• Painted Fires (1925)
• All We Like Sheep (1926)
• Be Good to Yourself (1930)
• Flowers for the Living (1931)

Non-Fiction

• In Times Like These (1915)
• The Next of Kin (1917)
• Three Times and Out (1918)
• Clearing in the West (1935)
• Leaves from Lantern Lane (1936)
• More Leaves from Lantern Lane (1937)
• The Stream Runs Fast (1945)
• The Morning After Dawn (1950)

See also

• History of feminism
• 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

Library resources
About Nellie McClung
Resources in your library Resources in other libraries
By Nellie McClung
Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries

• "Nellie McClung". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2005. 
• The Canadian Encyclopedia, Nellie Letitia McClung
• Histori.ca Re-enactment of Nellie McClung!
• Works by Nellie L. McClung at Project Gutenberg
• 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
• S. Frasher (9 July 2000). "Nellie McClung". Canadian suffragist, women's rights leader, author Alberta legislator. Find a Grave. Retrieved 18 Aug 2011.