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Nellie McClung
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Best-selling novelist, Prohibitionist and
charismatic suffragette, McClung won hearts, influenced minds
and changed the legal status of women with wit and subtle
humour. Born Nellie Letitia Mooney in 1873, she was
the youngest of six children. At the age of 15, she
was accepted at the teachers college in Winnipeg. In
1896, after a five-year courtship, she married pharmacist
Robert Wesley McClung - son of fellow activist Annie McClung.
They had five children together. She completed her first
novel, Sowing Seeds In Danny, in 1908. It was published
the same year as Anne of Green Gables and for awhile it was
the best selling novel in Canadian history.
McClung embraced temperance with the Women's Christian Temperance
Union and fought for the prohibition of alcohol. In
the early 1900s, when women could not vote or hold public
office, had no legal right to property if they were married,
no legal control over their own children and were not even
considered persons under Canadian law, she led the campaign
to give women the right to vote. McClung and her fellow
temperance advocates knew they could never win their battle
against the liquor trade without being able to vote.
So, McClung and a delegation of peaceful, polite, Canadian
feminists set out to win this fundamental right for women.
By referendum, in the summer of 1915, the voters of Alberta
approved prohibition of alcohol. The other provinces
soon followed. After victory in Manitoba, McClung helped
lead another suffrage campaign. The women of Alberta
won the right to vote in April 1916.
On the 18th of July, 1921, McClung was elected to the Alberta
Legislature. She was only the third woman ever elected
to a provincial government in Canada. In March 1928,
the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not "persons"
according to law. By October 18, 1929, thanks to McClung
and the "Famous Five," women had become equal to men in the
eyes of the law. The word "persons" now referred to
both sexes.
Original Air Date - January 18, 2000
Links
Nellie
McClung (National Library of Canada)
Nellie
McClung (Time links)
The
Famous Five
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