The statue depicts McClung and the four other feminists of the so-called Famous Five. (CBC)A statue of novelist and politician Nellie McClung was unveiled at the Manitoba legislature Friday.

It depicts McClung and the four other feminists of the so-called Famous Five — Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards — who were responsible for making women "persons" under the law.

The statue was sculpted by Winnipeg artist Helen Granger Young, who also sculpted a bust of McClung that is in the Citizens Hall of Fame.

The famous early feminists were moved into action by a ruling in March 1928, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not "persons" with equal rights as men under the law.

They won a landmark court ruling on Oct. 18, 1929, that changed that, giving women equal rights and allowing them to sit in the appointed Senate. Oct. 18 is now recognized across Canada as Persons Day.

Marcia McClung, McClung's granddaughter, will be at the ceremony.

"What I remember about her was the great energy that she had. She had these sparkly eyes and she was animated — she was always a very animated person," Marcia McClung said.

"There was always lots of activity around her, so for a kid that was just great — people coming and going and talking. It was fun and it was only later I realized how significant all these meetings were."

The statue is on the west lawn of the legislative grounds.

Winning the right to vote

McClung's activism started long before the Famous Five ever formed.

Nellie McClung changed the legal status of women with wit and subtle humour. (CBC)Born Nellie Letitia Mooney in 1873 in Chatsworth, Ont., McClung was the youngest of six children. Not long after, her family moved to Manitoba and at age 15, she was accepted at the teachers college in Winnipeg.

In 1896, after a five-year courtship, she married pharmacist Robert Wesley McClung and they eventually had five children together.

McClung completed her first book, Sowing Seeds In Danny, in 1908, and for a while it was the best-selling novel in Canadian history.

But it was on a January day in 1914, that the prairie housewife took some of her most famous steps. That's when she walked through the doors of the Manitoba legislature and began her campaign to convince the government that women should be allowed to vote.

By early 1916, the women of Manitoba became the first in Canada to win that right as well as the right to run for public office.

The federal government implemented the same laws later in the year.

McClung later moved to Alberta and on July 18, 1921, was elected to the provincial legislature, where she served as MLA until 1926. At the time, she was only the third woman ever elected to a provincial government in Canada.

It was in Alberta that she met the other women who would become the Famous Five. In October 2009, that group was posthumously named honorary senators.

McClung died in September 1951 at age 77.