McClung, Nellie Mooney
Women’s Rights Advocate ~ 1880-1951
Nellie was born on a farm near Chatsworth in 1873, the youngest of six children. In 1880, the Mooney family moved west to Manitoba as pioneer homesteaders. She wed Wesley McClung, raised five children, two of whom later became Rhodes Scholars. By 1896, while a teacher she had written books and speeches for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and was very active in the movement. Her good friend E. Cora Hind reviewed her books in the Winnipeg Free Press. She championed a variety of causes ranging from rural life; the plight of immigrants, conditions in cities and factories, and directed her energies to prohibition and women’s suffrage. She crusaded through a historical backdrop of the First World War, the Depression, and the Second World War. She gave speeches, called recitals, and developed into a prominent lecturer. She founded many organizations including; the Winnipeg Political Equality League, the Federated Women’s Institute of Canada and the Women’s Institute of Edmonton, of which she was the first president. Her skills as an orator drew full houses wherever she was engaged to speak and her tours included; the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Women’s Press Club, the Methodist Church of Canada and the Calgary Women’s Literary Club. McClung was a prominent speaker for the Manitoba Liberal Party. In 1916, Manitoba became the first province to allow women into the political franchise, giving them the right to vote and run for public office. McClung was elected to the Alberta Legislature in 1921. Federally, in 1927 along with four other prominent women, she initiated the “Person’s Case”; requesting an interpretation of “person” under the British North America Act of 1867. The Supreme Court found that “person” included women, thereby making women eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada. Her career achievements made milestones for women. She was the only woman delegate of the Methodist Church of Canada at the Ecumenical Conference in London, England, member of the Canadian Delegation to the League of Nations Geneva, Switzerland; the first woman member of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, Board of Broadcast Governors. An eight-cent stamp was issued to honour her in 1973 and her name appears on a plaque outside the Senate Chamber in Ottawa. A cairn marks her birthplace south of Chatsworth for this lecturer, legislator, teacher and writer, an ardent activist for women’s rights. She died in 1951 in Victoria, BC.
Additional information: Sharon Cake Ed. Eminent Women of Grey County, Grey County Historical Society, Richardson, Bond, Wright Ltd., Owen Sound, 1977.
Dorothy Vick, From Quill to Ballpoint, RBW Graphics, Owen Sound, 1988.
Library and Archives Canada website: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/index-e.html.
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