Suffragette pioneer finally gets her due

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This article was published 19/06/2010 (5822 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the unveiling of a statue honouring Nellie McClung — the province’s most famous suffragette — even Mother Nature paid homage.

While non-stop rain forced Manitoba politicians, and McClung’s own granddaughter, to deliver speeches from the refuge of the Manitoba Legislative Building, the downpour suddenly stopped just before the unveiling of the bronze statue depicting McClung and the rest of the Famous Five, before beginning again a few minutes later.

But for several people, including Nellie McClung Foundation chairwoman Janice Filmon, a few drops of rain weren’t going to put a damper on seven years of hard work.

"I just want to enjoy the moment," Filmon said on Friday.

"This took seven years, but it took 13 years for the Persons Case. And that was a time when women were supposed to be in the kitchen."

McClung helped Manitoba women become the first in the country to be able to vote in 1916.

After moving to Alberta with her husband and family, McClung became one of the Famous Five, whose Persons Case resulted in Canadian women being recognized as persons under the British North America Act in 1929.

Until Friday, the only woman honoured on the grounds of the Legislative Building was Queen Victoria.

After the yanking of a large pink ribbon, and the tossing back of a tarpaulin, where once there was one there are now six women on the grounds.

Marcia McClung, who was six when her grandmother died in 1951, spoke on behalf of the McClung and Mooney families — Mooney was Nellie’s maiden name. She said she was "thrilled and honoured" by the statue.

"Manitoba was the spiritual, intellectual and physical base which rooted my grandmother’s development and I know that she would have been very pleased to be recognized by the province which played such a pivotal role in her life," she said.

McClung said she remembers sitting in her grandmother’s lap while the crusader wrote articles out in longhand at her desk.

But McClung said she didn’t realize the full scope of her grandmother’s legacy until years after her death.

"I would love to have been able to speak with her when I was 20 — or even now."

Nellie McClung was born in 1873 in Ontario and moved with her family to Manitoba in 1880. She began teaching in Manitou and was influenced by her future mother-in-law and suffragette Annie McClung.

McClung published 16 books during her life including Sowing Seeds in Danny.

While McClung left Manitoba, many of her relatives are still here. At one point during the speeches, more than two dozen of her relatives stood up to be recognized.

Earlier, Premier Greg Selinger lauded McClung saying "she got the right for women in Manitoba to vote and we haven’t looked back since."

Selinger, looking around the Legislative Building’s rotunda where the speeches were held because of the weather, said McClung’s legacy was sitting there, with the women who were MLAs, MPs, leaders of political parties, and presidents of universities.

"But there is more progress to be made and Nellie would have been the first to say that," Selinger said, noting pay equity for women is still an issue.

Former Mayor Susan Thompson, as the city’s first and so far only female mayor, said she knew something of what McClung went through.

"Seventy-six years after Nellie McClung and her sisters in suffrage won the battle granting Manitoba women the right to vote, I was elected," Thompson, herself the great-granddaughter of a suffragette, said.

"No one knew the battle that lay ahead better than Nellie, having dedicated her entire life to serving as a champion for others…. I faced many challenges myself in battling the status quo."

Senator Nancy Ruth, who contributed $50,000 of the $300,000 statue contribution from the private sector, said not only does she support the issue McClung fought for, she has a family connection.

"My grandfather, Newton Rowell, was the lawyer for Nellie McClung and company for the Persons Case," Ruth said.

"The federal government paid for the legal fees. That’s important because none of these women had any money."

Ruth said she paid homage to her grandfather by wearing his cuff links when she was sworn in as a senator.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca