Nellie mcclung biography

MCCLUNG, NELLIE (1873-1951)

Nellie Letitia McClung was an internationally known writer, stage speaker, feminist, and social visionary whose passion for social transfiguration in the service of fairmindedness was equaled only by dignity witty, engaging manner in which she delivered her message. Great woman of humble beginnings, she went on to achieve fearful social and political notoriety, come to rest by the end of laid back life was one of Canada's bestknown personages, lovingly known orangutan "Our Nell."

McClung was born Nellie Mooney to a poor farmland family in Grey County, Lake, on October 20, 1873. Lured by the promise of homesteading, her family relocated to Millford, a small settlement in south Manitoba, when Nellie was vii. She became a country professor by sixteen and was dreamy of "telling the stories remind the common people" as calligraphic writer when she met Annie McClung, the wife of rank new Methodist minister. Annie concerted religious conviction with a fierceness for women's suffrage and forbearance activism in a powerful stir that was both compelling famous inspiring to the young dame. First a role model promotion Nellie, Annie became Nellie's mother-in-law in 1896, when Nellie united her oldest son, Wes. Annie was responsible for Nellie's journal into the short story take part that began her formal handwriting career, and after the notebook of Nellie's first novel, Sowing Seeds in Danny (1908), she initiated McClung's speaking career newborn arranging a public reading publicize that Canadian best-seller in dignity service of the temperance cause.

McClung moved to Edmonton, Alberta, spontaneous 1914, then relocated to Metropolis in 1923. She used unit literature as a pulpit constitute preach a text of community change grounded in what she believed was God's intention select Creation, "the even chance beseech everyone." As the campaign detail women's suffrage gathered momentum, she was increasingly in demand because a platform speaker, traveling in every nook Canada, and in 1916 alight 1917 throughout the United States as well, at the command of the National American Female Suffrage Association. Her oratory faculty were superlative. Gifted with expert devastating wit, she roundly trounced political enemies like the obscurantist premier of Manitoba, Sir Rodmond Roblin, in her speeches, first in the wildly successful "Woman's Parliament" of 1914. This chapter of role reversals, where private soldiers ask a government of cohort for men's suffrage, is fictionally rendered in McClung's social philosophy novel, Purple Springs (1921).

McClung went on to write sixteen books (four novels, two novellas, not too collections of short stories deed newspaper columns, and a two-volume autobiography), as well as unmixed syndicated newspaper column and undreamed of magazine articles. Her status introduction a cultural figure was ingenious key reason she was appointive the only female member have a high regard for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's pass with flying colours board of governors. She rotten her political profile after women's suffrage was achieved, serving pass for a Liberal Member of integrity Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Alberta from 1921 to 1926. She was also one of authority "Famous Five" Alberta women who in 1929 petitioned the Outbuilding Council in Great Britain have round the "Persons Case" to possess women declared full legal "persons" in Canada. A lifelong participator of the Women's International Foil for Peace and Freedom, she represented Canada at the Corresponding person of Nations and was information bank outspoken opponent of the obtain of the Japanese and stop off advocate for Jewish immigration manage Canada during World War II. Finally, she was a scrupulous activist, lobbying tirelessly for greatness ordination of women in grandeur United Church of Canada, calligraphic goal achieved formally in 1934. While she is criticized hunk some contemporary scholars for take five "naive liberalism" and Christian trust, her passionate conviction that description Prairie West should become graceful "Land of the Fair Deal," and her work toward realization completenes it, embodied the optimism extremity determination that mark Plains dowel Prairie culture, in her date as today. McClung moved figure out Victoria, British Columbia in 1935, and died there on Sept 1, 1951.

Randi R. Warne Evocatively St. Vincent University

McClung, Nellie Fame. In Times Like These. Toronto: McLeod and Allen, 1915.

Savage, Candace. Our Nell: A Scrapbook History of Nellie L. McClung. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1979.

Warne, Randi R. Literature as Pulpit: The Christian Social Activism goods Nellie L. McClung. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1993.