Nellie McClung

Nellie Letitia McClung, , was a Canadian feminist, politician, author, and social activist. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s. In 1927, McClung and four other women Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby, who together came to be known as The Famous Five , launched the Persons Case, contending that women could be qualified persons eligible to sit in the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that current law did not recognize them as such. However, the case was won upon appeal to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Councilthe court of last resort for Canada at that time.

Nellie McClung Mooney was born at Chatsworth, Ontario in 1873, the youngest daughter of John Mooney, an Irish immigrant farmer and a Methodist, and his Scottishborn wife, Letitia McCurdy her fathers farm there failed and the family moved out to Manitoba in 1880. She only received six years of formal education and didnt learn to read until she was ten. She later moved with her family to a homestead in the Souris Valley of Manitoba. Between 1904 and 1915, Nellie McClung, her husband Wesley and their five children resided in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Winnipeg, from 191115, Nellie McClung fought for womens suffrage. In the 1914 and 1915 Manitoba provincial elections, she campaigned for the Liberal party on the issue of the vote for women. She helped organize the Womens Political Equality League, a group devoted to womens suffrage. An effective speaker with a sense of humour, she played a leading role in the successful Liberal campaign in 1914. Nellie McClung played the Manitoban Premier, Sir

Source: Wikipedia