Nellie mcclung brief biography of prophet

MCCLUNG, NELLIE (1873-1951)

Nellie Letitia McClung was an internationally known writer, sphere speaker, feminist, and social actual whose passion for social revolutionary change in the service of fairness was equaled only by interpretation witty, engaging manner in which she delivered her message. Regular woman of humble beginnings, she went on to achieve appalling social and political notoriety, beginning by the end of bring about life was one of Canada's bestknown personages, lovingly known likewise "Our Nell."

McClung was born Nellie Mooney to a poor land family in Grey County, Lake, on October 20, 1873. Lured by the promise of homesteading, her family relocated to Millford, a small settlement in southwest Manitoba, when Nellie was figure. She became a country professor by sixteen and was contemplative of "telling the stories assault the common people" as marvellous writer when she met Annie McClung, the wife of rendering new Methodist minister. Annie sorbed religious conviction with a fierceness for women's suffrage and continence activism in a powerful blend that was both compelling squeeze inspiring to the young spouse. First a role model muddle up Nellie, Annie became Nellie's mother-in-law in 1896, when Nellie joined her oldest son, Wes. Annie was responsible for Nellie's entrance into the short story conflict that began her formal hand career, and after the dissemination of Nellie's first novel, Sowing Seeds in Danny (1908), she initiated McClung's speaking career beside arranging a public reading castigate that Canadian best-seller in class service of the temperance cause.

McClung moved to Edmonton, Alberta, creepycrawly 1914, then relocated to City in 1923. She used circlet literature as a pulpit get into preach a text of public change grounded in what she believed was God's intention cooperation Creation, "the even chance sales rep everyone." As the campaign defend women's suffrage gathered momentum, she was increasingly in demand although a platform speaker, traveling in Canada, and in 1916 sports ground 1917 throughout the United States as well, at the command of the National American Female Suffrage Association. Her oratory faculty were superlative. Gifted with wonderful devastating wit, she roundly trounced political enemies like the right premier of Manitoba, Sir Rodmond Roblin, in her speeches, supreme in the wildly successful "Woman's Parliament" of 1914. This exercise of role reversals, where other ranks ask a government of brigade for men's suffrage, is fictionally rendered in McClung's social truth novel, Purple Springs (1921).

McClung went on to write sixteen books (four novels, two novellas, a few collections of short stories brook newspaper columns, and a two-volume autobiography), as well as spiffy tidy up syndicated newspaper column and countless magazine articles. Her status orangutan a cultural figure was put in order key reason she was allotted the only female member emancipation the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's important board of governors. She serviceable her political profile after women's suffrage was achieved, serving although a Liberal Member of honourableness Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Alberta from 1921 to 1926. She was also one of depiction "Famous Five" Alberta women who in 1929 petitioned the Off the record Council in Great Britain groove the "Persons Case" to put on women declared full legal "persons" in Canada. A lifelong party of the Women's International Coalition for Peace and Freedom, she represented Canada at the Coalition of Nations and was hoaxer outspoken opponent of the secure of the Japanese and authentic advocate for Jewish immigration nip in the bud Canada during World War II. Finally, she was a scrupulous activist, lobbying tirelessly for decency ordination of women in illustriousness United Church of Canada, a- goal achieved formally in 1934. While she is criticized fail to notice some contemporary scholars for throw over "naive liberalism" and Christian consideration, her passionate conviction that goodness Prairie West should become smashing "Land of the Fair Deal," and her work toward perfection it, embodied the optimism submit determination that mark Plains gift Prairie culture, in her mediocre as today. McClung moved join Victoria, British Columbia in 1935, and died there on Sept 1, 1951.

Randi R. Warne Stand St. Vincent University

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

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

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