Rhiannon Jeffrey

My great-great grandmother, Alice Maud Brown, was a mother of twelve and she was a secretary for a politician on Parliament Hill. She would, without a doubt, have used her voting rights as soon as they became available to her in 1917. The Ottawa Valley, where Grandma and her family lived in Canada, is big farmland country. The people were Irish, Scottish, or English immigrants. Some had been there longer than others, but all shared the defining characteristic of being extremely Protestant. The Ottawa Valley was decidedly less developed than the rest of the province and was made of small towns and villages. It is amazing that in this community, my grandmother as a mother of twelve was both able to work and able to vote. She was most definitely a progressive woman.

One of my family’s favorite anecdotes about my great-great grandmother portrays her as a lover of literature, one of the first in my family. Taking care of twelve children did not allow Grandma Alice to have much free time, so every night after she made dinner, she left the family to eat. Then she went to the drawing room and locked the door and read for an hour while everyone ate dinner. It’s no wonder that this is my family’s favorite story. Alice’s grandson, my grandfather, was one of the first people in our family to go to college, and since then, academia has been a big part of our lives. I like to believe that my great-great-grandmother was the person that inspired the love of literature that our family has. She made time for herself and for her interests. In a time when a woman’s only job was to take care of her family, she redefined what it meant to be a mother and a wife.

Nellie McClung was an author, activist, and mind ahead of her time. She was born Helen Letitia Mooney in Southern Ontario, Canada. At the age of four, she and her family moved out to the western province of Canada. By the age of sixteen, Nellie became a school teacher in a rural school. When she was twenty-three, she married Wesley McClung and had five children with him. She was a “normal” woman. She had a family, a husband, and a household to take care of. The only thing that made Nellie extraordinary was her drive and her talent for writing. Not only did she become one of the most influential women in Canada, but she became a force for good in her government and an advocate for the downtrodden.

In a time when female authors were neither respected nor popular, Nellie McClung wrote a bestseller. It was her first book, Sowing Seeds in Danny. It was published in 1908, sold 100,000 copies, and had seventeen editions. She wrote sixteen books in all, and also wrote for many magazines. McClung is also recognized as one of the best female orators of her day. In 1914, she wrote a scathing commentary on Premier Robin’s speech to the women delegates who came to him asking for equal rights. It was a satire of epic proportions, and she performed it in front of a “women’s congress.” Nellie was part of the “Famous Five”- the five Canadian woman who pioneered the Person’s Case. They sought to change the meaning of the word “person” in the Canadian Constitution so that women’s rights would be included. In 1921, McClung was elected to the legislature of her home province, Alberta. In 1938, she was one of the Canadian delegates to the League of Nations. Nellie advocated for the government to take in Jewish refugees during World War II, asking the government to set up support programs, especially for Jewish children. She also argued for the rights of Japanese-Canadian citizens, during a time when it was a very fraught issue. Unlike many politicians, Nellie followed through on her beliefs. She took her belief that all people are equal and applied it to the injustices she saw around her country. Even into her later years, McClung kept up her writing. She kept up a correspondence with her acquaintances long into her 60s and 70s. She kept on writing speeches and writing for magazines. Her words have power, even now that she is long gone. She made a difference, she pioneered change, she defeated stigma and did it all while managing a family and a home.

During this project, it became apparent to me, that though the women of the past deserved the rights that we take for granted today, they had to fight tooth and nail for them. They had expectations and limits that we don’t have today. My great-great grandmother had twelve children and a job and was expected to care for her family and make meals. She wouldn’t have been able to go to college, or even to study on her own. As someone who has always loved academics and learning, I would hate having to start a family, as early as the age of eighteen. I have always seen college and then graduate school as a part of my future.

Without the bravery and perseverance of women like Nellie McClung, I would not be here going to school this morning, or going on college visits this summer, or have the opportunity to have a good job. I would have a set future as a housewife. Instead, my future is wide open and full of opportunity.