Calgary & Southern Alberta

Nellie McClung
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

Born in Grey County, Ontario, in 1873, Nellie Letitia (Mooney) McClung moved to Brandon, Manitoba, as a child. She started school at the age of ten and had earned a teaching certificate by age fifteen. After teaching at Manitou, Manitoba, she married Robert Wesley McClung, the son of temperance worker and suffragist, Mrs. J. W. McClung. With her mother-in-law’s encouragement, McClung wrote her first of sixteen novels, Sowing Seeds in Danny, in 1908. In 1911 McClung moved to Winnipeg where she became active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Canadian Women’s Press Club. In addition, she helped to found the Manitoba Political Equality League in 1912. In 1914, McClung moved with her husband to Edmonton where she joined the Edmonton Equal Franchise League. In 1921 she was elected as a Liberal MLA where she fought for mother’s allowances, public health nursing, free medical and dental care for children, liberalised birth control, divorce laws, and improved property rights for married women.