Perhaps the best-known of the Famous Five who lobbied for women's personhood under the law, Nellie McClung was born in 1883 in Ontario and grew up in a religious family on a Manitoba homestead.
She published her first novel in 1908, and wrote books in praise of the rural lifestyle.
McClung trained as a teacher in Winnipeg. Her first assignment was to teach 8 grades in a country school, a typical situation for the times.
After Nellie met and married Wes McClung, they had five children. She campaigned for the vote in Manitoba, and was one of the organizers of the Winnipeg Women's Political Equality League.
Nellie McClung was a champion of women's rights and a clever orator. In her Mock Parliament, organized for the Women's Press Club, she cleverly used humour to demonstrate the absurdity of the arguments that were being used to keep women in their place. Turning the tables on Premier Roblin, she assured the laughing crowd that "nice men don't vote."
The main causes she supported women's suffrage, temperance, factory safety laws, old age pensions and public health nursing. Six years after she moved to Edmonton in 1915, McClung was elected a Liberal member to the Alberta Legislature, where she served for five years. in 1929, she took part in the Persons Case.
In 1936, she became the first woman member of the CBC Board of Governors, and in 1936 she was the only woman to be part of the Canadian delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva.
Nellie McClung died in 1951. She is remembered through many scholarships, libraries, schools, and parks that have been named in her honour.
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