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Tom Monto

Soft approach is best said Nellie McClung of the WCTU

Updated: Mar 23, 2021

As wisdom passed on from one generation to another, we can learn from what Nellie McClung wrote in her autobiography The Stream Runs Fast.


One anecdote concerns what Nellie herself learned from Louise McKinney.


McKinney, you may recall, was the first woman elected in the British Empire right here in Alberta. In the 1917 provincial election she was elected in the district of Claresholm. (Both of them went on to be members of the Famous Five who fought for Canadian women's complete political equality with men.)


Nellie wrote that during WWI she was writing up an argument "against some obstreperous women who were giving us trouble." At the time McKinney and McClung were both active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union.*


McClung showed what she had written to McKinney, thinking she would approve of it.


But McKinney said "You've certainly demolished their arguments but you have made them ridiculous and there is no need of that. These women are sincere, though mistaken. It is never wise to kill your enemy even if you can do it and get away with it. It is better to kill his enmity, and then you have acquired a friend."


McClung wrote "I knew in a flash she was right."


McKinney's portrait can be seen today in the legislature Building. (Well not today due to COVID but eventually you will be able to go to see it.)


Nellie (with Irene Parlby of Alix) followed McKInney into the legislature in 1921. (Parlby too would be one of the Famous Five.)

This was the time when women were breaking down the doors that were locking them out of chambers of power at all levels

Edmonton's first woman city councillor was elected in 1922.

The first women MP (Agnes MacPhail) was elected the same year McClung and Parlby were elected in Alberta.


In one small town east of Edmonton there was an old gentleman who objected to women's entry into politics. When a woman was elected to the school board upon which he served, at the first meeting he tendered his resignation saying he would not serve on the board with a woman member. He was probably hoping that the other members would take his side and go on to ostracize the newest member.


But she was prepared. She asked leave of the Chairman to have the floor and began to shower the member with praise - some of it the product of a fertile imagination - for the member's service for the many years and then wrapped it up by making a motion that the resignation be accepted with regret but complete understanding. The motion then was passed by the other members. And before the member knew it he was walking out the door. He was halfway home before he realized he had lost his position. (p.172-3)


Now that is smooth.

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* Both McKinney's and McClung's names appear in a report of a WCTU convention in 1916.

The name "Mrs. Gainer" also appears in a list of delegates at the convention - she is likely wife of Arthur Gainer, son of John Gainer, the founder of the Gainer meatpacking plant that used to be near the Mill Creek at 79th Avenue. The Gainer Block, on Whyte Avenue next to the Princess Theatre once held the business's retail operation. Later it held Hanratty's Tea and Pastry Shop (the family coffeehouse), then Sherlock Holmes, then Funky Buddha. The building is a lasting memorial to the family.

(Red Deer News, Oct. 4, 1916)


McKinney and McClung were also both active in the Alberta Temperance and Moral Reform League at that time. This was when the League helped achieve majority vote in favour of Prohibition in the 1915 referendum (at a time when only men could vote) and then continued to press the government to enforce the law.


Sidenote: As hotel rooms, being upstairs from hotel taverns, were often filled with drunk men, causing discomfort to temperate travellers just wanting a good sleep, the League built up a chain of temperance hotels. One was on the southwest corner of 83rd and 104th Street in old Strathcona. (Edmonton Bulletin, Feb. 16, 1917)


G.H.V. Bulyea, Alberta's first lieutenant-governor, and his wife were teetotallers. No liquor was served at the lieutenant-governor's annual levee at Government House.


Thanks for reading.

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