Nellie McClung, Canadian politician and activist (d. 1951)
Nellie Letitia McClung (born Letitia Ellen Mooney; 20 October 1873 – 1 September 1951) was a Canadian author, social activist, suffragette, politician, and maternal feminist. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s. Her great causes were women's suffrage and temperance. It was because of her hard work and advocacy, along with others involved in the Political Equality League of Manitoba (which included men), that in 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the right to vote and to run for public office. Nellie McClung was at the forefront of the Suffragist movement in Canada. Through her social justice activism, the issues of temperance, anti-war (enfranchisement of Japanese Canadians and opening the Canadian Border to Jewish Refugees), Labor and Dower rights were among her most important contributions.
In 1927, McClung and four other women: Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby who together came to be known as The Famous Five (also called "The Valiant Five") launched "the Persons Case," contending that women could be "qualified persons," therefore eligible to sit in the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the current law did not recognize women as such. However, the case was won upon appeal to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council—the court of last resort for Canada at that time.