Firing The Heather. The Life And Times Of Nellie McClung

Firing the Heather: The Life and Times of Nellie McClung Mary Hallett and Marilyn Davis Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1993; 368 pp.Reviewed by Shelley Bosetti - Piche White Rock, British ColumbiaWe are accustomed to thinking of Nellie McClung in terms of her prominent role in the cause of women's suffrage. Popular scholarship tracing the course of women's rights in Canada is responsible for this perception and, while it is wholly accurate, there were numerous other facets of Nellie McClung's life that are worthy of attention. She was a successful writer in her day, a leading activist in politics and human rights, and a fervent social reformer. All of this is brought to light in Firing the Heather. Co - authors Hallett and Davis have combined their separate passions, English and History, to produce a biography that is thoroughly engaging. Based upon a "life and times" format, it nicely meets the authors' stated objective of integrating McClung's character with the social context of early twentieth - century Canada. It has been over 15 years since Candace Savage wrote the first full - scale study of McClung in Our Nell: A Scrapbook Biography of Nellie L. McClung. This original work was comprised of excerpts from McClung's own writings with Savage's explanatory and transitional passages.Hallett and Davis portray Nellie McClung, especially in her early years, as being shaped by outside influences more so than by personal conviction. She was won over to the cause of female suffrage, for example, simply because she admired the woman who was circulating a suffrage petition -- a minister's wife, and her future mother - in - law. As McClung matured she acquired more rational reasons for supporting the women's suffrage movement. Hallett and Davis uncover similar findings over the issue of prohibition. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the organization most active in the prohibition fight, but the authors suggest that McClung would have joined that club even if she had no strong convictions about prohibition because the WCTU was the social and cultural centre of small - town Canada. McClung did develop convictions about prohibition, however, and these remained with her throughout her life. McClung saw alcohol abuse as the curse of all society and not just confined to the immigrant poor. She had first hand knowledge, in citizens of her own town of Manitou -- a farmer, a physician, and a high school principal, each of whom had allowed alcohol to ruin his life. It was the wives and children of alcoholics, however, who were the truest victims and who garnered McClung's greatest sympathy. She blamed the liquor interests for the suffering since it was this trade that profited at the expense of innocent individuals. McClung's biographers suggest that she "lost her sense of humour when it came to the liquor question," and so it would seem (p. 177). Over the years she spoke about it, wrote about it, even railed about it in the Alberta Legislature. In fact, McClung remained unshakeable in her conviction that alcohol was a source of evil even after the rest of the world had moved on in its thinking.McClung contributed significantly to the female suffrage movement in Canada. She lobbied governments both provincially and federally, she addressed the topic in written works, such as her 1915 collection In Times Like These, she made countless suffrage speeches, and she belonged to suffrage organizations including the Political Equality League in Winnipeg and the Equal Franchise League in Edmonton. Sir Rodmond Roblin, Manitoba's Conservative premier, was perhaps McClung's most delightful opponent in the suffrage debate. His eloquent yet unbearably patronizing speech against female suffrage in the Manitoba Legislature was admirably spoofed by McClung in a "mock parliament." Playing the role of Roblin, McClung and her sister suffragists conducted a women's parliament which listened to a request for suffrage from a delegation of men. …