Jew but the Traitor could be re-edu- FIRING THE HEATHER: tainment and entertainment was cated, ultimately transformed into THE LIFE AND TIMES home-made, not technologicallypro- something great, a superman, even a vided, she quickly became widely in God, living in a utopian paradise. OF NELLIE MCCLUNG demand h beyond her own district. Inspired by the Fascist aesthetic, Gradually she began to give speeches Laurendcau dreamt of a day when Mary Hallett and Marilyn Davis. on topics that engaged her loyalties, "Doctors, dentists and gymnasts will Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, temperance first and always, with 1993. help build a strong, chaste race of women's suffrageand women's rights handsome young men and beautiful in general a dose second. The time young girls." was right for her: married to Wes Delisle ultimately condudes that McClung, a pharmacist, and living in the writers, intellectuals and nation- No one at all interested in the his- the little town ofManitou, she speed- alists associated with Lionel Grouh, tory of women's rights in ily became known as a riotously suc- Le Devoir, l'Action nahnahandjnrne could fail to know the name of Nellie cessful speaker throughout Manitoba, Cad,all expressed "the same wish, McClung, but few of us have an then across Canada and finally, from at heart: via dictatorship, by the re- appreciation of the range and im- the mid-teen war years on, when the education of the Traitor and the cx- portance of her manifold activities. suffrage movement was at its hottest, pulsion of the Jew, the chaos and We have heard a good deal about in the States and Europe. decay which surround us will end." her, but in sporadic bits and pieces; In these same years she had five If Tbe Traitor and theJew remains this book is the first gathering to- children, wrote and sold innumer- an important contribution to Cana- gether and presentation of the whole able short stories, and in 1908 be- dian intellectual history it is also a complicated and colourful tapestry came a continental bestseller with the timely investigation into white he- of Nellie's "life and times." There is novel, Sewing See& in Danny. Wes gemony. In her introduction Delisle something today in the very sound McClung gave up a prosperous phar- discuses the notion of government- of "Nellie," a name that has gone macy business because of a serious defined cultural communities, that completely out of fashion, that has and lengthy bout of ill health the is, government efforts "to assimilate too often encouraged a hint of nature ofwhich remains mysterious; new immigrants into the fmcophone amused and condescending over-fa- and in 191 1 they moved to Winni- majority without destroying their miliarity in her treatment, perhaps peg where he became an insurance presence as defined minorities whose because one of her most engaging salesman, then after some years to very existence testifies to and con- qualities was a readiness to laugh at Edmonton, where Nellie became firms the presence of the majority." herself. This book should go a long deeply engaged in politics, a Delisle is led to ask, "But when does way toward persuading readers of member for the Liberals from 1922 one cease to belong to to a 'cultural her paramount importance in Cana- to 1926. At the same time, along with community' and actually become da's feminist history. Emily Murphy, her friend and equal 'Quibkcois? Just how many genera- For many years many of us have in energy, zest, humour and activism, tions have to be counted, and what been devoted readers and teachers of and Irene Parlby, Louise McKinley characteristics must be acquired, be- Ckaring in the West and The Stream and Henrietta Muir Edwards, the fore the club takes in some new mem- Runs Fast, the two volumes of other three of the "Famous Five," she bers?" McClung's autobiography; for us it was relentlesslypushing along a move- English Canada would do very well is particularly interesting to have this ment that would climax in the 1929 to ask itself the same question. fleshed-out account of the develop- decision of the Judicial Committee ment of McClung, the passionately- of the Privy Court in , Eng- 1For a good overview ofl'affaire Delisk engaged activist, from the eager, land that women were indeed per- see Charles Foran, "That Book of clever, energetic and often frustrated sons under the B. N. A. Act and could Esther's," Saturday Night, 108, 8 child ofIrish-Scottish Manitoba emi- therefore be appointed to the Senate. (October 1993). grants from Ontario. First, as soon as Just as relentless was her campaign she had achieved independence as a for the ordination of women in the teacher, she jumped the hurdle ofher United Church and her continuing mother's disapproval of a show-off battles for legislation against alcohol. daughter to begin giving readings "Relentless" and "ruthlessn were al- and poetry recitations at all kinds of ways theoperative words when Nellie neighbourhood social events. Shewas McClung and her army ofsupporters a natural mimic, a "stand-up comic" were on the move, and by the mid- of her day (always ladylike, mind twenties, women had been embold- you) and at a time when publicspeak- ened by the franchise and in most, if ing was an intensely popular enter- not all oftheir causes, had been joined

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESlLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME by men of good will and liberal con- markets -and in her day there were TELL THE DRIVER: A victions. a plethora of outlets for didactic, ro- BIOGRAPHY OF ELINOR McClung was obviously one of mantic, sentimental stories consid- F. E. BLACK. M. D. those fortunate individualswho thrive ered suitable for a very large and on a schedule that would swiftly kill mostly feminine reading public. Julie Vandervoort. Winnipeg: Uni- most individuals. She loved the plat- Though Hallett and Davis spend versity of Manitoba Press, 1992. form and there her forte was a com- some forty pages arguing for bination of creative thinking, hu- McClung's fiction as "anti-roman- mour and a wicked and ready tongue tic, " they are not completely suc- THE STRUGGLE FOR for the satirizing ofher opponents. If cessful: in writing as well as in speak- SOCIAL JUSTICE IN it were not for much contrary evi- ing, McClung's greatest asset was her : dence, it would be all too easy to see combination of humour and closely HELENA GUTTERIDGE, her as a Canadian Boadicea, dragging observed detail, but her matching THE UNKNOWN weakness, and one that her times FIRING and the context of her life did noth- REFORMER LHL ing to eradicate, was her combina- tion of blatant didacticism and easy Irene Howard, : Univer- sentimentality. Even Painted Fires, sity of British Columbia. 1992. here given particularly detailed treat- ment as her best novel, is badly scarred by a ridiculously sentimental romantic ending and by McClung's Almost ten years ago Susan Mann weakness for bluntly caricaturing Trofimenkoff wrote an article in both heroes and villains, but espe- Atlantis outlining the complexities of cially villains. writing feminist biography. One of At many points Firing the Heather the potential difficulties with biogra- invites argument. It is only fair to phy for feminist historians, argued The hTimes of remember that the book was written Trofimenkoff, was that they ran the Nellie McClung and finally finished in the face of risk of enshrining "Great Women" terrible difficulties. Mary Hallett, the just as male historians had for decades MARY HALLETT & MARlLYK DAVlS historian of the Hallett and Davis glorified the "Great Men" of history. her family as well as her opposition partnership, became terminally ill of Trofimenkoff suggested some meth- along at her chariot wheels. She and cancer and died in 1986, when work ods to avoid this pitfall. She observed Wes certainly had their family prob- on the book had already been in that "AGreat Man doing Great Deeds lems as every family does: some of progress for about ten years, and when may merit a story but rarely does he them had to do with the drink that the manuscript had already reached require an explanation. A woman in she so abhorred and in fact were first-draft stage. Since then Marilyn the same position immediately raises probably exacerbated by her obses- Davis, a literary scholar, has doggedly the question "How come?" In an- sion against alcohol. In private as carried the work along, both a labour swering this question the focus shifts well as public life, however, the sav- oflove in itselfand a memorial for her away from the accomplishments of ing combination ofdeep and respon- friend. But she has been over-eager to the individual to an explanation of sible love for her dear ones and readi- satisfy the criticisms and suggestions not only the individual's changing ness to laugh at her own excesses was of the various people she has con- circumstances and struggles but also a remarkably successful balance to sulted, with the result that she has the cultural and economic constraints her hectically busy program. By all found it impossible to develop com- imposed on all women of her genera- accounts from family, friends and pletely a satisfying, overriding vision tion. former servants, the McClung home ofNellie McClung. There is too much Barriers to both social justice and was a notably calm and congenial eye "Saint Nellie" here, too much anxiety mobility within professions are ob- of the whirlwind. to anticipate and refute criticism and stacles which Canadian women have Like L. M. Montgomery, her con- not enough, not nearly enough, of faced throughout the twentieth cen- temporary in writing, McClung had the biographer's own necessary con- tury. Irene Howard and Julie doggedly become a truly professional viction, deep and stubborn to the Vandervoort both admirably ap- writer as a young woman, enduring point of ruthlessness as stubborn as proach their subjects within this con- the inevitable drudgery of copying Nellie's own. text. While protagonists Elinor F. E. manuscripts, rising above rejections Quibbles aside, do take this book Black and Helena Gutteridge had to submit and re-submit her work seriously. We haven't yet even begun very little in common, they were both and writing for any and all available to give Nellie McClung her due! adventuresome women who were, as

VOLUME 14, NUMBER 4