Canada's Tea Party

She emerged from the Western rural areas a formidable force.  Unknown to the greater portion of the nation, her appearance on the national scene caused something of a sensation.  As an elected politician from her home region, she had crafted a speaking style that elicited the energies of all who listened to her.  “I saw faces brighten, glisten, and felt the atmosphere crackle with a new power,” was her way of describing the effect of her speaking on the larger population.  Her book became a national bestseller, and the enhanced fame prompted her to have a tea party, the result of which was destined to change the course of her nation forever.No, this isn’t Sarah Palin.  It’s Nellie McClung, a Liberal politician from the heart of Alberta, who in the early years of the twentieth century cut her teeth on social activism and determined efforts at political reform.  Like Palin, she saw her country as bitterly divided.  The difference came in how they approached that division.  For Palin, her chosen path was to exacerbate national divisions, sow seeds of discontent, and use that enmity to persuade the religious and political Right to coalesce around her as leader.McClung’s path was the mirror opposite of Palin’s and formed a unique Canadian initiative that was ultimately to prove successful in forming the national character.  She saw the country as divided between men and women.  She had enjoyed many opportunities from living in Western Canada, yet she also faced a significant prejudice: women were not persons.  With very few exceptions, women couldn’t vote or hold office in the 1920s.  Married women held few rights to money or property.  Yet it was the reality that, legally, women couldn’t retain the legal classification of “persons” that compelled her out of her Western confines and onto the national stage.  One of her first acts was to have tea.Along with Albertans Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, and Henrietta Edwards (previously from Saskatchewan), McClung fought battles through the Supreme Court of Canada, right up to the Privy Council in Britain.  Their efforts ultimately prevailed and women were permitted to become members of the Senate.Every day, on my way to the House of Commons, I pass the statues of these “Famous Five,” situated directly beside Centre Block.  One of the figures hoists her cup of tea in the air as all five consider the certification printed on paper before them.  It's even on the back of our $50 bill.  They had a tea party Palin could never replicate because their methods involved inclusion, the right of all Canadians to look to their government for support, clarification, and ultimately for legal status.Palin’s Tea Party south of the border wants to start a revolution, and some Canadians wish to see the likes of it established here in Canada.  But citizens of this country actually want a nation, not a revolution, and they want a country where all are included, hatred and divisions are abated, and where people run for office to expand the opportunities of all Canadians, not just those of one particular persuasion.  Palin’s Tea Party wants to do away with government to the point where her ideology, and that of those like her, prevail over all challengers.  McClung’s tea party wished government to assume its expanded responsibility to provide freedom, justice and prosperity for all, including those of persuasions with which we disagree:  A marvelous concept, and one far and away the superior to the simmering ideology and vehemence inherent in its tea party cousin to the south.Canada doesn’t require a Tea Party because we already have one.   We even founded a statue to it on Parliament Hill.  Five remarkably courageous and visionary women, emanating from Western Canada were the true trailblazers of the tea party movement.  Rather than starting a movement, let’s support the more equitable and far superior one already underway.