A Liberal-Labour Lady restores British Columbia's first female MLA and the British Empire's first female cabinet minister to history. An imperial settler, liberal-labour activist, and mainstream suffragist, Mary Ellen Smith (1863-1933) demanded a fair deal for "deserving" British women and men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She strove to shift Liberal parties leftward to benefit women and workers, while still embracing global assumptions of British racial superiority and bourgeois feminism's privileging of white women. In the BC legislature until 1928, Smith campaigned for better wages, pensions, and greater justice, even as she endorsed anti-Asian, settler, and pro-eugenic policies. Simultaneously intrepid and flawed, Smith is revealed to be a key figure in early Canada's compromised struggle for greater justice.
- ISBN10 0774867248
- ISBN13 9780774867245
- Publish Date 20 December 2021 (first published 15 November 2021)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint University of British Columbia Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English