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Thérèse Casgrain

The name Thérèse Casgrain is synonymous with the suffrage fight in Canada, especially in her home province of Quebec. What is less well-known was that after Quebec women finally won the right to vote in provincial elections in 1940, Mme. Casgrain turned her attention to the political arena.


In politics, Casgrain was a “first” for women in many categories. She was the first vice-president of a federal political party (the CCF in 1948), the first leader of a provincial political party (the Quebec CCF in 1951), and the first president of the Quebec section of a party (the NDP in the 1960s). While all these indicate that Casgrain was a leftist, the reality is that she was first a member of the Liberal Party. Mme. Casgrain had long envisioned herself as becoming the first female Member of Parliament from Quebec. As such, she sought the Liberal nomination in her husband’s Charlevoix-Saguenay riding. However, the Liberal Party rebuked her offer, and Casgrain (running as ‘Independent Liberal’) finished a solid second with almost 35% of the vote. This was the proverbial straw that broke her ties to the Liberal Party. Prior to the election, she had started to grow wary of the Liberal Party and its half-hearted willingness to truly champion issues that she cared about.


Another important facet to Mme. Casgrain was that she was a pan-Canadian nationalist. Thus, she made the decision was made to join the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. The CCF matched her feminist social concerns and offered a program that spoke the same message to all Canadians. She signed on to the party in 1946.


In landing Casgrain, the CCF automatically elevated its profile and she provided an energy for a party desperately in need of a boost in Quebec. There were only 100 French-Canadian members of the Quebec CCF at the time she became leader in 1951. In addition to being a person of great renown in the province, Casgrain possessed strong organizational skills from her days as a women’s suffrage advocate and leader. Possessing these leadership and organizational levels, the marriage between Casgrain and the Quebec CCF seemed a good fit.


As far as the organizing that the national CCF office was looking for: in locating candidates and funding for the party in Quebec, Casgrain was unsuccessful. In terms of fund-raising, Casgrain continually expressed to the National Office that her many socially prominent friends would come through with the money. Few did. Indeed, for the 1952 provincial election, Casgrain paid the deposits for nearly all of the 25 candidates the party ran. According to historian Susan Mann Trofimenkoff, the reality was that Casgrain did not like asking her friends for donations and found the entire fund-raising bit ‘tiresome.” By the time her leadership came to an end in 1957, the Quebec CCF’s finances had not significantly improved during Casgrain’s leadership.


While the party had expected Casgrain to boost their visibility in the province, the harsh reality was that, in many instances, the press had turned on her. While even the Catholic Church had lifted its embargo against Catholics voting for the CCF brand of socialism, many journalists were fearful of providing the party with much in the way of column inches. Journalists were often seen as ‘quasi-bolsheviks’ by the Quebec premier, so, many viewed it wise to ignore the CCF – even with Thérèse Casgrain at the helm of the party. At various times during her leadership, Casgrain was labeled a ‘white pearl socialist’ by the press for her penchant of speaking with working-class groups wearing the latest Paris fashions.

The results for the party reflected the continued lack of organization for the Quebec CCF. In the 1952 campaign, the CCF claimed one percent of the vote – and no seats in the legislative assembly. It was the era of the ‘Grande Noirceur,’ – which was difficult for a party of the political Left. To shake things up, Casgrain pushed through a name-change for the party. The new name, the Parti social democratique (PSD), was announced at the Quebec party’s convention in late 1955. As it turned out, the name change did not aide the Quebec branch. In the 1956 election, the PSD garnered a little over 11,000 votes and a mere 0.6% of the tally. When asked to explain the party’s poor electoral showings, Casgrain remarked that, “As a woman, and the leader of a party of the left to boot, I had no chance of success. However, I attained my goal, which was, above all, to make the CCF philosophy more widely known and to obtain publicity for the party."


The following year, Casgrain gave way to labour firebrand Michel Chartrand as leader of the Quebec PSD. The party did not contest another provincial election until 1970. Casgrain remained with the federal party as its vice-president while it transitioned to the New Democratic Party in 1961. According to M. J. Coldwell, Casgrain convinced the NDP’s founding convention of the policy plank of Canada as ‘two nations.’ She remained the NDP’s vice president until 1963 when she resigned to campaign against nuclear weapons. In 1970, Casgrain moved to the Liberal Party camp by accepting a seat in the Canadian Senate from Pierre Trudeau and she supported the government’s ‘War Measures Act’ later that year. Thérèse Casgrain passed away in Montreal in 1981. She was 85 years of age.


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