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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63098 Medium Nellie McClung: the mock parliament and after

Read the following passage.

A. On 27 January 1914, Nellie McClung sat in the Manitoba legislature and listened closely to Premier Rodmond Roblin. Her suffrage group, the Political Equality League, had just failed to get the assembly to act on a large petition for women's right to vote. The next evening, at Winnipeg's Walker Theatre, she played the premier in The Women's Parliament, a satire put on by the league. It was set in an imagined province where only women could vote, and she copied Roblin's arguments as she turned away a delegation of men. Newspapers reported laughter and applause. In 1916, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to give women the vote.

B. By then McClung was already a popular author. Her first novel, Sowing Seeds in Danny, appeared in 1908 and became a best-seller. It grew out of a short story she had entered in a magazine contest in 1902, which she did not win. At a temperance convention in Manitou in 1907, she discovered that she had the power to move a crowd, and she was soon in demand as a speaker across the province. In 1915 she collected her speeches for suffrage and temperance in a book, In Times Like These. She wrote 17 books in all, and they were popular in her lifetime, but critics also called them didactic, or too keen to teach lessons.

C. In December 1914 the McClungs moved to Edmonton because of her husband Wesley's work. Alberta gave women the vote in 1916, and in 1921 McClung won one of Edmonton's seats in the provincial legislature as a Liberal. The United Farmers of Alberta formed the government, so her party sat in opposition. She often acted independently of her party. She supported public-health nurses, medical clinics and birth control, and also laws to limit the fertility of people judged mentally unfit. After moving to Calgary, she ran again in 1926 and lost, apparently because of her support for Prohibition.

D. In 1927 McClung joined Emily Murphy and three other women in asking whether women were 'persons' who could be appointed to the Senate. The Supreme Court of Canada said they were not, but in October 1929 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled in their favour. The five became known as the Famous Five. Her place in history is now argued over. Many scholars find her ideas too narrow, pointing to her assumption that Anglo-Celtic, middle-class people should lead and to her sympathy for eugenics, yet she is still the best-known figure of Canada's suffrage generation.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
Although she won a seat in a provincial legislature, her party was not in power.

- 2.
She pushed for family planning because she had seen poor mothers struggling with many children.

- 3.
Her first novel developed from a piece of writing that had failed to win a prize.

- 4.
The day before her stage performance, she had watched the politician she later imitated.

- 5.
Some reviewers felt her books tried too hard to instruct their readers.

- 6.
Manitoba granted women voting rights earlier than any other Canadian province.

- 7.
The Supreme Court turned the women down, but a separate body later sided with them.

- 8.
Her first novel sold more copies than any of the books she wrote later.

- 9.
McClung herself wrote the script of the play in which she acted the premier.

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