Marie Thérèse Casgrain (; 10 July 1896 – 3 November 1981) was a Canadian feminist, reformer, politician and senator. She was a leader in the fight for women's right to vote in the province of Quebec, as well as the first woman to lead a political party in Canada. In her later life she opposed nuclear weapons and was a consumer activist. A strong federalist, one of her last political actions, at age 83, was to intervene on the "No" side in the 1980 Quebec sovereignty referendum.
Family and early life
thumb|left|Thérèse Forget, 1914
Born in Saint-Irénée-les-Bains, near Quebec City, Thérèse was raised in a wealthy family, the daughter of Blanche, Lady Forget (née MacDonald), and Sir Rodolphe Forget, a wealthy entrepreneur and Conservative Member of Parliament.
In 1905, at eight years old, she became a boarder at the Dames du Sacré-Coeur, at Sault-au-Récollet, near Montreal. Upon graduation, she hoped to further her studies at university, but her father opposed the idea, not seeing any utility in further education for women. In his view, Thérèse should instead learn how to manage a household, a skill that would befit a future wife of her stature. In 1916, aged twenty, she married Pierre-François Casgrain, a wealthy Liberal politician with whom she raised four children.
Thérèse's father, Sir Rodolphe, had represented the Charlevoix riding since the general election of 1904, holding it as a Conservative. Her husband, Pierre Casgrain, sought the nomination in the new Charlevoix—Montmorency riding for the Liberal Party as a Laurier Liberal, opposed to conscription. He was elected in the general election.
Women's right to vote
Thérèse Casgrain accompanied her husband to Ottawa, the national capital, for the opening of the parliamentary session in the spring of 1918. It was during her time in Ottawa that she became aware of the importance of the right to vote for women. Prior to the 1917 Canadian federal election, women did not have the right to vote in federal elections. In the lead-up to the election, the government of Prime Minister Borden had enacted the Wartime Elections Act, which gave the right to vote to wives, widows, mothers, and sisters of soldiers serving overseas. Although this was a clear attempt to gain votes in favour of the war effort, it was a significant milestone for women's suffrage in Canada. The Borden government would later adopt the Women's Suffrage Act, which gave the right to vote at federal elections to all Canadian women aged twenty-one years or older, from 1919 onwards.
thumb|Political cartoon commenting on denial of vote to Quebec women, 1930
In spite of these changes at the federal level, and the expansion of women's suffrage in most other provinces, women in Quebec still could not vote during provincial elections. The opposition for such an extension of the law was strong, notably from the clergy and the conservative elite.
Casgrain led the women's suffrage movement in Quebec for twenty years. Her tenacity, her political contacts through her husband (who eventually became Speaker of the House of Commons), her leadership and her ability to inspire, all helped her to achieve her goal of women's right to vote in Quebec. She founded the Provincial Franchise Committee in 1921 and campaigned for women's rights, writing innumerable letters to influential people, making annual trips to the provincial capital at Quebec City, and broadcasts on radio, speaking for women's rights.
Electoral politics
thumb|Thérèse Casgrain lectures at the Family Consumer Cooperative Saint-Hubert Street in Montreal. January 14, 1945
In late 1941, Casgrain's husband was appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec. She sought the nomination of the Liberal Party to stand for election in the vacant riding of Charlevoix—Saguenay, the same riding which had been held by her father and then her husband, but the party turned her down.
Senator and later life
thumb|left|Casgrain in 1980
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed Casgrain to the Senate of Canada in 1970, where she sat as an independent for nine months before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75. As senator she questioned the prime minister's policy on the use of Canadian-made napalm and defoliants in Vietnam.
Death
Thérèse Casgrain died in 1981, living with one of her daughters in Montreal. She is interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal.
Assessment
It was during her period as a candidate with the CCF and the Parti social démocratique du Québec, that Casgrain acquired the reputation of a "pearl-necklace leftist." Always impeccably dressed and coiffed, with elegant hats, she would make speeches to workers, encouraging them to make their demands known to their employers in companies and mines - companies of which she was often a share-holder, with shares inherited from her businessman father.
- 1979: one of the first recipients of the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case.
- 1980: awarded the title of "Grand Montrealer" from the city of Montreal, in the social category
- 1980: received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University
- 1981: received an honorary PhD from the University of Windsor
- 1982: the federal government created the Thérèse Casgrain Volunteer Award
- 1985: Canada Post honoured Thérèse Casgrain with a postage stamp
- 1991-1992: received the medal of the Bar of Montreal (a posthumous title).
- 2004: commemorated on the $50 banknote of the Canadian Journey Series, along with The Famous Five.<!-- page 110 --> This commemoration was discontinued in 2012 with the introduction of a new design on the reverse of the fifty-dollar bill.
- 2016: appointed commander of the Order of Montreal (a posthumous title) The archival reference number is R7906, former archival reference number MG32-C25. The fonds covers the date range 1818 to 1981. It consists of 2.05 metres of textual records and 534 photographs.
The Thérèse F.-Casgrain Foundation fonds is conserved at the Montreal archives centre of the National Library and Archives of Quebec.
Publications
Thérèse F. Casgrain, Une femme chez les hommes (Montréal: Éditions du Jour, 1971)
Thérèse F. Casgrain, A Woman in a Man's World (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972)