Thérèse Casgrain

Who was Thérèse Casgrain?

Thérèse Casgrain, born Marie Thérèse Forget, CC OBE was a feminist, reformer, politician and senator in Quebec, Canada.

Thérèse Casgrain was raised in a wealthy family, the daughter of Lady Blanche MacDonald and Sir Rodolphe Forget. She married Pierre-François Casgrain, a wealthy Liberal politician with whom she raised four children.

Casgrain led the women's suffrage movement in Quebec prior to World War I. She founded the Provincial Franchise Committee in 1921 and campaigned for women's rights and for the right to vote in Quebec elections, a right that was not won until 1940. From 1928 to 1942, she was the leader of the League for Women's Rights. In the 1930s, she hosted a popular radio show Fémina.

In the 1942 federal by-election, she stood as an "Independent Liberal" candidate in the Charlevoix-Saguenay riding, the same seat formerly held both by her father and by her husband.

Following World War II, she left the Liberal Party and joined the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. In 1948, she became one of the federal vice presidents of the CCF. She led the Quebec wing of the party, the Parti social démocratique du Québec, from 1951 to 1957. She was therefore the first female leader of a political party in Canada. She was a CCF candidate in a 1952 federal by-election and in the 1953, 1957 and 1958 federal general elections and a New Democratic Party candidate in the 1962 and 1963 federal general elections. She also used her position as a platform to campaign against the government of Maurice Duplessis.