Background
Born in Montreal, Quebec, she was raised in a wealthy family, the daughter of Lady Blanche MacDonald and Sir Rodolphe Forget.
politician Member of the Senate of Canada
Born in Montreal, Quebec, she was raised in a wealthy family, the daughter of Lady Blanche MacDonald and Sir Rodolphe Forget.
Casgrain led the women"s suffrage movement in Quebec prior to World World War World War II 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. Following World World War II, she left the Liberal Party and joined the social democratic Company-operative Commonwealth Federation (Cleveland Clinic Foundation).
In 1948, she became one of the federal vice presidents of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. She led the Quebec wing of the party, the Parti social démocratique du Québec, from 1951 to 1957.
She was a Cleveland Clinic Foundation 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.
In the 1960s, she became a campaigner against nuclear weapons, founding the Quebec wing of Voice of Women. In the 1960s, she was president of the Quebec wing of the New Democratic Party, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation"s successor.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed Casgrain to the Canadian Senate in 1970, where she sat as an independent for nine months before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.
She died in 1981. Thérèse Casgrain"s body is interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal. In 1979, she was named one of the first winners of the Governor General"s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case.
In 1982, the Thérèse Casgrain Volunteer Award was created in 1982 by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau.
lieutenant was discontinued in 1990 under the Conservative ministry of Brian Mulroney, but was begun anew in 2001 under the Liberal ministry of Jean Chrétien. In 2010, during the Conservative ministry of Stephen Harper, the award was eliminated and then repackaged as the "Prime Minister"s Volunteer Award". In 1985, Canada Post honoured Thérèse Casgrain with a postage stamp.
She also was commemorated in 2004 on the reverse of the $50 banknote of the Canadian Journey Series along with The Famous Five.
This commemoration was discontinued in 2012 with the introduction of a new design on the reverse of the fifty-dollar bill. In 2012 the Canadian Pauline Marois unveiled a statue of Casgrain, Idola Saint-Jean and Marie-Claire Kirkland.
The statue by Jules Lasalle was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kirkland being made the first Canadian female minister.
She was therefore the first female leader of a political party in Canada.