On October 11, 2023, Mount Saint Vincent University will welcome to campus the Famous 5 Maquette National Leadership Tour.
MSVU is the only Nova Scotia stop on the tour – in other words, the university will be the only location in Nova Scotia at which members of the public can view the Famous 5 Maquette.
MSVU is a fitting host for the maquette as the region’s leading university for the advancement of women, celebrating 150 years of challenging the status in 2023. In fact, MSVU was founded to create opportunities for education for women at a time when they didn’t yet have the right to vote.
About the Famous 5 Maquette
The F5 Maquette is a miniature of the Famous 5 Foundation’s Women are Persons! Monuments in Olympic Plaza in Calgary and in front of the Senate of Canada in Ottawa which were designed by Barbara Paterson and created by Bronzart Foundry.
These monuments were created as a tribute the Famous Five: Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy and Henrietta Muir Edwards, all from Alberta.
The Famous Five brought a case before the highest court in the British Empire to appeal a 1928 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. That court had ruled that women could not be appointed to the Senate, because they were not “qualified persons.” On October 18, 1929, the Privy Council reversed this decision. This sculpture was also featured on the back of the $50 bill.
Maquette arrival on October 11
Members of the media are invited to attend an event to welcome the maquette to MSVU:
– When: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 11 a.m.
– Where: MacDonald Room within the Library in the E. Margaret Fulton Communications Centre at Mount Saint Vincent University [campus map]
– Who: Frances Wright, CEO and Co-Founder of the Famous 5 Foundation, will be available to speak to media.
Attendees will celebrate the arrival of the maquette on the MSVU campus with a pink tea. Why a pink tea? When the Famous 5 were campaigning for women to have the right to vote and run for elected office, their suffrage meetings were disrupted by their opponents. Women traditionally held teas for the birth of children, when someone left the community or other reasons. Men didn’t attend these teas so suffragists started calling their political meetings Pink Teas and very few opponents attended.
