Madeleine Parent

Quebec Dept: She could remind us that in her lifetime, children of 10 worked 12-hour night shifts in Montreal's factories and that women were paid a small fraction of what men earned for doing the same job, according to Montreal Gazette. I spent a wonderful afternoon interviewing Parent 15 years ago. She was a small, delicate-looking woman, in the same elegant mould as the Quebec suffragette leader and politician Th r se Casgrain. They were both tough as nails in their determination to improve the legal and social rights of ordinary people in Quebec, particularly for women who for many years struggled under the yoke of the state, the church and the patriarchy and with the death Sunday of Madeleine Parent at age 93, one of the most important threads that connect Quebecers to their history was cut. As long as she was alive, there was a voice of conscience who could talk about what it felt like to be a child of privilege waited on by girls her own age, girls from poor farm families forced into service to survive. She had stories to tell about standing up to Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis and his private goon squad, the S ret du Qu bec, on behalf of the ordinary working men and women of the province. She led one of the province's most bitter strikes, against Dominion Textile in Valleyfield, earning the undying enmity of Duplessis. It was a strike that lasted for 100 days, but ended in victory for the 6,000 workers with a first collective agreement. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.