Grace: The Life of Grace MacInnis

David A. Lenarcic teaches history at Wilfrid Laurier University in
Waterloo.

This is the inspirational story of an exceptional person. One of the
most influential women in Canadian public affairs, the achievements of
Grace MacInnis’s career form an impressive record: a key member of the
CCF/NDP leadership who helped build the party and define its ideology;
the first woman elected to the House of Commons from British Columbia;
and a tireless advocate of consumer and women’s rights who championed
reform of birth control and abortion laws. She was, the author tells us,
“a socialist and a humanist.”

All of this makes for fascinating reading, and Lewis’s well-written
and often gripping account does well in combining primary research with
interviews to paint a vivid portrait of MacInnis’s private and public
lives. Along the way, one also learns much about the birth and growth of
Canada’s social democratic party; the roles played by its central
figures, like Grace’s father, J.S. Woodsworth, and her husband, Angus
MacInnis; women’s up-hill fight for equality; and significant
developments in 20th-century Canadian social and political history
generally.

The book’s central shortcoming is its overreliance on the
recollections and impressions of contemporaries to provide a balanced
interpretation of MacInnis, about which Lewis only occasionally ventures
her own opinion. Indeed, Grace’s comments about herself are often more
critical than the author’s. The result is that the overall tone of the
biography is somewhat hagiographic, its main thrust narrative rather
than analytical. The absence of any summation of the career and
personality of MacInnis in the form of a concluding chapter makes it
difficult to square descriptions of her as both pragmatist and
principled, as a path-breaker on social issues as well as a conservative
on party matters. One gets the feeling that Grace was a much more
complex individual that Lewis lets on.

Nevertheless, this book deserves to be read for its appreciation of a
dedicated woman’s important contributions to making Canada a more
compassionate place in which to live. On this score, the author performs
a valuable service.