The Fighting Days: A Play

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright and librettist and author of the
children’s books Magic and What’s in a Name?

This is a play about Francis Beynon, a Manitoba journalist who was part of the women’s suffrage movement. The four characters in the play are Francis, her sister Lily, her editor George McNair, and Nellie McClung. The place: Winnipeg. The time: before and during World War I.

On stage the battle is one of ideas. The first act quietly depicts a young woman starting her writing career. The second act is more dramatic, as the characters disagree on how women should use their newly won vote. Should foreign women be given the federal vote, when it is Canadian and British men who are fighting the war in Europe? Should women vote for conscription and therefore tacit acceptance of war? Nellie has a son in Europe who begs for help in fighting for freedom. Francis, with the uncomplicated vision of the young, sees only that women should use their vote to protest against killing. The older woman sees the value of compromise, the younger one risks and loses all in her determination to stand by her ideals.

This play was first performed in Winnipeg in 1983. The script illuminates a time in our history that is long gone. The moral issues it raises are still with us and Francis’s personal dilemma — work or marriage? — is still, 70 years later, a troubling question.