Brief biography of Margaret Crang

Margaret Crang (1910-January 5, 1992) was a Canadian politician and a candidate for the Alberta Legislature. She served on the Edmonton city council from November 1933 to 1937.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta of Dr. Francis and Margaret Crang, she attained degrees in law and education from the University of alberta. Following in her father's footsteps, (he was a long-serving member of the Edmonton public schoolboard and an advocate of human rights and the rights of labour, the sick, the young and the poor),<ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 24-26</ref>she ran for a seat on the Edmonton city council as a Labour Party candidate. She was elected, becoming only the second woman on the city council, the first Edmonton-born person and the youngest ever in the city's history. <ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 229-31</ref>
She was re-elected at the top of the polls in the 1935 Edmonton municipal election.
In provincial by-elections in 1936 and 1937, Crang ran as a candidate for a seat in the Alberta legislature. She was not elected.
In 1936 she travelled to Spain, at the time engulfed in a civil war, and made a symbolic gesture in support  of the Republican government fighting against right-wing rebels. For this she was criticized by many Canadian newspapers.
She was not re-elected in the 1937 Edmonton municipal election.
She left Edmonton and as a lawyer pursued the rights of Hindu Indian refugees/ immigrants on the Wesst Coast. She later pursued a journalistic career but suffered from ill health. <ref>Monto, Tom. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang). Edmonton: Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, 2012, p. 303-304</ref>

She died of old age in January 1992 in Vancouver.

Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang) is available from Alhambra Books in Edmonton, Alberta and through abebooks.com.

Three of Edmonton's Labour Party Councillors Remembered in New Book

    Best remembered now for having a high school named after him, Harry Ainlay was a political activist of very strong convictions. A new book by local author Tom Monto retells the political life of this man and the times in which he lived.

Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton also chronicles the lives of Ainlay's political colleagues/sometime opponents human rights lawyer Margaret Crang and farmer organizer Rice Sheppard. 

 

The book covers Edmonton politics from the territorial-era 1890s to the Cold War of the late 1940s.

 

During these years, Sheppard helped found the UFA and saw it become the provincial government during the post-WWI labour/farmer turmoil that saw teachers get first formal union recognition, city workers engage in a general strike, and the radical One Big Union strive for legitimacy across Alberta. During this tumultuous period Ainlay helped establish the Alberta Teachers' Association and would go on to serve as ATA president in 1928-1929. At this time, he was teaching at Garneau School, where one of his students was Margaret Crang, a member of a politically-active family in southside Edmonton.

Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang and Rice Sheppard, although generations apart in age, served together on city council during the Great Depression, at a time when Labour controlled city hall. They fought side-by-side to keep streetcar fares low and fought for better treatment of the city's unemployed. But while on city council they drifted apart, Rice Sheppard to the Social Credit movement and Margaret Crang to a United Front coalition with Communists.

Crang played a leading role in the League Against War and Fascism and pursued legal redress for immigrants and political and religious dissidents under wartime “security” prohibitions. Her act of defiance on behalf of the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War caused editorial comment across Canada and contributed to her retirement from elected office at the age of 27.

Ainlay had a second stint on city council in the 1940s, first serving as alderman then mayor. He repeatedly pressed for improved people services, lower user fees and retention of public ownership of the city's utilities. Despite (or because of) his socialist sentiments, he was elected mayor in 1945, a post he served with much acclaim until his voluntary retirement in 1949. By then, in his 60s, he retired to B.C., only occasionally returning to visit the city he had led through the turbulent years of northern Alberta's first oil boom and to visit the high school that was named after him.

Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton, by Tom Monto, Edmonton: Crang Publishing, 450 pages, photos, illustrations, end-notes, appendices, index, soft cover, $25

 

Available at Alhambra Books, 10115 - 81 Avenue and through abebooks.com

Lives of Margaret Crang, Harry Ainlay and Rice Sheppard described in Protest and Progress

Protest and Progress

Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton

by Tom Monto

Best remembered now for having a high school named after him, Harry Ainlay was a political activist of very strong convictions. A teacher at the Garneau and Old Strathcona public schools, he was an active unionist and Labour Party man, serving on Edmonton's city council in the Dirty Thirties.

Rice Sheppard, who farmed the land that is now Avonmore, helped found the United Farmers of Alberta political movement and saw it become government of Alberta in 1921. He served on Edmonton city council as a Labour man and helped found the Co-operative Commonwealth party during the Depression.

Margaret Crang, a newly-trained lawyer, was barely more than a teenager when she was elected to city council to serve alongside Ainlay and Sheppard, when Labour dominated City Hall. They fought hard for proper treatment of the poor, the young and old, the sick and frail. They succeeded in keeping streetcar fares low and fought for better treatment of the unemployed.

But while on city council they drifted apart, Rice Sheppard to the radical reformist Social Credit movement led by William Aberhart, and Margaret Crang to a United Front coalition with Communists. Their political activities continued into the 1940s, but they were overshadowed by the successes of Harry Ainlay who became mayor as Edmonton finally emerged from the dark days of the world war.

Protest and Progress chronicles their lives on the streets of Strathcona, amidst the historic buildings that still stand today.

Protest and Progress (450 pages, photos, illustrations, end-notes, appendices, index) is available for $25 from Alhambra Books, 10115-81 Avenue, or through abebooks.com