CABINET MINISTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

CABINET MINISTER.

CANADIAN WOMEN IN POLITICS. The Hon. Irene Parlby, who has for the past seven years been a member of the Alberta Government, is the first and only lady Cabinet Minister in the British > Empire. Mrs. Parlby has been closely associated with the development of the Prairie since she arrived there 32 years ago. Daughter of .Colonel Marriott, R.E., of the Indian Army, she was born in Lon- . don 50 years ago, during a holiday her parents were spending in England. As an infant she went to India, and from early childhood was educated in England and on the Continent. When her father retired from the Army she studied music and painting abroad. An invitation to stay with friends who were ranching in Alberta brought her to Canada in 1896, There she met and married Mr. Walter Parlby, a young Cambridge graduate who had taken up a homestead on the Prairie. Fifty miles from the railway, surrounded by foreigners, Mrs. Parlby shared qll the early trials of the farmer's wife before the coming of the railroad. When the wheatgrowers began to see the advantages of co-operation, and the United Farmers of Alberta was fromed, it fell to Mrs. Parlby to organise the women's auxiliary of that movement. When the first women's club was formed she wrote a letter to the London "Spectator" asking for gifts of reading matter. Supplies of literature came from SQuth America, South Africa, and from all parts of the Empire—enough to furnish libraries for a score of clubs. Called to the House. Mrs. Parlby was first president of the United Farjn Women of Alberta. After four years' hard work she set the organisation on its feet, and retired to the comfort of her music and books and flowers. Her respite was 6hort-lived, however, for a request came for Mrs. Parlby to accept the U.F.A. nomination. She accepted, and was elected to Parliament with a big majority, which was greatly increased at the next election, four years later. She was taken into the Government at her first election in 1922, and her administration has given widespread satisfaction. Mr. Henry Wise Wood, president of the Alberta Wheat Pool, who is known as the "uncrowned king of Alberta," pays a high tribute to Mrs. Parlby. "She has been true," he says, "to all the highest ideals of the farmers' movement. I think her understanding of these ideals has been and is perfect." The Premier and members of the Legislature think she has been a constructive power for good in the Government of Alberta. She does not let her emotions run away with her. She has an uncompromising sense of justice, and has the quality of recognising potential attributes in others. .' %

It was Mrs. Parlby who nominated Mrs. Margaret -Dunn ( as; her succcessor In leading the farm women of Alberta. "She is an inspiration to the women of ithe Prairie," said tha^lad^! 1

"Just as the women, never , hesitated to follow their husband* into the wilderness," said Mrs Parlby recently, "so they have borne their part in the newi organisation for their mutual benefit."

Speaking of her beloved garden, she said: "Thrones might totter in Europe, gigantic upheavals, physical and human, might take place, but I was much more interested in bringing safely through the winter some perennial sent from Home, to make a corner of my garden forever England.'"