21 Facts About Rae Luckock

Rae Luckock was a feminist, social justice activist, peace activist and, with Agnes Macphail, one of the first two women elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, in 1943.

Rae Luckock served as a Member of Provincial Parliament until she was defeated in the 1945 Ontario general election.

Rae Luckock became the Congress of Canadian Women's founding president in 1950 and became a victim of the Cold War's anti-communist hysteria when she was denied entry into the United States, because she travelled to "Red" China and invited Soviet women to visit Canada.

Rae Luckock contracted Parkinson's disease in the mid-1950s and mostly was bedridden until her death in 1972.

Rae Luckock was raised on a family farm in Arthur, Ontario.

Rae Luckock's father, James J Morrison, was a founder of the United Farmers of Ontario and served as the party's general secretary during the UFO's years in power and was leader of the party that won the 1919 Ontario election.

Rae Luckock worked as a seamstress during the Great Depression but had to go on social relief when she became unemployed.

Rae Luckock joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation at its inception in 1932 and served as a local party activist.

Rae Luckock ran for the Toronto school board five times before winning election as a trustee on her sixth try in January 1943.

Rae Luckock was thus the second woman to take the MPP's oath.

Rae Luckock opposed Premier Drew's education curriculum change that introduced a religious education course that could promote antisemitism.

Rae Luckock championed the equality of women by advocating equal pay for equal work and pay for homemakers.

On 4 June 1945, Rae Luckock lost her re-election attempt in the Bracondale constituency to Royal Canadian Navy Lieutenant, Harry Hyland Hyndman of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Rae Luckock served as president of the Housewives and Consumers Association from 1943 to 1944, and organized its 1948 "March of a Million Names" campaign that petitioned the federal government to lower the price of consumer goods.

Rae Luckock lost the Ontario CCF's Bracondale nomination on 29 April 1948 at what she called an illegal meeting that didn't have quorum nor sufficient notice.

Rae Luckock chose the HCA and was expelled from the CCF in 1948.

The HCA joined with other women's groups to form the Congress of Canadian Women in 1950, and Rae Luckock was elected its first president.

Rae Luckock attended conferences of the, including one in the People's Republic of China in 1956 as well as Copenhagen, and Warsaw, Poland.

Rae Luckock successfully argued that she should be allowed in.

Rae Luckock was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease shortly after her trip to China and spent the last years of her life in hospital.

Rae Luckock died in Toronto on 24 January 1972, at the chronic care Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Parkdale, and was laid to rest in her hometown of Arthur, Ontario.