Dynamite Dinah

Grace MacInnis - daughter of J.S. Woodsworth, founding mother of the New Democratic Party, BC's first woman Member of Parliament, universally respected social democrat who fought tirelessly for the rights of women, consumers and low-income Canadians. MacInnis worked some sixty years as a social reformer, as BC MLA and MP and as indispensable behind-the-scenes policy worker for the CCF and NDP. Many of the causes she campaigned for were unpopular at the time: family planning in the 1930s, when providing information on birth control was illegal; income and unemployment insurance for homemakers in the 1940s, when 85% of Canadians thought women's place was in the home; voting rights for Native Canadians and Doukhobors in the 1950s; abortion rights in the 1960s, when abortion was punishable by life in prison. S.P. Lewis was a radio news reporter in 1987 when she first met Grace MacInnis. She was so impressed that she went back for another visit, and another. During the last few years of MacInnis's life, the two women spent many a long afternoon together while Lewis worked on this book.