Dedicated Socred MLA had lengthy career
By DUNCAN THORNE
Journal Staff Writer
Former premier Ernest Manning
has praised the accomplishments
of long- serving former
Stony Plain MLA Cornelia Wood,
who died Thursday at 93.
Manning said Friday that Mrs.
Wood, 23 years a Social Credit
backbencher, thoroughly researched
issues before she spoke.
" She didn't make a lot of
speeches but she was well- informed
when she spoke," he said.
" She was on the whole so dedicated."
Mrs. Wood accepted a status of
women Persons Award from then
governor general Ed Schreyer in
1981.
Her involvement in women's
Cornelia Wood
. . . strong women's advocate
issues goes back to at least 1913,
when she helped found the Stony
Plain Women's Institute. Mrs.
Wood was the only woman MLA
in her first legislature term, 1940-
44.
In 1966, she recalled that as a
visitor to the legislature 50 years
earlier, she had heard an MLA
argue in vain that women should
not have the vote as " they do not
have the intelligence."
She dismissed the MLA as " the
little squirt," but was also critical
of women. ,
She said in 1940 that having
won the vote women had not exercised
their right by ensuring they
were adequately represented in
government.
Wood Manor in Edmonton, a
halfway house for former psychiatric
patients, is named for her involvement
as a past executive of
the Canadian Mental Health Association.
The library and archives
in the Stony Plain multicultural
centre are dedicated to her as the
town's former MLA and first
woman mayor.
Mrs. Wood, a descendant of
former United States president
Thomas Jefferson, graduated as a
teacher at age 16, and found she
was younger than some students in
her first class.
She was chairman of Stony
Plain Consolidated School Board
from 1933 to 1939.
She believed so strongly in Social
Credit monetarist reform that
when she finally lost the party's
nomination in 1967, at age 75, she
said: " I believe I'm the only true
Social Crediter left. Maybe that's
why they wanted to get rid of me."
In the 27 years since her first
election she had missed just one
term, 1955- 59, when she lost her
seat during a brief Liberal surge.
She failed in her final bid as an independent
Socred in 1967.
Former Socred president Orvis
Kennedy recalled that Mrs. Wood,
who attended a 50th- anniversary
Social Credit reunion in August,
was a fearless speaker.
" If she felt she should speak
out, she did."
He said although Mrs. Wood
wasn't in Manning's small cabinet,
Socred caucus members listened to
her closely.
Former Socred cabinet member
Alf Hooke said Mrs. Wood was a
Social Credit pioneer before William
( Bible Bill) Aberhart formed
the movement's first government
in 1935. " She was never afraid to
express her views."
Mrs. Wood also held senior
posts with the Canadian Association
of Consumers and the Community
Planning Association of
Canada.
She was predeceased by her
husband, Russell Edgerton Wood,
in 1963. In 1983 Mrs. Wood published
an autobiography, My
Memories.
Funeral service will be Tuesday
at Stony Plain United Church.
Alberta Women's Institutes - Collective Memory
