The Fighting Days

The Fighting Days is set in Winnipeg during 1910-1917. The play focuses on the life and work of Francis Marion Beynon, a Manitoba journalist and political activist. When the play opens, Francis is on her way to Winnipeg, leaving behind a sheltered and religious rural childhood. Soon after she arrives she meets Nellie McClung and becomes involved in the Votes-for-Women movement. She also begins work as the women’s page editor for The Rural Review, airing her controversial political views on the editorial page. Suddenly, Canada is involved in World War I, and the conscription crisis divides the suffragists: should all women have the vote or just Dominion-born women who are sending their husbands and sons off to battle? Should women use their votes to push for conscription or to lobby for a swift end to the war?

A play about the polarities of public and private lives, and about issues of racism and pacifism within the women’s movement, The Fighting Days deals with timeless moral concerns. Francis Beynon, says the playwright, “gave up everything for her beliefs and one can only hope the world’s a better place for it.

AUTHOR

Wendy Lill

Wendy Lill was born in Vancouver in 1950 and was educated in both London and Toronto, ON. She lived for many years in Winnipeg, MB, and now resides in Dartmouth, NS, with her husband Richard and two children, Joe and Sam. She has written for magazines, radio, television, and stage. Her plays have been produced extensively on Canadian and international stages. Her play All Fall Down examines the roots of intolerance and hysteria and their effects on love. Sisters received the Labatt’s Canadian Play Award at the Newfoundland and Labrador Drama Festival. Primedia Productions brought out television versions of two of Lill’s plays, Sisters and Memories of You, both of which Lill scripted. (Sisters won a Gemini in 1992). Lill has four plays nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Drama: The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, All Fall Down, The Occupation of Heather Rose, and Corker. Talonbooks has also published her Chimera, Messenger, and The Fighting Days. Between June 1997 and June 2004, Wendy Lill was the Member of Parliament for Dartmouth and the Culture Communications critic for the federal New Democratic Party (NDP).