In My Own Name

By Maureen McTeer

Book Overview

At the age of 50, lawyer and activist Maureen McTeer takes stock of an incredibly eventful life. In a book that will be inspirational for women of all ages, McTeer shares the struggles and triumphs of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679312315
• ISBN13: 9780679312314
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.2" x 1.1" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

A novel political life

Maureen McTeer, wife of...no, mustn't say that. This talented, fluently bilingual woman just happened to marry, at the age of 22, a man 13 years her senior who would become Canada's 15th prime minister. But she accomplished a great deal on her own. In the late 1970s--in what was supposedly a time of great advancement for women--Joe Clark, already a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament from Alberta when she met him, lost a considerable faction of committed party voters because his wife chose to keep her maiden name. And a lot of those voters were women. Fast forward to the '90s. Hilary Rodham became Hillary Rodham Clinton, and often just Hillary Clinton. Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose?You know the expression: I'm not superman? Well, McTeer may have been a real superwoman. Yes, she had a lot of support, but she went to law school, was admitted to the Ontario bar, and got a master's degree in law, all the while helping her husband campaign successfully for the highest elected office in Canada. Later when his minority government crumbled after a few months due to factors that were not entirely their fault (although some were, such as poor "party whipping," and a degree of naiveté dealing with members of other parties as well as their own) her life was even more stressful. And when her husband lost his party leadership to Brian Mulroney, it was the most difficult time of all.In this book, Joe Clark comes off as a man of intelligence wit, grace and humour, and above all, integrity. It is difficult to understand, from this perspective, why Joe was often earlier dismissed as "Joe Who?" During these past years, if I thought about McTeer at all--perhaps because McTeer lived her own life to a great extent-- I would have just put her absence from my consciousness to the fact that the Clarks faded from the scene. This was not true; they continued to work and accomplish much individually and as a couple. But they did not enjoy particularly ample or good press. McTeer herself admits to using coarse language in a moment of understandable exasperation during a party convention, and I recall reading years ago, around the time she first announced she was pregnant with her daughter, that she demanded in an interview to know why the media were always "crapping on my husband." She definitely had a point, but this type of remark is not endearing.Even though McTeer was disliked by some of the more right-wing members of the Progressive Conservative party, she had her share of admirers, and justifiably so. She ran for Parliament unsuccessfully in 1988 and I think this was Canada's loss. Her pro-choice stance for women was to haunt her, an example of the pitfalls for candidates and one that, because she was a woman, became an unfairly heavy burden. McTeer tells a chilling anecdote about her beloved daughter being harassed during door-to-door campaigning.There have been jests over time that the party title, Progressive Conse