Kathleen Wynne: ‘Who are the Mothers of Confederation?’

“With each story of how it can be done — and how it has been done — more and more women are entering politics,” Kathleen Wynne told an overflow crowd at the University of Ottawa on Thursday. “As we do, we’re showing what a difference we can make.”

The premier was speaking to an audience of academics, students and journalists at an event organized in advance of International Women’s Day.

At the outset of her remarks, she offered up a history lesson of sorts drawn from a photo op at the annual premiers’ meeting last August. During the Charlottetown confab, the current-day premiers were photographed at Government House — on the very steps where the Fathers of Confederation gathered 150 years ago.

“That meeting in the first week of September 1864, laid the foundations of Canada,” Wynne noted as the photo below appeared on an oversized screen:

She went on to describe how the following image was recreated on a hot August day in 2014:

Wynne explained to the university crowd that the shoot got her thinking about women in politics in 1864. “We all learned about the Fathers of Confederation in grade school. Who are the Mothers of Confederation? Who are they?”

Listen as Wynne discusses the slow march of Canadian history: