Margaret Konantz
Margaret McTavish Konantz, née Rogers was a Canadian Metis politician, who represented the electoral district of Winnipeg South in the House of Commons of Canada from 1963 to 1965. She was the first woman elected to the House of Commons from Manitoba.
She was of Métis ancestry, the granddaughter of Lydia Catherine Christie and Donald C. McTavish Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Norway House, and the great-granddaughter of Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson's Bay Company and his wife Betsy Sinclair. She was the daughter of Robert Arthur Rogers, a businessman, and Edith Rogers, the first woman ever elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. She married Gordon Konantz in 1922.
During World War II, Margaret Konantz was an active volunteer for the Patriotic Salvage Corps, Bundles for Britain and the Women's Volunteer Services. In 1944, she was one of four women sent to Great Britain by the Canadian government to work with the Women's Voluntary Service. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire posthumously for her volunteer work in the war effort. Following the death of her husband in 1954, she volunteered for UNICEF, travelling to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and the United Arab Republic on behalf of the organization.
She originally stood as the Liberal candidate for Winnipeg South in the 1962 election, but was defeated by Progressive Conservative incumbent Gordon Chown. When the minority government of John Diefenbaker fell the following year, however, Konantz defeated Chown in the 1963 election. In 1964 she was the only woman on a committee of 15 MPs selected by Prime Minister Lester Pearson to choose a new flag for Canada. She served as an MP until the 1965 election, when she was defeated by new Progressive Conservative candidate Bud Sherman.
Also in 1963, she was a delegate to the United Nations Third Committee on Social, Economic and Humanitarian Problems. In this capacity, she toured a number of Indian reserves in Canada to study economic and health conditions.
Following her electoral defeat in 1965, she became national chair for UNICEF Canada. She undertook several further international tours until her death in 1967.
