While visiting the home of an old friend recently, I admired her artwork, all of her own creation. Among her paintings was one in an unusual, retro style. Its bold colours and the paint technique, mimicking the stippling of ink on newsprint, had a comic book feel. When I asked about it, she told me it was a portrait of Nelvana. This female superhero sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know at the time that she had relevance for a special day in May.

A few weeks later, I attended a lecture on the history of comic books. I was surprised to learn that comic books were not invented until the 1930s. Newspaper comic strips began in the late 1890s. Books compiling comic strips were published in the early 1900s and these eventually evolved into comic books as we know them. The lecture focussed on the influence of World War II on the development of Canadian comic books and heroes.

In 1940, the Canadian Parliament passed the War Exchange Conservation Act, which was designed to balance trade with the United States. This Act banned the import of nonessential / luxury items, which included comic books, from the U.S. This market void led to a flourishing of Canadian comic books filled with home-grown stories and heroes. The first Canadian comic book of original material was Better Comics featuring Canada’s first superhero, Iron Man. The better known Superman, although drawn by a Toronto-born artist with a debut in 1938, was published in the U.S. and was therefore banned in Canada for the duration of the war.

Nelvana of the Northern Lights was born in August 1941 as the star of Triumph-Adventure Comics. She was the first female superhero, not only in Canada, but in the world! She pre-dates America’s Wonder Woman by several months.

Nelvana was based on Inuit stories brought back from the Arctic by a Group of Seven painter, Franz Johnston. In the 1930s, Johnston met an Inuit woman named Nelvana in Coppermine, N.W.T. (now Nunavuit). Unfortunately, his photographs and paintings of her have not survived. When he returned to Toronto, he told his friend, Adrian Dingle, about this amazing Inuit Madonna. (Because of this description of her as a mother, historians think they have figured out which actual woman Johnston met.) Dingle turned her into a superhero.

In her comic book incarnation, Nelvana was a demi-goddess: the daughter of a mortal Inuit woman and the King of the Northern Lights. She zipped around in a blue fur-trimmed minidress, tights, knee-high boots, gloves, a cape, and a winged crown. Her powers included telepathy, invisibility, and melting metal. She also travelled the speed of light by riding the Northern Lights. She was guardian of the Inuit people. Typical of the comic books of the time, her major conflicts were with Canada’s WWII enemies, either directly or in symbolic form.

Library and Archives Canada has a podcast about their comic book collections. LAC’s Beyond the Funnies website discusses the history of comics in Canada with links to digitized comic books from different eras, and their Guardians of the North website highlights nine Canadian superheroes and their creators.

This month is the perfect time to remember Canada’s first female superhero. Based on a real-life mom, Nelvana reminds us to honour our own moms on Mother’s Day and always. Modern mom superpowers may be less flashy, but are just as useful: detecting misdemeanours when her back is turned, healing scratches with a kiss, doing multiple things at once, and most important – providing eternal love and support to her offspring.

This article was originally printed in the BERGEN NEWS and is being reprinted with permission.