Watch Martha Friendly's speech at the Department of Public Memory's unveiling of a sign celebrating several decades of public child care at Bellevue Child Care Centre.
Excerpts from Martha's Speech
"I have a long history of advocacy for high quality, universal child care. I started as a researcher, I became a parent and saw it from that perspective and then carried on as a researcher and advocate and now I'm a grandmother of two twins in municipal child care.
Fighting for a universal child care system has been a roller coaster, we started off in the 1970s with "more daycare, better daycare" but over the years our ask became more detailed and more complex.
It started with Action Daycare which was a small activist group in the 1970s and we called for accessible, affordable, high quality, 24 hour, community controlled day care.
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We've eventually arrived at the vision of a publicly managed early childhood education and care system."