Dianne Haskett

Dianne Louise Haskett (born March 4, 1955) was mayor of London, Ontario, Canada, from 1994 to 2000. She served two, three-year mayoral terms, making a priority of downtown revitalization, heritage preservation, economic development, neighbourhood protection, protecting the environment, international relations, trade corridors' infrastructure, family values and anti-poverty initiatives. She has been described as a "pro-life, pro-family Christian" and as a "fundamentalist."

Haskett was born and raised in London's Kensal Park district north of Springbank Drive, a descendant of the pioneer Haskett family, one of the early Irish Protestant settlers in London and area, dating back to 1818.

Haskett earned her B.A. from the University of Waterloo in 1974, her LL.B. from the University of Western Ontario in 1977, her LL.M. from the London School of Economics in 1979 and a second LLM from The George Washington University Law School in 2005.She has also studied law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies at Cambridge University, England.

She later founded her own law firm, Haskett Menear & Associates, which grew to include seven lawyers.

From 1991-1994, Haskett was a member of London's elected board of control on city council.

Once Haskett was elected mayor in November 1994, beating Deputy-Mayor Jack Burghardt by slightly more than 1,000 votes, she stepped aside from her duties as a lawyer and as a partner in her law firm. She was re-elected in 1997 with a landslide victory.

In 1995, Dianne Haskett refused to issue a Gay Pride Proclamation on the basis that she'd previously formulated a policy of declining controversial proclamations. London City Council also declined to issue the Gay Pride Proclamation by a vote of 13-5 (Mayor Haskett abstained from voting).

Richard Hudler, president of the Homophile Association of London, Ontario (HALO), filed an official complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1995, a tribunal of which ultimately determined in 1997 after a three-day public hearing that the City of London and Mayor Haskett had discriminated against HALO in the provision of a municipal service. Both the City of London and Haskett were fined $5,000.

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