Flora MacDonald (Canadian politician)
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The Honourable Flora MacDonald PC CC OOnt ONS |
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|---|---|
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| 16th Secretary of State for External Affairs | |
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In office June 4, 1979 – March 2, 1980 |
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| Prime Minister | Joe Clark |
| Preceded by | Don Jamieson |
| Succeeded by | Mark MacGuigan |
| Minister of Communications | |
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In office June 30, 1986 – December 7, 1988 |
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| Prime Minister | Brian Mulroney |
| Preceded by | Marcel Masse |
| Succeeded by |
Lowell Murray (acting) Marcel Masse |
| Minister of Employment and Immigration | |
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In office September 17, 1984 – June 29, 1986 |
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| Prime Minister | Brian Mulroney |
| Preceded by | John Roberts |
| Succeeded by | Benoît Bouchard |
| Member of Parliament | |
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In office 1972–1988 |
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| Preceded by | Edgar Benson |
| Succeeded by | Peter Milliken |
| Constituency | Kingston and the Islands |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Flora Isabel MacDonald June 3, 1926 North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Died | July 26, 2015 (aged 89) Ottawa, Ontario |
| Political party | Progressive Conservative (1950s–2003) |
Flora Isabel MacDonald, PC CC OOnt ONS (June 3, 1926 – July 26, 2015) was a Canadian politician and humanitarian. Canada's first female foreign minister, she was also one of the first women to vie for leadership of a major Canadian political party, the Progressive Conservatives. She became a close ally of Prime Minister Joe Clark, serving in his cabinet from 1979 to 1980, as well as in the cabinet of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1984 to 1988. In her later life, she was known for her humanitarian work abroad.
MacDonald was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Mary Isabel Royle and George Frederick MacDonald. She was of Scottish ancestry.
Her grandfather had been a clipper ship captain who sailed around Africa and South America. Her father was in charge of North Sydney’s Western Union trans-Atlantic telegraph terminus.
In her youth, Macdonald trained as a secretary at Empire Business College and found work as a bank teller at the Bank of Nova Scotia. She used her savings to travel to Britain in 1950 where she got involved with a group of Scottish nationalists who stole the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey and brought it to Scotland.
After hitchhiking through Europe, she returned to Canada and became involved in politics, working on Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield's campaign which won an upset victory in the 1956 provincial election. Later the same year, she hired to work in the national office of the Progressive Conservative Party under leader John Diefenbaker, as secretary to the party's chairman, and worked on Diefenbaker's 1957 and 1958 election campaigns. In 1959, she was working as a secretary in the office of Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker. She continued working for the party in various capacities but grew disillusioned with Diefenbaker and was fired by him when he learned of her support for party president Dalton Camp's campaign for a leadership review. Macdonald then worked for the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario while continuing to support the anti-Diefenbaker camp and worked on Robert Stanfield's successful campaign during the 1967 Progressive Conservative leadership election and worked for him during the 1968 federal election.
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