Norah Michener

Norah Willis Michener (1902 – January 12, 1987) was the wife of Roland Michener, the 20th Governor General of Canada. As the spouse of a Governor General, she held the title of Chatelaine of Rideau Hall.

She was born in Boissevain, Manitoba, but spent the greater part of her young years in Vancouver, B.C. She attended the University of British Columbia, from which she received her B.A. in philosophy in 1922. She later considered herself fortunate to have attended the University of British Columbia, which she described as having an "intellectually cosmopolitan atmosphere and a rare tolerance in matters of race, religion and colour".

She met Roland Michener at a tea party hosted by a mutual friend, and a courtship began in 1925. On February 26, 1927, they were married. The couple had three daughters.

After her marriage, she continued her studies in philosophy at the University of Toronto under George S. Brett and Fulton Anderson and at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies under Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson and Anton C. Pegis. She received her M.A. in 1937 and her Ph.D. in 1953, both from the University of Toronto.

In 1955, she published Maritain on the Nature of Man in a Christian Democracy, a study of Maritain's theory of the person and his political philosophy, based on her doctoral thesis. The philosopher Leslie Armour wrote in 1999, "Norah Michener [...] wrote an important book on his [Maritain's] philosophy of human nature." In 2003, Armour wrote, "In her perceptive study, Norah Michener argues that the theory of the intellect is the key to Maritain's philosophical anthropology. 'Man can through his intellect know—and hence intentionally become—all things.'"

From 1933 onwards, Maritain gave lectures from time to time at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Norah Michener attended many of Maritain's lectures, and they also met socially or in relation to her thesis. She was philosophically astute and held in esteem by both Maritain and Gilson. On the rare occasions when both men were at the University of Toronto at the same time, she made it a point to invite them to her home.

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