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Flora MacDonald (politician)

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The Honourable
Flora MacDonald
PC CC OOnt ONS
Member of Parliament
for Kingston and the Islands
In office
1972–1988
Preceded byEdgar Benson
Succeeded byPeter Milliken
Personal details
Born
Flora Isabel MacDonald

(1926-06-03)June 3, 1926
North Sydney, Nova Scotia
DiedJuly 26, 2015(2015-07-26) (aged 89)
Ottawa, Ontario
Political partyProgressive Conservative

Flora Isabel MacDonald, PC CC OOnt ONS (June 3, 1926 – July 26, 2015) was a Canadian politician.

Early life and career

MacDonald was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Mary Isabel Royle and George Frederick MacDonald. She has Scottish ancestry.[1]

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.[2]

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.[3]

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.[3] Later the same year, she hired to work in the national office of the Progressive Conservative Party under leader John George Diefenbaker, as secretary to the party's chairman, and worked on Diefenbaker's 1957 and 1958 election campaigns.[2] In 1959, she was working as a secretary in the office of Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker.[4] 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.[3]

Member of Parliament

She was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1972 general election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament for the riding of Kingston and the Islands. She remained in parliament until her defeat in the 1988 election.

At the 1976 PC leadership convention, she became the second woman to mount a serious campaign for the leadership of one Canada's major parties. In this, she had been preceded by Rosemary Brown who ran in 1975 for the leadership of the New Democratic Party, and by Mary Walker-Sawka, who won two votes at the PC leadership convention in 1967.

MacDonald fared worse than expected, winning just 214 votes on the first ballot despite having over 300 pledged delegates in her camp. This led pundits to coin the phrase the Flora Syndrome[5] for the phenomenon of a female politician's promised support failing to materialise. It was thought that this was a result of sexism: delegates liked the candidate but in the end could not bring themselves to vote for her because she was a woman. MacDonald dropped off after the second ballot, and encouraged her supporters to vote for Joe Clark, the eventual winner.[6]

Minister of External Affairs

Clark and MacDonald, both Red Tories, became allies throughout their careers. When Clark became Prime Minister of Canada in 1979, he made MacDonald the first female Secretary of State for External Affairs in Canadian history, and one of the first female foreign ministers anywhere in the world. During her tenure she had to deal with the Vietnamese boat people refugee crises that followed the end of the Vietnam War. MacDonald and Immigration Minister Ron Atkey developed a plan in which the federal government would match the number of refugees sponsored by members of the general public which allowed more than 60,000 Vietnamese refugees to enter the country. The Iran hostage crisis was also a major issue during her term. Six American diplomats had escaped the seizure of the American embassy by radical Iranian students and had sought refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran. MacDonald authorized the issuance of false passports and money to the six as part of a plan to rescue the escapees that had the Americans pose as Canadians and leave the country with Canadian staff when the embassy was closed on January 28, 1980. The successful operation became known as the Canadian Caper.

Macdonald's tenure as foreign minister was short-lived, however, as Clark's minority government was defeated in a parliamentary Motion of no confidence and then voted out of office in the federal election held on February 18, 1980.

Return to Opposition

The Conservatives returned to the Opposition benches in 1980. While Clark continued as party leader, his position was challenged by calls for a leadership review which ultimately led to the 1983 leadership convention. Macdonald was a close ally of Clark and supported him his campaign to regain the leadership but Clark lost to Brian Mulroney. [citation needed]

Return to government

MacDonald returned to government after the PC victory in the 1984 federal election, serving first as Minister of Employment and Immigration, and then as Minister of Communications under Prime Minister Mulroney.[citation needed] A Red Tory, MacDonald, within the federal cabinet, argued against Mulroney's push for free trade with the United States but publicly supported the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in the 1988 federal election. While the Progressive Conservatives won the election, which was fought on the free trade issue, MacDonald was personally defeated in Kingston.[3]

After politics

After losing her seat in 1988, MacDonald devoted her time to international humanitarian work. She served as Chair of the Board of Canada's International Development Research Centre from 1992-1997, and was also president of the World Federalist Movement (Canada).[7] In 2003, she briefly re-entered the political scene to oppose the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance, but was unable to prevent the folding of the PCs into the new Conservative Party of Canada. According to journalist Thomas Walkom, she voted for the New Democratic Party in the 2004 federal election.[8] She died in Ottawa on July 26, 2015.[9]

Honours

Honorary Degrees

Flora MacDonald Received Many Honorary Degrees for Her Service to Canada. These Include

Honorary Degrees
Country Date School Degree
 Nova Scotia 1979 Mount Saint Vincent University Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) [15]
 Ontario May 1980 McMaster University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [16]
 Ontario 1981 Queen's University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [17]
 New York 8 May 1988 Potsdam College Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) [18] [19]
 Ontario Spring 1989 York University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [20]
 Ontario 1996 Carleton University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [21]
 North Carolina 1996 St. Andrews University Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) [22]
 Ontario 12 June 1998 Brock University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [23]
 Newfoundland and Labrador May 2003 Memorial University of Newfoundland Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [24]
 Nova Scotia May 2003 Cape Breton University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [25]
 Nova Scotia 23 May 2003 Saint Mary's University Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) [26] [27]
 New Brunswick 2004 Mount Allison University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [28]
 Ontario 2006 University of Waterloo Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [29]
 Ontario 12 June 2007 University of Western Ontario Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [30]
 Ontario 2008 Trent University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [31]
 Nova Scotia 2 May 2010 St. Francis Xavier University Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [32]
 Ontario Fall 2010 University of Windsor Doctor of Laws (LL.D) [33]

See also

  • Bradley effect, Shy Tory Factor, and spiral of silence, for similar phenomena to the "Flora Syndrome"
  • MacDonald, as Secretary of State for External Affairs, appears in archival footage in the movie Argo, about the Canadian-assisted escape of six U.S. diplomats from Iran in 1980.

References

  1. ^ McDonell, J.K.; Campbell, R.B. (1997). Lords of the North. General Store Publishing House. p. 271. ISBN 9781896182711. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  2. ^ a b "Obituary: Flora MacDonald, 1926-2015". Maclean's. July 26, 2015. Retrieved July 26, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d Martin, Patrick (July 26, 2015). "Conservative trailblazer Flora MacDonald dies aged 89". Globe and Mail. Retrieved July 26, 2015.
  4. ^ Jordan Press. "Quebec will vote Conservative, even if Harper doesn't believe it, retiring senator says," Postmedia News, July 17, 2012. Accessed July 19, 2012.
  5. ^ "Where have all the women leaders gone?". University of AlbertaExpressNews. 2002-12-20. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Raymont, Peter. "Scenes from a leadership convention". National Film Board of Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved July 26, 2015.
  7. ^ World Federalist Movement - Canada, World-View page accessed June 7, 2006 Archived 2006-08-23 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ Walkom, Thomas (2005-11-12). "Still feeling jilted after right-wing marriage:Many unhappy with PC-Alliance union". Toronto Star.
  9. ^ "Veteran federal politician Flora MacDonald dead at age 89". thestar.com. 26 July 2015.
  10. ^ "Order of Canada citation".
  11. ^ "Peter Raymont".
  12. ^ "Recipients—2007".
  13. ^ "WORLD FEDERALIST MOVEMENT-CANADA". worldfederalistscanada.org. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  14. ^ "Dancer Transition Resource Centre". dtrc.ca. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  15. ^ http://www.msvu.ca/en/home/aboutus/universityprofile/senate/honorarydegrees/ourhonorarydegreerecipients.aspx
  16. ^ http://www.mcmaster.ca/univsec/reports_lists/S_HD_Recipients.pdf
  17. ^ http://www.queensu.ca/secretariat/senate/honorarydegrees/MasterList.pdf
  18. ^ http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031769/1988-04-05/ed-1/seq-13.pdf
  19. ^ http://www.albany.edu/academics/honorary.degree.shtml
  20. ^ http://secretariat.info.yorku.ca/senate/sub-committee-on-honorary-degrees-and-ceremonials/honorary-degree-recipients/#M
  21. ^ http://carleton.ca/senate/honorary-degrees/honorary-degrees-awarded-since-1954/
  22. ^ https://www.sa.edu/aboutsa/honorarydegreerecipients.php
  23. ^ https://brocku.ca/webfm_send/33360
  24. ^ http://www.mun.ca/senate/honorary_degrees_by_convo_listing.pdf
  25. ^ http://www.cbu.ca/honorees
  26. ^ http://www.smu.ca/academics/archives/honorary-degrees.html
  27. ^ http://www.smu.ca/academics/archives/flora-i-m.html
  28. ^ http://www.mta.ca/Community/Governance_and_admin/Governance/Board_of_Regents/Board_committees/Honorary_degrees/Honorary_degree_recipients_21st_century/Honorary_degree_recipients_21st_century/
  29. ^ https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/committees-and-councils/honorary-degrees-committee/honorary-degrees-granted/2000-2009
  30. ^ http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/senate/honorary/honorary_degrees_by_year.pdf
  31. ^ http://www.trentu.ca/convocation/honorarydegree_past.php
  32. ^ http://www.stfx.ca/news/view/2182/
  33. ^ http://www.uwindsor.ca/secretariat/sites/uwindsor.ca.secretariat/files/honorary_degree_by_convocation_0.pdf

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