Govern Like a Girl Read online

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Govern like a girl : the women who became Canada’s first ministers / Kate Graham.

  Names: Graham, Kate, 1984- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210136146 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210136154 | ISBN

  9781772602104 (softcover) | ISBN 9781772602135 (EPUB)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women prime ministers—Canada—Biography—Juvenile literature. |

  LCSH: Premiers (Canada)—Biography—Juvenile literature. | LCSH: Women

  politicians—Canada—Biography—Juvenile literature. | LCGFT: Biographies.

  Classification: LCC FC26.P6 G73 2021 | DDC j971.009/9—dc23

  Copyright © 2021 by Kate Graham

  Edited by Andrea Knight

  Illustrated by Liz Parkes

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council

  and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge

  the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  Second Story Press

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, ON

  M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  For Flora

  with love and hope

  Contents

  Introduction

  2 Premier Eva Aariak

  3 Premier Catherine Callbeck

  4 Premier Christy Clark

  5 Premier Caroline Cochrane

  6 Premier Nellie Cournoyea

  7 Premier Pat Duncan

  8 Premier Kathy Dunderdale

  9 Premier Rita Johnston

  10 Premier Pauline Marois

  11 Premier Rachel Notley

  12 Premier Alison Redford

  13 Premier Kathleen Wynne

  14 Prime Minister Kim Campbell

  Govern Like a Girl

  Glossary of Terms

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Who gets to make the rules in Canada? Who decides what we learn at school, or how many parks we have, or whether we take care of our environment?

  The answer is the government—a group of people we choose to make decisions for us.

  Once you turn eighteen, you can vote. You get to pick who you want to make the rules in your community, your province or territory, and your country. These people have the big job of doing what we call governing; making decisions that affect everyone.

  Canada is a big country with lots of different people. We have young people and old people. We have people with black skin and brown skin and white skin. We have tall people and short people. We have people who use wheelchairs and people who need special help to hear or see or speak. We have people who like to be loud and people who like to be quiet. We have people who have different talents, like doing math or writing rules or taking care of others. We have people with many different kinds of experiences, like growing up in a big city or a small town or living in another country.

  It’s important that our governments are made up of all of these different kinds of people, with many different life experiences, so that when governments make decisions, those decisions help everyone.

  But we have a big problem.

  Most of the time, our governments don’t have enough different kinds of people. Often, they do not include people from a diversity of backgrounds—and, they don’t have very many women.

  Women and girls are half of Canada’s population but are only around thirty per cent of the people in our governments. And it’s even fewer when we look at who gets the top job of being the prime minister or being the premier of a province or territory.

  Canada has had twenty-three prime ministers, and only one was a woman.

  More than 300 people have been the premier of their province or territory, and only twelve of those people have been women! Some provinces in Canada have never had a woman in charge.

  This is a problem because it means that the decisions made by our governments might not always make life better for women and girls. It’s one of the reasons that women and girls in Canada are more likely to be poor, more likely to experience violence, and often get paid less money at work. That is just not fair.

  Who is the one woman who became the prime minister of Canada to lead our whole country? Who are the twelve women who have been the premier, in charge of their province or territory? What were they like when they were girls? How did they reach the top and what did they do when they got there?

  In this book, you will meet the thirteen amazing women who rose to the top jobs in our governments. It wasn’t easy—but they got there! They showed Canada that women are great leaders and that it’s okay for them to govern in their own way.

  Canada has a long way to go before our governments include all the different kinds of people we have in our country.

  This is where you come in.

  No one else has the exact same opinions and knowledge and ideas and experiences that you have. No one. Only you know what matters most to you. If there is something you want to see change in our country, you need to tell the people in government who get to make those decisions. When you are old enough, you need to vote for the people you think will make the best decisions for you—or run for office yourself, so you can make the rules!

  As the leaders in this book learned, you don’t need to change who you are to be in charge. In fact, we need more people like you in government—people who know how to govern like a girl.

  PREMIER

  Eva Aariak

  Eva Aariak has spent her life fighting for language rights for Inuit—and she knows firsthand why these rights are so important.

  Eva Qamaniq Aariak was born in a camp on Baffin Island on a cold January day in 1955. Baffin Island is the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest in the world. It is a winter paradise located in the beautiful Arctic Ocean, home to whales, polar bears, walruses, and narwhals.

  On the northern shore of Baffin Island sits a small Inuit community called Arctic Bay. Only about 800 people live in Arctic Bay today, but Inuit have lived in the community for more than 5,000 years. Inuit call Arctic Bay Ikpiarjuk, which means “the pocket,” because the community sits at sea level surrounded by high hills.

  When Eva was a young girl, she moved with her parents and older sister into her grandfather’s house in Arctic Bay. The house had only one room.

  Eva’s parents had been self-sufficient for most of their lives, hunting and living off the land. Like many other Inuit parents, they decided to move to Arctic Bay when they had children so their kids could go to school.

  Eva had a few older cousins who already lived in Arctic Bay. One day, when Eva was about five years old, she and her cousins were out playing near the school. Her cousins could see that Eva wanted to go to school, so they invited her inside. The teacher looked at Eva and began to speak to her in English, but Eva did not speak any English. The teacher sent her away, saying the one English word Eva did understand: no. She had to wait until she was older and could understand more English before coming back because lessons were taught only in English and not in Inuktitut, the language Eva spoke.

  Living in Arctic Bay taught Eva what it meant to be part of a community. She could see how working together helped everyone. She also learned to be resourceful. Arctic Bay had only one store, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Getting food or clothing was difficult, and homes did not
have washing machines. There were few places for people to gather during the cold, dark winter months. So, on the weekends, the school would open up to the whole community. People would gather there at night to do their laundry together. The schoolteacher was also a photographer and taught weekend classes about how to take and develop pictures. And the clerk at the Hudson’s Bay store was also an athlete who would lead exercise and gymnastics classes for the whole community.

  Eva went to school in Arctic Bay for as long as she could, completing the highest level of school available in the small community. She wanted to continue to learn but doing so meant she had to leave. She moved hundreds of kilometres away from her family to Churchill, Manitoba to complete her studies before moving back to Arctic Bay.

  Eva’s first major political activity came shortly after her return home. Arctic Bay did not have as many recreational activities as she felt it should, but Eva had an idea. She wanted the local government to shovel the snow off a section of the frozen Arctic Bay so people could skate and play hockey. She requested an opportunity to speak as a delegate to the town council, asking for a Zamboni machine to be used to clear the ice. After her presentation, the council went into a closed room to discuss the idea. Eva was not allowed into the room. When they came out, they told her the answer was no. But, not long after the meeting, the ice was cleared off. The town’s Zamboni driver had heard about Eva’s presentation and cleared the ice anyway.

  This sparked Eva’s interest in politics. She learned that politics is about making decisions, and those decisions can solve problems and help people. She worked as a news reporter, telling the community about what was happening—and there was a lot! At the time, Arctic Bay was a part of the Northwest Territories. For many years, people wanted a large eastern area of the Northwest Territories to become its own territory. This idea had been discussed since before Eva was born. The Canadian government and Indigenous peoples had been in disputes over who owned the land for decades, and there were concerns that being a part of the Northwest Territories was threatening some parts of Inuit culture. The education system in the territory did not recognize Inuit languages spoken in places like Arctic Bay, so children had to attend school in English. After many years, agreements were finally reached, and in 1999 the new Canadian territory of Nunavut was created.

  With the creation of the new territory, Eva was appointed to a new job as Languages Commissioner for Nunavut. One of her tasks was to choose a new word in the Inuktitut language for the Internet. Eva chose the word ikiaqqijjut, which means “travelling through layers.”

  Eva also became very involved in the community, volunteering with an Inuktitut-language book publishing program and chairing the Nunavut Film Development Corporation. She also opened a store in Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, to sell Inuit arts and crafts.

  People often told Eva that she should run for office to serve in the government. Eva had always been interested in politics. She watched debates and sometimes thought about what she would like to do if she were in a position to make decisions for her community and territory. By this time, Eva’s children were adults and she felt a strong desire to do everything she could to make Nunavut a place where children could grow up with their own culture and language. She wanted to improve daycare services in Nunavut, for example, so more women could work and participate in civic and community life, including politics.

  In 2008, Eva ran for the Nunavut Legislative Assembly—and she won! She was the only woman elected. Nunavut has a model of government called “consensus government.” There are no political parties, and all the elected members make each decision together. After an election, all the elected members (called MLAs, or members of the legislative assembly) vote for which one of them will be the leader of the government: the premier. Eva put her name forward. She had big ideas about what she wanted the government to do in Nunavut. Three members wanted the job: the current premier, a male veteran politician, and newly elected Eva.

  The vote was held on November 14, 2008, by secret ballot. After the ballots were counted, the results were announced: Eva Aariak had been elected as the first—and to date, only—female premier of Nunavut.

  Even though she was the premier, Eva was also the only female MLA. Sometimes she found that her colleagues treated her differently or didn’t listen to her. Sometimes she had to bluntly ask, “If I were a man, would you be treating me that way?” But Eva kept working hard to address the problems that people in Nunavut were experiencing. She worked to bring more mental health supports to the territory and introduced a better childcare system. She also worked to protect Inuit language rights. After serving as premier, Eva became the new Commissioner of Nunavut in 2021.

  When she was a little girl, Eva never dreamt that she would become the premier someday.

  “I never really imagined how far I would go. It was always about doing what I felt I could do, at that moment, in the community where I lived.”

  PREMIER

  Catherine Callbeck

  Catherine Callbeck knows what it’s like to be the only woman in the room. She is also the only woman to date who has served as premier of Prince Edward Island (PEI). She was the first woman to become a premier in Canada by leading her party to an election victory.

  Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, is located in the Maritimes in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The entire province has a population of about 160,000 people—about twenty times smaller than the population of the city of Toronto!

  Near the southern coast of the island sits a small community called Central Bedeque. Today, along with its surroundings, it is home to about 300 people—including Catherine Callbeck, who still lives in the house where she grew up.

  Catherine was born on July 25, 1939, into a well-known Prince Edward Island family. Her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were both former mayors of Summerside. Her mother was a school trustee and her father ran a store called Callbecks, which became the largest country store in Prince Edward Island. Callbecks sold everything from clothing to building supplies to groceries, and also operated as the local post office and egg grading station. At its peak, Callbecks employed fifty people and generated sales of six million dollars per year—a large operation for the time and for Prince Edward Island!

  Catherine attended a two-room school near her home and was involved in the family business from a young age. At twelve, she stocked shelves, served ice cream, and helped customers. Watching her father run the business, she also learned how to manage money. One summer, in addition to working at the store, she helped to harvest a three-acre plot of strawberries. Instead of spending her wages, she put all the money she was paid into her savings account.

  Catherine was a strong student. When she graduated from high school, she was accepted to Mount Allison University. She wanted to study business, but this was not a normal choice for a woman at the time. Catherine enrolled anyway. She was the only woman in the Bachelor of Commerce degree program in 1956 and the second woman to graduate from Mount Allison with this degree.

  After graduation, Catherine decided she wanted to teach business. She applied for a job at a high school in New Brunswick and was offered the job with a salary of $3,500 per year. This was $500 less than the male teachers were paid. Catherine refused the offer, telling them that it was because of the unfair pay. She later accepted the job when it was offered to her at $4,000 per year.

  After a few years of teaching business, Catherine decided that she wanted to get back into the business world herself. Her father had passed away, and her brother Bill was running the family business. Catherine returned home to Central Bedeque and she and Bill began expanding the Callbeck store with a new furniture department.

  For many years, people had told Catherine that she should run for political office. At first, she felt she was too shy. This changed in 1973, when Prince Edward Island was celebrating its centennial (100th) year as a province. Catherine wa
s asked to chair a centennial committee for eight communities, and they organized a highly successful event. That was Catherine’s invitation into public life. In 1974, she decided to run as a Liberal candidate in the Prince Edward Island provincial election. At that point, only one woman had ever been elected to the provincial legislature. Not everyone supported Catherine’s decision to run. One man Catherine knew well said to her, “I know you have been successful at many things, but I can’t support you because you’re a woman.”

  Catherine persisted. In her speech to secure her party’s nomination, she said, “the strength of a society rests on the willingness and ability of its citizens to share in the decisions which affect it.” She recruited many young people, including young women, to help her on the campaign. It paid off, and she won. Her party also won the most seats, forming a majority government.

  Shortly after the election, the premier announced his new Cabinet. Catherine was named minister of health and social services, two large and demanding portfolios. Once again, Catherine was the only woman appointed to Cabinet. She became the first woman and youngest person in Prince Edward Island to hold a Cabinet portfolio.

  After four years in the provincial legislature, Catherine decided to step away from politics and went back to work in her family business for a decade. Then, on her 49th birthday, Callbeck announced a return to politics—this time at the federal level. She ran and won her seat as a member of parliament (MP), where she served for more than four years, and then made another major step. When the premier of Prince Edward Island announced his resignation in 1992, a leadership campaign was launched. Catherine received many calls asking her to consider running. At first she said no, but after careful re-evaluation, she felt this was an opportunity to do more for her province. Once again, she ran and won, becoming the first—and to date, only—female premier of Prince Edward Island.