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| EQUAL VOICE SALUTES The Right Honorable Ellen Loucks Fairclough celebrates her 99th birthday on January 28, 2004. Canada’s first woman to sit in the federal cabinet, Ellen was a pioneer on many social and political fronts. From the very early days of her marriage, she managed and enjoyed what she calls her “double days” with family and career, the career being a chartered accountant and a civic politician in her hometown of Hamilton. In 1950, she answered the clarion call of federal politics and became the honorable member for Hamilton West – a seat she held until 1963. In Saturday’s Child*, her memoirs, she recounts the exhilaration of this particular public office in three pivotal chapters: Salad Days - The Opposition Years; Endless Days - The Cabinet Years, and Dark Days - The Bitter End. These three chapters capture the soul of a woman rendering public service and they open a wide angle on the political history of Canada from 1950 to 1963. In 1957, when the Progressive Conservatives won the general election, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed Ellen Secretary of State and over the course of her political career, she served as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Post Master General, and she had responsibility for several federal agencies; The Dominion Carillonneur, The National Gallery, The National Film Board, The National Archives/National Library, and The Royal Canadian Mint. Ellen was defeated at the polls in the April 1963 general election. Reference: Saturday’s Child; University of Toronto Press,
1995 Birthday Wishes can be sent
to:
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