Monique Bégin | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament for Saint-Michel | |
| In office 1972–1979 | |
| Preceded by | Victor Forget |
| Succeeded by | Thérèse Killens |
| Member of Parliament for Saint-Léonard—Anjou | |
| In office 1979–1984 | |
| Preceded by | first member |
| Succeeded by | Alfonso Gagliano |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 1, 1936 Rome, Kingdom of Italy |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Occupation | administrator sociologist |
| Website | Parliament of Canada biography |
Monique Bégin, PC CC FRSC (born March 1, 1936) is a Canadian academic and former politician.
Early life
Bégin was born in Rome and raised in France and Portugal before emigrating to Canada at the end of World War II. She received a MA degree in sociology from the Université de Montréal and a PhD degree from the Sorbonne. She describes her early life in Montreal as challenging, but credits community groups and her childhood role as a Girl Guides of Canada member as "sav(ing) her life".[1]
Political career
In 1967, Bégin became executive secretary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which published its report in 1970. She won election to the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal candidate in the 1972 election. Bégin, Albanie Morin and Jeanne Sauvé, all elected in 1972, were the first women ever elected to the House of Commons from Quebec.
She was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as Minister of National Revenue in 1976, and served as Minister of Health and Welfare from 1977 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984 during which the Canada Health Act was enacted.
Post-politics
In 1986, she joined the University of Ottawa and Carleton University as the first joint Ottawa-Carleton Chair of Women's Studies. From 1990 to 1997, she was the University of Ottawa's dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and continues teaching to this day as a professor emeritus. From 1993 to 1995, she also served as co-chair of Ontario's Royal Commission on Learning with Gerald Caplan.
In 1997, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Bégin currently serves as the Treasurer for the International Centre for Migration and Health.
In 2018, she published the memoir Ladies, Upstairs!: My Life in Politics and After.[2]
She was elevated to a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2020.[3]
Electoral record (partial)
| 1980 Canadian federal election: Saint-Léonard—Anjou | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |||||
| Liberal | Monique Bégin | 42,228 | 81.12 | |||||
| New Democratic | Filippo Salvatore | 3,741 | 7.19 | |||||
| Progressive Conservative | Pierre Gauthier | 2,972 | 5.71 | |||||
| Rhinoceros | Pierre Guzzo-Céros | 1,569 | 3.01 | |||||
| Social Credit | Gaétan Bernard | 1,194 | 2.29 | |||||
| Union populaire | U.P. Nelson Bouchard | 260 | 0.50 | |||||
| Marxist–Leninist | Caroline Commandeur-Laloux | 91 | 0.17 | |||||
| Total valid votes | 52,055 | 100.00 | ||||||
| Total rejected ballots | 607 | |||||||
| Turnout | 52,662 | 66.44 | ||||||
| Electors on the lists | 79,266 | |||||||
| Source: Report of the Chief Electoral Officer, Thirty-second General Election, 1980. | ||||||||
Archives
There is a Monique Bégin fonds at Library and Archives Canada.[4]
References
- ^ "Monique Bégin: The feminist trailblazer - Macleans.ca". Macleans.ca. 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
- ^ "Ladies, Upstairs!: My Life in Politics and After, by Monique Bégin". Quill & Quire, March 2019.
- ^ "Governor General Announces 114 New Appointments to the Order of Canada".
- ^ "Finding aid to Monique Bégin fonds, Library and Archives Canada" (PDF). Retrieved 2020-08-31.