June 25, 1993 - Kim Campbell - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Kim Campbell named Canada’s first woman prime minister. Avril Phaedra Douglas Campbell was born in Port Alberni, British Columbia on March 10, 1947. She changed her name to Kim when she was just 12 years old. After high school, Campbell studied politics and government at the University of B.C. and the London School of Economics, then lectured at UBC She graduated from UBC’s law school while serving as a Vancouver school board trustee. She ran unsuccessfully on a provincial level with the governing Social Credit Party in 1984, then for the party’s leadership. Success came in 1986, when she was elected to the provincial legislature, but early on, she differed with Premier Bill Vander Zalm over the issue of abortion. When the Progressive Conservatives approached Campbell to run federally, few could have predicted her meteoric rise. She went from backbench MP in 1988 to serving as the country’s first woman justice minister in 1990. When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stepped down, Campbell won the leadership of the party and was sworn in as Canada’s first woman prime minister on June 25, 1993. Unfortunately for Campbell, her reign lasted only a few months. Her party suffered its greatest defeat, electing only two MPs (and Campbell was not one of them) on November 4. Campbell went on to lecture at Harvard University before serving as Canada’s consul general in Los Angeles for several years.

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