The Right Honourable Ellen Fairclough, Canada’s pioneering first female cabinet minister, passed into history on November 13, 2004. She was 99 years-old. The following day Prime Minister Paul Martin paid tribute to her life of service on behalf of all Canadians.
“It is with both sadness and a sense of history that I learned of the death of the Right Honourable Ellen Fairclough,” he said in a written statement. “Appointed to cabinet in 1957 as Canada's first female cabinet minister, Ms. Fairclough was a pioneer who advanced the role of women in public life and was a role model for countless others. Ms. Fairclough served the people of Canada in the Diefenbaker government as Secretary of State of Canada, Immigration Minister and later as postmaster general. In Opposition, before being a part of government, Ms. Fairclough was a forceful and compelling voice demanding equal pay for women. Clearly she was a woman who had a lasting and positive impact on public life and made our nation a better place. On behalf of the government and all Canadians, I extend sympathies to her family.”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.