Michaëlle Jean
Her Excellency the Rt. Hon. Michaëlle Jean | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 27th Governor General of Canada | |
| Assumed office September 27, 2005 | |
| Prime Minister | Paul Martin, Stephen Harper |
| Preceded by | Adrienne Clarkson |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 6, 1957 Port-au-Prince, Haïti |
| Spouse | Jean-Daniel Lafond |
| Profession | Journalist |
Michaëlle Jean, CC, CMM, COM, CD, DUniv (honoris causa), D.Litt (honoris causa) [mi•ka•ɛl ʒɑ̃], (born September 6, 1957, in Port-au-Prince, Haïti) is the current Governor General of Canada. Jean was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Paul Martin, to succeed Adrienne Clarkson and become the 27th governor general of Canada since Confederation in 1867.
As the current Governor General of Canada, she is entitled to be styled Her Excellency while in office, and The Right Honourable for life; she will be sworn to the Queen's Privy Council for Canada after her term as the Queen's representative has ended.
An official announcement about the appointment was made on August 4, 2005. Her investiture took place on September 27.
Prior to becoming Governor General, Jean was a journalist and broadcaster on Radio-Canada and the CBC.
She is the first person of Afro-Caribbean heritage to serve as Governor General, the third woman, and the second immigrant.
Biography
Jean fled Haiti with her family from dictator François Duvalier's regime in 1968. Her father, with whom she has recently reconciled, was a philosopher who was tortured under Duvalier's regime and separated from the family for 30 years. The Jean family settled at Thetford Mines, Quebec.
As a student at the University of Montreal, Jean received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Italian and Hispanic languages and literature and, from 1984 until 1986, taught Italian studies while completing a Master of Arts degree in comparative literature. Jean attended the University of Florence, the University of Perugia, and the Catholic University of Milan to continue her studies in language and literature. Besides French and English, Jean is fluent in Spanish, Italian, and Haitian Creole and can read Portuguese.
While attending university, Jean worked at a shelter for battered women from 1979 until 1987. She later helped establish a network of shelters for women and children across Canada. Jean also worked in organizations that helped immigrants to Canada and then later worked for Employment and Immigration Canada (now Human Resources and Skills Development Canada) and at the Conseil des Communautés culturelles du Québec, where Jean began writing about the experiences of immigrant women.[1]
Family
Jean married documentary film-maker Jean-Daniel Lafond. They have one daughter, Marie-Éden, adopted from Haiti.
Jean was born in Haiti, Lafond in France, and Marie-Éden in Haiti, making the entire vice-regal family of non-Canadian and non-Commonwealth birth.
Career
Jean was an award-winning reporter, filmmaker, and broadcaster.
She was employed by Radio-Canada in 1988, where she worked as a reporter and then host of news and affairs programs such as Actuel, Montréal ce soir, Virages, and Le Point. In 1995, she anchored a number of programs for Réseau de l'information (RDI), Radio-Canada's all-news channel, such as Le Monde ce soir, l'Édition québécoise, Horizons francophones, Les Grands reportages, Le Journal RDI, and RDI à l'écoute. In 1999, she was also asked by the English network, CBC Newsworld, to host The Passionate Eye and Rough Cuts, which broadcast the best in Canadian and foreign documentary films. By 2004, she began her own show, Michaëlle, while continuing on Radio-Canada, hosting RDI's Grands reportages, as well as an occasional anchor of Le Téléjournal.
She and Lafond have made several films, including the award-winning Haïti dans tous nos rêves ("Haiti in All Our Dreams"). In the film, she meets her uncle, the poet and essayist René Depestre, who fled from the Duvalier dictatorship into exile in France and wrote about his dreams for Haiti, to tell him Haiti awaits his return. She has hosted and produced news and documentary programming for television on both the English and French services of the CBC.
Governor General
Announcement
In announcing the Queen's approval of Jean as his choice to succeed Clarkson, then-Prime Minister Martin said she "is a woman of talent and achievement. Her personal story is nothing short of extraordinary. And extraordinary is precisely what we seek in a Governor General — who after all must represent all of Canada to all Canadians and to the rest of the world as well."[2]
Jean is Canada's first black Governor General, the second person without either a political or military background (after Adrienne Clarkson), the second person from a visible minority and (again after Clarkson), foreign-born (like Clarkson, and breaking tradition since Vincent Massey's appointment), the second person in an interracial marriage (again after Clarkson), the third woman (after Jeanne Sauvé and Clarkson), the fourth-youngest person (after Lord Lorne (33 years old in 1878), Lord Lansdowne (38 years old in 1883) and Edward Schreyer (43 years old in 1979), and the fourth journalist (after Sauvé, Roméo LeBlanc and Clarkson) to hold the position. She is also the first Governor General to be born during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Her appointment also marked the first time that a child had lived in Rideau Hall since Edward Schreyer and his young family lived there in the early 1980s.
As Lafond was born in France, and their six-year-old adopted daughter, Marie-Éden, born in Haïti, the entire vice-regal family will be of non-Canadian and non-Commonwealth birth. Jean had held dual citizenship; she applied to become a French citizen upon marrying her husband who also held Canadian and French citizenship. She renounced her French citizenship, however, on September 23, 2005, "in light of the responsibilities related to the function of Governor General of Canada and Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces."[3]
Jean, in her first remarks after the announcement of her impending appointment, said she wanted to reach out to all Canadians, regardless of their background. Jean also made it a goal to reach out especially to Canadian youth and those who feel disadvantaged. Jean also encouraged all Canadians to become involved in community affairs.
On September 6, 2005, the Queen granted an audience to Jean and her family at Balmoral Castle. Though it is standard for a governor general-designate to have an audience of the monarch before assuming office, this meeting was unique in that Jean's young daughter was present, marking the first time in the Queen's reign that a governor general-designate has brought her child to an audience.
Reaction
- Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative party and then leader of the opposition (currently the Prime Minister), congratulated Jean on her appointment and said that her life story "serves as a great example to many Canadians. I know Mme. Jean will serve Canada in a dignified, vice-regal fashion."[4]
- The departing Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, applauded Martin for choosing Jean by saying she is "an exciting and imaginative choice for Governor General." Clarkson said she and her husband John Ralston Saul look forward to Jean being invested with her position with "great enthusiasm."[5]
- Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, was disappointed that Jean decided to, in his words, "accept a position that is strictly honorary and within an institution that is not democratic."
- Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, said he wished Jean and her family well and that he looked "forward to seeing a family again in Rideau Hall, which is fitting for the first Governor-General of a new century." Layton also commented on Canadian peacekeeping activities at this time by saying Jean "knows well the value of the peacekeeping operations that give Canadians so much pride."[6]
Controversy over recommendation
Soon after the announcement of Jean's recommendation for appointment, Prime Minister Martin was asked if the current political climate in Ottawa caused him to recommend that she be appointed by the Queen. Martin denied that his was a political move to gain seats in Quebec, where the Liberal Party had lost 15 seats in the 2004 election. Until Jean's appointment, Jeanne Sauvé, who served from 1984 to 1990, was the last governor general to live in Quebec (though Jules Léger, who served from 1974 to 1979, was the last governor general born in Quebec).
On August 11, 2005 The Globe and Mail reported that in a forthcoming article released early by the Quebec sovereigntist publication Le Québécois, author René Boulanger stated that Jean and her husband supported Quebec independence. Boulanger also stated that Jean's spouse, Jean-Daniel Lafond, was friendly with former Quebec terrorists.[7]
Boulanger reported that he had often visited Jean's home, and that during one of these visits Lafond told him that Jacques Rose, a former member of the terrorist FLQ, had built a bookshelf for the couple. Rose was a member of the FLQ cell which kidnapped and murdered Quebec Cabinet Minister Pierre Laporte. Boulanger admitted that his statement was intended to cause English Canada to reject Michaëlle's candidature as the next Governor General. Following release of the article, Gilles Rhéaume, former president of the St-Jean Baptiste Society called on Jean to reveal how she voted in Quebec's 1995 referendum, which federalists won by a narrow majority.[8][9] Sovereigntists had a vested interest in causing a strong reaction in English Canada against francophone candidates which would alienate the public in Quebec. They had also been attempting to garner support amongst the francophone immigrant community, and a high profile federal appointment of this sort did not help their case.
Calls from a few members of parliament, and by some of the provincial premiers, for Jean and her husband to reveal their sympathies were met with a statement from the Prime Minister that the two had undergone a thorough background check by the RCMP and CSIS, as was standard procedure for appointment to such a high-profile position.[10][11] Four days following this, the August 17 edition of La Presse contained the information that Jean had appeared in a video documentary toasting "to independence" in a Montreal bar with several hard-line separatists. In the video she made the statement: "Independence can't be given, it must be taken." It was then later clarified that she had been speaking about Haïti, and not Quebec.
The same day, Jean responded to the controversy, with the following statement:
- "I want to tell you unequivocally that both [Lafond] and I are proud to be Canadian and that we have the greatest respect for the institutions of our country. We are fully committed to Canada. I would not have accepted this position otherwise.... [We] have never belonged to a political party or the separatist movement."
Following Jean's statement, Martin responded "There is no doubt in my mind that her devotion to Canada is longstanding and resolute," although some critics continued to argue that her response was still too vague.[12]
By late August, polls showed that there had been a 20% drop in support for the recommendation of Jean as the next Governor General. In response, the Hatian community voiced their support for Jean, even holding special church services in her honour.[13]
Another minor controversy concerned her French citizenship, which she acquired when she married Lafond. A section of the French civil code forbade French citizens from holding government or military positions in other countries, and, as Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces and as Governor General, Jean would hold both military and government positions; however, the law is rarely applied. The French embassy stated that there was "no question" that the law would not be enforced in Jean's case. Still, on September 25, two days before her scheduled swearing-in, Jean made a statement renouncing her French citizenship, putting the controversy to rest.[14]
In an interview conducted in October, 2005, Jean's husband affirmed that he and his wife were Quebecois before they were Canadians.
Jean later said that her opponents had attempted to manufacture a controversy out of the lighthearted event in order to discredit her.
Investiture of the 27th governor general
At her investiture on September 27, 2005, Jean declared, "the time of the two solitudes [referring to Quebec and the rest of Canada] that for too long described the character of this country is past." In her speech, described as "moving," Jean set aside the usual platitudes, and called for protection of the environment, the shielding of culture against globalization and an end to the marginalization of young people. According to one media account "...the pomp and circumstance of Canada's most significant state function were blended with humour, passion and even tears."[15] Globe and Mail columnist, John Ibbitson, reflected the general captivation with the new governor general in the following way:
- "[H]ere is this beautiful young Canadian of Haïtian birth, with a smile that makes you catch your breath, with a bemused older husband by her side, and a daughter who literally personifies our future, and you look at them and you think: Yes, this is our great achievement, this is the Canada that Canada wants to be, this is the Canada that will ultimately make way for different cultural identities."[16]
As Governor General
Following a tradition for governors general, Jean's first months in the position saw her traveling to each province and territory of Canada. Where she went, crowds were large and welcoming, a marked contrast to the low approval levels shown in polls earlier.[17] On November 27, 2005, Jean attended the Grey Cup and presented the Cup, donated by previous Governor General Earl Grey in 1909, to the victorious Edmonton Eskimos. In the past, this function was often performed by the Prime Minister.
In 2006, Jean, Lafond, and their daughter undertook their first international trip, visiting Italy to attend the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics, where Canada was given the Olympic flag as the hosts of the next games in 2010, as well as to meet Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in Torino, and Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.
On April 17, 2006, while on a visit to the territory of Nunavut, Jean opened the annual Toonik Tyme Festival and announced her donation of eighty books written in Inuktitut, French and English to the Iqaluit Centennial Library in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday on April 21, 2006.[18] The next month, on May 4, she became the first governor general to address the Alberta legislature, during her first official provincial visit there. That visit preceded another to Saskatchewan, where Jean made stops in Regina, Fort Qu'Appelle and Qu'Appelle. Jean participated in an historic private discussion with women chiefs and elders at Government House, following the Lieutenant Governor's luncheon, where a local Monarchist League of Canada representative was master of ceremonies.
Also in May, she attended the investiture of René Préval as President of Haïti, her first visit to her homeland in her vice-regal capacity. She was greeted with enthusiasm in her hometown of Jacmel.[19]
Jean became the first governor general to launch an online chat with Canadians, on September 27, 2006. This initiative was part of a larger project: creating a website within the Governor General's domain name dubbed "Citizen Voices: Breaking Down Solitudes," where users could engage each other in blogs and discussion forums.
Jean embarked on a trip consisting of five state visits to African countries - Algeria, Mali, Ghana, South Africa and Morocco - between November 18 and December 11, 2006. She encouraged women's rights in each country she visited, stating that women in Islamic countries were "builders and doers," and that westerners should "look beyond the veil."[20] On November 23, 2006, the tour took her to Mali where she was greeted by tens of thousands lining the highway, and where she was presented, in the town of Benieli, with a goat, replete with a Canadian flag on its collar.[21] Male vendors in Mali also gave Canadian jouralists gifts to be passed on to Jean, provided that she also be given their phone numbers. The gifts, and phone numbers, were deposited with the Rideau Hall Office of Protocol.[22] In a precedent-breaking move, on her Citizen Voices website, Jean personally explained the role of the Governor General in undertaking state visits, and the reason behind these particular visits throughout Africa.[23] She then continued to post, from Africa, her obsevations and feelings on her experiences on the continent.
Controversy during tenure
The controversies that attached themselves to Jean prior to her appointment continued into the early months of her time as Governor General.
At the October 12, 2005, National Press Gallery dinner, a jovial annual event akin to a roast in which Canadian politicians and reporters gather and by tradition make speeches satirizing one another, Jean stirred controversy when she referred jokingly to Parti Québécois leadership candidate André Boisclair's admitted cocaine use.[24]
Also, during Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa on November 11, 2005, a handful of veterans turned their backs on the Governor General as her car drove up to the National War Memorial. The protesters said they believed Jean and her husband were Quebec separatist sympathizers who worked to break up a country the veterans fought to defend.[25]
During the week of September 18, 2006, in an interview with the Canadian Press, speaking about an idea for subsidies for Canadians to visit other parts of the country, Jean stated that Quebecers "are sometimes very disconnected from the rest of Canada" and that it is affecting the country's unity. Criticized by Quebec separatist politicians, including André Boisclair and Gilles Duceppe, she later clarified her statement by saying that Canadians from all provinces are disconnected from other parts of the country.[26][27] A September 26 editorial in the Montreal Gazette, however, supported Jean's statements on the divisions between Canada's peoples, and said that supporting national unity was a part of a governor general's mandate.[28]
In an editorial on September 27, 2006, journalist Chantal Hébert stated that Jean had "been wading uncommonly deep in political territory over the past few months," citing the Governor General's criticism of Quebec sovereigntists, and her support for the mission of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, expressed in first year anniversary interviews.[29]
Arms
Following her installation as Governor General, Jean was granted a personal coat of arms by the Canadian Heraldic Authority, depicting her Haïtian roots. The shield shows a sand dollar, a special talisman for Jean, and the Crown symbolising her vice-regal authority. The crest is a shell in a broken chain, symbolising her ancestors' escape from slavery. The supporters are two Simbis, water spirits in Haïtian culture. The motto is Briser les solitudes, which means Breaking down solitudes. Around the shield is the circlet of the Order of Canada, with its motto, Desiderantes meliorem patriam, which means Desiring a better homeland.
Titles, honours and awards
Her full style and title in English is:
- Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Chancellor and Principal Companion of the Order of Canada, Chancellor and Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Chancellor and Commander of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief in and over Canada.
In French it is:
- Son Excellence la très honorable Michaëlle Jean, chancelière et compagnon principale de l'ordre du Canada, chancelière et commandante de l'ordre du mérite militaire, chancelière et commandante de l'ordre du mérite des forces de police, gouverneure générale et commandante en chef du Canada
Shorthand titles
- September 5, 1957 – September 27, 2005: Miss/Mme Michaëlle Jean
- September 27, 2005 – present: Her Excellency The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, CC, CMM, COM, CD, DUniv, DLitt
