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Elizabeth May (born June 9, 1954) is an environmentalist, writer, activist, and lawyer in Canada. She was the Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada from 1989 to 2006.
History
She was born in Connecticut to affluent parents. Her mother was a prominent anti-nuclear activist, and one of the original founders of the peace group SANE. May attended the prestigious Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. Her family moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1972.
Once in Cape Breton, her family suffered a reversal of fortune due directly to involvement in protest against an environmental abuse. May waited on tables for eleven years to put herself through university. She graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1983. She began work as an environmental lawyer advising Tom McMillan, Brian Mulroney's Environment minister. She resigned from her post after learning of the government's plan to grant permits for the Rafferty-Alameda Dams in Saskatchewan without performing environmental assessments.[1]
In 1989, she became the founding executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada.[2]
May sits on the boards of the International Institute of Sustainable Development and Prevent Cancer Now! She is also a former vice-chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
In 2001, May went on a 17 day hunger strike to protest the government's failure to clean up the Sydney tar ponds in Cape Breton.[3]
After that, May was involved in lobbying Paul Martin, Minister of Finance, and apparently was instrumental in convincing him that GDP was not a viable measure of economic performance, a position Martin clearly advanced in public in Canada through 2003.[citation needed]
When Martin became Prime Minister of Canada in late 2003, he was however circumspect on this point, and his replacement in Finance, Ralph Goodale, was concerned mostly to cut Canada's debt to GDP ratio, which was already the lowest in the world. May rallied and repeated her conversion feat, and by February 2005 Goodale announced "the greenest budget ever" with May at his side, representing the Green Budget Coalition.[4]
May was also involved in international lobbying. She said that the Montreal Action Plan (which came out of the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference) was "a set of agreements that may well save the planet." [5]. She counts Bill Clinton, who attended the Montreal Conference in 2005 at her request, among her contacts. She was the person, reputedly, who invited Clinton and convinced him to come. Clinton's presence was instrumental in getting the US to agree to talks on climate change for the first time.
May resigned as the Sierra Club's executive director in April 2006, intending to step down in June 2006. As one of her last major acts in this post she participated in a poll of experts that determined that Brian Mulroney was Canada's "greenest" Prime Minister, due in part to his influence over the US on acid rain. This was May's last public nonpartisan announcement.
May currently lives in New Edinburgh, a suburban community in Ottawa, Ontario with her daughter, Victoria-Cate, born in 1991.
Political Involvement
On May 9, 2006 May entered the Green Party of Canada's leadership race. The Green Party of Canada has increasingly won votes in recent years, however, it remains without a seat in any of Canada's legislatures.[6] She announced her intent to make the Greens "a force" and "would have influence" and "rock this country's politics in a way no other party ever has". She cited the "major planetary catastrophe" and "climate crisis" and the "crisis of democracy" cited by Al Gore, another climate activist. "I find myself despairing when I see four men in suits engaging in a debate where nothing important is said… if the voters get to hear a whole bunch of really exciting new ideas, they might like them… instead of trying to do a calculation of who they hate the least." [7]
The competition to May's candidacy bid is Deputy Leader David Chernushenko, who won the greatest amount of Green Party votes of any GPC candidate in the 2006 election.
While May had no prior political party affiliation, she did publicly endorse New Democratic Party leadership hopeful Bill Blaikie in the 2003 leadership contest which was won by Jack Layton.[8]
Honours and awards
- Elizabeth May Chair in Women’s Health and the Environment, Dalhousie University, 1998.[9]
- Honorary doctorate, Mount Saint Vincent University, 2000. [10]
- Harkin Award from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, 2002.
- Honorary doctorate, University of New Brunswick, 2003.[11]
- United Nations Global 500 award. [12]
- Officer of the Order of Canada, 2005. [13]
Selected works
- Frederick Street: life and death on Canada's Love Canal (with Maude Barlow). 2000. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0002000369
- Paradise Won: the struggle for South Moresby. 1990. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0771057725
- At the cutting edge: the crisis in Canada's forests. 2005. Key Porter Books. ISBN 1552636453
- How to Save the World in Your Spare Time. 2006. Key Porter Books. ISBN 1552637816
References
- ^ Interview with Elizabeth May, Sept. 1990
- ^ Library of Canada biography
- ^ Library of Canada biography
- ^ Liberal budget announcement, 2005
- ^ CBC News: Climate-change conference ends with key deals
- ^ Toronto Star: Veteran environmentalist ponders Green Party leadership run
- ^ quotes from a CBC Radio One replay of her announcement on May 9, 2006.
- ^ Supporter of Bill Blaikie's NDP leadership bid
- ^ Library of Canada biography
- ^ Mount Saint Vincent University honour roll
- ^ UNB Renaissance College newsletter
- ^ UN Global 500 directory
- ^ Order of Canada citation