Flora MacDonald

For the Scottish Jacobite heroine, see Flora Macdonald

Flora MacDonald (born 1926) is a Canadian politician. She was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1972 general election as MP for the riding of Kingston and the Islands sitting in parliament until her defeat in 1988. In 1976 she became the first woman to run for the leadership of a major federal political party. She did worse than expecting leading pundits to coin the phrase the Flora factor for the phenomenon of a politician's promised support failing to materialise. It was thought that this was a result of sexism as it was thought that delegates liked the candidate but in the end could not bring themselves to vote for her because she was a woman. MacDonald dropped off after the second ballot and threw her support to Joe Clark, the eventual winner.

Clark and MacDonald, both Red Tories, became allies throughout their careers. When Clark became Prime Minister of Canada in 1979 he made MacDonald the first female Secretary of State for External Affairs in Canadian history and one of the first female foreign ministers anywhere in the world. MacDonald, in turn, supported Clark at the 1983 Tory leadership convention where he lost to Brian Mulroney.

MacDonald returned to government after the Tory victory in the 1984 general election serving first as minister for employment and immigration and then as communications minister under Prime Minister Mulroney.

Since losing her seat in 1988 MacDonald has devoted her time to international humanitarian work. In 2003 she briefly re-entered the political scene to oppose the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance but was unable to prevent the folding of the Tory party into the new Conservative Party of Canada.

She was the 1999 recipient of the Pearson Medal of Peace.