Kim Campbell

The Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell

Rank:	19th
Term:	June 25 - November 4, 1993
Predecessor:	Brian Mulroney
Successor:	Jean Chrétien
Date of Birth:	March 10, 1947
Place of Birth:	Port Alberni, British Columbia
Profession:	politician
Political Party:	Progressive Conservative

Kim Campbell was the nineteenth Prime Minister of Canada from June 25 to November 4, 1993. Though she was not popularly elected, she remains North America's only female head of a national government to date.

She was born Avril Phaedra Douglas Campbell on March 10, 1947, but was not particularly fond of any of her given names, and consequently adopted the first name Kim in her teens. She was educated at the University of British Columbia (B.A., LL.B.) and studied for her doctorate in Soviet Government at the London School of Economics.

Campbell married Nathan Divinsky in 1972. During their marriage, Campbell lectured in political science at the University of British Columbia and at Vancouver Community College, and entered politics as a Vancouver school board trustee. Campbell and Divinsky were divorced in 1983, and Campbell married Howard Eddy in 1986.

She was elected to the British Columbia legislature as a member of the Social Credit party in 1986 and later unsuccessfully ran for the leadership of the party. A few years later she resigned from the legislature to run in the 1988 federal election as a Progressive Conservative.

Upon her election to the Canadian House of Commons in 1988, Campbell became Canada's first female Minister of Justice (1990-1993). Then she briefly became the first female Minister of National Defence before running to succeed Brian Mulroney when he resigned as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. Campbell defeated Jean Charest at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention that June.

Also in 1993, Campbell and Eddy were divorced, although the divorce was finalized before she became Prime Minister.

Campbell's quick rise to fame from a relatively unknown cabinet member to Prime Minister of Canada came as a bit of a shock to many Canadians. The fact that she was a woman, the first to become Prime Minister, initially made her very popular. For a while, it seemed that she might have a chance of repairing the Conservative party's reputation, which had been badly damaged after a number of scandals during the Mulroney government. Accordingly, an election was quickly called, and the new Prime Minister hoped to ride this wave of popularity to an electoral victory. She was also the second woman in history to sit at the table of the Group of Seven (now G8) leaders, the eight most industrialized countries in the world, after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

However, Campbell's initial popularity soon wore off. The prime minister appeared to have troubles relating to "regular" Canadians, and many felt that she had an overly condescending and pretentious tone. She once famously quipped that an election was "no time to discuss serious issues." In addition, she was criticized as carrying much the same attitudes and positions of her widely detested predecessor epitomised in the activist chant, "Kim, Kim, you're just like him."

Campbell also had a habit of making public relations blunders. A Conservative election commercial in which Liberal leader Jean Chrétien's facial paralysis was mocked was largely regarded as the final nail in her campaign's coffin.

In the 1993 election, all but two of the Conservative party's candidates lost their seats to a massive Liberal landslide, and Campbell herself failed to hold onto her Vancouver riding. Although many pundits saw the unprecedented scope of her defeat as a reflection of the unpopularity of her predecessor Mulroney (rather than as a rejection of Campbell per se), nevertheless she quickly resigned her position as party leader.

Campbell returned to lecturing in political science for a few years, this time at Harvard. Then, in 1996, the Liberal government that had defeated Campbell appointed her as Consul General to Los Angeles, a post she remained in until 2000.

In 1997 Campbell collaborated with common-law husband Hershey Felder on the production of a musical, Noah's Ark in Los Angeles. In 2002, she lectured at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is also Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, a network organised by the Kennedy School.

In 2004, she was included in the list of 50 most important political leaders in history in the Almanac of World History compiled by the National Geographic Society. Controversy ensued among academics in Canada over the merit of this honour.