When Member of Parliament Karina Gould (BA’10) was named Minister of Democratic Institutions during the early days of Canada’s sesquicentennial year, she became the latest McGillian to hold a federal cabinet position – a proud tradition that dates back at least to Raymond Préfontaine (Law 1873), who served as the Minister of Marine and Fisheries under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier (BCL1864).
Sir Wilfrid Laurier
Laurier was the country’s first French-Canadian leader, but not the first McGill grad to hold Canada’s highest office – that would be
John Abbott (BCL1847, DCL1867), who served as the third Prime Minister. Nor would Laurier be the last: current PM
Justin Trudeau graduated with a BA in literature in 1994.
McGillians have led at the provincial level as well. Alexander Cameron Rutherford (BA1881, LLB1881) was elected Alberta’s first premier in 1905. David Howard Harrison (MDCM1864), John Duncan MacLean (MDCM1905), Frank Miller (BEng1949), Donald William Cameron (BSc1968) were premiers of, respectively, Manitoba, British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. Brian Gallant (LLM’11) is New Brunswick’s current, and Canada’s youngest, premier.
David Johnston
For almost 200 years, many McGill grads have held elected office in Canada. Some didn’t even wait until graduation: the “McGill Five” –
Charmaine Borg, Matthew Dubé, Laurin Liu, Mylène Freeman and Jamie Nicholls – were famously elected to the House of Commons during the NDP’s “orange wave” of 2011. And a McGillian currently grants royal assent to all of Canada’s bills, laws and appointments: since 2010, former McGill principal David Johnston has served as the 28th Governor-General, the federal vice-regal representative of Queen Elizabeth II.
