Campagnolo served B.C. in many capacities
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians.
Iona Campagnolo was B.C.’s first female lieutenant-governor, was the first female president of the federal Liberal Party, and the first woman to hold the federal sports portfolio — “the last place where women are trusted to be involved,” observed Karin Loftstrom of the Canadian Association of the Advancement of Women in Sport.
But she is best remembered for the bum that brought down a prime minister. In 1984, Prime Minister John Turner, a former Vancouver resident, was campaigning. The polls were buoyant. Then he casually patted the Liberal president on the bottom. Her surprise was captured by TV. A feminist cause célèbre took shape. Turner shrugged it off as the genial locker-room bum slap of “a very tactile politician.” He went down to resounding defeat.
Born on Galiano Island on Oct. 18, 1932, to Kenneth and Rosamond Hardy, she moved to the North Coast community of Prince Rupert as a child when her dad took work at a fish cannery. Childhood exposure to B.C.’s second greatest river, the Skeena, and the First Nations and Asian people who congregated there to harvest its salmon, instilled in her a passion for her province, its environment and its cultural diversity.
She married, raised two daughters, and lived a small-town life until her marriage ended. She ran for Prince Rupert school board and supported herself selling radio spots and hosting a show for Skeena Broadcasting Ltd. In 1973, she was inducted into the Order of Canada for her community work, then won a seat and cabinet post in the 1974 Trudeau government.
Defeated in 1979, she stayed active as a strategist and in 1982 became the first woman president of the Liberal Party. In 2001, she was appointed B.C.’s lieutenant-governor. “It was significant to me that of the 27 lieutenant-governors, it was almost 140 years before a woman received this post,” Campagnolo said.
She gave 350 speeches a year and encouraged public use of the gardens surrounding Government House. She has been a chancellor of the University of Northern B.C., has worked internationally for women’s and human rights, has been granted names by Tsimshian and Haida First Nations, has been made a member of the Gitksan First Nation, and chaired the Fraser Basin Council, which works for environmental sustainability.