Flora MacDonald

Died: July 26, 2015

Flora MacDonald, who has died in Ottawa aged 89, was a Canadian politician and political pioneer. She was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1972 as Progressive Conservative member for the federal electoral district of Kingston and the Islands and held that constituency for sixteen years.

In 1979 Prime Minister Joe Clark appointed her Minister for External Affairs and MacDonald became the first woman in Canada to hold that position. Later she would serve as Minister for Employment and Immigration and Minister of Communications in Brian Mulroney's government. MacDonald had previously bid for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives in 1976, but lost despite a campaign subsequently described as "a quixotic attempt to carry out politics in an entirely different way – open and transparent."

MacDonald was a trailblazer in other respects. The Clark government lasted less than a year, but it was long enough for her to be involved in two major foreign policy decisions. The first was to allow Vietnamese boat people into Canada. This resulted in 60,000 Vietnamese refugees entering the country and is regarded as a defining moment in the creation of Canada's multicultural mosaic.

The second was the so-called "Canadian Caper" during the Iran hostage crisis. She authorised false passports for six American diplomats who were then able to leave Tehran along with the staff from the Canadian embassy. MacDonald, however, was no easy doer of American bidding. She was very much a "Red Tory", the term developed by Canadian political scientist Gad Horowitz who viewed Canada as more collective and communitarian than its neighbour to the south. MacDonald was not anti-American, but she was pro-Canadian and worried about the relationship between external economic control and Canada's political independence.

She was also, as her name suggests, very aware of her Scottish ancestry. In 2008 photographer Graeme Murdoch and I interviewed her in Ottawa as part of a Homecoming Scotland project called "this is who we are". One of the ideas was to explore issues around Scottish identity, and the first line of the interview was striking: "My name is Flora MacDonald..."

Her father believed in names that would be easily remembered and MacDonald was born in North Sydney, Cape Breton where "everybody knew the history of the original Flora MacDonald." Her family had come to Canada from Lochaber in the 19th century and she once visited the village that they left. There she found an old man who had been corresponding with her father in Cape Breton. She also discovered a connection to Skye where "people talked the way we did, they lived the way we did in many cases, and so I felt very much at home there."

Eventually, talk of Scotland waned but the interview carried on. MacDonald told us about the humanitarian work she had been involved in since quitting politics and Afghanistan where, at the age of 84, she lived in a tent. Reflecting on her political career, she remembered raising a point of privilege with the speaker when she was in opposition because Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau insisted on calling her the "Honourable Lady". Trudeau had to address her as "The Honourable Member for Kingston and the Islands" from that day forward.

We took a picture of a picture she had on the wall which showed Joe Clark's swearing in ceremony in 1979: MacDonald a lone woman in a white dress. The only other person to stand out in the photograph was Canada's first black MP Lincoln Alexander who became Minister of Labour in the same government. They called us the odd couple, she said, with the hearty laugh that was rapidly becoming a feature of the interview.

In 1979, MacDonald attended the G7 Summit with Joe Clark where they had a 20-minute introductory session with the Japanese host. When the Canadian 20 minutes ended, the host asked them to stay on to reduce the time he had to spend with the delegation that was coming in next. MacDonald glanced out the window and saw Margaret Thatcher's limousine pulling up. Again, the hearty laugh.

The stories rolled on and we emerged from MacDonald's apartment five hours later with the Rideau Canal in the gloaming. She could not attend the exhibition in the Scottish Parliament that included the interview and we never met her again. In retrospect, it was remarkable that she would invite two strangers from Scotland into her house in the first place; evidence, perhaps, that a life in politics need not dent one's faith in human nature.

Her pioneering work on women in politics, openness in government, the treatment of refugees, human rights and the relief of suffering seems somehow more pertinent than ever. In short, Flora MacDonald was the kind of politician that once gave Conservatism a good name.

HARRY MCGRATH