Alexa McDonough OC ONS
McDonough in 2008
Leader of the New Democratic Party
In office October 14, 1995 – January 25, 2003
Preceded by	Audrey McLaughlin
Succeeded by	Jack Layton
Member of Parliament forHalifax
In office June 2, 1997 – October 14, 2008
Preceded by	Mary Clancy
Succeeded by	Megan Leslie
Leader of theNova Scotia New Democratic Party
In office November 16, 1980 – November 19, 1994
Preceded by	Buddy MacEachern
Succeeded by	John Holm
Member of theLegislative Assembly of Nova Scotia
In office May 25, 1993 – October 20, 1995
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Eileen O'Connell
Constituency	Halifax Fairview
In office October 6, 1981 – May 25, 1993
Preceded by	Walter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by	Jay Abbass
Constituency	Halifax Chebucto
Personal details
Born	Alexa Ann Shaw (1944-08-11)August 11, 1944 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Died	January 15, 2022(2022-01-15) (aged 77) Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Political party	New Democratic (from 1974)
Other political affiliations	Liberal (1970–1974)
Spouse	Peter McDonough ​ ​ (m. 1966; div. 1993)​
Domestic partner	David MacDonald (1997–2004)
Children	2
Parents	Lloyd R. Shaw (father) Jean MacKinnon (mother)
Alma mater	Dalhousie University (BA)
Profession	Politician social worker

Alexa Ann McDonough (néeShaw; August 11, 1944 – January 15, 2022) was a Canadian politician who was the first woman to lead a major, recognized political party in Canada, at any level, when she was the leader of theNova Scotia New Democratic Party (NSNDP) from 1980 to 1994. Subsequently, she served as leader of the federalNew Democratic Party (NDP) from 1995 to 2003.

Prior to her political career, McDonough was a social worker inHalifax, Nova Scotia during the 1970s. Originally, she was aNova Scotia Liberal Party worker and wrote their social-work policy for the 1970 election. By 1974, she grew disenchanted with the Liberal government and joined the NDP. Her first foray into electoral politics as a candidate happened at the end of the 1970s, but was not successful.

In June 1980, there was a major rift between the NSNDP executive, mainly people from Nova Scotia's mainland, and itsCape Breton Island-based legislativecaucus overJeremy Akerman's resignation as leader. The divided party she inherited as the new leader, in November 1980, forced her to deal with a crisis within her legislative caucus. Eventually, she decided to ejectPaul MacEwan from both the legislative caucus and the party that December. McDonough won elected office in 1981 and served as a member of theNova Scotia Legislature until 1995. During those first years, she was the only femaleMember of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and had to deal withsexism both in and out of the legislature. Throughout this time, she represented theHalifax Chebucto andHalifax Fairview electoral districts. When she unexpectedly stepped down as the NSNDP's leader in 1994, she was the country's senior incumbent political leader.

She subsequently ran as theunderdog candidate for leader of the federal NDP and surprisingly won it after one-round of voting in October 1995. She spent the next two years rebuilding a federal party that lost official party status in the previous election, before running for a seat in theHouse of Commons. The NDP had a breakthrough inAtlantic Canada during the 1997 election and regained party status in the House. McDonough was elected the Member of Parliament (MP) for the federal electoral district ofHalifax in 1997. She was criticized by unions, in particular theCanadian Auto Workers union (CAW), and progressive party members of trying to move the party to the centre-left withThird Way policies. Her most visible campaign as leader was to help win the freedom ofMaher Arar, who was a victim of "extraordinary rendition" during the United States'swar on terror at the turn of the 21st century. She stepped down as party leader in 2003 but continued to serve as an MP for two more terms, until 2008, when she retired from politics altogether.

In 2009, she became the interim president ofMount Saint Vincent University and was appointed anOfficer of the Order of Canada in December of that year. She suffered from ill-health in her final years, battling both cancer andAlzheimer's disease before dying in 2022.

McDonough was born Alexa Ann Shaw inOttawa, Ontario, on August 11, 1944, at theOttawa Civic Hospital.^[1] Her parents were Jean MacKinnon andLloyd Robert Shaw, a wealthy businessman who was committed to progressive politics.^[2] He served as the first research director for the federal NDP's predecessor, the nationalCo-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF),^[3] and was an early financial backer of the NDP when it formed in 1961.^[2]

McDonough was involved in social activism from an early age, when, at 14, she led her church youth group in publicizing the conditions ofAfricville, a low-income, predominantly Black neighbourhood inHalifax.^[2] She attendedQueen's University in Kingston, Ontario, which was her family'salma mater.^[4] After two years, she transferred toDalhousie University in Halifax, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and psychology in 1965.^[4] She became a social worker and, during the1970 Nova Scotia general election, worked forGerald Regan's Liberal Party, writing that party's social policy platform.^[4] She quickly became disenchanted with Regan and the Liberals and joined the New Democratic Party in 1974.^[4]

McDonough's first foray into electoral politics occurred during the1979 and1980 federal elections.^[5] In both of those elections, she ran unsuccessfully in the federalHalifax electoral district.^[6] In the 1980 federal election, she lost to former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan,^[6] the same politician that she once supported back in 1970.^[7][8]

Just after the 1980 federal election, in the spring,Jeremy Akerman stepped down as the Nova Scotia NDP's leader. At this time, there was a growing rift between the Cape Breton Island and Mainland wings of the party.^[9]

This rift exploded in June, whenPaul MacEwan, the NDP MLA forCape Breton Nova, was expelled from the party due to his constant public airing of internal party disputes, including the implication that Akerman resigned due to "Trotskyist elements" from the mostly mainland-based provincial council.^[10] To make this situation worse for an incoming leader, the NDP's four MLAs, all from Cape Breton constituencies, voted 3–1 to keep him in the caucus, withLen J. Arsenault – the MLA forCape Breton North – being the only negative vote.^[11] MacEwan's expulsion became one of the dominant issues during the leadership race that fall.^[11]

In late September, Akerman was appointed to a top Nova Scotia civil service job that required him to both resign from the Legislature and terminate his membership in the NDP.^[12]James 'Buddy' MacEachern, a leadership candidate, and MLA forCape Breton Centre, was made the interim leader on October 2.^[12]

Despite these internecine battles, and not having a seat in theNova Scotia House of Assembly, McDonough decided to enter the leadership race. The third candidate in the race to replace Akerman was Arsenault.^[13] The leadership convention was convened in Halifax, with the leadership vote held on November 16, 1980.^[13] McDonough received 237 votes, compared to Arsenault's 42 votes, and MacEachern's 41 votes, giving her a first ballot landslide victory.^[13] As a result of her victory, she became the first woman in Canada to lead a major recognized political party.^[5][14][15]

McDonough's first order of business was to settle the Paul MacEwan question. On December 9, 1980, she managed to get her former leadership rivals to vote MacEwan out of the caucus and party.^[16]

Since she did not have a seat in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, the party was left with just two seats, because MacEwan was now an independent, and Akerman's seat was left vacant due to his resignation. For almost a year, she would sit in the Assembly's visitors gallery until she could run for a seat in the1981 Nova Scotia general election. McDonough's first provincial election as leader was fought in theHalifax Chebucto electoral district, where the Liberals and Conservatives were more or less evenly matched in terms of voter support, and the NDP was a distant third in the previous election.^[17] McDonough won her seat, the first one for the NDP in Mainland Nova Scotia, but the NDP lost all of itsCape Breton Island seats in the process.^[4][9][17]

After the 1981 election, she spent the next three years as the only New Democrat, and the only woman in the House of Assembly.^[18] She took on the "old boys' network", that permeated Nova Scotia's politics at the time, by attempting to dismantle the province's entrenched patronage system.^[18] McDonough was personally popular throughout Nova Scotia, consistently being the electors' top choice in leadership polls, but her personal popularity did not extend to the party.^[18] She led the party through three more elections, eventually building the caucus up to three members: all from the mainland, including future Nova Scotia NDP leader,Robert Chisholm.^[18] Following her fourteen years as the Nova Scotia NDP leader–which, at the time, made her the senior incumbent leader of a major political party in Canada–she stepped down on November 19, 1994.^[19]John Holm, the NDP'sSackville-Cobequid MLA, took over as interim leader, until Chisholm was elected leader in 1996.^[18][20] She remained a member of the NDP's legislative caucus until she resigned from the House of Assembly on October 20, 1995.^[21]

As the fortunes of the Nova Scotia NDP were slowly rising during the mid-1990s, the same could not be said of its federal counterpart. The1993 Canadian federal election was an unmitigated disaster for the NDP.^[22] UnderAudrey McLaughlin's leadership, the party suffered, to that date, its worst defeat since 1961 when it was founded.^[22] When looking at the popular vote, it was the worst ever election for a federal social-democratic party in the 20th century, with just seven percent of the vote.^[22] The party only had nine seats, three short of the twelve seats needed to have official party status in the House of Commons,^[23] and all the extra funding, research, office space and Question Period privileges it accords.^[24]

Following the 1993 election, the party embarked on a transformative journey, undertaking a comprehensive reform of its policies and purpose. On April 18, 1994, McLaughlin announced her intention to step down as leader by 1996.^[25][26] However, McLaughlin, confronted with internal strife akin to the challenges faced by the Nova Scotia party in 1980, advanced her departure from the end of 1996 to the end of 1995.^[27]

Amidst a toxic internal party atmosphere, McDonough entered the leadership race on May 30, 1995.^[28][29] The circumstances were reminiscent of her initial leadership campaign in 1980, characterized by a deeply divided party.^[28] Nevertheless, the party was additionally constrained by the unpopular provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) governments inOntario andBritish Columbia.^[30][31] Notably, the NDP had suffered substantial losses in these two provinces at the federal level in 1993, losing all of its Ontario members of parliament (MPs) and all but two of its British Columbia MPs, representing more than half of its caucus.^[32][33]

The 1995 leadership election deviated from previous conventions in its implementation of six regional primary votes prior to the convention. For candidates to be eligible for the convention, they were required to either secure 15 percent of the total vote or emerge victorious in one of the regional primaries. This filter narrowed the field to only three candidates for the convention.^[34] However, it is important to note that the primaries did not directly select delegates to the convention. Instead, constituency associations and labour affiliates were responsible for this delegation selection, as was the customary practice during previous conventions.^[35]

McDonough's candidacy received support from the party establishment, particularly from former Ontario leaderStephen Lewis and his labour leader brother, Michael Lewis.^[36] Despite this establishment backing, she was widely perceived as an underdog by media outlets such asThe Globe and Mail prior to the NDP leadership convention vote inOttawa.^[37] The primary votes placed her behind leading contendersSvend Robinson andLorne Nystrom, as she only secured victory in the Atlantic Canada primary and finished third in the remaining regions.^[38][37]

However, on October 14, 1995, during the convention, McDonough secured second place on the first ballot, surpassing Nystrom in a nearly three-way split of delegates.^[39] Although Robinson had won the first ballot, he believed that the majority of Nystrom's supporters would support her on the second ballot, ultimately securing her victory.^[40] Consequently, he conceded to McDonough before a second ballot could be held. On a motion moved by Robinson and seconded by Nystrom, the convention formally recognized McDonough as the party's new leader.^[41] She became the first person fromAtlantic Canada to lead a major party sinceRobert Stanfield retired as the Progressive Conservatives' leader in 1976.^[42] Unusually for a major-party leader, she refrained from having one of her MPs resign to secure entry into Parliament through a by-election, opting instead to make a third bid for her home electoral district of Halifax in the subsequent general election.^[43]

In the1997 election, her first as leader, the party won 21 seats. This included a historic breakthrough in the Atlantic provinces, a region where it had only won three seats in its entire history prior to 1997.^[44] McDonough herself won Halifax by 11,000 votes, pushing Liberal incumbentMary Clancy into third place.^[6] She would continue to win it consecutively three more times until she retired from politics in 2008.^[6][45]

During the next few years, McDonough's leadership of the party elicited controversy.^[46] Union leaders were lukewarm in their support of her, often threatening to break away from the NDP, in particular theCanadian Auto Workers' presidentBuzz Hargrove.^[47] She was widely seen within the NDP as trying to pull the party toward the centre of the political spectrum, in theThird Way mode ofTony Blair.^[48][49] Although when she made her leader's speech at the party's August 1999 Ottawa policy convention, she attempted to distance herself from "Third Way" policies by stating: "We must lay out a new way for Canadians to navigate in the 21st century. Not an old way, not a 'third way', but a made-in-Canada way...."^[50] Part of her proposal to move the party to the centre-left would include tax cuts – a move that prompted Ontario Conservative premierMike Harris, to send a controversial letter of support for the debates on tax cuts that did not please many delegates.^[51] A vote on a resolution to adopt Third Way policies in the party's platform formally was defeated, as many union leaders opposed it and McDonough's "Canadian Way".^[52]

TheCanadian Alliance and its new leader,Stockwell Day, presented a further challenge to McDonough's NDP. Fearful of the prospect of an Alliance government, many NDP supporters moved to the Liberals.^[53] As well, two NDP MPs,Angela Vautour andRick Laliberte,^[54][55]crossed the floor to other party caucuses, reducing the NDP caucus to 19 seats.^[55] In the2000 federal election, the NDP was held to just 13 seats, and its 8.5 percent of the popular vote, was near its historic low from the 1993 campaign.^[53] About the only solace the NDP and McDonough could take from the 2000 campaign was that they kept official party status in the House of Commons (if only barely),^[43] unlike McLaughlin in the 1993 campaign.^[56]

After the disappointing performance in the 2000 federal election, there were more calls for party renewal. Some party activists perceived that the NDP had moved to the centre of the political spectrum and wanted to change that by bringing in social/political activists outside of the parliamentary process. They called their movement theNew Politics Initiative, or NPI.^[57] Another group, calledNDProgress, wanted to reform the party's internal structures, with procedural changes to how leaders were elected and limiting how much control Labour Unions had in the party.^[57] The NPI proposal to create a new party from the ashes of the NDP, was opposed by McDonough, and by former NDP leader, Ed Broadbent.^[58] The NPI resolution was voted down when it was presented at the party's November 2001 Winnipeg policy convention.^[59] NDProgress's resolution to have a "one member one vote" election for party leader, with a provision to limit organized labour's allotment of ballots to a maximum of 25 percent, passed.^[60] The 2001 Winnipeg convention was also where McDonough easily defeated a leadership challenge bySocialist Caucus member Marcel Hatch, who was also an NPI supporter.^[61]

The issue that highlighted McDonough's federal leadership occurred during the twilight of her career: the fight againstIslamophobia and general anti-Arab sentiment, which swept through Canada and the United States in the wake of the9/11 attacks in September 2001. She led the charge on the national scene to repatriateMahar Arar, an Arab-Canadian who was wrongly detained as a terrorist by United States border officials, on an erroneous tip from Canada's secret service.^[62] Throughout 2002 and 2003, McDonough campaigned for his release.^[62] When he was released, his wife,Monia Mazigh, joined the NDP and became a candidate for them in the 2004 federal election, out of recognition for the support McDonough and the party showed for her and her husband.^[62]

WithBrian Masse's May 2002 by-election victory, in theWindsor West riding, the party's caucus grew to 14 members.^[63] A few weeks later, on June 5, 2002, McDonough used this positive turn in electoral fortunes to announce that she was stepping down as NDP leader.^[5] On January 25, 2003, at theToronto leadership convention, she was succeeded byJack Layton.^[43] She was re-elected to Parliament in the2004 federal election and again in2006.^[6][45] In the NDP'sshadow cabinet, McDonough served as the critic for International Development, International Cooperation and Peace Advocacy.^[6]

On June 2, 2008, McDonough announced that she would not run again in the riding of Halifax in the next federal election. She made the announcement at theLord Nelson Hotel, the same place where she celebrated her 1997 victory as the MP for Halifax. McDonough said that she would continue on as the MP for Halifax until thenext federal election.^[64]

On June 29, 2009, it was announced that McDonough was named the new interim president ofMount Saint Vincent University, in Halifax,Nova Scotia. Her one-year appointment began in August 2009.^[65] It was announced on December 30, 2009, that she was to be appointed an officer of theOrder of Canada for her pioneering work as both the Nova Scotia and Federal leader of the New Democratic Party.^[66][67] She received an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws degree fromAcadia University, inWolfville, Nova Scotia on May 13, 2012.^[68]

McDonough's only marriage was in 1966 to Halifax lawyer, Peter McDonough (April 1, 1940 – November 17, 2021),^[69] with whom she had two sons: Justin and Travis.^[64] In 1993, she separated from McDonough, later divorcing him; she said her political career did not play a part in it.^[18][64] In 1994, just before she stepped down as Nova Scotia leader, she had a hysterectomy, and waited until she recuperated before she announced her resignation.^[18]

During her time as leader of the federal NDP, McDonough was romantically involved withDavid MacDonald, a formerProgressive Conservative (PC) MP forToronto Centre—Rosedale and a cabinet minister.^[70] MacDonald ran as the NDP candidate in Toronto Centre—Rosedale in the1997 election but did not manage to get elected. In the previous election, he was the PC incumbent, and like every other PC candidate in Ontario in1993, was defeated.^[70] The pair split up prior to the2004 federal election.^[71]

On May 3, 2013, McDonough announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer about four months earlier during amammogram. She had been receiving treatment.^[72] McDonough died at a long-term care home in Halifax, on January 15, 2022, at the age of 77. She suffered fromAlzheimer's disease in the seven years prior to her death.^[7]

Source:^[45][6]

Source:^[45][6]

Changes for the Canadian Alliance from 1997 are based on the results of its predecessor, the Reform Party.Source:^[6][73]

Source:^[6][73]

Source:^[74]

Source:^[6]

Specific

Bibliography

• Alexa McDonough – Parliament of Canada biography

• 1944 births
• 2022 deaths
• 20th-century members of the House of Commons of Canada
• 20th-century Canadian women politicians
• 21st-century members of the House of Commons of Canada
• 21st-century Canadian women politicians
• Canadian Baptists
• Canadian activists
• Canadian university and college chief executives
• Canadian women activists
• Dalhousie University alumni
• Deaths from Alzheimer's disease in Canada
• Female Canadian political party leaders
• Leaders of the Nova Scotia CCF/NDP
• Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Nova Scotia
• Members of the Order of Nova Scotia
• Mount Saint Vincent University
• NDP and CCF leaders
• Deaths from dementia in Canada
• New Democratic Party MPs
• Nova Scotia New Democratic Party MLAs
• Officers of the Order of Canada
• Politicians from Ottawa
• Women MLAs in Nova Scotia
• Women members of the House of Commons of Canada
• 20th-century members of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use Canadian English from January 2022
• All Wikipedia articles written in Canadian English
• Use mdy dates from July 2025