Hello Audrey McLaughlin

Audrey McLaughlin had always wanted to live in the North. In 1979, she quit her job in Toronto, looked on a map and decided to drive to Whitehorse, since Yellowknife didn’t have mountains and Whitehorse did.

A long-time NDP worker, McLaughlin had no intention of running for office, but her friends persuaded her to represent the party in a Yukon by-election, when it was learned that Tory MP Erik Nielsen, the former Deputy Prime Minister, had resigned.

On July 20, 1987, McLaughlin beat the Liberal candidate, former Mayor Don Branigan, by 332 votes and was on her way to the House of Commons. She was the first NDP MP ever elected in the Yukon.

Two years later, she was elected leader of the NDP, the first woman to lead a federal political party in Canada.