Iona Campagnolo waves to a group of chanting protesters prior to the Speech from the Throne at the B.C. Legislature in Victoria on Feb. 13, 2007.Deddeda Stemler /The Canadian Press
With her inexhaustible energy, captivating presence and scrappy demeanour, Iona Campagnolo cut a vivacious swath through Canada’s often staid political landscape. A freewheeling cabinet minister in the administration of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and perhaps the most headline-grabbing president the federal Liberal Party ever had, she radiated a star quality that, at its peak in the 1980s, had many promoting her as the Liberals’ future political leader, entreaties she rejected. During a long career that began in the isolated West Coast outport city of Prince Rupert and ended with six high-profile years as lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, she earned a reputation for getting things done in every post she held. And she was never dull.
Her outspoken, no-holds-barred style wasn’t always appreciated, leading some on Parliament Hill to brand her the Lady with the Hobnailed Boots, a nickname that delighted her. But once the political dust she raised had died down, she became known, appropriately, as the Woman of Firsts. Ms. Campagnolo was Canada’s first minister of fitness and amateur sport, the first female president of a major political party, the founding and first chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and the first woman to serve as B.C.’s viceroy.
Despite this record of achievement, however, nothing attracted more national attention than the time Liberal Prime Minister John Turner gave the striking Ms. Campagnolo, then party president, a friendly pat on the posterior while on the campaign trail in 1984. Captured on camera, it was the bum pat felt around the country. Unoffended, Ms. Campagnolo quickly returned the gesture, saying it was “womano a mano,” and Mr. Turner blustered afterward that it was just like slapping a guy on the back. But the damage had been done. At a time when feminism was on the rise, the highly publicized incident reinforced a perception that Mr. Turner, newly returned to politics, was out of touch. It exacerbated the Liberals’ cascading fortunes that led to the landslide victory by Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives.
The event was unfortunate for Ms. Campagnolo, as well. The resulting notoriety, which had nothing to do with her, was demeaning for someone who had championed feminism and blazed a trail for women in politics. It also detracted from her own extraordinary story.
A single mother with Grade 12 education and a stopgap Liberal candidate in the 1974 federal candidate, she upset the NDP’s venerable Frank Howard, who had held the Skeena riding in north-west B.C. for 17 years. “They thought I was from Mars,” Ms. Campagnolo recalled of coming from a riding as remote from the corridors of power as any in Canada. Two years later, the rookie MP found herself in cabinet. Mr. Trudeau had taken a shine to Ms. Campagnolo for her moxie in expressing views on controversial issues that did not adhere to government policy. She was an ardent supporter of a woman’s right to choose, while opposing the abolition of capital punishment and a proposed gun-control measure.
Iona Campagnolo in Montreal in June, 1985. Ms. Campagnolo was Canada’s first minister of fitness and amateur sport, the first female president of a major political party, the founding and first chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and the first woman to serve as B.C.’s viceroy.Ryan Remiorz /The Canadian Press
Her potential had also been spotted by no less than former prime minister John Diefenbaker, who noted her capabilities at a treaty signing in Saskatchewan. She was there in her initial government role as parliament secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs. Mr. Diefenbaker told those assembled: “It won’t be long before she’s a minister.”
Though she had never even been to a hockey game, Ms. Campagnolo, who died April 4 at the age of 91, was appointed Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport in the fall of 1976. It was considered a minor post, but she approached the new portfolio with characteristic gusto. Taking dead aim at the proverbial 60-year-old Swede, famously reputed to be more fit than the vast majority of Canadians, she toured the country, preaching the gospel of physical fitness, startling one citizens’ group, by proclaiming: “I can’t give you pablum. I’ve come to provoke you!”
She also increased government funding for amateur sport, charging sports organizations with producing elite athletes to improve Canada’s performance in international competition, before professional athletes were allowed.
Calgary organizers considered her early support and government financial help key to the city’s successful bid for the 1988 Winter Olympics. When Ms. Campagnolo visited a winter training camp for Canadian athletes in Cuba, a bemused Fidel Castro showed up, boasting of his own athletic prowess. Ms. Campagnolo invited him to the West Coast for a spot of salmon fishing.
Dazzled by her looks, stylish wardrobe and refreshing candour, male reporters couldn’t stop objectifying and writing about her. “The unfortunate fact has been that she is a good-looking woman in a glamour-starved House of Commons,” one columnist reflected.
Her meteoric rise came crashing down in 1979, when Ms. Campagnolo lost Skeena to the NDP’s Jim Fulton and the Liberals lost power, nationally. She returned to politics three years later with a bold run for presidency of the Liberal Party, pledging to reform the party by bringing its affairs out of smoke-filled back rooms and into the open.
Touring virtually every riding in the country, Ms. Campagnolo became one of the best-known political figures in Canada. But she couldn’t stem the tide of public opinion running against the Liberals, who had recaptured government in 1980. After Mr. Trudeau resigned, Ms. Campagnolo presided over a raucous leadership convention, famously declaring candidate Jean Chrétien “first in our hearts,” before announcing John Turner as the winner.
Iona Victoria Hardy was born in Vancouver on Oct. 18, 1932, but spent her childhood on Galiano Island in the Straight of Georgia, where her ancestors first settled in 1882. Her father, Kenneth Hardy, was a maintenance foreman at North Pacific Cannery on the Skeena River. He returned south to his family when the fishing season ended. Her mother, Rosamond, inspired Iona at an early age to forge her own path, regardless of what was expected from women in those conservative times.
After a few years, the family moved up north to the string of fish canneries outside Prince Rupert known as “Cannery Row.” Iona’s playmates were Indigenous and Japanese-Canadian children, whose parents worked in the canneries. The experience implanted in her a strong sense of anti-racism and respect for Indigenous rights she maintained throughout her life.
As a young teenager, Iona began working summers in the canneries, earning 42 cents an hour gutting fish. After the family moved into Prince Rupert, she quickly immersed herself in community activities. As a high-schooler, she fundraised for the Red Cross, standing outside the local movie theatre and imploring patrons to donate. She was secretary of the Haida chapter of the charitable organization IODE, senior class president and an eager participant in a “junior citizens” program that allowed students to learn the workings of city hall.
Ms. Campagnolo returned to the public eye in 2001 as B.C.’s lieutenant-governor, putting her personal stamp on yet another public position.RICHARD LAM /The Canadian Press
Also passionate about theatre, she became a driving force behind the Prince Rupert Little Theatre, designing costumes for most of their productions and winning a best actress award in British Columbia’s yearly one-act play festival.
Her poise and good looks did not go unnoticed. She modelled swimsuits, and was chosen as high school prom queen, Miss Prince Rupert and the city’s contestant for the crown of Miss PNE at the annual Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. A few months shy of her 20th birthday, she married local fisherman Louis Campagnolo. The couple had two children. They drifted apart and eventually divorced as Ms. Campagnolo became increasingly embroiled in politics.
In 1967, she spearheaded a group of women known as the “Marching Mothers” who confronted union picket lines with fierce protests during a bitter, complicated strike by the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. The women preferred a local union over the UFAWU and denounced its Communist Party-affiliated leadership. In his memoir, union president Homer Stevens said he had never seen such looks of hatred in all his years in the labour movement. In the end, the UFAWU was decertified at the local fishermen’s co-op.
Ms. Campagnolo was first elected as a school trustee in Prince Rupert in 1966. She spent the next six years as chair of the school board. In 1972, she won a seat on city council for the first time, and two years later found herself in Ottawa as MP for Skeena.
Before that, she had been working as a broadcaster on the city’s private radio station, CHTK, hosting a popular current affairs show, selling ads and devising station promotions. In 1973, she was recognized as B.C. Broadcaster of the Year. The same year, before her foray into federal politics, her ongoing community activism resulted in her appointment as a member of the Order of Canada for “wide-ranging services in organizing, promoting and conducting community projects in Prince Rupert.”
Ms. Campagnolo’s surprise election victory in 1974 did not come without a cost. The grind of commuting 10,000 kilometres virtually every weekend to go home to Prince Rupert then back to Ottawa and her punishing work habits had friends concerned. Yet nothing seemed to slow her down, not even three broken ribs and a cracked vertebra, suffered when her car flipped over three times after hitting an icy patch on a dark mountain road in 1975. She kept her speaking engagement the next day. Forced by the accident to curtail her jogging, she took up weightlifting, wowing reporters by bench-pressing 85 kilograms.
She acknowledged she could play it tough when she had to, once confessing admiration for the fight-prone hockey player Tiger Williams. “He plays hockey like I play politics.”
When her political career was over, Ms. Campagnolo wasted little time tacking in different directions. She resumed broadcasting for a time with the CBC, fundraised, consulted and travelled abroad for Third World development agencies such as CUSO and CIDA, and, during her six years as the first chancellor of University of Northern British Columbia, she played a formative role establishing the fledgling school. Mr. Trudeau’s historic “Dear Iona” letter to Ms. Campagnolo as Liberal Party president announcing his resignation, is now in the UNBC archives.
Ms. Campagnolo returned to the public eye in 2001 as B.C.’s lieutenant-governor, putting her personal stamp on yet another public position. She visited every nook of the province, from tea in tiny Vavenby to glittering banquets in Vancouver. She maintained her strong support and respect for Indigenous people, and did not shy from expressing her views. In a passionate speech on International Women’s Day in 2003, she denounced the rollback of women’s rights by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and decried the lack of women in political leadership. “Determine for yourself the dimension of a civilization making decisions day after day affecting the lives of women for their children all around the world, without women’s participation, all done in the name of ‘sweetest democracy!’”
She was promoted to officer of the Order of Canada in 2008.
In 2014, Ms. Campagnolo broke her neck in a horrendous fall at her home on Vancouver Island, leaving her a partial quadriplegic, physically confined to a wheelchair. “She adapted beautifully,” said her daughter Jennifer Campagnolo, “as she did with so much that happened in her life.”
Ms. Campagnolo was predeceased by her brother Harold; sister, Marion; and ex-husband. She leaves her brother John; daughters, Giana (Jan) Logan and Jennifer Campagnolo; three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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