Person

Jean, Michaëlle

September 6, 1957 -

Michaëlle Jean is a Canadian stateswoman and former journalist who served from 2005 to 2010 as Governor General of Canada, the 27th since Canadian Confederation. She is the first Haitian Canadian and black person to hold this office. Jean's family hails from Haiti; she was born on September 6, 1957 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was baptized at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, and spent winters in that city and summers and weekends in Jacmel, her mother's hometown. Though her father worked as principal and teacher for a Protestant independent school in Port-au-Prince, Jean was educated at home, as her parents did not want her swearing allegiance to the then Haitian president, François Duvalier, as all Haitian schoolchildren were required to do. With her family, Jean fled Haiti to escape Duvalier's regime, under which Jean's father was arrested and tortured in 1965. Jean's father left for Canada in 1967, while she arrived with her mother and sister the following year; the family settled together at Thetford Mines, Quebec. Jean's father, however, became increasingly distant and violent, and her parents' marriage eventually fell apart; she, with her mother and sister, then moved to a basement apartment in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal. Jean received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Italian and Hispanic languages and literature from the University of Montreal, and, from 1984 to 1986, taught Italian Studies there, while completing her Master of Arts degree in comparative literature. She then went on with language and literature studies at the University of Florence, the University of Perugia, and the Catholic University of Milan. Besides French and English, Jean is fluent in Spanish, Italian, Haitian Creole, and can read Portuguese. Concurrent with her studies between 1979 and 1987, Jean coordinated a study on spousal abuse and worked at a women's shelter, which paved the way for her establishment of a network of shelters for women and children across Canada. She also involved herself in organizations dedicated to assisting immigrants to Canada obtain the entry they desired, and later worked for Employment and Immigration Canada and at the Conseil des Communautés culturelles du Québec, where Jean began writing about the experiences of immigrant women. She married French-born, Canadian filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond, and the couple adopted as their daughter Marie-Éden, an orphaned child from Jacmel. Through her marriage to Lafond, Jean has two stepdaughters. Jean became a reporter, filmmaker, and broadcaster for Radio-Canada in 1988, hosting news and affairs programmes such as Actuel, Montréal ce soir, Virages, and Le Point; she was the first person of Caribbean descent to be seen on French television news in Canada. She then moved in 1995 to Réseau de l'information (RDI), Radio-Canada's all-news channel, in order to anchor a number of programmes, Le Monde ce soir, l'Édition québécoise, Horizons francophones, Les Grands reportages, Le Journal RDI, and RDI à l'écoute, for example. Four years later, she was asked by CBC's English language all-news channel, CBC Newsworld, to host The Passionate Eye and Rough Cuts, which both broadcast the best in Canadian and foreign documentary films. By 2004, Jean was hosting her own show, Michaëlle, while continuing to anchor RDI's Grands reportages, as well as acting occasionally as anchor of Le Téléjournal. Over the same period, Jean made several films with her husband, including the award-winning Haïti dans tous nos rêves ("Haiti in All Our Dreams"), in which she meets her uncle, the poet and essayist René Depestre, who fled from the Duvalier dictatorship into exile in France and wrote about his dreams for Haiti, and tells him Haiti awaits his return. She similarly produced and hosted news and documentary programming for television on both the English and French services of the CBC. On August 4, 2005, it was announced from the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada that Queen Elizabeth II had approved Prime Minister Paul Martin's choice of Jean to succeed Adrienne Clarkson as the Queen's representative. Jean announced to the press in early 2010 that she would step out of the viceregal role near the end of the traditional, but not official, five-year period. The then official opposition leader, Michael Ignatieff, publicly advocated the extension of Jean's tenure, in doing so breaking the tradition of keeping consultations on the next governor general among the prime minister and opposition party leaders confidential. Polls conducted around that time showed that Jean had earned an approval rating of 60%. On May 10, 2010, Princess Margriet of the Netherlands presented Jean with a new tulip cultivar named the Michaëlle Jean tulip; with deep maroon petals; it was designed to reflect the Governor General's personal tastes. This carried on the tradition of Dutch royalty giving tulips as gifts to Canada. In the weeks before Jean's departure from the viceregal office, the Cabinet announced that the Michaëlle Jean Foundation would be established by the federal Crown-in-Council to focus on promoting education, culture, and creativity among youth from rural, northern, and/or poor communities in Canada. It was also reported that the Secretary-General of the United Nations would be appointing Jean to act as special envoy to Haiti for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, with an aim to fight poverty and illiteracy and raise international funds. She was on November 8, 2010, appointed for a four-year term. Although the position's office is located in Paris, France, Jean opted to remain in Canada and base herself out of space provided by the University of Ottawa and rented by the Michaëlle Jean Foundation. In early 2011, Jean made a call for the overhaul of Haiti's education system, as "the cornerstone of the impoverished nation's future prosperity." Also that year, it was announced that Jean had been appointed as Chancellor of the University of Ottawa; she began her term on February 1, 2012, and stepped down in 2015. Secretary-General of La Francophonie Abdou Diouf, in April 2011, appointed Jean as the Grand Témoin de la Francophonie for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, with the task of promoting the French language and ensuring compliance by the London Olympic Organising Committee with rule 24 of the Olympic Charter, which gives French the status of an official language of the Olympic Games. In 2014, the Canadian federal government, along with the provincial governments of Quebec and New Brunswick, as well as the government of Haiti endorsed Jean's candidacy to be Diouf's successor as Secretary-General of La Francophonie. On November 30, 2014, the representatives of governments of the 57-member organization chose Jean for the position by consensus after the four other candidates withdrew. Her four-year mandate began January 5, 2015, and she has since promoted democratic procedures—particularly in respect to elections in the Central African Republic, Niger, Comoros, and Benin—education, and the rights of women and girls. Jean sought a mandate for a second four-year term at the 2018 Francophonie Summit in Armenia, however, France and eventually Canada supported the consensus candidate, Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo. Jean has been criticized for expenses such as spending $500,000 to renovate her Paris apartment, a $50,000 bill for four nights at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the acquisition of a $20,000 piano and the $1-million price tag for a youth-engagement program carried out aboard the replica of a historic 18th century ship, the Hermione. Jean was defeated in her bid for a second term when the 2018 Francophonie summit held in Armenia agreed, by consensus, to elect Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo as secretary-general. Jean's term in office ended on January 2, 2019. Jean was named to succeed Jean Paul Gladu as chancellor of St. Paul's University College in late October 2020. The school, which is affiliated with the University of Waterloo, offers programs in Indigenous Studies, International Development, Canadian Studies and Human Rights while also being home to the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre, the Student Refugee Program, and GreenHouse, a nationally-recognized social enterprise incubator. Jean was given the mandate to revive Haitian soccer as the Head of the Fédération haïtienne de football until 2022.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Jacmel, Haiti
Thetford Mines, QC
Montreal, QC
Florence, Italy
Milan, Italy
Ottawa, ON
Waterloo, ON

Governor General of Canada
Teacher
Philanthropist
University chancellor
Diplomat

RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.

Catalogued December 2022.

1) Archival material
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C3%ABlle_Jean
3) https://www.michaellejean.ca/detailed-biography
4) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michaelle-Jean