From chief cyber spy to chief of staff: 10 interesting Canadians on International Women’s Day

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To mark Worldwide Ladies’s Day, the Nationwide Put up is spotlighting some influential Canadian girls, from a number one federal Liberal management contender, Anita Anand, to enterprise powerhouse and Indigo founder Heather Reisman, getting back from a short-lived retirement to reset her firm after a “journey off model.” This isn’t a prime 10 checklist, however profiles of fascinating girls doing fascinating issues.

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Anita Anand

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A scholar, lawyer and authorized educational earlier than venturing into politics, Anand was first elected in 2019, as a Member of Parliament for Oakville, the place she and her husband raised 4 youngsters. As public companies and procurement minister throughout the early days of COVID-19, Anand was within the sizzling seat for securing vaccine provides, overcoming preliminary delays and finally securing sufficient doses to depart Canada among the many most-vaccinated nations on this planet.

Anand was moved from procurement to change into defence minister after the 2021 election, tasked with cleansing up the navy’s tradition and harassment issues. The conflict in Ukraine adopted 4 months later. Sending one in all his “greatest and brightest” to defence was a tacit admission by Justin Trudeau that he had colossal issues within the navy, columnist Matt Gurney wrote in Nationwide Put up. “Anand is likely one of the few true success tales within the Trudeau cupboard.”

Anand’s transfer to a decrease profile function as head of Treasury Board caught many observers unexpectedly. It was seen as a “wrist slapping” by Trudeau’s internal circle for a behind-the-scenes management marketing campaign. Anand instructed Nationwide Put up’s Ryan Tumilty she didn’t see the transfer as a demotion and, when requested of her management ambitions, stated she was very a lot centered on the mandate Trudeau had given her and prudent administration of the general public purse.

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Born and raised in Nova Scotia after her dad and mom, each physicians, immigrated from India, Anand has been described as “details-oriented,” the Trudeau Liberal’s “all-round fixer.” She’s a self-described perfectionist who, throughout a hearth chat final March together with her researcher-sister, Sonia Anand, hosted by McMaster College’s Educational Ladies’s Success and Mentorship Committee, stated the one solution to get extra girls into management roles “is for extra good folks to run.”

Melissa Lantsman

A former political staffer first elected within the 2021 federal election, Melissa Lantsman rapidly turned “one of many go-to folks” the celebration turns to in query interval, the Toronto Solar’s Brian Lilley stated in introducing Lantsman to a Full Remark podcast final yr.

She’s had a foot within the door of politics courting again to highschool. In 2022, Pierre Poilievre appointed her one in all two deputy leaders of the Conservative Social gathering. As a long-time conservative, she’s all the time believed in “smaller authorities, much less authorities, much less intrusion, extra accountability,” Lantsman instructed Lilley.

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She’s brazenly homosexual, a descriptor typically utilized by media that she finds “lazy, frankly,” she instructed The Jerusalem Put up. “When you had been to ask me, I’d let you know that I verify a variety of containers,” Lantsman 39, stated. “I’m younger, profitable, I used to be a feminine government. I’m a Zionist. I’m the kid of immigrants ” (Her dad and mom immigrated to Canada by way of Israel from what was then the previous Soviet Union within the Nineteen Seventies.) She’s fluent in English, French and Russian. “I’m joyful to tackle Justin Trudeau any day of the week. These are the descriptors I feel they may use.”

A former common TV commentator and speak radio host, Lantsman has labored or volunteered for Conservative campaigns since earlier than she was a teen. She as soon as served as director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper and was chief spokeswoman for Doug Ford’s 2018 election marketing campaign. In 2019, she co-authored an opinion piece urging the Conservatives to interrupt from the previous “and look to a extra modern conservativism that resonates extra broadly throughout the nation. Nowhere is that this extra clear than on the query of LGBTQ rights, which ought to not be a query in any respect.”

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When her Thornhill constituency workplace was plastered with hateful, anti-Israel messages, Lantsman vowed she wouldn’t be silenced with intimidation. “The mobs gained’t win,” she instructed the Toronto Solar. In a podcast with Nationwide Put up’s John Ivison in 2023 Lantsman recalled rising up “with not such nice tales” about her guardian’s childhoods and teenage years. Her father served within the Russian military; her mom wasn’t allowed to go to school “as a result of they’d already reached their quota on Jews.” Her dad and mom selected Canada “to do all the things doable to present us a greater life than they may ever dream of for themselves.”

A “totally different sort of Tory,” Lantsman is now one of many celebration’s rising stars.

Katie Telford

Political strategist and chief of employees to Trudeau, Katie Telford has been described as one of the vital highly effective girls in Canada, the prime minister’s “final gatekeeper” who has run Trudeau’s workplace because the Liberals took workplace in 2015. In his 2014 ebook, Frequent Floor, Trudeau praised Telford as “hard-working, powerful, sincere and depraved good,” a part of the core of his internal circle.

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She’s been described as unflappable. “Exterior of her trusted internal circle, it may be powerful to get a learn on her as a result of she’s so reserved, susceptible neither to bombastic glad-handling that often powers politics, nor to particular person heat fuzzies,” wrote The Globe and Mail’s Shannon Proudfoot. Showing earlier than a Home of Commons committee wanting into Chinese language interference in Canada’s democratic system, Telford revealed little to parliamentarians. “Publicly disclosing what our intelligence businesses know or how they arrive to know it will possibly irreparably hurt Canada’s nationwide curiosity and put folks’s lives in peril,” Telford stated.

At age 12, she labored as a web page for a number of weeks within the Ontario legislature when her neighbour, Bob Rae, was premier. She studied political science on the College of Ottawa, the place she led the debating membership to a world championship occasion in Glasgow, Scotland. From 2004 to 2006, she was chief of employees to Ontario Schooling Minister Gerard Kennedy and headed his marketing campaign within the 2006 Liberal Social gathering of Canada management election. She later served as deputy chief of employees for Liberal chief Stéphane Dion.

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She was 37, with a four-year-old son, when she turned Trudeau’s chief of employees. She’s a champion of gender fairness, recognized to be aware of the variety of girls in authorities conferences. “Her consideration to element, and reluctance to depend on intuition, has been an indicator of her tenure,” journalist Maura Forrest wrote for Politico. A “shrewd negotiator,” Telford was among the many political heavyweights who helped clinch a brand new NAFTA deal in 2018.

Good, centered, disciplined is how pollster Nik Nanos described Telford on CTV Information Pattern Line forward of Telford’s look earlier than the home committee on overseas interference. Chiefs of employees usually don’t final so long as Telford, which speaks to her significance to Trudeau, Nanos stated. “Crucial particular person, very succesful. No massive errors. It’s simple to make a mistake when you’re in politics. I don’t see any vital main errors when it comes to her trajectory as chief of employees,” Nanos stated. “Fairly strong.”

Margaret Atwood

Famed creator and poet Margaret Atwood, an enormous of Canadian literature, is remarkably right down to earth, the co-directors of the 2019 documentary, Margaret Atwood: A Phrase after a Phrase after a Phrase is Energy, instructed Nationwide Put up’s Chris Knight. “Daily she lives a easy life,” a part of the directing duo, Nancy Lang, stated. “It’s not stuffed with fancy issues. It’s snug and worn.”

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Critics say her work has by no means been extra related in an period of authoritarianism and looming artificial wombs. At 84, the creator of greater than 50 books of fiction, poetry, crucial essays, youngsters’s books and graphic novels, Atwood was lately honoured as a author “whose work expresses a uncommon mixture of literary expertise and ethical creativeness, serving to us to higher perceive the world and our place in it.” The literary big has lately pushed again in opposition to U.S. college board censorship of her traditional, The Handmaid’s Story, a ebook she considers “a lot much less sexually express than the Bible,” in addition to pirated copies of her books getting used to coach AI chatbots. “As soon as absolutely educated, the bot could also be given a command — ‘Write a Margaret Atwood novel’ — and the factor will glurp forth 50,000 phrases, like delicate ice crem spiraling out of its dispenser, that shall be indistinguishable from one thing I’d grind out,” she wrote in The Atlantic.

Atwood started crafting the Handmaid’s Story “on a clunky rental typewriter whereas on fellowship in West Berlin, in 1984,” Rebecca Mead wrote in a New Yorker profile. The ebook would promote greater than eight million copies in English globally. The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to Handmaid’s Story, was a joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. Her lately launched Outdated Babes within the Wooden: Tales, a group of brief tales devoted to her accomplice, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019, is a compilation of tales involving “jokes, griefs, snails, aliens, murders, World Struggle II and extra,” she instructed The Harvard Crimson. The acclaimed creator, feminist icon and environmental activist has been described as “arguably essentially the most well-known dwelling literary novelist on this planet.” She’s additionally a self-described voracious, virtually compulsive, form of reader. “If there may be nothing else to learn, I’ll learn the again of the cereal field and airline in-flight magazines,” she instructed the CBC Radio’s Matt Galloway in a dialog earlier than a packed Toronto viewers final yr.

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She is, by nature, a hopeful particular person, she instructed Galloway. “Hope is a part of our human beingness.” As she’s aged, so, too, have her ideas on growing old, telling Galloway that, at about age 18, she wrote a brief story “a few actually, actually previous lady … like she was historic, all dusty and kind of dried up … she was 40.” She instructed Wired getting previous “is extra enjoyable than you assume.

“So long as you’re not really dying or having dementia, you simply have lots much less to lose…. You may color quite a bit additional outdoors the strains, particularly in comparison with younger folks as of late, in an age of tension. Persons are afraid of being overwhelmed up by their friends on social media. They haven’t been hardened within the fireplace,” Atwood stated.

“When you have been hardened, you may simply let it rip.”

Jayna Hefford

File-breaking attendance, tickets promoting out in minutes — because the six-team league hit the ice in January, the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League enchantment has been magical, and one of many stars behind that magic is retired ice hockey participant, adorned Olympian and Hockey Corridor of Famer Jayna Hefford.

The PWHL’s senior vp of hockey operations, Hefford grew up a Wayne Gretzky fan, began enjoying hockey at six, and, by 1994, was a member of Ontario’s championship workforce within the inaugural girls’s under-18 match. After making her world championship debut in 1997, Hefford turned one of many longest serving gamers of Canada’s Nationwide Ladies’s Group. She ranked second all-time in Group Canada historical past when she retired in 2015, with 267 video games performed, 157 objectives scored and 291 factors.

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“Extra of a purpose scorer than a play maker,” Hefford, 46, instructed Edward Greenspon on his podcast, WONK. Her older brother performed the sport; her dad performed the sport. They all the time had a yard rink at their dwelling in Kingston, Ont. “Hockey Evening in Canada was kind of a factor in our home on Saturdays,” Hefford instructed Greenspon. “It’s a ardour for me that I’ve had so long as I can bear in mind. I simply assume it’s a type of belongings you’re born with.”

Her hope, she instructed a packed media briefing on the league’s debut at TD Place in January, is that “each younger woman who needs to see a future for herself in hockey can do this now.”

Sarah Polley

It had been a decade since Sarah Polley directed her final movie, Tales We Inform (2012). Based mostly on a Miriam Toews novel, her fourth characteristic, Ladies Speaking (2022), got here out to crucial acclaim. The movie, starring Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, tailored and directed by Polley, gained her an Academy Award for Finest Tailored Screenplay.

“To start with, I simply wish to thank the Academy for not being mortally offended by the phrases ‘girls’ and ‘speaking’ put so shut collectively like that,” Polley stated in her acceptance speech.

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The movie takes place in a tight-knit Mennonite colony within the aftermath of sexual abuse, as the ladies meet in a hayloft to decide. Ought to they do nothing, keep and struggle or depart? Polley continued, “The final line of our movie is delivered by a younger lady to a brand new child, and she or he says, ‘Your story shall be totally different from ours.’ It’s a promise, a dedication and an anchor.”

Born in Toronto, Polley is a former baby actor who made her movie debut within the Disney film One Magic Christmas (1985) on the age of 5. Her star continued to rise in TV collection comparable to Ramona (1988) and Street to Avonlea (1990–96) and movies together with Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994) and The Candy Hereafter (1997), which obtained the Grand Prix at Cannes.

In 1999, at 20, she transitioned to directing, first with shorts after which a miniseries. Polley’s first characteristic movie, Away From Her (2006), was primarily based on a brief story by Alice Munro and starred Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie as a married couple contending with infidelity and Alzheimer’s illness. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Finest Tailored Screenplay and gained the Genie Award for Finest Course (making Polley the primary lady to obtain it).

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She went on to put in writing and direct Take This Waltz (2011), impressed by a Leonard Cohen music of the identical identify, and Tales We Inform, a feature-length documentary about her household, which gained a number of awards for greatest documentary and was named one of many Prime 10 Canadian Movies of All Time in 2015. Polley continued to put in writing, releasing her first ebook of essays, Run In direction of the Hazard, in 2022.

Polley instructed The New Yorker in 2011 that her early success as a toddler performer allowed her to set skilled boundaries at a younger age. “You attempt to do good initiatives, and also you collaborate with fascinating folks, and also you by no means embark upon attempting to promote your self, or pitch your self, or get someplace.” A sentiment she reiterated on the 2022 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. “I’m not overly formidable as a filmmaker, typically,” Polley reportedly instructed the viewers. “If I don’t make one other movie once more, I’m OK with that. I don’t wish to make a movie except it has one thing to say.”

Caroline Xavier

Caroline Xavier, head of Canada’s digital spy company, the Communications Safety Institution (CSE), has been a public servant for over three a long time. On the CSE’s 77th anniversary in September 2023, Xavier posted on LinkedIn: “So grateful to be Chief No. 11 of such an incredible group and the place I get to guide folks which are passionate and devoted to the mission.”

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As chief of one in all Canada’s overseas intelligence businesses, Xavier is tasked with “defending Canada’s authorities and important infrastructure from cyber threats.” A accountability that has solely change into extra crucial since 2020, when the CSE warned that foreign-backed disinformation and on-line affect campaigns turned the “new regular.”

Earlier than being appointed chief of the CSE in August 2022, Xavier made historical past because the affiliate deputy minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. “I’m the kid of Haitian immigrants and the primary Black particular person — male or feminine — to succeed in the deputy minister rank within the federal public service,” Xavier stated in a 2020 interview with the College of Ottawa’s Telfer College of Administration. “It’s an achievement I’m extraordinarily happy with. But this milestone additionally raises the query: What took us so lengthy?”

Canada’s chief cyber spy can also be chargeable for one other first. On parental depart in 1995, Xavier co-founded The Bagel Run, Inc., the primary Montreal-style bagel store in Orleans, Ont., which remains to be baking bagels in a wood-burning oven practically three a long time later.

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Xavier’s profession in public service began with a human assets function over 30 years in the past. She was appointed assistant secretary to the cupboard, safety and intelligence on the Privy Council Workplace and has held a number of pivotal positions on the Canada Border Companies Company and government positions with the CSE, Business Canada and the Canada Income Company.

Born in Montreal, Xavier’s dad and mom “instilled in her the worth of schooling,” in accordance with Black Ottawa Scene. After ending elementary college in Canada, most of Xavier’s secondary research happened in Haiti, together with her ultimate yr in New York. Xavier then attended the College of Ottawa, the place she graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in administration with a focus in advertising and marketing and informatics. She pursued graduate research at Dalhousie College, incomes a grasp’s diploma in digital commerce, legislation, info administration and data know-how.

Xavier was “humbled” to be acknowledged as one in all Shifter Journal’s Excellent Black Ladies in Canada for 2023. “One factor that has pushed me through the years and all through my profession is the mantra ‘when you can see it, you will be it,’” she stated in a CSE statement on X. “In my case, I used to be fortunate to see a variety of profitable Black girls in my household and neighborhood and had many unbelievable those who influenced and supported me.”

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Heather Reisman

Heather Reisman made headlines this previous fall for reducing her retirement brief to return because the CEO of Indigo Books and Music. Reisman based the corporate in 1996 and, over practically 30 years, constructed it into Canada’s greatest bookstore chain. She initially stepped down as CEO in September 2022. Nearly a yr later — lower than per week earlier than her seventy fifth birthday — she left the board.

“Deciding when it’s time to transfer on is likely one of the hardest choices a founder should make, however I do know that is the precise second for me,” she stated in a launch saying that she would retire from her roles as government chair and a director of Indigo on Aug. 22, 2023. Three weeks later, she returned as CEO “after succession plans took a improper flip,” in accordance with BNN Bloomberg. “I’m again as a result of, however all people’s greatest intentions, Indigo took a journey off-brand,” she stated, after her successor, Peter Ruis, abruptly resigned.

Reisman reportedly has no fast plans to search for one other successor however has realized from the expertise. “A deep ardour for books and storytelling” is non-negotiable. When she began Indigo, books had been the enterprise’ focus, and she or he is placing them again within the highlight. “Whoever comes (subsequent) has to know that (what) we’re at our coronary heart and soul, and the core, is concerning the books, the tales, the writers,” stated Reisman.

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Born in Montreal, Reisman is one in all Canada’s most distinguished advocates of literacy and studying. At age 11, she saved her allowance to hitch a book-of-the-month membership, she instructed Canadian Enterprise in 2008, and her love of studying remains to be robust. She reportedly strives to learn a minimum of one ebook per week however begins many extra, giving them 20 pages to attract her in.

Reisman studied social work at McGill College and was a youth caseworker earlier than beginning a enterprise consultancy and briefly heading up the delicate drink firm Cott Company. After working with American bookseller Borders to assist them increase into Canada, which by no means materialized, Reisman opened the primary Indigo retailer in Burlington, Ont. in 1997. “Heather’s Picks” quickly turned synonymous with the model as Reisman established herself as Indigo’s “Chief Booklover.” She adopted the launch of Indigo by taking on Chapters in 2001 and co-founded Kobo, a world e-reader maker, in 2009.

Recent out of her temporary retirement, Reisman reportedly assured publishers she was joyful to be again in an October 2023 on-line city corridor assembly. “To the extent that during the last whereas, one way or the other books felt like they weren’t the guts and soul (of the corporate), that we weren’t dwelling our mission, which is to encourage studying, I can guarantee you that each single minute of each single day, we’re centered on precisely that.”

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Linda Hasenfratz

Linda Hasenfratz is an government recognized for her management function at Linamar, Canada’s second-largest auto components producer (after Magna Worldwide) primarily based in Guelph, Ont. Hasenfratz has performed a vital function within the progress and success of the corporate since changing into the CEO in 2002, succeeding her father, Hungarian immigrant Ferenc (Frank) Hasenfratz.

Frank based Linamar as a machining enterprise within the basement of his dwelling in Ariss, Ont., in 1966. His daughter joined the corporate in 1990, initially as a machine operator in a automobile components manufacturing unit, and rose by way of the ranks earlier than changing into government chair and CEO. Beneath her management, Linamar has expanded its operations worldwide, changing into a key participant within the automotive and industrial manufacturing sectors.

At the moment, Linamar is a diversified international manufacturing firm specializing in precision metallic parts and techniques for numerous industries, together with mobility, medical and agriculture. It generates $10 billion in gross sales, and Linda Hasenfratz is chargeable for 33,500 workers in 70 manufacturing areas and 14 analysis and improvement centres in 17 nations.

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Hasenfratz has obtained many accolades and honours, together with being named one in all Fortune’s Most Highly effective Ladies Worldwide, Canada’s Excellent CEO of the 12 months and receiving the Order of Canada. Philanthropy is a spotlight for her, and Hasenfratz serves on numerous boards and advisory teams, together with the Board of Governors on the Royal Ontario Museum and the inaugural Chair of the Philanthropy Management Cupboard of the Guelph Normal Hospital.

She advocates for girls in management roles, promotes range within the office and needs “to see girls progress in enterprise to the highest stage of trade.” On Feb. 20, Catalyst Canada introduced it had appointed Hasenfratz as the brand new Chair of its Canada Advisory Board due to her dedication to selling gender fairness and inclusive workplaces.

“I’m honoured to tackle the function of chair for the Canadian Advisory Board. I stay up for working with Catalyst Canada and my esteemed colleagues to drive impactful change and create inclusive environments the place everybody thrives,” Hasenfratz stated.

As a part of her advocacy for girls in science, know-how, engineering and arithmetic, Hasenfratz based See it Be it STEM it in 2018, an initiative “to empower ladies and younger girls to pursue their curiosity in STEM.” Hasenfratz  earned a bachelor of science diploma in chemistry and an MBA from Western College. “Society typically has a mistaken picture of scientists, technologists, laptop scientists, coders, engineers and mathematicians. STEM grads are as various as our general inhabitants.”

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Danielle Smith

A self-described “proud Albertan,” Danielle Smith has reinvented herself all through her profession, working in media, enterprise and politics, then biking again once more. Born and raised in Calgary, Smith’s dad and mom (each commerce graduates who labored within the oil sands) named her Marlaina Danielle after the B-side music Marlena by The 4 Seasons — however she has all the time passed by Danielle.

Smith has bachelor’s levels in English and economics from the College of Calgary. After a analysis internship on the Fraser Institute, she was director of the Canadian Property Rights Analysis Institute. Smith then transitioned to media, internet hosting a nationwide present affairs speak present on International TV and becoming a member of the Calgary Herald as an editorial author and columnist. After a quick stint as a tax affiliate, she hosted radio speak exhibits on well being and property rights for the now-defunct CKMX whereas serving as director for the Alberta Property Rights Initiative.

From 2006 to 2009, Smith was the director of the Canadian Federation of Impartial Enterprise earlier than changing into the chief of the Wildrose Social gathering, a place she held till December 2014, when she crossed the ground to hitch then premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives.

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After shedding her bid for a Progressive Conservative nomination in Highwood in 2015, which many thought of fallout for her floor-crossing, Smith returned to radio as a chat present host for Corus Leisure, the place she produced three hours of dwell radio 5 days per week.

When Smith left her practically six-year speak present in February 2021, she defined her departure in a commentary piece. “My whole grownup life and profession has been spent questioning authority and establishments and traditional knowledge,” Smith wrote. “Sadly over the previous couple of years far too many matters have change into unchallengeable and the mob of political correctness thinks nothing of destroying an individual’s profession and popularity over some perceived slight, actual or imagined. I’ve discovered that consequently there are lots of matters I merely select to not cowl anymore.”

Smith then moved again to enterprise advocacy as a lobbyist and president of the Alberta Enterprise Group whereas internet hosting video interviews on-line with folks she stated had been off limits on her radio present.

After her predecessor, Jason Kenney resigned as United Conservative Social gathering celebration chief in 2022, Smith introduced she was launching a management marketing campaign. “The membership of the United Conservative Social gathering is hungry for a pacesetter that shall be responsive and struggle for the pursuits of Alberta,” she wrote in a press release on the time. Now the UCP chief, Smith was sworn in as Alberta’s nineteenth premier in October 2022.

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