Alexa Ann McDonough (née Shaw; 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 the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party (NSNDP) from 1980 to 1994. Subsequently, she served as leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) from 1995 to 2003.
Prior to her political career, McDonough was a social worker in Halifax, Nova Scotia during the 1970s. Originally, she was a Nova 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 its Cape Breton Island-based legislative caucus over Jeremy 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 eject Paul MacEwan from both the legislative caucus and the party that December. McDonough won elected office in 1981 and served as a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature until 1995. During those first years, she was the only female Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and had to deal with sexism both in and out of the legislature. Throughout this time, she represented the Halifax Chebucto and Halifax 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 the underdog 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 the House of Commons. The NDP had a breakthrough in Atlantic 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 of Halifax in 1997. She was criticized by unions, in particular the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW), and progressive party members of trying to move the party to the centre-left with Third Way policies. Her most visible campaign as leader was to help win the freedom of Maher Arar, who was a victim of "extraordinary rendition" during the United States's war 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 of Mount Saint Vincent University and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in December of that year. She suffered from ill-health in her final years, battling both cancer and Alzheimer's disease before dying in 2022.
Early life and education McDonough was born Alexa Ann Shaw in Ottawa, Ontario, on August 11, 1944, at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Her parents were Jean MacKinnon and Lloyd Robert Shaw, a wealthy businessman who was committed to progressive politics. He served as the first research director for the federal NDP's predecessor, the national Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), and was an early financial backer of the NDP when it formed in 1961.
McDonough was involved in social activism from an early age, when, at 14, she led her church youth group in publicizing the conditions of Africville, a low-income, predominantly Black neighbourhood in Halifax. She attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, which was her family's alma mater. After two years, she transferred to Dalhousie University in Halifax, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and psychology in 1965. She became a social worker and, during the 1970 Nova Scotia general election, worked for Gerald Regan's Liberal Party, writing that party's social policy platform. She quickly became disenchanted with Regan and the Liberals and joined the New Democratic Party in 1974.
Provincial leadership McDonough's first foray into electoral politics occurred during the 1979 and 1980 federal elections. In both of those elections, she ran unsuccessfully in the federal Halifax electoral district. In the 1980 federal election, she lost to former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan, the same politician that she once supported back in 1970.
Rift between Cape Breton and the Mainland 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.
This rift exploded in June, when Paul MacEwan, the NDP MLA for Cape 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. 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, with Len J. Arsenault – the MLA for Cape Breton North – being the only negative vote. MacEwan's expulsion became one of the dominant issues during the leadership race that fall.
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. James 'Buddy' MacEachern, a leadership candidate, and MLA for Cape Breton Centre, was made the interim leader on October 2.
1980 NSNDP leadership election Despite these internecine battles, and not having a seat in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, McDonough decided to enter the leadership race. The third candidate in the race to replace Akerman was Arsenault. The leadership convention was convened in Halifax, with the leadership vote held on November 16, 1980. McDonough received 237 votes, compared to Arsenault's 42 votes, and MacEachern's 41 votes, giving her a first ballot landslide victory. As a result of her victory, she became the first woman in Canada to lead a major recognized political party.
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.
1981 Nova Scotia general election 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 the 1981 Nova Scotia general election. McDonough's first provincial election as leader was fought in the Halifax 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. McDonough won her seat, the first one for the NDP in Mainland Nova Scotia, but the NDP lost all of its Cape Breton Island seats in the process.
MLA years After the 1981 election, she spent the next three years as the only New Democrat, and the only woman in the House of Assembly. 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. 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. 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. 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. John Holm, the NDP's Sackville-Cobequid MLA, took over as interim leader, until Chisholm was elected leader in 1996. She remained a member of the NDP's legislative caucus until she resigned from the House of Assembly on October 20, 1995.
Federal leadership 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. The 1993 Canadian federal election was an unmitigated disaster for the NDP. Under Audrey McLaughlin's leadership, the party suffered, to that date, its worst defeat since 1961 when it was founded. 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. The party only had nine seats, three short of the twelve seats needed to have official party status in the House of Commons, and all the extra funding, research, office space and Question Period privileges it accords.
1995 NDP leadership election 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. 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.
Amidst a toxic internal party atmosphere, McDonough entered the leadership race on May 30, 1995. The circumstances were reminiscent of her initial leadership campaign in 1980, characterized by a deeply divided party. Nevertheless, the party was additionally constrained by the unpopular provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) governments in Ontario and British Columbia. 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.
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. However, 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.
McDonough's candidacy received support from the party establishment, particularly from former Ontario leader Stephen Lewis and his labour leader brother, Michael Lewis. Despite this establishment backing, she was widely perceived as an underdog by media outlets such as The Globe and Mail prior to the NDP leadership convention vote in Ottawa. The primary votes placed her behind leading contenders Svend Robinson and Lorne Nystrom, as she only secured victory in the Atlantic Canada primary and finished third in the remaining regions.