Trini woman seeks to lead

CLOSE ON the heels of the appointment of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as this country’s first Opposition Leader, comes word of another Trinidadian woman who is seeking to take on political leadership.

This time it is Trinidadian-born Member of Parliament in Canada, Dr Hedy Fry, who last week declared her intention to run for the leadership of that country’s Liberal party. Fry, 64, is the third female candidate to seek the Liberal leadership and the only one among the growing pack from Western Canada. Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett and Toronto lawyer Martha Hall Findlay are the other women wanting to take the reins of the Liberal party. Fry said in her speech announcing her candidacy last Thursday that the Liberal party is in need of renewal.

“We need to reconnect with our grassroots, to rebuild our relationships with each other and to focus on the things we have in common as Liberals, our vision, our adaptability, our centrist non-ideological approach to problem-solving.”

Fry began her political career in 1993, when she unseated then prime minister Kim Campbell during the federal election. She was only the fourth person to unseat a sitting prime minister and the first to do so on his or her first try for office. Despite several controversial missteps, Fry has been re-elected in every subsequent election.

Fry said the Liberal party’s strengths are keeping in touch with its membership and spanning the spectrum between centre-left and centre-right.

“A new leader must go back to those roots, strengthen them, restore them, restore their values. I intend to do that.”

Currently the critic for Sport Canada in the Liberal shadow cabinet, Fry made a name for herself by supporting gay rights and feminism. But she has also raised eyebrows with her contentious statements, some involving anti-American sentiments.

In March 2001, as secretary of state for multiculturalism, Fry’s loose-lipped comments landed her in trouble when she claimed that people were burning crosses on the lawns of Prince George, BC. She told reporters last week that she didn’t lie, but just got the town wrong.

Several weeks after Fry’s statement, the RCMP raided the home of a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in Merritt, BC.

Later in 2001, shortly after September 11, Fry attended a women’s conference in Vancouver where she did not protest or leave during an anti-American speech by University of British Columbia professor Sunera Thobani. Her credibility damaged, Fry was dropped from the Cabinet when it was shuffled in 2002.

Early in 2003, Fry caused offence by naming Israel as a country violating human rights and “threatening the United States.”

When Paul Martin became prime minister of Canada at the end of 2003, he made her parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration with special emphasis on foreign credentials. After the 2004 election, she was named parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration and the minister of human resources and skills development with special emphasis on the internationally trained workers initiative.

Fry was born August 6, 1941, in San Fernando and received her medical training at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland. She later migrated to Canada and established a medical practice in Vancouver.

She has served as president of the British Columbia Federation of Medical Women, as well as the Vancouver Medical Association and the BC Medical Association.