what contributions did michaelle jean make to canadian society?

and what obstacles have they overcome

Michaelle Jean is an accomplished and highly intelligent woman, but I don't think she was the best choice for GG. Her resume is lacking when compared to that of previous GG's. She does not have a record of public service. She is not recognizable to Canadians outside of Quebec.

I think Paul Martin was enamoured of this woman and moreso, her life story, as being representative of a new generation of Canadians. She was offered the position on that basis, rather than because of her previous contributions. He knew of her great potential as someone who could contribute to Canadian life. I think it would have been more fitting had he asked her to run for his party. Her appointment was too much, too soon, in my opinion.

I am the only person I have ever seen posting on these blogs who actually has been affected by the violence Madam Jean's FLQ felquist friends practiced. In 1969 my father, a second generation Montrealer who had spent 20 years working as a mining engineer in Sudbury got a job working on the Churchhills Falls power project which had its headquarters in downtown Montreal. So he packed us all up and moved us there. What a mistake.

We lived in lower Westmount, an enclave of what I soon learned to be were "les maudit anglais" or the "f*ing english". I was a thirteen year old school girl in grade 8 in October 1970. I was new to the city when the bombing started in earnest. Pipe box bombs in mail boxes were set by the Federation de Liberation de Quebec (FLQ). You never knew when to expect the next bomb. It became eerily normal. One day the inevitable happened and all the windows in our block were blown out. I was not injured by the flying glass but I was terrorized by it. Other kids on my block were hit by glass. The city was in a state of seige after James Cross the British Consulate was kidnapped by the FLQ. Then Monsieur Pierre Laporte, a democratically elected member of the Quebec cabinet was kidnapped and garrotted with his own cross chain by the FLQ. His body was dumped in the trunk of a Montreal taxi cab.

Can I describe the terror in that city and in my household. There were Canadian army snipers on every roof and tanks rolling down our beautiful boulevards.

The only thing that made me feel safe was when Pierre Trudeau was asked if he would invoke the War Measures Act he answered "just watch me". I knew that he cared about what happened to me and he was not going to let those bad men hurt us any more.

Pierre Trudeau, like Lester Pearson, MacKenzie King and every Prime Minister back to Sir John A. MacDonald would not watch bullies push Canadian citizens around...until Mr. Dithers came along and decided he would stop his dithering with the hot looking, Francophone Haitian/Canadia n/French Radio Canada (TV Canada) second tier "presenter" Michaelle Jean.

So what if Madam Jean had hired Jacques Rose to renovate her library in 1993. Do you remember Jacques Rose. I sure as hell do. He was the charming fellow who served eight years after the fact as an accessory to the assassination of Pierre Laporte.

Francis Simard is the good friend and cowriter of a documentary on the FLQ with Madam Jean's husband Jean-Daniel Lafond. Francis Simard also was convicted in the assassination of M. Laporte.

In the notorious "documentary" where Madam Jean toasts the demise of my beautiful home Canada by "taking independence" from it and where she refers to the "white niggers who have their black niggers in Quebec" (!!!?) she clinks wine glasses with Pierre Valliere, the valiant leader of the FLQ, poor M. Laporte's murderers.

Yes, give it to a province who has never had an appointment of GG. Newfoundland and Labrador.

Better still, let's make some steps towards a real democracy. Have each province and territory suggest three. Have the senate and RCMP whittle it down to one per province and territory then have house of commons present cases in public on each and finnally vote.