Michaëlle Jean

She went to the Caribbean to work on a documentary about Martinique poet Aimé Césaire in 1991. There she fell in love with the film’s French-born Canadian director Jean-Daniel Lafond, and married him after some time. The couple has one adopted daughter, Marie-Eden.

In 2011 the Universities Fighting World Hunger international network launched the Michaelle Jean Award to recognize students who have made a major contribution to combating hunger in an emergency relief situation.

She was born on 6 September 1957 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Roger and Luce. Both her parents were teachers and her father worked as the principal for an elite Protestant private school in Port-au-Prince.

The political situation in Haiti was very tense at that time and thus Michaelle was educated at home instead of being sent to school.

Her father was abducted and brutally tortured by the henchmen of the President François Duvalier in 1965 and the family decided to leave the country for the sake of their safety.

Her father went to Canada in 1967 while the rest of the family joined him after some time. They eventually settled in Quebec but the family’s problems were far from over. Roger became increasingly abusive and her parents separated.

She attended the University of Montreal from where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Italian and Hispanic languages and literature. She completed her Master of Arts degree in comparative literature from the same university.

She went to Haiti with a friend to conduct research on the island’s women. Her work caught the attention of a National Film Board producer who appointed her as a researcher and interviewer for a film on the 1987 Haitian elections, shown on ‘Le Point’, a news magazine program on Radio-Canada, the French language arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

She was eventually hired by Radio-Canada in 1988 as a reporter, filmmaker, and broadcaster, and worked on several of the network's programs, including ‘Actuel’, ‘Montréal ce soir’, and ‘Virages’.

In 1995, she started working for the Réseau de l'information (RDI), Radio-Canada's all-news channel and anchored a number of programs like ‘Le Monde ce soir’, ‘l'Édition québécoise’, ‘Horizons francophones’, ‘Les Grands reportages’, and ‘Le Journal RDI’.

She established herself as a very popular journalist over the next few years and was hosting her own show, ‘Michaëlle’ by 2004.

On 27 September 2005, she became the 27th Governor General of Canada, succeeding Adrienne Clarkson to became the first black person to serve as governor general.

During her term as Governor General of Canada, she focused strongly on the plight of female victims of violence.