2001

• Anti-globalization protesters take to the streets in Quebec to protest.
• Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).
• Women protest against the lack of protection of social policies in the agreement.
• Women in Canada and Mexico in solidarity to fight against the globalization.

2001 Quebec FTAA protest

Top

2002

Teresa Magee

Joined UFCW Canada local 175 in 1990 as a union representative.
2001 became Director of the South West Region later promoted to Executive Assistant to the President.
Sister Magee was elected to Secretary-Treasurer in 2002, 2005 and again in 2009. Sister Magee retired in 2014.

Theresa McLaren

Became a UFCW Canada Local 401 member in 1978 when she hired as a cashier by Canada Safeway in Medicine Hat.
Active as a shop steward,  elected to the local union’s executive board in 1988, serving for four years.
Hired as a union representative for UFCW Canada Local 401 in 1994, Sister McLaren was elected secretary-treasurer in 2002,  and re-elected in 2005, 2009 and 2013.

Top

2003

Aline Audette

Aline began to work in the healthcare industry in 1984 at St. Boniface Hospital. She soon became involved as a union activist and union steward for her fellow healthcare support workers. Over the next two decades Sister Audette played many roles in protecting worker's rights, including shop steward, vice-president, union counsellor, and as a member of her bargaining unit's negotiating committee - while also continuing in her role as a Health Care Aide in the post-anaesthesia Recovery Unit.

In 2003, Sister Audette became the first full-time President of UFCW Canada Local 1869. She was re-elected as President in 2005 and 2009. In 2016, Local 1869 merged with UFCW Canada Local 832, where Sister Audette now oversees the entire healthcare sector at Local 832 throughout the province. Sister Audete also sits as a co-chair of the Manitoba Council of Health Care Unions (MCHCU).

Top

2004 – Supreme Court of Canada

Louise Charron

Born 1951 Sturgeon Falls, Ontario.

Rosalie Abella

Born in 1946 in Stuttgart (Germany), in a displaced persons camp, the first Jewish woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

Marylou Mallett – Secretary-Treasurer, UFCW Canada Local 633

Marylou is Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Canada Local 633. Sister Mallet has worked for Metro for many years, has been a proud union Steward since 1989, is committed to defending her fellow workers, and over the years has participated as a bargaining committee member in several Metro contract negotiations. 

Marylou has also been a member of the Local 633 Executive Board since 1997. Over the years, Marylou has also been active on the Target Equality committee, raising funds for various causes, including most recently co-ordinating fundraisers for Youth Without Shelter – an agency which supplies emergency housing, counselling and support for homeless youth.

Top

2005

Michaelle Jean (1957-)

Michaelle Jean, award winning journalist and broadcaster is invested as Canada's 27th and first Afro-Caribbean Governor General.

Top

2006

Bev Busson (1951-  )

Bev Busson is appointed as the first woman Commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2006.

Top

2007

Sheila Watt-Cloutier ( 1953- )

For more than two decades Sheila Watt-Cloutier has worked to ensure the health and cultural survival of the Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples. In 2007, the longtime Inuit leader, activist, and environmentalist was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Top

2008

Chantal Petitclerk (1969 - )

Chantal Petitclerc, a wheelchair athlete since 1992, wins five gold medals and sets three world records at the Beijing Paralympic Games.  She caps her career with a total of 21 medals from five meets, including 14 gold.

Top

2009 - Andrea Horwath (1963 - )

MPP (Hamilton Centre), Leader of the Ontario NDP

In 2009 Andrea Horwath became the first-ever woman leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

A longtime social housing advocate and labour activist, Horwath began her political career as a three-term Hamilton city councilor (1997 - 2004). She moved to provincial politics in 2004 with a landslide by-election victory that took the riding of Hamilton East away from the incumbent Liberals. Currently she is the MPP for the riding of Hamilton Centre.
With strategic support from the UFCW Canada caucus, Horwath was chosen as the Ontario NDP party leader at its leadership convention, March 6-8, 2009. (Pictured with Horwath moments after her NDP Ontario leadership victory (l-r) : Kevin Corporon, President, UFCW Canada Local 1000A; Andrea Horwath, Leader, ONDP; Scott Penner, President, UFCW Canada Local 1977; Pearl Sawyer, Exec.V.P., UFCW Canada Local 1000A)

Top

2010

June Zolinsky

June began working at Intercontinental Parkers (now Maple Leaf Foods) in Saskatoon in 1976. In 2010 she was elected as Secretary-Treasurer and Executive Board member of UFCW Canada Local 248P which represents members at the Saskatoon facility. Sister Zolinsky continues to work at the Saskatoon plant, in addition to her Executive Board duties.

Top

Huguette Plamondon

Huguette Plamondon dedicated over five decades to building the union, improving the lives of working families, and breaking down barriers for women in Canada. She died on September 29, 2010 at the age of  84. She started out as a secretary in the Montreal office of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA, a predecessor union of UFCW Canada) in 1945.

Shortly after entering the workforce, Sister Plamondon found herself embroiled in a massive strike that involved Canada’s entire meatpacking industry. Motivated by a strong belief in social justice, Huguette became an ardent supporter of the strike. She led pickets, and became a source of inspiration and encouragement for her sisters and brothers in the labour movement. She was 21 years old.

Because Sister Plamondon possessed a rare combination of intelligence, passion and eloquence, she rapidly rose through the labour movement’s ranks. And she made history every step of the way.

Huguette was elected president of the Montreal labour council in 1955, and in doing so became the first Canadian woman to lead a major labour organization. A year later, Sister Plamondon became the first woman in Canada to achieve a national union executive position by becoming a vice president of the newly-formed Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).

In 1961, Huguette took another place in Canada’s history, nominating Tommy Douglas as the first leader of the New Democratic Party at the NDP’s founding convention. She served UFCW Canada as an international vice-president and an executive assistant to the national director for many years, and was the long-time president of UFCW Canada Local 744P in Quebec.

Top

Suzanne Hodge

After three decades of activism,  Suzanne Hodge was elected as President of UFCW Canada Local 247 in 2010.

Sister Hodge first became a member of UFCW Canada when she began working as a cashier for Safeway in December 1975.  In 1982 she was elected to the UFCW Canada Local 1518 executive board and also worked for Local 1518 as temporary staff.  In 1991, she joined the UFCW Canada National Office as an International Representative assigned to British Columbia. Three years later she joined UFCW Canada Local 777 as a staff representative, and a year later became Assistant to the President. UFCW Canada Local 777 and UFCW Canada Local 2000 merged to become UFCW Canada Local 247, where Sister Hodge was elected Secretary-Treasurer in 2006. Now as President, Sister Hodge leads a Local Union with more than 14,000 members.

Top