Monique Bégin
Monique Bégin was born on March 1, 1936, in Rome, the eldest of six children. Her family lived in Europe until 1941, when they fled the German occupation of France and settled in Montréal as refugees.
As a child, Monique’s love of education developed early, eventually leading her to earn her teaching certificate in 1955. She then worked both as a teacher and secretary at the Université de Montréal before beginning a master’s degree in sociology there in 1958. During this period, she conducted research for organizations including the Montreal Catholic School Commission, the YWCA, and the Montreal Women’s University Club on women’s economic and social conditions. Her involvement with the Club’s Program Committee led to her becoming a founding member of the Fédération des femmes du Québec in 1966.
In 1967, she became Executive Secretary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and later joined the federal government as Assistant Director of Research at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
In 1972, she entered federal politics as a Liberal candidate. After an initial nomination loss in Duvernay, she was elected in Saint-Michel, becoming one of the first three female MPs from Quebec. She later recalled that on her first day in Parliament, a security commissioner directed her toward the public galleries rather than the House floor, reflecting the assumption that, as a woman, she was not a participant in Parliament, but an observer.
She represented Saint-Michel until 1979, serving on several parliamentary committees. In 1975 she became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of External Affairs, and in 1976 Minister of National Revenue, where she contributed to the Child Tax Credit (1978). Following a 1977 cabinet reshuffle, she became Minister of National Health and Welfare, overseeing amendments to the Old Age Security Act and implementation of the First Nations and Inuit Health Career Program and the Canada Health Act.
While Monique served as Minister of National Revenue, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF) submitted an application for charitable status that was initially rejected because the organization’s activities were perceived as partisan or political. CRIAW-ICREF co-founder Naomi Griffiths met with Monique to discuss this decision, explaining that the organization was working with local women’s groups to address issues affecting their communities. In response, Monique’s staff reviewed how such applications were assessed and worked with women’s organizations to help them revise their charters in ways that aligned with the Ministry’s requirements.
On September 4, 1984, Monique retired from politics. While serving her final days as an MP, Monique accepted a position as a visiting professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame.
In 1986, Monique became the first joint chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, a role she accepted with the objective of prioritizing women and health, as well as women and social policy. In this role, she worked jointly with Naomi Griffiths, the Dean of Women Studies at Carleton University.
While in this position, Monique delivered the keynote address opening the 1987 CRIAW-ICREF conference in Winnipeg. Her presentation, “Redesigning Health Care for Women” argued that “women and the elderly have been badly served by modern medicine because reproduction and the aging process are not pathological states but are changes in health status and for this reason do not interest medical research.”
While teaching and chairing committees, Monique was elected to the board of CRIAW-ICREF in 1988, a role she retained until 1991. Reflecting her social justice and healthcare focus, she called on the organization, during a symposium sponsored by the Secretary of State, to centre women with disabilities in one of its annual conferences.
In response, board member Estelle Reddin organized the 1990 annual conference in Charlottetown, which focused on women with disabilities and became one of the first national women’s organizations to do so. The call for papers generated significant discussion, as CRIAW-ICREF’s invitation to participate described the oppression & disadvantages faced by lesbians and women of colour, and older women as a result of disabilities.” The conversation led to an examination of the concept of disability within CRIAW-ICREF.
The conference was attended by hundreds of women with disabilities and helped to develop a relationship between CRIAW-ICREF and the DisAbled Women’s Network. Following the conference, CRIAW-ICREF produced “The More We Get Together,” a report examining the intersection of gender and disability.
After four years with Women’s Studies, Monique became Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, where she continued to speak and write on women’s health and women in politics. She also served on the International Commission on Population and Quality of Life from 1993 to 1995.
She retired early from her deanship in 1997 but remained active in committee and volunteer work, including as chair of the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative and a research project at the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control on women’s health surveillance. That same year, she was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, later elevated to Companion in 2020.
Monique returned to teaching in 1999 at the University of Ottawa School of Management and later served on the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health from 2005 to 2008. She retired from teaching in 2010, published her memoir Ladies, Upstairs! My Life in Politics and After in 2018. Monique passed away in 2023 at the age of 87.
References
Begin, Monique. Ladies Upstairs! My life in Politics and After. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018.
Bégin, Monique. “Redesigning Health Care for Women.” In Women and Well-Being, edited by Vanaja Dhruvarajan. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990.
Bonnett, Laura. “Building Bridges and Expanding Expectations: the Work of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 1976-1996.” Master’s of Arts in Canadian Studies, Carleton University, 1996.
Peritz, Ingrid. “One Woman’s Take on Politics in Canada: Monique Begin, a Former Revenue Minister and Minister of Health and Welfare, Talks to the Globe and Mail’s Ingrid Peritz about Her New Memoirs and the Discrimination She Faced in Parliament in the 1970s.” The Globe and Mail (1936-), Mar 30, 2019. https://ezproxy.lib.torontomu.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/one-womans-take-on-politics-canada/docview/2748112904/se-2.
Piccin, Kyla. “Intersectionality at CRIAW-ICREF.” Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 2019.