Lorraine Michael

Lorraine Michael (born March 27, 1943) is a social-democratic Canadian politician from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. From May 2006 until March 2015, Michael was the leader of the Newfoundland and Labrador New Democratic Party (NDP). She is a former nun, teacher, and social activist. On November 1, 2006, she was elected Member of the House of Assembly (MHA) for the district of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, and re-elected the following year in the provincial election, and again in 2011. On January 6, 2015, Michael announced her resignation of leader of the NDP following a leadership election which took place on March 7, 2015. Michael successfully contested the 2015 provincial election in the district of St. John's East-Quidi Vidi. Following the resignation of her successor as NDP leader, Earle McCurdy, Michael served as interim leader of the NDP from 2017 until 2018. She did not re-offer at the May 16, 2019 provincial election and retired from the legislature. Background and personal life Michael was born on March 27, 1943, to a Lebanese-Newfoundland family in St. John's, Newfoundland. Michael was a nun until she left the Roman Catholic Church in 1993 over conflicts with the local Archdiocese, including the Archdiocese's handling of an alleged sexual assault case. She has completed degrees at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Toronto. She started her career as a high school teacher on Bell Island, and was a junior high school principal and teacher in Baie Verte, the Codroy Valley, on the Burin Peninsula, and in St. John's. Michael has been a social activist and a feminist activist in Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as internationally. After leaving the teaching profession, she became Director of the Office of Social Action in St. John's where she worked on a number of coalitions for social justice, both regionally and nationally. In later years, while working with the Toronto-based Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice (ECEJ), she spoke on the subject of economic globalization in Mexico, Chile, and Zimbabwe. She has also worked with the Women and Work Committee of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and served for a period as the organization's Interim Executive Director.