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National News: CBC Host Named Governor General
OTTAWA — Michaëlle Jean, the Haitian-born television personality who appears on both CBC's English and French networks, will become the 27th governor general of Canada. Prime Minister Paul Martin announced this morning that the Queen has approved the appointment of Jean as her next representative in Canada.
Jean will take up the vice-regal post after Governor General Adrienne Clarkson's mandate ends this fall.
The 48-year-old Montrealer will be the first governor general from Quebec since Jeanne Sauvé was named to the post in 1984. Jean will be Canada's first black governor general and only the third woman to hold the post, following Clarkson and Sauvé.
The appointment also means a young child will soon take up residence at Rideau Hall. Jean and her husband, Quebec do*****entary filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond, have a 6-year-old daughter, Marie-Eden, whom they adopted from Haiti.
Martin said Jean is an extremely talented woman who will bring a new perspective to the office.
“She is a reflection of that great quality of Canada, a country which focuses on equality of opportunity,” Martin said in making the formal announcement of Jean’s appointment.
He praised her as a social activist and an educator, as well as a journalist.
“She reflects what we are and what we want to be.”
Jean, in her first press conference, said she wanted to reach out to young people and the disadvantaged.
“I have come a long way,” she said. “My ancestors were slaves, they fought for freedom. I was born in Haiti, the poorest country in our hemisphere. I am a daughter of exiles driven from their home by a dictatorial regime.”
Jean was born in Haiti and grew up in Port-au-Prince until 1968 when her family was forced to flee the brutal regime of François (Papa Doc) Duvalier regime for Montreal.
She studied at the Université de Montréal and went on to study at universities in Florence, Milan and Perugia, Italy. She is fluent in five languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian and Haitian Créole.
Clarkson's five-year term was extended last fall for one year by Martin, who was facing one of the most unstable Parliament in decades, requiring an experienced governor general who could be called on to adjudicate a potential constitutional crisis.
Jean's appointment brings to a close weeks of speculation and rumours about who will fill Clarkson's shoes. Her name was never among those bandied about official Ottawa.
Jean's background has parallels to Clarkson's; both had prominent careers at the CBC.
English viewers of CBC have known Jean since 2000, when she began introducing do*****entaries on The Passionate Eye and Rough Cuts, the network's do*****entary shows.
But it is in French Canada where Jean made her name as a journalist.
She joined Radio-Canada, the CBC's French network, as a local reporter in 1988 and before long her career was propelled into various roles as reporter and presenter. Since 1995 she has worked on such shows as Le Monde ce soir, L'Édition québécoise, Horizons francophones, le Journal RDI and RDI à l'écoute.
Now, she is widely known as the host of Grands Reportages, the Radio-Canada do*****entary series. And last month she filled in as the summer anchor of Le Téléjournal, the network's flagship evening newscast.
Jean has also worked with her husband to produce three independent do*****entaries.
In 1996, the couple's film, Haiti dans tous nos rêves, was named best political do*****entary at Toronto's Hot Docs do*****entary film festival.
Jean has won a number of other awards for her journalistic work including the Amnesty International Journalism award in 1995 for a 15-part series on women. She won the 1994 Anik Prize for information reporting and the 2000 Galaxi Award for best information program host, according to her official CBC biography.
Jean will take up her role at a time when Martin's minority government continues to be fragile and may fall in a no-confidence vote when the House of Commons resumes sitting this fall. If that happens, Jean will be called on as representative of the Head of State to do one of two things: dissolve parliament, which will provoke an election, or ask Stephen Harper, the leader of the opposition, to try to form a government.
With files from Susan Delacourt, Les Whittington and Canadian Press
Posted on Saturday, September 03 @ 16:54:34 UTC by ryoung
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