Nova Scotia’s fifth female senator has made a career of helping others

The type of people I admire are those who have a dynamic and interesting life – people who are much more than just checking boxes. Their life path isn’t so cookie-cutter.

One such person is Mary Coyle.

I often meet Mary on my morning walks. She is usually holding a flower she picked along the way or saying farewell to a friend she shared her morning stroll with.

Her social media is full of interesting life moments – dips in the lake, walks in nature with friends, adorable grandchildren, moving words celebrating one of her daughters’ birthdays, photos of her amazing culinary delights or perhaps an impactful speech she has given in the Senate.

I sat down with Mary to learn more about her.

EARLY LIFE

Mary was born into a very loving family in Orillia, Ont, as one of seven children. Her mother was a nurse, but after having children, managing their family became her job.

Her father was a travelling salesman, so for much of her childhood, they moved around Ontario.

Although she didn’t yet know what feminism was, it was early in her years that she knew she wanted more than a typical suburban life.

Mary describes herself as a shy person, but she became active in politics as a young woman.

When she was Head Girl of her high school in Ottawa, she invited then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to visit. He accepted the invitation.

Mary heard Trudeau had a habit of kissing women when he greeted them and found herself terribly nervous that he was going to kiss her when he got out of his car. To her own astonishment, instead of him kissing her – she kissed him.

ROARING 20S AND 30S AND 40S

At age 21, Mary (who was already married) gave birth to her first daughter at the end of her second year of university, followed by another daughter at 24.

At 25, with a three-year-old and a six-month-old in tow, she and her family made their way to Botswana, where she was to work in small business development. They stayed for two-and-a-half years, and at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, she gave birth to her third daughter.

From Botswana, they migrated back to Canada, where she completed another degree (with three small children at home), followed by a stint in Indonesia, where she worked in rural development.

Her master's paper on support for small-scale businesses around the world caught the attention of an organization in Toronto which worked in global microfinance. They approached Mary to design a program for First Nations in Canada, which was called The First People’s Fund.

Mary very quickly became the executive director of this organization and, over the next 10 years, she ran all their domestic and international programs.

At 42, she and her family made another move heading east to Antigonish, which she still calls home, where Mary became the director of The Coady Institute.

In a contrast to her past roles, this was a very different endeavour, as the Coady was already a well-respected and globally-recognized institute. While acknowledging the great history, she brought new life into their programming.

With the help of her amazing colleagues, great movements were made: First Nation and youth programs were developed; The Centre for Women’s Leadership was started, and multimilliondollar campaigns were hatched.

She eventually became vicepresident of StFX.

She was the longest-serving director of The Coady, but after 13 years, she decided to step away on a high note and spent time working in Haiti and Indonesia, eventually becoming the executive director of the Frank McKenna Centre for Leadership at StFX.

CANCER AND SENATE

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau - not the one she kissed - had implemented a reform of the senate of Canada early in his term, leading her to do something she had never dreamed of: applying to become a Senator.

She thought it would be a long shot, but she leaned into her motto of ‘you don’t ask, you don’t get. You don’t try, it doesn’t happen.'

The application process was rigorous and quite literally - right before she hit send – her life was interrupted by cancer.

Five years ago, shortly after a healthy mammogram, she found a lump in her breast. It was stage three breast cancer.

In the middle of chemo, she had a bad reaction and ended up being admitted to the hospital.

While there, she remembered the deadline for submitted her application was the next day and she hadn’t yet hit send.

Thankfully, she was discharged and found the energy to put the final touches on her application.

A few requests for more information came in here and there, but it was many months later - in November 2016 - that she was informed that someone from the government was going to call her on a Saturday.

On that day, her house was full of people. To get away from all the chaos, she took the phone call upstairs. She didn’t realize it would be Prime Minster Trudeau himself calling to inform her she had been selected to join the Senate of Canada.

Like most Canadians, she didn’t fully know what being a Senator meant. It became a whole new phase of learning, of making and passing laws. Since she didn’t have time in her life to do a PhD, she considers this work to be hers.

As the fifth female Nova Scotian to ever be appointed to the Senate, over the last three years she has worked with incredibly talented people from across the country to have a positive impact on Canadians during a time when the governance system has been transformed.

Medical assisted death, UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous people, banning conversion therapy, climate change, fisheries, foreign affairs, Arctic, and chemical weapons convention are just a few of the topics she has covered, her learnings have been endless.

LEARNINGS

As she was talking about her incredibly inspiring professional career, I couldn’t interrupt the flow with questions about her personal life.

After I absorbed the extraordinary impact she has made, I ended with a few questions:

Firstly, how in the world did you do all of that with three kids who have all turned out to be amazing women?

"With a husband who was an equal partner and an absolute commitment to family," she explains. "With great efficiency and incredible amount of hard work. When he did his

master's, I was the breadwinner. When I did my master's, he was the breadwinner."

She never sacrificed family, but that left very little time for herself. The secret was that she always did work that was fully in line with her core beliefs of fairness and justice for all and making an impact, so her work felt like an outlet that others might get from volunteering.

All that hard work has left Mary with a life that could be described as a cornucopia: full of fantastic friends she met along her journey and a beautiful family. Together, they built things that brought about great change in our community, our country and the world.

She continues to grow, to learn and to evolve.

Her advice to others? "Dream to be great – not what for what you can do and have for yourself, but what you can do in and for the world."

It seems her dreams have come true.

With an insatiable love for human behaviour and circumstance, Emilie Chiasson absorbs the world around her, and turns her experiences into relatable stories. From her home town of Antigonish, NS to her travels around the world, she never fails to connect with the characters and perspectives that make life a bit more colourful. Read more at https:// emiliechiasson.wordpress.com/