Nancy Ruth (born January 6, 1942 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian senator from Ontario. She was appointed to the senate by Prime Minister Paul Martin on March 24, 2005. She sits as a Progressive Conservative, and is Canada's first openly lesbian senator.
Before being appointed to the Senate, Ruth was a social activist and philanthropist. She founded several women's organizations in Canada, including the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund , the Canadian Women's Foundation and a women's studies chair at Mount Saint Vincent University. She has also been a noted benefactor of hospitals and art galleries throughout Canada, and was named a member of the Order of Canada in 1994. She has long battled for women's constitutional rights, and opposed the Charlottetown Accord from this position in 1992. She is also a vocal opponent of pornography.
She was born Nancy Rowell Jackman, and is the sister of former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Hal Jackman, the daughter of former Member of Parliament Harry Jackman and the granddaughter of former MP and Ontario Liberal Party leader Newton Rowell. She changed her name in the mid-1990s, for reasons that have never been publicly clarified.
A Red Tory, Ruth campaigned for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario on two occasions in the early 1990s, when she was known as Nancy Jackman. The first was in the 1990 provincial election, when she lost to New Democratic Party candidate Zanana Akande by fewer than 1,000 votes in the riding of St. Andrew—St. Patrick . On April 1, 1993, she lost to Liberal Tim Murphy by over 2,000 votes in a by-election held in St. George—St. David .
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