Anne Cools facts for kids

Anne Clare Cools (born August 12, 1943) is a Canadian retired senator and the longest serving member of the Senate of Canada. As a social worker, Cools was a pioneer in the protection of women from domestic violence, running one of the first domestic violence shelters in Canada.

Personal life and education

Cools was born and raised in Barbados, as the daughter of pharmacist Lucius Unique Cools and Rosita Gordon Miller Cools, who owned a sugar plantation. Both her grandfather and an uncle were politically active on the island. When she was four years old, two of her siblings died. In Barbados, Cools attended Queen's College Girls School. In 1957, when she was 13 years old, her family immigrated to Canada, where she studied at Thomas D'Arcy McGee High School in Montreal. Cools received a B.A. degree in social sciences, sociology and psychology from McGill University. Cools is married to business consultant Rolf Calhoun. Her personal interests include classical music, playing the piano, reading, gardening and dogs.

Early Career

Early in her career, Cools worked as a student coordinator, responsible for supervising students and training them to be social workers. She was employed by the University of Toronto, in the Faculty of Social Work from 1978-1978; by the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) from 1978 to 1980. She worked at Seneca College from 1977 to 1989.

Advocacy

Racism

In February 1969, Cools participated in a 13 day long civil disobedience sit-in at Sir George Williams University (later Concordia University), where over 400 students occupied the computer center to protest the school's inadequate handling of complaints of racism against a professor. Cools was one of 97 students arrested, and unlike most of them, Cools refused to plead guilty to be set free, instead, she served two months in jail. In 1981, she was granted the pardon by the National Parole Board of Canada.

Child custody

Cools is a strong advocate for children's rights, that they after divorce should have continuing relationships with both mothers and fathers, and the importance of fathers for the children's development. In the 1990s, Cools was instrumental in the creation of and served on the Senate/House Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access, which in December 1998 issued its report, For the Sake of the Children. A principal recommendation of this report was that following a relationship breakdown, shared parenting should be presumed to be in the best interests of the child. She was candid in her criticism of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien when proposed legislation to be introduced in the House of Commons was shelved after intense lobbying by women's groups.

Feminism

While a strong advocate for women and domestic violence victims, she has also criticized certain aspects of the feminist movement.

Community Outreach

In addition to her work as social worker, Cools was actively involved in several community organizations. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Black Education Project, a volunteer-run organization created to address racial inequalities in Toronto's education system. She also served on the board of Black Theatre Canada, the Pauline McGibbon Cultural Centre, and the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto.

Political career

National Parole Board

From 1980 to 1984, Cools served on the National Parole Board of Canada, which is the parole board for federal prisoners.

Canadian House of Commons

She twice sought election to the House of Commons of Canada as a candidate of the Liberal Party of Canada. She lost the Liberal nomination in a highly contested race against John Evans for the 1978 by-election in Rosedale. Her campaign for the nomination was documented in the National Film Board of Canada's 1979 film The Right Candidate for Rosedale. She ran again in 1979, and won the nomination but was defeated in both the 1979 and 1980 elections by Progressive Conservative candidate David Crombie.

Canadian Senate

In 1984, Cools was appointed to the Senate of Canada by governor general Edward Schreyer, on the recommendation of prime minister Pierre Trudeau, becoming the first black person in the Canadian senate. She had designated herself as representing the Senate division of Toronto-Centre-York.

Cools became increasingly critical of the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and of same-sex marriage. On June 9, 2004, she announced that she was crossing the floor to join the Conservative Party of Canada.

In the fall of 2006, Cools was barred from her committee duties for the Conservative Party, after questioning a new government accountability bill. In 2007, Cools was ousted from the Conservative party group after accusing two fellow senators of having grabbed and assaulted her. She also mentioned that she had witnessed a senator hitting a child. She sat as a non-affiliated Senator from 2007 until 2017 when she joined the Independent Senators Group.

From the retirement of Lowell Murray on September 26, 2011, until her own retirement on August 12, 2018, Cools was the longest-serving member of the Senate. She is the first female black Senator in North America. With the retirement of Charlie Watt, Cools was the last Senator appointed by Pierre Trudeau remaining in the Senate.

See also

• Canadian titles debate
• Lists of Canadian senators
• List of Ontario senators
• Ninth Floor, documentary about the 1969 sit-in