Alexa McDonough (1944-2022)

“The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto,” intoned the Speaker.

我t was the afternoon of Wednesday, March 30, 1983, and opposition MLAs were in the midst of introducing a series of notices of motions of resolutions and house orders. Most of the time, the resolutions were tabled. A few might eventually be debated; most just disappeared into the pages of Hansard, never to be spoken of again.

Resolution 120 was to be very different. “Mr. Speaker,” Alexa began, “I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move adoption of the following resolution:

“虽然这所房子的成员因坐在委员会而提前支付；尽管人力资源委员会的自由成员都没有出席今天的会议。。。因此，无论如何解决这家众议院的所有成员都要认真对待委员会的责任，而不是对委员会制度无动于衷。”

布雷顿角自由党文斯·麦克林（Vince MacLean）跳上了自己的脚步，宣布他的党派“只能放弃通知，并立即辩论该决议。”请求需要一致同意。同意。就是这样。

事实是Alexa的立法者poiling for this fight since even before the House opened. During her first legislative session the year before, Alexa had discovered the politicians’ dirty little secret: for years, MLAs had quietly topped up their official $28,000 salaries with committee fees that added an average of $9,000 more to their pay packets. Under the system, “unique in Canada [and] devoid of logic,” members received extra pay—from $1,500 to $3,000—for each committee they sat on, whether they attended the meetings, whether the committee even met. There were twenty-four such committees, most with ten or more members.

当Alexa为委员会任务赚取8,700美元的Alexa确切地了解该系统的工作原理时，“或者我可能会更准确地说，失败”时，她将自己的担忧私下交给了一个“独立”委员会，其成员包括前自由内阁部长现在判断。该委员会已成立，以对MLA薪酬提出“约束力”建议。但是，当Alexa发现委员会“选择不处理她的担忧”时，她开始寻找其他私下和公开筹集它们的方法。

当天早些时候,她写th的椅子e human resources committee to complain about the failure of other members to show up for its meeting. She had been “appalled,” she said, to learn the committee had to cancel four meetings the previous session because of the lack of a quorum. During the entire legislature session, there had been only one nineteen-minute committee meeting, which had cost taxpayers $15,000 in committee fees. “It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that it has to be recognized that the present system is wide open to this kind of inefficiency and wide open to abuse.”

她的同胞没有逗乐。省联合专栏作家Parker Barss Donham在肯特维尔报道说：“两个半小时的不间断时间。”Advertiser，，，，“the fifty-one male members of the legislature—Liberals, Tories and Labour—heaped scorn on McDonough with an air of personal rancor rare even in this acrimonious forum.”

他们声称她正在向媒体播放。CBC-TV程序询问，他们指出，当晚晚些时候，安排了委员会系统的一部分。它包括对Alexa的采访。They argued they were underpaid and that committee fees were simply a reasonable way to bring their incomes closer to elected officials in other provinces, without explaining, of course, why those fees needed to be kept secret.他们指责Alexa亲自攻击他们，而亲自攻击她是因为她的嘴里有“银汤匙”。正如麦克唐纳（McDonough）自己所说，“他们认为只有一个有钱的孩子可以是这样的破坏者。”

“Not only am I hurt, but I am angered,” declared Tory MLA Malcolm MacKay. “But I do not really get emotionally angered when it is somebody from the opposite sex that is chastising me. . . . I better be careful what I say now because I consider myself to be a gentleman.” Looking at Alexa, he added, to laughter from his colleagues, “I would not feel comfortable holding you up by the scruff of the neck.”

Alexa的克星Paul Macewan [前NDP MLA从党退出，现在是劳动独立的人]，很高兴。“议长先生，今天下午的讨论与我所看到的，在我在这所房子里的十三年中，谴责房子的一名成员，没有明确说明的谴责行为。”

抚养的原因似乎很明显。多纳姆写道：“麦克唐纳（McDonough）打破了沉默的守则，笼罩着立法生活的津贴。”“她违反了老男孩俱乐部的规则，因此受到了惩罚。。。。麦克唐纳（McDonough）引起了这个问题的激动，仅证明了她触动了原始神经。MLA被抓住了一阵欺骗，他们知道。”

我t had been another good week, not to mention a much better legislative session for Alexa, who’d begun to master the ways and wiles of the House of Assembly. She’d learned from her first session as an MLA when, as she admitted to Canadian Press reporter Elaine McCluskey, she’d sometimes come off as “sanctimonious and holier-than-thou. I worked so hard at distancing myself from the old boys’ club that I made it hard for anyone to be even slightly friendly.”

Years later, in a conversation with journalist Sharon Fraser, she tried to put her approach in context. “I was really driven by the notion that I had to be strong, that I couldn’t appear to be weak in the face of these fifty-one male adversaries,” she explained, adding, “I think it wouldn’t have taken such a toll on me if I had learned to . . . depend upon more people for emotional support. . . . But when people say, ‘Oh come on now, lighten up,’ they don’t understand the passion that I feel about the issues, the passion that fuels my involvement.”

That passion, leavened at least slightly by what she’d absorbed in her first session as MLA, helped her in her second session, she told McCluskey. “I sort of feel that I have my feet on the ground and some little bit of confidence about being able to stand on my own.”

The key now was to keep pushing, keep the pressure on the government and the opposition. Which was what brought her back to the NDP’s downtown office on Saturday, April 2, 1983, to plan strategy for the next week in the House.

一会儿，亚历克斯（Alexa）记得几年后，她站在办公室里与一名工作人员交谈。下一刻，“我昏迷了。”

***

At first, doctors at the Victoria General Hospital believed she was suffering from a simple sinus infection. They examined and then discharged her, advising her to take it easy for a few days. Easier said than done, of course, for a one-person political party in the middle of a hectic legislature session. A week later, she was back at the hospital, complaining now of horrific headaches, and it soon became clear this was not just a simple sinus infection. But what was it? Meningitis? A brain tumor? A… ? She was admitted.

在医院的最初几天，Alexa将决定每日新闻发布并在她的床上给政府官员的公开信。在引起全国关注的一封信中，她呼吁布坎南总理要求司法部长哈里（Harry）辞职，因为他写信给印度加拿大新斯科舍省协会（Indo-Canadian Association）的不屑一顾的信。如何捍卫阿卡迪亚大学不聘请M. K. Jain博士为大学图书馆员的决定。他抱怨说：“许多人，经常给政客们写一封信，抱怨歧视工作时。。。。他补充说，其他事情是平等的，”我们应该在公立资助的大学招聘加拿大人的偏好。但是Jain实际上是加拿大人。布坎南（Buchanan）试图在政府文具上争论这封信，就是个人意见。 But the point had been scored.

但是，随着Alexa的病情恶化，她的注意力减弱，该党开始指定代理人就特定问题发言。它很少有效。律师和新民主党发言人雷·拉金（Ray Larkin）就劳动和经济问题问题进行了理解。“我们并不那么迷人，”他告诉Globe and Mail.

同时，有测试和更多测试。她的住院日变成了几周，几周临近一个月。Alexa减轻体重，变得沉默，似乎“完全受伤”，她的兄弟Robbie每天都拜访了她。“没有眼泪，没有‘祸患我。’但是我知道她的状态真的很差。她看着，说话，表现得好像可能死了。。。。我想法她要死了。”

最后，哈利法克斯维多利亚综合医院的首席神经科医生乔克·穆雷（Jock Murray）负责。在检查她之后，他联系了安大略省伦敦大学医院的同事，在那里进行了更复杂的测试以确认他的怀疑。

While that was being organized, Alexa, eager to make clear she was still functioning, organized a hospital-bed news conference for the afternoon of May 8, 1983. Instead, her condition worsened that morning, the news conference was abruptly cancelled, Peter and the boys were called, and Alexa found herself being bundled into an air ambulance for an emergency flight to London with Peter at her side. “I remember saying goodbye to my kids and not knowing if I would see them again,” Alexa said years later. “It was really scary, not knowing what it was.”

Rumours that Alexa might actually die sparked a variety of heartfelt responses across the province. In Cape Breton, John Arthur Murphy and his wife, long-time NDP supporters, named their newborn daughter Lindsay Alexa after the NDP leader. A union made plans to plant a magnolia tree in her honour at Conrose Field near the McDonough house. In the provincial legislature, members pressed pause on their usual partisan rancor long enough to unanimously approve a get-well resolution: “Whereas while members of this House may disagree, even profoundly, on political matters,” it began, “when it comes to health, surely none of us would wish ill to one another. Resolved that this House asks Mr. Speaker to convey to the member for Halifax Chebucto all of our sincere wishes for a speedy and successful recovery.” The resolution had been introduced by none other than Paul MacEwan.

幸运的是，伦敦的医生并没有长时间诊断并开始治疗Alexa McDonough。她患有颅内感染，鼻窦炎引起的大脑感染可能导致她的大脑肿胀。如果不及时治疗，这很容易致命。尽管有这种诊断，但很难不承认Alexa自己的后来评估中也可能会有真相。“我只是在身体，精神和情感上烧毁了自己，当我生病时我无法反击。”

She returned home a week later, on May 16, to rest and recuperate, returning to work, in the words of a party press release, “as her health permits.”

But, just two weeks later—having missed seven weeks of the spring session—she was back in her seat in the legislature. She rose “reluctantly,” as she put it, “trying to obey doctor’s orders and make a slow re-entry,” in order to participate in a debate on the government’s new Canada-Nova Scotia Oil and Gas Agreement Act, which she complained was “virtually substance-less” and “will confirm the worst fears of Nova Scotians about the whole way in which this government has been approaching the handling of offshore development matters.”

Alexa McDonough was back in the business of making life uncomfortable for John Buchanan’s government.

— FromAlexa! Changing the Face of Canadian Politics
by Stephen Kimber (Goose Lane Editions, 2021)